TEHRAN (Basirat)- Commenting on the push of US Secretary of State John Kerry to introduce a no-fly zone for Russian and Syrian aviation in Syria, Iranian President explained why the idea has little sense for the improvement situation on the ground, while former British diplomat and MI6 agent Alastair Crooke suggested what might be a real purpose behind it.

Commenting on the push of US Secretary of State John Kerry to introduce a no-fly zone for Russian and Syrian aviation in Syria, Iranian President explained why the idea has little sense for the improvement situation on the ground, while former British diplomat and MI6 agent Alastair Crooke suggested what might be a real purpose behind it.
russiatoday.com reports:
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani stated that a no-fly zone in Syria
will serve to only strengthen foreign-sponsored terrorists in Syria.
"A no-fly zone (in Syria) will benefit terrorists, who have everything
expect for military aircraft," Al-Masdar News quoted Rouhani as saying
during a presser after his speech at the 71st United Nations General
Assembly session in New York on Thursday,.
They have mortar shells, tanks, missiles and armored personnel
carriers. They have cannons and artillery batteries but no warplanes.
The creation of a no-fly zone is not the right step. This is an
ill-advised suggestion," the Iranian president added.
This view was echoed by Alastair Crooke, who is also the founder and
director of the Conflicts Forum, an organization that advocates for
engagement between political Islam and the West.
"It makes very little sense. Unless you want to shift the balance
in favor of the jihadist forces on the ground, which may be partly the
purpose of that,' he said in an interview with RT.
Crooke further explained that the ‘no-fly zone’ is really "very much
one-sided" move because the US is not capable of controlling the
jihadists in Syria.
"They may think they have some sort of control but in practice it is not," the former MI6 agent said.
All of the groups, he noted, have already denied the ceasefire from the
outset: they won’t participate because, they are not part of it.
They’ve recently been rearmed, regrouped and had more forces added
to them. So, what we can expect from a ‘no-fly’ zone is renewed ground
fighting," he told RT.
Similar view was earlier expressed by Jim Jatras, a former US diplomat
and foreign policy adviser to the Senate GOP leadership, who called it
opportunism.
"How does grounding the Syrian Air Force and Russian Air
Force…defeat ISIS, defeat Al-Qaeda? It doesn’t. In effect, they would be
the beneficiaries of these policies," Jatras said in his interview with
RT.
Alastair Crooke however explained why then the US is not interested in any objections.
"It is a geopolitical war. It is not a war about Syria or in Syria;
this has become a geopolitical conflict between two opposing sides," he
said.
"This is just the war of narratives that the West is very good at
because it controls completely the mainstream media," he finally stated.