Page 9 - IRANRptSep18

Turkey has warned that an all-out military offensive on Idlib by forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad—an ally of Russia and Iran—could provoke a “disaster” and spark a new refugee wave toward its borders.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will sit down with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani at the summit in Tabriz in northwestern Iran’s Iranian Azerbaijan. With the US having recently imposed sanctions on Turkey, the gathering also represents an assembling of ‘the sanctioned’.
Washington’s ties with Ankara and Tehran are badly strained thanks to its use of sanctions and there is no love lost between the US and Russia with the Americans tightening the sanctions screw on Moscow. The ill-feeling felt towards the US by the three parties could be a factor as they talk over policy towards continued US support for Kurdish forces in Syria, which Erdogan fears could ignite more separatist aspirations among Kurdish militants in Turkey.
Turkey, an opponent of Assad, is pursuing its own security interests in Syria. It has intervened militarily against Islamic rebels and Kurdish forces there.
A difficulty for Russia is that its bases in Syria are coming under attack from al-Qaeda-linked rebels in the northwestern province of Idlib as Syrian forces close in on the opposition enclave, currently under heavy Turkish influence.
The US and Russia, meanwhile, exchanged warnings over the weekend in relation to developments in Idlib. US National Security Advisor John Bolton said Washington was willing to make a military intervention if Assad uses chemical weapons to recapture the province. Russia accused the US of attempting to devise a pretext to attack Assad.
2.6 Analysts look at Iran’s Zaghari-Ratcliffe release for what it says about efforts to save nuclear deal
Iran on August 23 granted a temporary release to British-Iranian woman Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, sentenced to five years in jail for spying. Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who had been in prison for more than two years, was given only a few minutes’ notice of her impending release. Iran analysts are now assessing whether the move was prompted by Tehran realising that as the US sanctions pressure on the country is turned up, it needs to fix as many bridges as possible when it comes to Europe, an opponent of Washington’s attempt to drive foreign businesses out of Iran.
The UK, along with France and Germany, on 6 August—the day the first round of US anti-Tehran sanctions began—signed a joint statement defending the Iran nuclear deal as “a key element of the global nuclear non-proliferation architecture, crucial for the security of Europe, the region, and the entire world”.
Also, in a visit to Washington this week, recently appointed UK foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt did not back down from the British standpoint that Iran was in full compliance with the nuclear deal and that excessive US pressure on Tehran was only likely to cause the Iranian regime to become more hostile to the West.
9 IRAN Country Report September 2018 www.intellinews.com