U.S. Conducts First Airstrikes in Syria on Islamic State

By Tony Capaccio

Sept. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Ian Bremmer, president at Eurasia Group, discusses how the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State is coming together, what it means for U.S. policy in the Mideast and why it complicates a nuclear deal with Iran. He speaks on “Bloomberg Surveillance.”

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• U.S. Expands Airstrikes Into Syria to Target IS

The U.S. and its Arab allies launched a series of airstrikes against Islamic State positions in Syria, a major expansion of President Barack Obama’s effort to destroy the Sunni extremist group.
Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Bahrain “participated in or supported” strikes against 14 Islamic State targets near their stronghold of Raqqa and along the Iraqi border, the Pentagon said in an e-mailed statement today. Fighter jets, bomber aircraft and Tomahawk missiles were being used in an ongoing operation, Pentagon press secretary Rear Admiral John Kirby said in a statement late yesterday.
The U.S. and allies are seeking to
reverse the advances of Islamic State, which has seized a swath of territory across Iraq and Syria. That has prompted alarm among neighboring nations, including the Sunni Arab monarchies taking part in the operation. The Pentagon had so far limited its airstrikes to targets in Iraq.

Syria’s Civil War

Islamic State can only be defeated by tackling them in Syria, Jean-Pierre Filiu, a former French diplomat and now a professor of Middle East studies at Sciences Po, a university in Paris, said by video teleconference at a forum yesterday sponsored by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “The head of the snake is in Syria.”

Photographer: Mohammed Al-Shaikh/AFP via Getty Images

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The U.S. also launched eight strikes against the Khorasan Group, a militant organization the Pentagon said was made-up of a “network of seasoned al-Qaeda veterans” who are plotting an “imminent attack” against U.S. and Western interests. No further details were given.

Legal Question

Obama said in a Sept. 10 televised speech he would “not hesitate to take action” against the group “in Syria as well as Iraq.”
Russian Ambassador to the United Nations Vitaly Churkin, whose country backs Assad, told the UN Security Council on Sept. 19 that any attacks inside Syria without the approval of its President Bashar al-Assad would be “considered illegal” under international law. The U.S. informed Syria’s UN envoy yesterday that the strikes would take place, Syria’s state-run television reported, citing the Foreign Ministry.
While Iraq’s government has invited the U.S. and other nations to help it fight Islamic State, no such request has come from Assad, whose ouster the U.S. seeks. Syria has fractured into enclaves controlled by different militant groups since the start of an uprising against Assad’s rule in 2011.
Some U.S. allies have also shown a reluctance to extend the strikes beyond Iraq and into Syria. While France has joined the U.S. in airstrikes in Iraq, President Francois Hollande ruled out attacking Syria.

Photographer: Alex Wong/Getty Images

John Kirby, Pentagon Press Secretary Rear Admiral.

“We’re very concerned with the aspects of international law,” Hollande said last week at a press conference. “We’ve been called in by the Iraqis; we’re not called on in Syria.”

Self-Defense

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told a Sept. 17 U.S. Senate hearing that in helping to defend Iraq, “you have a right of hot pursuit, you have a right to be able to attack those people who are attacking you as a matter of self-defense.”
Army General Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a Senate hearing last week that about two-thirds of Islamic State’s personnel, which the Central Intelligence Agency estimates at roughly 20,000 to 31,500, are in Syria.
Attacks on Syria “will not look like ‘shock and awe’” air strikes that opened the 2003 Iraq War “but it will be persistent and sustainable,” Dempsey told the panel.
“This plan includes targeted actions” against Islamic State positions, including “command and control, logistics capabilities and infrastructure,” Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said last week.
Backing the expansion of air strikes into Syria, Representative Howard “Buck” McKeon, the California Republican who heads the House Armed Services Committee, said in an e-mailed statement that “this is one step in what will be a long fight” against Islamic State.

Air Strikes Insufficient

Airstrikes are just the beginning of what will be needed to defeat Islamic State in what promises to be a years-long mission that ultimately will require some trained ground troops, said Michael Eisenstadt, director of the Washington Institute’s military and security studies program.
“On its own, it won’t be enough to defeat ISIS,” Eisenstadt said at yesterday’s forum, using another acronym for the group. While Obama is counting on Iraqi and moderate Syrian rebel ground troops, “our battlefield partners in Iraq and Syria are not ready yet,” Eisenstadt said.
Training a 5,000-man force of Syrian rebels could take more than six months, said James Jeffrey, a former U.S. ambassador to Iraq who also spoke at the forum.