The various tracks related to UNSC resolution 2254 and the solution to the Syrian crisis, whether those tracks are Geneva, Astana, Sochi or the Constitutional Commission, continue to worked on step by step and through many difficulties. Progress in any of them is, in sum, useful for the whole process. However, the essence of the matter is still, as always have been, the necessity for radical, deep and comprehensive national democratic change.
In the last few days there have been very contradictory statements on the subject of the constitutional committee, especially from the US side, whose representative in the UN Security Council has declared that the idea has been given enough time and has not been realized, and therefore, the international envoy must abandon it, in parallel with the completion of understandings on the Committee and the approach of the declaration of its formation.
After the rise of the US ado over the past months about Iran, from the withdrawal from the nuclear agreement and then the imposition of sanctions, and the tightening of sanctions time after time, reaching brinkmanship after the downing of the drone, through the threat of a military strike, and even the logistical preparation of such a strike, the US mountain of escalation gave birth to a mouse, and the calls for dialogue and negotiation returned to dominate the scene.
The Syrian economic file is witnessing a number of heavy and «interdependent» operations of vandalism, on top of them are the following:
US officials recently said that the solution in Syria would pass through «difficult decisions» that «all parties» have to take.
Many years have passed since the debate over which is first: the political solution or the fight against terrorism. That debate proved to be futile. Subsequent developments have shown that the extremists on both sides, who held up to one of the answers, implicitly agreed to extend the duration of the crisis because of the immaturity of "quelling" [the opposition by the regime] nor "overthrowing" [the regime by the opposition] – as their slogans claimed, at a time when the obvious answer was that the two processes [of political solution and fighting terrorism] constitute one integral whole, and cannot be approached except together and in parallel.
It was just a month since Iran downed of the US drone, and the subsequent mutual reactions, until the tension entered a new stage through the tankers-warfare, moving from Gibraltar to the Straits of Hormuz up to Brazil.
Various indicators and data suggest that the announcement of the formation of the Syrian Constitutional Committee is imminent, and this may take place within a few weeks.
The 13th round of Astana concluded its work last Friday, affirming the general line of the Astana meetings, which seeks to complete untying the military knots in order to open the door wide to a political solution.
On August 5, [2019], the Russian Foreign Ministry published on its official website a media report about the meeting between Mikhail Bogdanov and Dr. Kadri Jamil. It reads:
