West, Russia at odds over Syria mission: Commentator
Press TV has interviewed Fred Weir, a journalist and political commentator in Moscow, about British fighter jets reportedly being given the green light to shoot down Russian aircrafts over Syria.
What follows is a rough transcription of the interview.
Press TV: How do you react to this? Is a standoff in the sky essentially inevitable at this point?
Weir: I do not think so. There is a lot of political tension between the West and Britain and United States and in particular Russia over Syria, over what is the mission there. They are at odds and frankly there is a lot of confusion about it as well and that it is a dangerous situation, there is no denying that but this is the kind of news item that comes out at times like this … I am absolutely sure that British planes in war zones are always armed and under orders to defend themselves, if attacked, but I am equally sure that the Russians have absolutely no intention of attacking British warplanes. With just a little bit of caution on both sides, no confrontation of that sort will happen.
The problem is the political tensions and differences over what next, how to deal with this, whether the mission there is to overthrow Assad, defeat IS (Daesh), or something in between. These tensions are growing. We are going to hear a lot of that and frankly we are going to hear a lot of scaremongering news stories like this in the weeks to come.
Press TV: And I wanted to ask you about that because you mentioned Daesh there and I am wondering the US certainly as far as this coalition because its declared goal is at least to fight Daesh, so I am wondering why all these tensions then? Why aren’t all these countries working together?
Weir: One thing the Russian intervention has made perfectly clear is that the American and western, British and Saudi and Qatari goal always was to overthrow Assad. IS appeared it is a scary monstrous organization, it is a thing that everybody will focus on but the war against IS clearly is an add-on for the West or as the essential core goal that the CIA - we now learned - has been ramping up forces for the West to overthrow Assad.
The Russians have come in and their goal is to bolster Assad, save the Assad regime and also try to restore order to Syria on the basis of that regime. This is a big difference and this is what they are quarreling over now and this is a problem.
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