This is actually just highlighting the fact that this is
the old Shia-Sunni divide yet again, of course, the Saudi-Sunni backing
opponents of Bashar-al-Assad and of course the Shia-Iranians
backing the said President of Syria, So it is once again going on
the sectarian lines to support, and indeed to protest
against these strikes, Hadley? Absolutely Steven, unfortunately,
it seems as if these strikes at least for, if you're coming at it from
the opinions of the Saudis, for example, or certainly here in the Emirates as well,
they haven't really moved the dial any way, in terms of moving this situation forward,
in terms of doing anything that would result in Bashar al-Assad's removal from power and certainly
it seems as if the Russians are really only gaining in all of this, in spite of all of this rhetoric that
we've heard between the United States and Russia, in terms of the sanctions they're
certainly going to hurt for this, but the Russians, at the end of the day will be
able, potentially, to keep that port in Syria, and certainly to keep their
foothold in the Middle East, which has frankly been one of the main drivers
of Russian action in the region, as we know. Now, it's interesting to note what investors here
in the region are talking about right now. They say that they're used to this
kind of geopolitical risk, and most of them telling me, that this isn't
really moving the dial one way or the other, in terms of their investment case scenarios, but I asked Naguib Sawiris, the executive
chairman of Orascom Telecom, he's in gold, he's in real estate,
he's across the region, and frankly, this does hit quite close to home
for him, being an investor out of Egypt. Let's listen in to what he had to say.
Everybody is wrong in Syria, The Turkish go in and slaughter the Kurdish
people, because they say they're terrorists, the Iranians with Hezbollah go and
interfere and fight the locals, or fight ISIS, which is right in a way, and then the United States
wants to fight ISIS, too. So everybody's fighting everybody there,
except the people, the Syrian people. I mean, they're sitting there being
slammed by everybody back and forth between a corrupt and unfair
leader that is gassing them, between a foreign occupation by
Russia, Iran and Hezbollah, and then strikes that, okay,
are trying to help them, but you never know if the strike
really just really helps them, or... Because many talk also that
these strikes were symbolic.
I think, okay, symbolic or not,
I think it's a important to tell people, you can't go and support a dictator that is
gassing his people and get away with it. So I'm, all in all, I am for this strike. He mentioned earlier about Iraq and Lebanon really pushing back there and being against this strike, from the U.S., From the U.K., From France
and of course you have to remember that this is something that nobody in the
region really wants to see going forward is more instability, because the status quo for
so long has been the instability of Syria, the instability of Iraq and certainly they're
gonna have to change the narrative when it comes to their investment
case scenario as things move forward, and the potential for more
geopolitical risk here..
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