The Star Tribune quotes Rafik Hariri Center Resident Senior Fellow Frederic C. Hof on the pitfalls of a possible US-Russia settlement over Syria:
Obama is right to reject a solution that would reward Assad. Doing so would be a strategic and moral mistake that would alienate allies and exacerbate the catastrophe. “It would break up the coalition against ISIL and marginalize our relations with the Gulf states and much of the Arab world and would be a recruiting bonanza of incalculable value of the so-called caliph,” Frederic C. Hof, resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and a former ambassador for the transition in Syria, told an editorial writer. “If [ISIL] could reach out to the disaffected Sunni world and say, ‘Look at what I am up against — Iran, Russia, Assad and the United States,’ it would be the result [ISIL] is hoping and praying for.”