January 23, The Iran Project - Former US President Barack Obama exactly one night before relinquishing power to Donald Trump authorized a heavy attack on terrorist hideouts in Syria which is considered as the deadliest air strikes since the beginning of the war in this Arab county. Obama was replaced with Trump who has strange and odd beliefs. Now the question is what is Obama's motivation for authorizing the strike one night before leaving the White House?

The US strike hit a training camp west of Aleppo, near the Turkish border. A US B-52 bomber, along with armed drones, dropped 14 munitions on the camp. The site of the camp was well known to US intelligence.

Once, he prevented the US from entering huge war against Syria, not because of his sympathies with Syrians, but to avoid the repetition of its failure in Libya.

While Obama was unwilling to send US ground forces into major combat operations, he embraced a strategy of targeting killing suspected militants with American air-power, despite criticism that drone strikes and other attacks regularly killed civilians.

Obama’s last major airstrike as president killed around 100 members of al-Qaeda in Syria, according to the Pentagon.
2nd major US military attack

US Spokesman Capt Jeff Davis said the camp in Idlib province had been in operation since 2013 adding the strike was the second major US military attack in the final hours of Obama's presidency.

"These strikes, conducted in quick succession, degrade al-Qaeda's capabilities, weaken their resolve, and cause confusion in their ranks," he said.

Russia had previously tried to take out the Al-Qaeda training camp, but had been unsuccessful. The Russian Air Force conducts the majority of their strikes using unguided weapons during the day time. US Air Force and Navy jets fly primarily at night using satellite-guided bombs.

In all, US airstrikes have killed more than 150 Al Qaeda terrorists since Jan. 1.

 

Commanders killed

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that an air strike killed more than 40 members of Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (formerly al-Qaeda's Syrian branch) in northwestern Syria.

A source in Fateh al-Sham confirmed to Al Jazeera that dozens had died in air strikes on a training camp in western Aleppo's countryside.

Jabhat Fateh al-Sham split from al-Qaeda in July, a move that analysts said was aimed at easing pressure from both Russia and the United States.

 

French Trap

In a period of time, the US president was under a tremendous pressure to enter into a serious war in Syria by some certain opponents of Damascus and Moscow; but, finally Obama decided not to fall into the trap of the France the same was happened in Libya.

When Obama was informed French President Francois Hollande's intention to attack Syria and in a phone conversation he warned him not to count on the US help in attacking Syria.

In those days, Hollande was under pressure exerted by Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey to do what former French residPent Nicolas Sarkozy did in attacking Libya and bring North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces in the Syrian war.

But Syria was very different from Libya and Obama was not seeking to open another front in Syria to put Israel at risk.

However, the White House policies aimed at strengthening various terrorist groups in Iraq and Syria did not change, but when these groups threaten America's interests, they decided to limit them.

In the last few months of the Obama's presidency, US Department of Defense and Intelligence Community had little obedience to him and were implementing their programs in Syria and Iraq.

One of these programs was attacking Syrian military positions in the highlands of East Jabal Thardeh  in Deir Ezzor in Syria.

White House was not aware of the attack which led to the killing of more than 80 Syrian military forces and Daesh terrorists advance on the strategic heights. According to Sergei Lavrov, the American government had apologized for the attack. The attack was in direct assistance to Daesh terrorist group; put a tremendous psychological pressure on the White House leaders, Obama in particular. So he decided to authorize the attack as a sign of retaliatory measure.  What happened that night in west of Aleppo indicates that the Americans have been trying to perish a huge number of terrorists in retaliation for the killing of dozens of Syrian military forces.

Killing of 110 trained terrorists is not a small figure. So far the Russian Air Force has not succeeded to reach the amount of the mortality rate in an attack.

It is worth mentioning that the terrorists have been trained by the US and the Americans were fully aware of the terrorists' whereabouts in Syria.