US President Donald Trump has warned Syria against launching an attack on the country’s last rebel stronghold with the help of Russia and Iran, saying the offensive could trigger a “human tragedy”. The warning came as Russia begins war games with the largest fleet it has assembled in the Mediterranean for decades while issuing pre-emptive warnings that Syrian rebels are preparing to gas themselves in a bid to spark international outrage.

Moscow has been assisting Syria in rolling back US backed rebel forces under the guise of fighting ‘terrorist groups’, including Islamic State.

The anti-Assad regime rebels are now trapped in their final stronghold, the province of Idlib.

In recent weeks, Syrian forces — along with their Russian and Iranian supporters — have been seen massing in the vicinity of the northwestern district.

A final assault is believed imminent.

Iran’s foreign minister Mohammad Javed Zarif has met with Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad in a surprise visit to Damascus ahead of the looming offensive.

TRUMP’S WARNING
“President Bashar al-Assad of Syria must not recklessly attack Idlib Province. The Russians and Iranians would be making a grave humanitarian mistake to take part in this potential human tragedy,” Trump tweeted.

“Hundreds of thousands of people could be killed. Don’t let that happen!”

The United Nations and aid groups have warned that a full assault on Idlib could spark a humanitarian catastrophe on a scale not yet seen in Syria’s seven-year-old conflict.

But Russia and Iran have insisted that extremist groups in Idlib must be defeated and are expected to back regime forces in any assault.

Zarif’s trip to war-ravaged Syria also comes just days before a top-level tripartite meeting in Tehran to discuss the Syrian conflict, now in its eighth year.

He met Assad to discuss “issues on the agenda for the tripartite meeting,” according to the Syrian presidency’s account on the Telegram messaging app.

MOSCOW’S MESSAGE TO ‘BACK OFF’
Russian media outlet the Moscow Times says a large-scale naval exercise currently underway in the eastern Mediterranean “coincides with rising tensions between Moscow and Washington over Syria”.

Russia’s Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov said that he had told US officials that Moscow was concerned by signs that the US was preparing for new strikes on Syria.

The US, with Britain and France, unleashed a missile barrage against Syrian facilities earlier this year after chemical weapons were used against civilian and rebel forces.

Moscow denied the claim, instead claiming Syrian rebels had used ‘false flag’ tactics.

It’s doing so again — this time before any chemical weapons attack has taken place. It says it has ‘evidence’ that Syrian rebels want to stir up international opposition to the Russian-Syrian alliance, but it has taken no action to prevent the alleged plot.

The report states that the Russian navy had been strengthening its forces over the course of recent months as part of its largest build-up since it entered the Syrian conflict on the side of President Assad in 2015.

The state-run news service TASS says 25 warships and submarines and 30 planes are taking part in drills that involve anti-aircraft, anti-submarine and anti-mining exercises.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov reportedly said that militants in Idlib had to be “liquidated”, describing them as “a festering abscess.”

“In the interest of ensuring the security of shipping and aircraft flights in line with international law, the areas of the exercise will be declared dangerous for shipping and flights,” TASS quoted Lavrov as saying.

But the position of those war-games are clearly intended to make it difficult for US and allied forces to approach the Syrian coast.

FORMER DE-ESCALATION ZONE
Since early 2017, Iran, fellow regime ally Russia and rebel backer Turkey have sponsored the negotiations track based in the Kazakh capital to tamp down hostilities in Syria.

Last year, they had designated Idlib as a “de-escalation” zone where violence would halt in preparation for a countrywide ceasefire.

Damascus’s main sponsor Russia has been sounding the war drums in recent days, all the while seeking to pressure Turkey into reining in jihadists in Idlib. Tehran and Moscow have provided steady political, financial and military backing to Assad throughout the war, which has left over 350,000 people dead since it broke out in 2011.

The International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think tank, said an all-out assault on Idlib and its catastrophic consequences could still be avoided.

ICG said Russia, whose air support would be crucial for the offensive to succeed, should understand that a bloodbath in Idlib would jeopardise its own political goals.

“By backing an all-out offensive, Russia risks undermining its long-term political objectives in Syria,” ICG wrote in a nine-page briefing.

“Russia seeks to ensure not just the regime’s military victory in Syria but its full political restoration through international re-legitimation at war’s end.”

Further Iranian engagement in Syria meanwhile risks drawing Israel deeper into the conflict.

A series of recent strikes in Syria that have killed Iranians has been attributed to Israel.

But Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman on Monday signalled strikes could be extended to Iraq if necessary.

Asked about the possibility of Israel hitting Iranian military positions in “Iraq or Tehran,” Lieberman said: “We do not limit ourselves to Syrian territory alone. It must be clear.”

US WARNINGS RING HOLLOW
Britain, France and the US, which together launched limited attacks on Syrian installations in mid-April in retaliation for an alleged Syrian chemical attack, say their red line against illegal weapon use remains in force.

But analysts still say the United States appears resigned to the likelihood of a final military victory by Syrian government forces.

Behind the scenes, American diplomats have been actively warning Moscow, which has been accused in the past of turning a blind eye to chemical weapon use by its Syrian proteges.

But these “verbal warning shots” have little to do with today’s reality in Syria, said Jonas Parello-Plesner, a researcher with the Hudson Institute in Washington who recently published a study on the US approach to the region.

And that reality, he told AFP, is that “Assad is advancing on the ground, aided by Iran by land and Russia by air,” while the United States places its hopes on a UN-backed Geneva peace process that might best be described as “moribund.”

Trump said in April that “it’s time” to bring American troops home from Syria — once the jihadists of the Islamic State group had been definitively defeated.

While he quickly backed away from talk of an immediate withdrawal, his underlying determination to leave Syria’s seven-year war as soon as possible seems unchanged.