Thread by @TimInHonolulu

1. My analysis: Turkey's strategic goal is to seize Syria's oil and gas. And it appears Iran is formed across the Euphrates and ready to help. MT Turkish Security Council Mulls Syrian Operation, Despite Washington's Warnings voanews.com/middle-east/tu…

2. Turkey knew that CAATSA would be triggered when it closed the S-400 deal. Erdogan may have misread Trump but the US law was clear. The end of Turkey's participation in the F-35 was entirely on Erdogan.

The SDF consists of Kurdish, Arab and Syriac Christians and is a

3. trusted US partner in the war to defeat ISIS. US military have spoken highly of the SDF contribution to the war against terror. Few places in the Mideast that a US four star can take stroll down the street but the Autonomous NES is one.

4. Ever since the 2014 deal with ISIS to obtain the release of the Turkish diplomats taken by ISIS at Mosul, the Turkish AKP has been affiliated with ISIS. They have supplied it, armed it, allowed it to be treated in Turkish hospitals. But mostly it has made the Erdogan

5. family rich smuggling ISIS' stolen oil. The move by the SDF supported by the @coalition to push ISIS out of the Euphrates valley and liberate the Syrian oil and gas fields is the thing that the Erdogan family just can't stand.

6. Noteworthy that at the Ankara security meeting today were two people who were conspirators in the Michael Flynn Gulen kidnapping planning meeting. When the American people finally wake up to the fact that Turkey has committed ethnic cleansing of the few remaining Syrian

7. Christians in western Syria, Trump and his GOP supporters will have no political breathing room to placate the Erdogan thirst for more stolen oil when the cost to the GOP will be shedding more Syrian Christian blood to help ISIS' ally steal more Syrian oil.

8. And Iran's forces are right across the Euphrates. With a big bullseye on them.