On Jonathan Steele's Guardian CiF Piece

I question the certainty with which Jonathan Steele claims the Damascus bombings were made by al Qaeda sympathisers and also the way he portrays Russia as a side in this conflict which wishes to avoid civil war in Syria: He doesn't give the reasons for his certainty, and in his piece he simply states it as a self-evident fact, which it is not. When it comes to the Syrian revolution, nothing is certain and nothing is self-evident apart from the dead.

A Russian naval base in Tartous, and Russia's only foothold in the Middle East, are the reasons why Russia is supporting Assad to the hilt and giving his regime the diplomatic cover that has helped it remain in power. Lavrov is a great political animal, and I have a lot of respect for his abilities, but saying that the credit goes to the "tireless" Russian foreign minister for "working hard to forestall a civil war in Syria", smacks of naivety and ignores the real reasons for Russia's involvement. In the same way that some in the opposition refuse to accept that the West and Saudi Arabia support the Syrian revolution for their own reasons, there are some who continue to see Russia as some kind of misunderstood and maligned superpower. It is one thing to be sceptical of one side in this great game, quite another thing to think that it is the only one with bad intentions in this "conspiracy".