MOSCOW, April 07. /ITAR-TASS/. After Syria has destroyed its chemical weapons, there will be nothing left to keep the West from attacking the country, Yevgeny Satanovsky, President of the Institute of Middle Eastern Studies, told ITAR-TASS on Monday, April 7.

“Any civil war goes in ups and downs,” he said and cited several reasons why the confrontation in Syria has lost its edge. “First, militants who are fighting against Damascus have been distracted to each other… Second, America has a rather strong stand on support for al-Qaeda, and the Salafi groups fighting in Syria with the support of Saudi Arabia are nothing but al-Qaeda,” the expert said.

“And the last point… Qatar and Saudi Arabia have basically declared a cold war on each other and focused on each other,” Satanovsky said, adding however, that “the task of removing [Syrian President Bashar] al-Assad remains”.

“Immediately after all chemical stockpiles have been destroyed, we can expect an outside strike on Syria, primarily from the United States. This strike, when and if it achieves the set goal [which is to destroy heavy hardware and aircraft] will be very helpful for the militants,” the expert said.

He believes that the confrontation between Russia and the West over Syria “will inevitably develop into an external intervention”. “External observers from Brussels and Washington have linked events in Syria and Ukraine together into one tight knot. Building gas pipelines across Syria from the Arabian Peninsula to Turkey and farther to Europe in order to diversify Russian supplies is as pressing a task now as never before,” Satanovsky said.