“The failure of western diplomacy in Syria has been a bloody destroyer of illusions. The US, Britain, France, Turkey and the Arab League have acquiesced to a Russian veto. While they have agonised over the morality and practicality of “liberal intervention”, the dictatorships have been practising “illiberal intervention” in a modern echo of the Spanish Civil War.

Assad’s crimes have not stopped Putin supplying his client with arms. After Ba’athist forces massacred at least 108 people near Houla, Putin’s foreign minister insisted that “both sides obviously had a hand in the deaths of innocent people”. After the massacre in Mazraat al-Qubair, Russia said it wanted Iran involved in any peacemaking process. This was too much even for Hillary Clinton, a stateswoman whose tolerance had appeared to be infinite. Even she knew that Iran’s revolutionary guards are engaged in an illiberal intervention of their own on the side of the ayatollahs’ allies in the Allawite minority.”

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