At the UN Security Council meeting September 30th, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov began circulating a new draft resolution, derived from its previous UNSC resolutions on combatting terrorism—which the United States had rejected.

Lavrov emphasized that the Syria crisis can be solved through coordinated actions against ISIL, by supporting the work of Ban Ki-moon’s special UN envoy Staffan de Mistura, and by efforts involving other nations, including Saudi Arabia, Russia, Jordan, Qatar, China, and the United States. Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem told the Security Council that the U.S.-led coalition had failed to contain ISIL, and that its actions in Syria violated international law, since it encroaches on Syrian territory without the government’s authorization, Newsday reported yesterday.

During the special session, Lavrov warned that the Islamic State possesses components for weapons of mass destruction, and called for ISIS to be included as a separate subject in anti- terrorist sanctions lists of the UN.

he said, according to RT. The situation in the region has worsened in the past year, Lavrov underscored, adding that “The accumulation of crisis potential came close to the point where we can talk about the destruction of the political map of the region.”

The Russian leader told the special session,

According to a copy of the draft obtained by Associated Press, it calls for states to “coordinate their activities with the consent of the states in the territories on which such activities are conducted.”  Referencing the refugee flows into Europe, Lavrov said the crisis won’t be solved without creating “a firm barrier to the aspirations of Islamic State to place the region under medieval dictate.  It is not refugees that must be stopped, but terrorists and wars and conflicts begetting them.” 

In a Sept. 30 interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI), a veteran of the Afghanistan war, firmly stated that it were best for “cool heads” to prevail, in looking at the Russian intervention in Syria. The United States, she said, should work with Russia, and keep its “strategic goal” clearly in mind. The enemy is ISIL, Jabat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda. The U.S. shouldn’t get distracted by talking about “regime change or nation-building.” Overthrowing President Bashar al-Assad would not only be a mistake, she said, but would harm U.S. national security interests.

When Blitzer attempted to refute Gabbard by repeating the laundry list of Assad’s alleged crimes, and “slaughter of his own people,” Gabbard retorted that much of what is said about al-Assad today, was also said about Saddam Hussein and Muammar Qaddafi, who were overthrown by the U.S. Look at the state of those nations today, she told Blitzer, who could only mumble, “you’ve got a point.” The U.S. has to learn the lessons of the past, Gabbard underscored, and not go blindly rushing in to effect regime change, without asking “what comes next?”

In the second part of the interview, Gabbard pointed to the U.S.’s alliance with Soviet leader Stalin during the Second World War, to achieve their common objective, the defeat of Hitler and Nazism. The U.S. had to put aside objections it had to Stalin’s domestic policy, to ensure success in defeating fascism, she added. Otherwise, “we’d be living in a very different world today.” She reiterated that the U.S. must learn from history, not only from the World War II example, but also from more recent history “when we got into the regime-change and nation-building business,” which only produced chaos in its wake.

In a tweet put out yesterday, Gabbard wrote, “bad enough that the U.S. hasn’t been bombing al-Qaeda/al Nusra in Syria, but it’s mind-boggling that we protest Russia’s bombing of those terrorists…. Al Qaeda bombed us on 9/11, and must be defeated. Obama won’t bomb them in Syria. Putin did.”