![Inadequate for my purposes, but free and available](https://wp-media.patheos.com/blogs/sites/186/2015/10/Levant.gif)
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Iran’s intervention in the Syrian civil war is beginning to cost significant Iranian casualties:
http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/09/politics/iran-general-killed-syria-isis/index.html
And Russia, too, may soon begin to pay a toll.
It’s difficult to know exactly for whom we should be rooting in the new Russo-Iranian- and ISIS-dominated Levant and Mesopotamia.