Six-month truce agreed in three Syrian towns

If implemented, the agreement would be another rare example of global diplomacy successfully brokering an end to fighting in specific areas in Syria.

Rami Abdel Rahman, director of the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said the truce was reached between rebel fighters, including Ahrar al-Sham, and pro-regime forces and their Hezbollah allies.

According to the report, the move comes as Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Russian Federation have launched a “joint operations room” to coordinate their campaign to defeat the extremist Islamic State group, which has captured swathes of Syrian territory during the country’s four-year civil war, as well as the opposition groups, some linked to al-Qaeda, seeking to overthrow Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Russia’s military expansion into Syria has thrown three years of US policy planning about Syria into disarray, derailing calculations and assumptions about ways to resolve the country’s war that may never have worked but now nearly certainly won’t.

“The Russians will fight everyone who fights against Assad”, said Wazne, the Beirut-based analyst. He said decisions were, however, made by the government.

The deal, which would see rebels withdraw from a town near the border with Lebanon and the evacuation of besieged civilians from two villages in the northwest, would take place in two stages, Nasrallah said in a live interview with Al-Manar TV. He added that the deal allows for humanitarian supplies and goods to reach the two villages by road for those remaining behind.

The Syrian Observatory said the six-month truce would also include the release of rebel detainees.

Sunni rebels attacked the two villages after government forces laid siege to Zabadani in July. He pointed out that “the Iranian nuclear deal is also a factor, as the Americans thought they could convince Iran through negotiations to bargain over Syria, but this has also ended”. The 800-pound elephant in the room was Israel, whose occasional fighter jet sorties into Syria to take out missiles and prevent arms shipments to Hizbullah just became more complex with the addition of Russian troops defending Syrian assets.

But he suggested the transfer would not be permanent, adding that the insurgents are ready to reverse it by force.

“It was very important to come here in order to clarify our position and to do everything to avoid any misunderstandings between our forces”, Netanyahu said at the start of the meeting.