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Press TV has conducted an interview with Gordon Duff, senior editor of Veterans Today, about the Syrian army continuing to gain more ground in its fight against foreign-backed militants in several areas across the country.

- How do you see these government advances? It seems that as much as the opposition speaks about pre-conditions, the government keeps advancing on the ground?

- Well one of the things we believe that has driven the new American policy has been the success of the Syrian army, their ability to fight on multiple fronts, their ability to mount combined actions using air and ground forces, their pincer attacks.
They have been enormously successful using what has been modern warfare very much on the scale of the Americans. They have surprised a lot of people.

- So how do you think that this army that the Saudis are forming now in Turkey, how will that affect the situation do you think on the ground?

- Well the Saudis are going to, I think be facing a little downside in their own locally.

I believe the Saudi regime is involved in Syria as a way of deflecting their rather extreme problems at home and this love affair between the Saudis and the Israelis is not going to weather the changes in the Middle East that are going on - the new American relationship over the Palestinian state, the new American relationship with Iran and the new American and Russian outlook on Syria that the Saudi mischief in Turkey is going to come to naught.

- The Saudis are putting in a lot of effort, I want to push that point you know because they are spending hundreds of millions of dollars, they have Pakistani instructors we believe training these men and up to fifty thousand men at some places has been reported. Will that really not have any effect do you think?

- The numbers are higher than fifty thousand. We have here, we are told that they have hired three hundred thousand.