{"id":14716,"date":"2015-11-01T06:09:21","date_gmt":"2015-11-01T11:09:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.minaret.org\/?p=14716"},"modified":"2015-11-02T12:34:47","modified_gmt":"2015-11-02T17:34:47","slug":"el-mercurio-interview-on-the-russian-airliner-crash-in-the-sinai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.minaret.org\/?p=14716","title":{"rendered":"El Mercurio Interview on the Russian Airliner Crash in the Sinai"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>[<em>Here are our answers to questions by <a href=\"http:\/\/impresa.elmercurio.com\/\">El Mercurio&#8217;<\/a>s reporter Javier M\u00c3\u00a9ndez about the crash of a Russian civilian airliner in\u00c2\u00a0the Sinai]<\/em>:<\/p>\n<p>Q. It is possible that a Russian airplane passengers could be shot down by\u00c2\u00a0ISIS?<\/p>\n<p>A. The plane could not have been shot down at that altitude. An on-board attack\u00c2\u00a0cannot be ruled out, but seems very unlikely in the light of the reports\u00c2\u00a0during ascent by the pilot of some sort of &#8220;technical problem&#8221; and his\u00c2\u00a0intention to land the plane as soon as possible. Further, reports that this\u00c2\u00a0particular plane had experienced problems with an engine days before the\u00c2\u00a0flight suggest a more likely explanation.<\/p>\n<p>Q. What could be the political effects in the Middle East for this serious\u00c2\u00a0incident?<\/p>\n<p>A. The fear expressed by a number of airlines to fly over Sinai in the wake\u00c2\u00a0of this tragedy puts pressure on Egypt, whose government has already lost\u00c2\u00a0legitimacy as demonstrated by the poor turnout in the recent elections.\u00c2\u00a0Alleged claims that ISIS is responsible, far-fetched as those claims may be,\u00c2\u00a0nonetheless portend more violence against the group in Syria and its\u00c2\u00a0affiliate in the Sinai.<\/p>\n<p>Q. In your opinion, what will happen with the Islamic State the next year?\u00c2\u00a0Could ISIS be defeated by the international coalition?<\/p>\n<p>A. I cannot predict what will happen to ISIS, but if it is defeated without\u00c2\u00a0popular support of the indigenous populations, it shall only be replaced by\u00c2\u00a0another undesirable, and perhaps even more vicious party.<\/p>\n<p>Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad, Ph.D.<br \/>\nMinaret of Freedom Institute<br \/>\nwww.minaret.org<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[Here are our answers to questions by El Mercurio&#8217;s reporter Javier M\u00c3\u00a9ndez about the crash of a Russian civilian airliner in\u00c2\u00a0the Sinai]: Q. It is possible that a Russian airplane passengers could be shot down by\u00c2\u00a0ISIS? A. The plane could not have been shot down at that altitude. An on-board attack\u00c2\u00a0cannot be ruled out, but [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dr-ahmads-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.minaret.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.minaret.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.minaret.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.minaret.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.minaret.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14716"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.minaret.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14716\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14731,"href":"https:\/\/blog.minaret.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14716\/revisions\/14731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.minaret.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.minaret.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.minaret.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}