"Foreign Agent" by Brad Thor

I completed this book today. "Foreign Agent," by Brad Thor. 335 pages.

Thor does a great job in informing on current dynamics in the Middle East.

The book provides a great back-drop for current troubles with ISIS and the rise of Islamic terror.

A series of escalating terror actions are taken against United States interests, including the assassination of the US Secretary of Defense in Antalya, Turkey, and a suicide bombing at the entrance portico at the Whitehouse. ISIS claims credit.

Scott Harvath, a recurring Thor character, on contract (therefore now off books) with CIA, in a trade craft primer, identifies the perp as a Chechen, working for ISIS, operating out of ISIS controlled Syria, but, who is actually a double agent controlled by the Russians.

The Chechen's terror successes are enabled by the Chief of Staff of a US Senator, presidential pretender, who is a Russian spy. She trades personal favors for information that is passed to the Russians.

Plot line of the book: Neutralize the Chechen terrorist and out the spy in the US.

Thor does a great job in informing on current dynamics in the Middle East. The Sunni/Shia divide: Iran's role in bolstering Shia interests and the Sunni's gravitation to ISIS as a Sunni counter force to resist Iran's hegemonic designs; Turkey's dilemma with the Kurds, who on the one hand fight ISIS but, on the other seek an independent state, some of which would include Turkish territory.

But, this story is best speculating on and discussing Russia's role in the middle east.

In "Foreign Agent," Russia seeks, by the Chechen's terrorist provocations, to lure the US into a ground war in Syria. There are thousands of Russian Muslims, from the Russian Caucusus, (Chechnya, Dagastan, and Ingushita) who have traveled to Syria to fight for ISIS. Russia is deathly afraid that these people will return to Russia, replete with terrorist skills they have learned from ISIS, to foment Muslim insurrections back home. If the US chooses to put boots on the ground in Syria, risk of Russian terrorists fomenting problems at home is reduced.

TIMDT and Mwah (sic) motorcycled through Chechnya in 2014, after the Boston Marathon bombings in 2013, perpetrated by the Tsarnayev brothers, Chechens.

That Chechnya was a hot bed of Islamic terror became readily apparent to us when we visited Grozny, the newly rebuilt Chechyan capital, rising from the ruins of the old city, destroyed in 2000 by Russian troops as punishment for Chechnyan Islamic insurrection.

Russia is not a bit player in the war against Islamic terror. Self interest (dealing with Islamic separatist issues in the Caucusus) drives the Russians to prop up Assad in Syria, lest ISIS gains strength to threaten their own majority Islamic territory in the Caucusus. Thor's book's hypothesis, of attempting to lure the US to play a larger role in Syria to include US ground troops, may be closer to the mark than first appears.

Note: TIMDT and Mwah (sic) also motorcycled through Antalya, Turkey's sixth largest city, in 2006, site of the book's (fictional) assassination of the US Secretary of Defense.