A few miles apart in the Euphrates River valley, Russia and the U.S. are fighting separate military campaigns against Islamic State -- and an underlying strategic battle with each other, whose outcome could reshape the Middle East.
The Syrian civil war reached another tipping point last week when Bashar al-Assad’s Russian-backed army arrived at the city of Deir Ezzor on the Euphrates, breaking an Islamic State siege that lasted almost three years. Further east across the river, and still held by the jihadists, lie some of Syria’s main oilfields.
