"This will go down as one of the hardest to negotiate ceasefires; and we can see it began unraveling before the ink was dry," the analyst wrote for New Eastern Outlook. "At the talks, a key ingredient of ceasefire credibility was missing, as there were no enforcement mechanisms in the agreement."
In other words, the deal has failed to offer the means to "rein in the rogue elements caught violating the ceasefire," as the analyst put it. Indeed, the Russian Ministry of Defense recorded more than 300 instances of armed rebel groups violating the secession of hostilities in the seven days after the truce went into force.
"It appears that the opposition groups decided just to go ahead and sign on so the US would have its list to submit to the Russians, and then they did whatever they wanted. We saw this quickly when, in the first few days, the opposition continued to violate the ceasefire, but Kerry and the Western media generally ignored it," Dean observed.
US-backed groups, he added, saw Washington's response or the lack thereof as a carte blanche. "The rebel groups read between the lines that they could use the ceasefire to their advantage, and they did," he said.
A US-coalition airstrike on the Syrian Arab Army's base in the city of Deir ez-Zor drastically reduced the chances that the ceasefire would hold. The Pentagon later said that the attack was unintentional, but Veterans Today analysts have not been convinced.
They viewed it as "payback" to Damascus and particularly Russia "for being too public about the US side doing all of the ceasefire violations and the Russian requests to have the agreements made public," Dean said.
Dean warned that if the ceasefire is not revived a similar attack is possible in the future.
"Nobody knows at the moment, but I can clearly see the preparation for an escalated conflict being put in place, where another 'payback' like we saw in Deir ez-Zor could take the Syrian war into a new realm. There are those who would love to see that, and I think we all know who they are," he said.