Germany’s main intelligence agency, the BND, has renewed its intelligence sharing program with the Assad government a Syria, a move which appears to have in no small part been prompted by parliaments authorization of German involvement in the ISIS war.
Among Western nations, Germany has more historic ties with the Assad government than most, and early in the US war against ISIS in Syria, the US did some limited information sharing with Syria by way of German intelligence community contacts.
The resumption of full-scale intelligence sharing, however, could serve to be controversial with so many Western nations demanding the immediate ouster of Assad as part of the increasingly complex settlement goals of the civil war. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has given lip-service to removing Assad in the “long-term,” but has not been as loud in demanding an immediate removal.
Germany’s military involvement in the ISIS war is intended to be a support role, with a frigate dispatched, along with 1,200 troops to the region. Six surveillance planes are flying over Syria to provide some information to the nations conducting direct strikes.
Mr Ditz never tires of hyping umpteen "splits" between the US and European countries! It's all just clutching at straws. It would be very convenient to drive a wedge between Assad and Putin: Assad stays if he kicks Putin out of the naval base. Of no military value, such a move would be a massive blow to Putin's prestige with his elderly Soviet-generation supporters back home. From the American point of view, the advantsge is that without the US itself sharing intelligence with Assad, it can feed whatever intelligence it wants, real or fake, to Putin via the Germans and Assad.
I still think the Europeans are mostly calling for Assad's head in order to appease Uncle Sam. Look at their actions instead the bluster. Obviously the Syrians wouldn't be giving any intelligence to Germany if they are thinking that the Germans are trying to wreck the regime.
It will be interesting to see if appeasing Uncle Sam works any better than the storied appeasement of Nazi Germany.