Former President Jimmy Carter proposes, in an Oct. 23 op-ed in the New York Times that a plan backed by the U.S., Russia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Iran could end the fighting in Syria. In the process of doing so, he reports on his and the Carter Center's involvement in Syria since the 1980s and especially since the civil war broke out in 2011, sharing its insights with Washington and seeking to preserve an opportunity for a political solution to the rapidly growing conflict. "Despite our persistent but confidential protests, the early American position was that the first step in resolving the dispute had to be the removal of Mr. Assad from office," Carter writes. "Those who knew him saw this as a fruitless demand, but it has been maintained for more than four years. In effect, our prerequisite for peace efforts has been an impossibility."

He goes on to report on a series of meetings in May of 2015 with top Russian officials and think tanks in Moscow by a group of global leaders known as the Elders (he doesn't name other members of this group besides himself). They had detailed discussions with with the American ambassador, former President Mikhail S. Gorbachov, the late Prime Minister Yevgeny M. Primakov, Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov, among others. Carter reports:



"Later, I questioned President Putin about his support for Mr. Assad, and about his two sessions that year with representatives of factions from Syria... "He replied that little progress had been made, and he thought that the only real chance of ending the conflict was for the United States and Russia to be joined by Iran, Turkey and Saudi Arabia in preparing a comprehensive peace proposal. He believed that all factions in Syria, except the Islamic State, would accept almost any plan endorsed strongly by these five, with Iran and Russia supporting Mr. Assad and the other three backing the opposition. With his approval, I relayed this suggestion to Washington."

Carter writes that the Russian decision to militarily support the Assad government has intensified the fighting in Syria, but it has also "helped to clarify the choice between a political process in which the Assad regime assumes a role and more war in which the Islamic State becomes an even greater threat to world peace. With these clear alternatives, the five nations mentioned above could formulate a unanimous proposal."