Global Research - December 3, 2024
For Bibi, the Road to Tehran Goes Through Damascus
By Mike Whitney
Syria is an indispensable part of Israel’s ambitious plan to remake the Middle East. The country sits at the heart of the region and serves as both a critical landbridge for the transport of weaponry and foot-soldiers from Iran to its allies, as well as the geopolitical center of the armed resistance to Israeli expansion.
In order to truly dominate the region, Israel must topple the government in Damascus and install a puppet regime similar to Jordan and Egypt. Now that Washington has been persuaded to ‘unconditionally’ support Israel’s interests (over its own), there is no better time to affect the changes that are most likely to achieve Tel Aviv’s overarching plan. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is thus prepared to launch a ground war from the South to create a two-front war that will split Syrian forces in half greatly improving his prospects for success. At the same time, US-backed jihadis will continue their rampage in the North gradually eroding Syria’s tattered defenses while further securing Syria’s industrial capital, Aleppo. If Damascus falls and Assad is removed from power, Israel’s dream of regional hegemony will be within reach and likely attainable if—as we assume—President Trump has committed to initiating a war with Iran as part of a quid pro quo with powerful Lobbyists who shoehorned back him into the White House. But, first, Syria must be pacified, its army defeated, and its present ruler ousted. That is the only way that Iran can be effectively cut off from its allies and partners and thus prepared for the dreadful onslaught ahead.
At present, there is only one man on earth who can put an end to Israel’s bloodthirsty crusade:
If Putin does not act fast and provide emergency assistance to Assad, then the current course of events is likely to be irreversible. This could even mean the deploying of Russian combat troops to stave off the US-backed terrorist offensive or (the soon-to-be) provocations in the South. In short, the sovereign state of Syria now faces an existential crisis which will negatively impact the entire region and the world if Putin does not abandon his typically cautious approach and provide the tools Syria needs to fend off the barbarians.
In Sunday’s edition of the Times of Israel, we see that Israeli war-planners have already settled on a pretext for invading Syria from the South. Check out this excerpt from an article titled Rebelsﾒ advances in Syria spell short-term benefits, potential trouble for Israel, intel chiefs said to tell PM
Israel is watching the jihadist rebels’ advances in Syria with considerable wariness, with intelligence chiefs telling the political echelon developments in Syria could ultimately spell trouble for Israel, Channel 12 reports…. Netanyahu was reportedly told that Hezbollah’s attention will now be shifted to Syria, and “so will its forces, in order to defend the Assad regime.”….
The intelligence chiefs ….have warned, “the collapse of the Assad regime would likely create chaos in which military threats against Israel would develop.”
Channel 12 further reports that concerns were raised at Friday’s security consultation that “strategic capabilities” of the Assad regime could fall into the jihadists’ hands. The prime concern relates to “the remnants of chemical weapons,” the report says.
The IDF is said to be preparing for a scenario where Israel would be required to act, the report says without elaboration.
There is also an assessment that Syria might open its gates to a significant number of Iranian forces in order to try to stabilize the country, the report says.Rebelsﾒ advances in Syria spell short-term benefits, potential trouble for Israel, intel chiefs said to tell PM, Times of Israel
There it is in black and white, the justification for invading Syria. Israel has a number of excuses from which to choose; everything from “chemical weapons” to “Iranian forces” to post regime change “chaos” to Hezbollah forces “defending the Assad regime.” At every step, you can see how well-prepared Israel is for any eventuality. This plan has been in the works for years if not longer. And, of course, the strategy needs to be executed quickly to prepare the battlefield for the Grand Finale, the January inauguration, when the most pro-Zionist president in US history will ascend the throne and reward Israel with the war on Iran it so ardently seeks. Nothing is left to chance.
Surprisingly, the folks at the Jerusalem Post are more straightforward about their views on the developments in Aleppo. In fact, one astute analyst candidly admits that the capitulation of the nation’s industrial Capital at the hands of fanatical throat-cutters is “good news”. Say what?? Her’s an excerpt from the article:
The Islamist attack on Aleppo is “ostensibly good news for Israel,” Daniel Rakov, a senior research fellow for the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, said in a Saturday post to X/Twitter….. he said that “the fall of northern Syria to the rebels damages the infrastructure of the Iranians and Hezbollah there and will make it difficult for them to work to restore Hezbollah.”……
The Israeli researcher also stated that Russian state media is largely ignoring the conflict in Aleppo while claiming that Russian commentators on global conflicts said that Moscow is not responsible for the defense failure of the Syrian city, saying that Russia had very few forces there and the incident was a huge failure for the Assad regime….
An opportunity for Israel to strike Syria?
Rakov then entertains the idea of Israel having the opportunity to attack Syria due to the weakness demonstrated by the Assad regime….
“Assad’s loss of Aleppo damages Russia’s image as a power capable of projecting influence outside the post-Soviet space and threatens an important strategic asset of Putin’s, which is the bases in Syria,” he wrote. “This also reflects negatively on Russia’s image in the region.
“The Russians, as we can learn from the Ukrainian offensive in Kursk, are in no hurry to get hysterical, but the speed with which Aleppo fell will require them to respond quickly,” he wrote.
The JISS researcher concluded his post by saying that while the unstable situation in Syria may cause Assad and the Russians to open the gates more strongly for the entry of Iranian military forces, the collapse of the Assad regime may create a scenario for the growth of significant military threats against Israel. Attacks in Aleppo ﾑostensibly good news for Israel,ﾒ JISS researcher says, Jerusalem Post
Repeat: “An opportunity for Israel to strike Syria”?
It is, but it is equally interesting to see that ‘driving Russia out of the Middle East” is nearly as important as toppling Assad. (from Israel’s point of view.) And it’s also clear that Mr. Rakov thinks Putin is ‘on the ropes’ and will fail to respond in a timely manner and that this could be greatly to Israel’s advantage. But, of course, what is most shocking about Rakov’s overall assessment, is the sheer joy he derives from the destruction of a thriving city at the hands of deranged savages bent on replacing a stable, rational system with a despotic religious autocracy. But, I suppose, if genocide is your benchmark for success, nothing should surprise us.
This is a Sunday update on the extremely volatile situation on the ground in Syria:
Russian and Syrian government air strikes pounded central Aleppo on Saturday as rebels claimed control of the city’s international airport and advanced towards Hama… It was the first time air strikes had targeted Aleppo since 2016, when the Syrian opposition was driven out of the city.
However, rebels led by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and allied groups, including some backed by Turkey, claimed stunning gains on Saturday. They claimed to have seized Aleppo International Airport and the strategic city of Khan Sheikhoun in southern Idlib. The administrative borders of Idlib Governorate were fully under their control, they added.
They also claimed to have begun marching towards Hama, successfully capturing six towns and villages in the countryside, including Morek, which lies along an important highway connecting central Syria to the north.
The offensive began on Wednesday when rebels broke out from opposition-held territory in northwest Syria towards Aleppo. Within two days, they had seized dozens of towns and villages, as well as a section of the strategic M5 highway, cutting off supply routes to Damascus. They have taken several military bases and fortified positions since, often meeting little resistance.
Collapse of government forces
According to SOHR, government forces have collapsed in Idlib and Aleppo. This has left Aleppo, Syria’s second-largest city, outside government control for the first time since the country’s independence in 1946, the monitoring group said….
Amid fast-moving developments, the foreign ministers of Turkey and Russia – both major stakeholders in Syria – spoke by phone on Saturday and agreed to coordinate efforts to stabilise Syria, according to Moscow.
“Both sides expressed serious concerns at the dangerous development of the situation in the Syrian Arab Republic in connection with the military escalation in the Aleppo and Idlib provinces,” the Russian ministry said….
Most of Idlib province has since been held by HTS, a former al-Qaeda affiliate, which has established a civilian administration. Turkey-backed rebel groups in the Syrian National Army coalition have held sway in other areas of the north.
However, despite Russia being distracted by the war in Ukraine and Assad’s forces weakened by frequent Israeli attacks, Syrian and Russian warplanes have stepped up air strikes on opposition-held areas since August 2023. Syria: Deadly strikes hit Aleppo as rebels seize airport, push towards Hama, Middle East Eye
Readers should be aware that Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and the other so-called “rebel groups”, are mainly Al Qaida affiliates that have been recruited, armed and trained by the US, Qatar and Turkey to pursue a proxy war against the opponents to Israeli expansion and the remaking of the Middle East. Author and analyst Max Blumenthal has done considerable research on the origins of these groups and presented his findings in a recent article titled The US has backed 21 of the 28 ﾑcrazyﾒ militias leading Turkeyﾒs brutal invasion of northern Syria. Here’s a short blurb from his article:
Former and current US officials have slammed the Turkish mercenary force of “Arab militias” for executing and beheading Kurds in northern Syria. New data from Turkey reveals that almost all of these militias were armed and trained in the past by the CIA and Pentagon…..
According to a research paper published this October by the pro-government Turkish think tank SETA, “Out of the 28 factions [in the Turkish mercenary force], 21 were previously supported by the United States, three of them via the Pentagon’s program to combat DAESH. Eighteen of these factions were supplied by the CIA via the MOM Operations Room in Turkey, a joint intelligence operation room of the ‘Friends of Syria’ to support the armed opposition. Fourteen factions of the 28 were also recipients of the U.S.-supplied TOW anti-tank guided missiles.”…
In other words, virtually the entire apparatus of anti-Assad insurgents armed and equipped under the Obama administration has been repurposed by the Turkish military to serve as the spearhead of its brutal invasion of northern Syria. The leader of this force is Salim Idriss, now the “Defense Minister” of Syria’s Turkish-backed “interim government.” He’s the same figure who hosted John McCain when the late senator made his infamous 2013 incursion into Syria…..
This band of hacks (The media) is now fully exposed for foisting a bloody scam on the public, marketing some of the most brutal fanatics on the planet as revolutionaries and “moderate rebels” while they destabilized an entire region. Like the extremists they once promoted, most have somehow managed to evade accountability and remain employed. The US has backed 21 of the 28 ﾑcrazyﾒ militias leading Turkeyﾒs brutal invasion of northern Syria, Max Blumenthal, The Grayzone
So, who is the world’s biggest supporter of terrorism?
You guessed it: Uncle Sam.
Finally, I’ll finish with a quote from a blogger who I just discovered but with whom I agree on nearly every point she makes. I would be interested to know if other readers feel the same:
This US-Israel-Al Qaeda-Turkey backed operation against Syria, using various proxies and terrorist groups, was long planned in order to divert the Syrian Army’s forces, destabilize & overextend them, allowing Israel to come in from the south, preventing the flow of weapons to Hezbollah from Iran into Iraq, Syria & then Lebanon. The war continues, they merely shifted the theater slightly.
That’s why moments before this “ceasefire” Israel was attacking the border between Syria and Lebanon and continued after. The ceasefire gives Israel time to recover because it’s weak, and time to strategize with Washington until the most Zionist administration comes in. Make no mistake Trump will do what Bibi wants regarding Syria which will now be the focus, as it’s a huge resistance block standing in the way of the greater Israel project. …
Turkey & the two-faced conman Erdogan want control of the North (Syria) and will sell themselves to Israel and the West while condemning Bibi on Gaza. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte went to Turkey & worked out a deal with Washington giving F35s to Turkey right before this attack. He also met with Trump in DC days prior on 11/23.
None of this is coincidence. Essentially Israel isn’t going to follow through with this ceasefire. It’s in essence moot. The collective West including Tel Aviv are already at war against those fighting them to hold onto their national sovereignty. They want to stop Iran, Russia, & Syria, from cooperating to halt their expansionist, warmongering ambitions. Fiorella Isabel @FiorellaIsabelM
First-rate analysis. It helps to explain what’s going behind the fog of media coverage.*
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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.
Michael Whitney is a renowned geopolitical and social analyst based in Washington State. He initiated his career as an independent citizen-journalist in 2002 with a commitment to honest journalism, social justice and World peace.
Global Research - December 3, 2024
The Syrian Civil War: New Phases, Old Lies
By Dr. Binoy Kampmark
A new bloody phase has opened up in Syria, as if it was ever possible to contemplate another one in that tormented land. Silly terms such as “moderate” are being paired with “rebels”, a coupling that can also draw scorn.
What counts as news reporting on the subject in the Western press stable adopts a threadbare approach. We read or hear almost nothing about the dominant backers in this latest round of bloodletting.
“With little warning last Wednesday, a coalition of Syrian rebels launched a rapid assault that soon seized Aleppo as well as towns in the nearby Idlib and Hama provinces,” reported NBC News, drawing its material from the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
We are told about the advances of one organisation in particular: Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), an outgrowth of Jabhat al-Nusra, a former al-Qaeda affiliate. While the urgent reporting stressed the suddenness of it all, HTS has been playing in the jihadi playground since 2017, suggesting that it is far from a neophyte organisation keen to get in on the kill.
From Al Jazeera, we get pulpierﾠdetail. HTS is the biggest group in what is dubbed Operation Deterrence of Aggression. HTS itself comprises Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, Liwa al-Haqq, Jabhat Ansar al-Din and Jaysh al-Sunna. That umbrella group is drawn from the Fateh al-Mubin operations centre, which is responsible for overseeing the broader activities of the armed opposition in northwestern Syria under the control of the Syrian Salvation Government (SSG). It is through the offices of SSG that HTS delivers essential goods while running food and welfare programs. Through that governance wing, civil documentation for some 3 million civilians, two-thirds of whom are internally displaced people, has been issued.
The group, headed by Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani, himself an al-Qaeda recruit from 2003, then of Jabhat al-Nusra, has done much since its leader fell out with Islamic State and al-Qaeda. For one, HTS has a series of goals. It purports to be an indigenous movement keen on eliminating the Assad regime, establishing Islamic rule and expelling all Iranian militias from Syrian soil. But megalomania among zealots will always out, and al-Jawlani has shown himself a convert to an even broader cause, evidenced by this remark:
“with this spirit… we will not only reach Damascus, but, Allah permitting, Jerusalem will be awaiting our arrival”.
All of these measures conform to the same Jihadi fundamentalism that would draw funding from any Western intelligence service, provided they are fighting the appropriate villain of the moment. We should also expect routine beheadings, frequent atrocities and indulgent pillaging. But no, the cognoscenti would have you believe otherwise. We are dealing, supposedly, with a different beast, calmer, wiser, and cashed-up.
For one thing, HTS is said to be largely self-sufficient, exercising a monopoly through its control of the al-Sham Bank and the oil sector through the Watad Company. It has also, in the words of Robin Yassin-Kassab, become a “greatly moderated and better organised reincarnation of Jabhat al-Nusra.” This could hardly cause cheer, but Yassin-Kassab at least admits that the group remains “an authoritarian Islamist militia” though not in the eschatological fanatical mould of its forebears. “It has a much more positive policy towards sectarian and ethnic minorities than ISIS.” Fewer beheadings, perhaps.
A fascinating omission in much commentary on these advances is Turkey’s outsized role. Turkey has been the stalking figure of much of the rebel resistance against the Assad regime, certainly over the last few years. Of late, it has tried, without much purchase, to normalise ties with Assad. In truth, such efforts stretch as far back as late 2022. The topics of concern for Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoĝan are few: dealing with the Kurdish resistance fighters he sorely wishes to liquidate as alleged extensions of the PKK, and the Syrian refugee problem. The Syrian leader has made any rapprochement between the two states contingent on the withdrawal of Turkish forces from Syria.
With Damascus proving icily dismissive, Ankara got irate. Indeed, there is even a suggestion, if one is to believe the assessment by Ömer Özkizilcik of the Atlantic Council, that Turkey was instrumental in initially preventing the rebels from attacking as far back as seven weeks ago.
Much in the latest spray of analysis, along with unfolding events, will require much revisiting and revision. There is the issue of lingering Turkish influence, and whether Erdoĝan’s words will mean much to the charges of HTS as they fatten themselves on the spoils of victory. There is the behaviour of HTS, which is unlikely to remain restrained in a warring environment that seems to treat atrocities as mother’s milk. (Al-Jawlani has not shown himself to be above the targeting and massacring of civilians.) The retaliation from the Syrian government and Russian forces not otherwise deployed against Ukraine also promises to be pitilessly brutal.
Then there are the untold consequences of a Syria free of Assad, a fate longed for by the coarsened righteous in Western circles and emboldened al-Jawlani. This is certainly not off the books, given that both Iran and Russia are preoccupied, respectively, with Israel and Ukraine.
Were the regime, bloodthirsty as it is, to collapse, yet another cataclysmic tide of holy book vengeance is bound to ripple through the region. Never mind: the babble about God and theocracy will be happily supplemented by covert operations and arms sales, all overseen by a wickedly smiling Mammon.*
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). Email: bkampmark@gmail.com
https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-syrian-civil-war-new-phases-old-lies/5874220
