Ottoman Resurgence Versus Zionist Imperialism

One simple possibility but omitting Russian zone in Lattakia.

As the fog that shrouded Levant events over the past three weeks lifts, we now have better clarity about the affair. The terse account is Assad refused help from the only two genuine friends Syria had—Iran and Russia—and attempted to present a pro-American/Zionist face as suggested by the Gulf Arabs to get sanctions relief, which was never going to happen. From 2006 and again in 2012, the goal of eliminating Assad’s Syria from Levant geopolitics was made clear as the historical record verifies. All the terrorists the Outlaw US Empire claimed to be fighting it was instead supporting to advance its goals in Syria and beyond to Iraq and ultimately Iran. Like the British, the Americans have always used proxies to do the dirty work of death squads that supported the Nazi-like dictators it installed globally, but most importantly in Central and Southern America along with the Carribean, a use that goes back to the Spanish War and Mexican Revolution. The American Civil War saw both sides employ terrorists. The Outlaw US Empire’s use of terrorist proxies to advance its imperialistic goals isn’t anything new, although most haven’t a clue.

It’s clear that Russia and Iran were privy to what was soon to happen in Syria because they withdrew their military assets. The Zionists had no clue and were so badly beaten by Hezbollah they sued for a ceasefire. The Turks didn’t anticipate Assad’s complete surrender and only had plans to get Aleppo. The Americans were likewise in the dark. HTS’s lightening success surprised and shocked almost everyone. Since the SAA stood down, the Zionists and Americans immediately began bombing all known arms depots and other military targets so HTS would gain them and proves that they didn’t have any foreknowledge. The Zionist invasion via the Golan was done using the forces defeated by Hezbollah—they didn’t have to fight anyone this time. Attempts to say Russia suffered a strategic defeat fell on their face when Putin during the Direct Line refuted such nonsense by stating the facts. An avalanche of podcasts also contributed to providing a fuller picture. And as usual, today’s chat between Judge Napolitano and Alastair Crooke expanded on his SCF essay that will soon follow.

The map depicted above is close to being accurate but omits the Russian zone as I note. There’s a proper map out there that shows it all quite well, but it wasn’t amongst any of the choices I had to provide. Regardless, what’s depicted isn’t as clear-cut as it seems as there’re a great number of factions whose allegiances are fleeting at best as described in the many podcasts, which is precisely what Pepe Escobar described in his chat with Judge Napolitano. As noted, the Turks are now chanting, “On to Jerusalem.” And although not yet formally announced, Turkey will become a BRICS partner. So, in that last Astana Format meeting in Doha, something was indeed agreed upon between Iran, Russia and Turkey that only the participants and their superiors know about but that we can begin to see the outlines of from what’s happening within Syria. IMO, Escobar’s chat is critical. So, the lines seemingly drawn depict an ongoing clash within the Levant, not some sort of closure as trumpeted by Zionist and Outlaw media.

Now we’ll get to Alastair Crooke’s SCF essay that provides much of the backstory to the destruction of Syria by the Outlaw US Empire, although there’s certainly much more as the roots go back to British and French Imperialism well before the start of WW1, “The ‘king-makers’ pull the rug from Syria, yet again… A ‘Greek tragedy’ begins:”

James Jeffrey, former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq and Turkey, in a March 2021 interview with PBS Frontline, laid out very plainly the template for what has just happened in Syria this month:

“Syria, given its size, its strategic location, its historical importance, is the pivot point for whether [there can be] an American-managed security system in the region … And so you’ve got this general alliance that is locked in with us. But … the stress point is greatest in Syria”. [Emphasis Original]

Jeffrey explained (in the 2021 interview) why the U.S. shifted its to support to Jolani and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS):

“We got Mike Pompeo to issue a waiver to allow us to give aid to HTS – I received and sent messages to HTS” -The messages coming back from HTS were: “We [HTS] want to be your friend. We’re not terrorists. We’re just fighting Assad””.

The PBS Frontline interviewer asks: The U.S. was “supporting indirectly the armed opposition”? To which Jeffrey responds:

“It was important to us that HTS not disintegrate … our policy was … was to leave HTS alone … And the fact that we haven’t targeted [HTS] ever, the fact that we have never raised our voice to the Turks about their cohabitation with them — in fact, I used this example the last time I was talking to very senior Turks – when they started bitching about this relationship we [the U.S.] have with the SDF [in eastern Syria]”.

“I said to them, “Look, Turkey has always maintained that you want us in northeast Syria, which they do. But you don’t understand. We can’t be in northeast Syria without the platform, because we only have hundreds of troops there”; … I said: “It’s just like you in Idlib …”.

“We want you to be in Idlib, but you can’t be in Idlib without having a platform, and that platform is largely HTS. Now, unlike the SDF, HTS is a UN-designated official terrorist organisation. Have I ever, or has any American official ever, complained to you about what you’re doing there with HTS? No …”.

David Miller, a British academic, has noted that in 2015, prominent Syrian Sunni Muslim scholar, Shaykh al-Yaqoubi (who is anti-Assad), was unconvinced by Jolani’s efforts to rebrand Al Qa’ida as Jabhat al-Nusra. Jolani, in his al-2013 Al-Jazeera interview twice confirmed his allegiance to al-Qa’ida, saying that he received orders from its leader, Dr Ayman [al-Zawahiri] … and those were to not target the West. He confirmed his own position as being that of hardline intolerance toward those who practiced a ‘heretical’ Islam.

Miller comments:

“While ISIS put on suits; allowed Syria to be carved up by the U.S.; preach peace with the Zionist state; want free markets; and cut gas deals with their regional patrons – their ‘true-believers’… in the Sunni identitarian diaspora haven’t yet clocked that they’ve been sold out – as was always the plan”.

“In private, the planners of this war in NATO states laugh about sending young Salafi cannon fodder from around the world into a meat grinder. The $2000 salaries are a mere speck of sand compared to the gas and construction wealth that is expected to be returned to Turkish, Qatari, Israeli and American coffers. They killed Palestine for this, and they’ll spend the next 30 years justifying it, based on whatever line the very expensive PR firms hired by the NATO and Gulf states shill to them…The Syrian regime change operation is the rug pull of the century”.

Of course, James Jeffrey’s account was nothing new. Between 1979 and 1992, the CIA spent billions of dollars funding, arming, and training Afghan Mujahideen militia (like Osama bin Laden) in an attempt to bleed the USSR dry by pulling it into a quagmire. It was from the ranks of the Mujahideen that al-Qa’eda emerged.

“And yet, by the 2010s, even as the U.S. was ostensibly at war with al-Qaeda in Iraq and Afghanistan – it was secretly working with it – in Syria on a plan to overthrow Assad. The CIA spent around $1 billion per year training and arming a wide network of rebel groups to this end. As Jake Sullivan, told Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in a leaked 2012 email, “AQ [al-Qaeda] is on our side in Syria”, as Alan Macleod observes in Consortium News.

Turkish press accounts largely confirm this Jeffrey scenario was the current gameplan: Ömer Önhon, former senior Ambassador and Deputy Under-Secretary in charge of Middle East and Asia at the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, writes that:

“the operation to overthrow Assad’s regime in Syria was meticulously planned for over a year, with coordinated involvement from Turkey, the United States, and several other nations. Through various statements it has become clear that Assad’s departure resulted from an intricate web of agreements between virtually all stakeholders. Whilst HTS is actively working to rebrand itself – this transformation remains to be proven.”

This HTS story has a precedent: In the summer following Israel’s 2006 (unsuccessful) war on Hizbullah, Dick Cheney sat in his office loudly bemoaning Hizbullah’s continuing strength; and worse still, that it seemed to him that Iran had been the primary beneficiary from the U.S. 2003 Iraq war.

Cheney’s guest – the then Saudi Intelligence Chief, Prince Bandar – vigorously concurred (as chronicled by John Hannah, who participated in the meeting) and, to general surprise, Prince Bandar proclaimed that Iran yet could be cut to size: Syria was the ‘weak’ link that could be collapsed via an Islamist insurgency. Cheney’s initial scepticism turned to elation as Bandar said that U.S. involvement might be unnecessary. He – Bandar – would orchestrate and manage the project: ‘Leave it to me’, he said. Bandar separately told John Hannah: “The King knows that other than the collapse of the Islamic Republic itself, nothing would weaken Iran more than losing Syria”.

Well … that first effort did not succeed. It led to bloody civil war, but ultimately President Assad’s government survived.

So, Jeffrey was simply reiterating in 2021 its sequel: the original Wahabbi-led ‘rug pull’ on Syria by the Gulf was simply to be reverse engineered into a HTS hit by a rebranded amalgam of various militia made up primarily of former fighters (many not Syrian) from al-Qaeda/al-Nusra and ISIS, directed – in this second iteration – by Turkish Intelligence and financed by Qatar.

Syria thus has been disintegrated and pillaged in the name of ‘liberating’ Syrians from the threat of ISIS, which they – Washington – had installed in the first place, and which the U.S. then used to justify the north-east of Syria’s occupation by U.S. forces. In the same mode, the unspoken part of this plan is to make secular Syria – with its legal system taken from France – ‘Islamic’ (“we will implement Islamic law”) to justify the Israeli attacks and land grabs, which are being presented as ‘defensive measures against jihadists’.

Of course, it is correct that there is likely money to be made from these events. It was never proven, but seismic surveys before the first Syria war began in 2011, seemed to show that there may well be substrata deposits of oil or gas in Syria, beyond the relatively small fields in the north-east. And yes, re-construction will be a bonanza for Turkey’s languishing construction sector.

Syria’s ailing military was no direct military threat to Israel per se. So you may wonder, why are they tearing the place apart? “Israel’s goal here is to basically wreck Syria”, Professor Mearsheimer opines. “It’s not in large part because of Israel, by the way. I think the Americans and the Turks played a much more important role than Israel did – in wrecking Syria”. “The country is wrecked and I don’t know anybody who thinks that the rebels who are now in control in Damascus are going to be able to restore order in that country … From Israel’s point of view, this is a perfectly fine situation”, Mearsheimer adds.

U.S. anti-Russia hawks also hoped that Russia might take the bait of a wrecked Syria to get enmired into a widening Middle East quagmire.

All of which takes us directly back to Jeffrey’s statement: “Syria, given its size, its strategic location, its historical importance, is the pivot point for whether [there can be] an American-managed security system in the region …”.

Syria has been from the outset – from 1949 – ‘the balancer’ to Israel in the region. That is now over, leaving only Iran to balance the Israeli thrust to a ‘Greater Israel’. It is no surprise then that the Israelis are agitating for the Americans to join with them in another orgy of destruction – this time to be visited on Iran.

Did Russia have foreknowledge of what was afoot in Idlib, and the orchestration of a transition of power? Of course! The very effective Russian services must have known, as this Syria project has been ongoing since the mid 1970s (through the Hudson Institute and Senator Scoop Jackson).

Assad had been signalling over the last four years, his desperate plan with Saudi, UAE and Egypt to a move towards a more pro-Israeli/pro-Western stance, in the hope of normalising with Washington and thereby gaining some sanctions relief.

Assad’s ploy failed – and Syria likely will emerge as ‘Greek tragedy’ whereby tragedy evolves as actors play out their own natures. Quiescent ethnic and sectarian tensions likely will re-kindle; wildfires will catch. The lid is off. And Russia was never going to take the bait of plunging in.

The U.S.-Israeli alliance has long wanted Syria. And now, they have got it. Any concomitant mayhem is down to them. Yes, the U.S. – in theory – may applaud itself for achieving more of “an American managed security [and energy dominant flow] system”.

But the U.S. ruling strata, however, were never going to let Europe be energy independent. The U.S. needs West Asia’s energy assets for itself – to collateralise its debt-overload. European states are left to tumble, as the fiscal crunch bites and European growth tails away.

Others may see a collateral scenario – that a conflicted and possibly re-radicalised Middle East will inflict further strain onto the already ‘livid’ domestic social tensions in Europe.

Israel nonetheless is relishing its ‘win’. Winning what? Former IDF Chief of Staff and Defence Minister ‘Bogie’ Ya’alon puts it this way:

“The current Israeli government’s path is to conquer, annex, commit ethnic cleansing … and to establish Jewish settlements. Polls show some 70% of Israelis, sometimes more, support this – AND for Israel to be a liberal democracy”.

“This [contradictory] path will lead us to destruction”, he concludes.

What other can be the final end to this Zionist project? There are more than seven million Palestinians between the ‘River and the Sea’. Are they all to vanish from the map?

Plenty of Anti-Human players in this tragedy, which as usual is for a Few Dollars More. One big question: Will Iran launch its retaliation strike on the Zionists prior to 20 January as a kick in the groin to Blinken and Sullivan while also sending a very clear message to Trump that Iran is very capable of both defending itself and demolishing whatever it choses in the region? And then how will this impact Russia’s Ukraine operation? The recent strikes on civilian targets in Kazan Escobar deems attacks on BRICS, to which I concur. The Deep State has no compunction to ending its forever wars to contain what we must now refer to as the Heartland—Eurasia—which becomes further BRICS-land as Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Thailand, and Turkey are added to the mainland and Malaysia and Indonesia are added to the Eurasian periphery, while three more invitation responses have still to arrive.

The “Arch of Instability” encircling the heartland.

As 2024 closes, the Big Picture Conflict begins to take center-stage between the emerging Global Majority represented by BRICS and SCO against the Outlaw US Empire and its NATO vassal. The above representation depicts a strategy long in motion since 1945 that the decolonization process greatly facilitated as borders were drawn by the former colonial nations to ensure conflict within the colonies that facilitated the use of divide and rule methods of which the most prominent were proxies that are now very evident, particularly in Africa. For the Eurasian Heartland, the most dangerous still is the Partition of India, where we just saw a Color Coup in Bangladesh that was clearly affected by the ongoing Civil War in Myanmar. So, we can see where the conflict in the Levant is aimed at escalating the overall arch of instability. In its attempt to regain its lost Primacy, the Outlaw US Empire will apply more pressure to the arch’s flashpoints regardless of Trump’s efforts to halt them as the Deep State as plenty of assets to do so. And of course, with Trump’s already revealed animus against China and Iran, there’s no guarantee he’ll even try.

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