Damascus – from Elijah J. Magnier: @ejmalrai
With the end of al-Ghouta battle and the defeat of Jihadists, Moscow is reaching its objectives in the Levant.
Despite the US, the EU and the mainstream media gathering to attack him and try to demonise his policy, the Russian President Vladimir Putin can now say:”veni, vidi, vici”.
The US estimated that Russia, by 2020, would be too strong militarily and economically to be isolated or weakened. This is why Washington tried its best to surround Russia and “cut its legs off” much before and close the oceans to its commerce and to its Chinese ally.
The last US attack, while hiding behind the EU, to attract Ukraine into the European orbit and stop the flow of the Russian gas to Europe – a vital resource of the Russian economy – was in 2014 and this pushed the Russian bear to wake up and decide to act and react accordingly.
Moreover, in 2015, the US strikes a nuclear deal with Iran – putting an awful lot of pressure on the EU to accelerate its approval and finalise the deal – in an attempt to separate Iran from Russia. However, the Iranian Leader Sayyed Ali Khaminei was adamant: “There would be no talks involving any other dossier than the nuclear one. We don’t and will never trust the Americans”.
The US looked like a generous donor helping Iran to reopen its doors to the world without paying any price in Washington. This is why Donald Trump is now trying to find ways to revoke it, a deal he sees of financial and political benefit only to Europe and not to the United States. Iran is ready for a partnership with Europe but rejects US dominance.
Trump is even blackmailing Europe by threatening to impose high taxes on its products if the old continent doesn’t go along with the US policy. He has asked the European countries to decide : either they prefer to do business with Iran or with the United States.
President Trump has not understood, to date, that with or without the nuclear deal, Iran is heading towards a wide partnership with Russia and China. Beijing needs a reliable source of energy, an exit to the oceans and a window to the Mediterranean market. Iran can provide that and enjoy the colossal Chinese economic benefits, its market, and its support.
Iran didn’t only accept President Obama’s gift, it decided to face the US on the battlefield through the US’s Syrian proxies and its plans to destabilise the Levant. By sending Iranian Special Forces and relying on its allies (Hezbollah, Iraqi groups and others), Iran and Russia managed to defeat ISIS and al-Qaeda in many battles in Syria, Iraq and Lebanon.
The US lost one Syrian city after another despite its hopeless attempts at the UN, and despite its arming of the jihadists. The US asked Europe to open its doors to allow radicals to take the step of becoming jihadist extremists and go into action. It also, over the years, asked Turkey to open its borders to allow the flow of these future jihadists and old al-Qaeda guards to move by waves into Syria to destabilise the Syrian government.
Not only that, it has offered its CIA training to jihadists in Jordan and Turkey and asked Saudi Arabia and Qatar to pay billions of dollars to promote the success of “The New Jihadist Middle East”. And lastly, the US is manipulating the mainstream media. For the first time in history, we see a general manipulation of the media in a democratic country, with loss of credibility, much turning of « blind eyes » and fake news – and not just regarding Syria.
Moscow, Damascus and Tehran rejected many “red lines” imposed by the US on Syria (on the Tanf Syrian-Iraqi borders, the US forces imposed a safety parameter of 50 miles. Iran kept the distance but surrounded the US forces from the north, west and south). In fact, the war in Syria was far from being a civil war but the transposition of a worldwide war between two axes: but only one can win.
Russia moved forward and concluded a deal with the Syrian government to exploit its oil and gas resources. Iin Syria, energy wealth is estimated as follows: 63% on land and 37% in the Mediterranean, in the 14 richest blocks opposite Tartus and Lattakia with a production estimated above that of Kuwaiti oil production. On land, Syria’s energy is distributed as follow: 47% in al-Badiya, 2% in Aleppo, 12% in Deir-Ezzour, and 2% in the Golan. Syria can compete with Iraq and even Iran, with its energy in full production once the war is over.
The US establishment is finding it difficult to digest seeing this huge fortune in the hands of a Syrian government, and an ally of Russia and Iran, and, which above all, rejects US dominance and control.
Actually, in 2006, the ex-US Secretary Condoleezza Rice said: ”It is time for a new Middle East…We shall win, they shall lose”. It was the time Israel attacked Lebanon so the country submitted to US control and dominance. Israel failed when the Lebanese resistance stood against its attempt to invade the country for the third time and the “axis of the resistance” prevailed. This pushed the US to use different tactics (called “the soft war”), relying on proxies and locals in the Middle East rather than pushing its own army that drastically failed in Afghanistan and Iraq.
It was clear that Washington is militarily capable of invading any country in the Middle East but it can’t keep its forces there for long. This is when it was necessary for the US establishment to use more subtle technique: “cold steel”, rather than firearms They promoted the slogan of “democracy” or “freedom of expression”, or “freedom of religion”, or even « allowing youths to express their concern about human rights »
All these were fake slogans – regardless of their righteous titles – and were directed towards every single country unwilling to accept the US policy and control. This is where the “Arab Spring” (or Tsunami) hit the Middle East with the support of the US Secretary of State and the CIA who financed “schools of revolution and activism”.
Revolutions were a new phenomena using one slogan with different colours and were called the “Colour revolutions”: in Georgia (Rose), Ukraine (Orange), Iraq (Purple), Kyrgyzstan (Tulip), Lebanon (Cedar), Belarus (Jeans), Iran (Green), Egypt (Lotus)…
In the Middle East, the US called Google for help, supported social media availability and investing 30 million dollars to support Muslim youth through the internet and invited activists to rise in their respective countries. In June 2011, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton described the internet as “the Che Guevara of the 21st century in the Arab Spring uprisings”.
George W. Bush, Barack Obama and now Donald Trump all are following the same policy with different tactics, opening the road to changes in the Middle East by trying to remove dictators and replace these with Jihadists or with other dictators. The “management of savagery” (attributed to al-Qaeda and speaking about how to create a failed state and take advantage by moving towards the leadership of the country) was more applied by the US establishment than by the jihadists who wrote about it.
Obama saw the “Islamic State” growing in Iraq, moving to Syria, watched it occupying Iraq, allowed Jihadists to travel to the Middle East, opened all Saudi jails on condition jihadist extremists imprisoned are shipped to Syria. For one entire year, with “70 countries in a coalition fighting against ISIS” in Syria, the group was in fact expanding and increasing its wealth by selling increasing quantities of oil. All that to stop Iran and Russia, and create failed states (as in Libya) and fight Muslims with Muslims.
But Moscow, Beijing and Tehran knew that Jihadists must be stopped in the Levant before they had the chance to move to their own countries. Of course, President Medvedev made a mistake in 2010 by allowing the fall of Libya and with it the severance of an important source of energy. The US and the EU were fully aware of the presence of extremists in Benghazi but, regardless, have supported these extremists and allowed the destruction of the Libyan army at the beginning of the “Revolution”.
Lebanon, before Libya, managed to stay away from the US’s orbit and Russia, in 2006, was not yet ready to punch according to its weight. Libya was a Russian and a Chinese mistake at the UN and Russia believed it was not possible to do something to stop the process. But Syria is not going to be another Libya and Russia and China agreed, along with Iran, to stop once and for all the US unilateral dominance at the gates of the Levant.
PART 1
Part 3 to follow.
Part 3 to follow.
Proof read by: Maurice Brasher
