Relevant Zero Hedge article first published and crossposted on GR in April 2017.
Prophetically foreshadowing the current crisis (and apparent
action plan), leaked CIA documents from the reign of Bashar al-Assad’s
father in the 1980s show a Washington Deep State plan coalescing to
“bring real muscle to bear against Syria,” toppling its leader (in favor
of one amenable to US demands), severing ties with Russia (its primary
arms dealer), and paving the way for an oil and gas pipeline of
Washington’s choosing.
As
ActivistPost.com’s Brandon Turbeville detailed (just a day before Trump unleashed his Tomahawks), as the Syrian crisis enters its sixth year, the
Donald Trump administration is looking more and more like the
Obama
administration every day. With the Trump regime refusing to open useful
dialogue with Russia regarding Syria, its obvious anti-Iran and
pro-Israel positioning, and support for a very questionable “safe zone”
plan for Syria, the odds of a rational U.S. policy in regards to Syria
has lower and lower odds of existence as time progresses.
Yet, despite the fact that the Trump administration is apparently
poised to continue the Obama regime’s proxy war of aggression against
the people of Syria, an example of seamless transition,
it should also be remembered that the plan to destroy Syria did not begin with Obama but with the Bush administration.
Even now, as the world awaits the continuation of the Syrian war
through a Democratic and Republican administration, the genesis of that
war goes back to the Republican
Bush administration,
demonstrating that there is indeed an overarching agenda and an
overarching infrastructure of an oligarchical deep state intent on
moving forward regardless of which party is seemingly in power.
As journalist
Seymour Hersh wrote in his article, “
The Redirection,”
To undermine Iran, which is predominantly
Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure
its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the
Administration has cooperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is
Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah,
the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken
part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A
by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni
extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile
to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.
“Extremist groups that espouse a militant
vision of Islam” who are “hostile to America and sympathetic to
al-Qaeda” are the definition of the so-called “rebels” turned loose on
Syria in 2011. Likewise, the fact that both Iran and Hezbollah,
who are natural enemies of al-Qaeda and such radical Sunni groups, are
involved in the battle against ISIS and other related terrorist
organizations in Syria proves the accuracy of the article on another
level.
Hersh also wrote,
The new American policy, in its broad outlines, has
been discussed publicly. In testimony before the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee in January, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said
that there is “a new strategic alignment in the Middle East,”
separating “reformers” and “extremists”; she pointed to the Sunni states
as centers of moderation, and said that Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah were
“on the other side of that divide.” (Syria’s Sunni majority is
dominated by the Alawi sect.) Iran and Syria, she said, “have made their
choice and their choice is to destabilize.”
Some of the core tactics of the redirection are not public, however.
The clandestine operations have been kept secret, in some cases, by
leaving the execution or the funding to the Saudis, or by finding other
ways to work around the normal congressional appropriations process,
current and former officials close to the Administration said.
. . . . . .
This time, the U.S. government consultant told me, Bandar and other
Saudis have assured the White House that “they will keep a very close
eye on the religious fundamentalists. Their message to us was ‘We’ve
created this movement, and we can control it.’ It’s not that we don’t
want the Salafis to throw bombs; it’s who they throw them at—Hezbollah,
Moqtada al-Sadr, Iran, and at the Syrians, if they continue to work with
Hezbollah and Iran.”
. . . . . .
Fourth, the Saudi government, with Washington’s approval,
would provide funds and logistical aid to weaken the government of
President Bashir Assad, of Syria. The Israelis believe that
putting such pressure on the Assad government will make it more
conciliatory and open to negotiations. Syria is a major conduit of arms
to Hezbollah.
. . . . .
In January, after an outburst of street violence in Beirut involving supporters of both the Siniora government and Hezbollah,
Prince Bandar flew to Tehran to discuss the political impasse in Lebanon and to meet with
Ali Larijani,
the Iranians’ negotiator on nuclear issues. According to a Middle
Eastern ambassador, Bandar’s mission—which the ambassador said was
endorsed by the White House—also aimed “to create problems between the
Iranians and Syria.” There had been tensions between the two countries
about Syrian talks with Israel, and the Saudis’ goal was to encourage a
breach. However, the ambassador said, “It did not work. Syria and Iran
are not going to betray each other. Bandar’s approach is very unlikely
to succeed.”
. . . . . .
The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, a branch of a radical Sunni movement
founded in Egypt in 1928, engaged in more than a decade of violent
opposition to the regime of
Hafez Assad, Bashir’s
father. In 1982, the Brotherhood took control of the city of Hama; Assad
bombarded the city for a week, killing between six thousand and twenty
thousand people. Membership in the Brotherhood is punishable by death in
Syria. The Brotherhood is also an avowed enemy of the U.S. and of
Israel. Nevertheless, Jumblatt said, “We told Cheney that the basic link
between Iran and Lebanon is Syria—and to weaken Iran you need to open
the door to effective Syrian opposition.”
. . . . .
There is evidence that the Administration’s redirection strategy has
already benefitted the Brotherhood. The Syrian National Salvation Front
is a coalition of opposition groups whose principal members are a
faction led by
Abdul Halim Khaddam, a former Syrian
Vice-President who defected in 2005, and the Brotherhood. A former
high-ranking C.I.A. officer told me, “The Americans have provided both
political and financial support. The Saudis are taking the lead with
financial support, but there is American involvement.” He said that
Khaddam, who now lives in Paris, was getting money from Saudi Arabia,
with the knowledge of the White House. (In 2005, a delegation of the
Front’s members met with officials from the National Security Council,
according to press reports.) A former White House official told me that
the Saudis had provided members of the Front with travel documents.
Hersh also spoke with
Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, leader of the Shi’ite Lebanese militia, Hezbollah. In relation to the Western strategy against Syria, he reported,
Nasrallah said he believed that America
also wanted to bring about the partition of Lebanon and of Syria. In
Syria, he said, the result would be to push the country “into chaos and
internal battles like in Iraq.” In Lebanon, “There will be a Sunni
state, an Alawi state, a Christian state, and a Druze state.” But,
he said, “I do not know if there will be a Shiite state.” Nasrallah
told me that he suspected that one aim of the Israeli bombing of Lebanon
last summer was “the destruction of Shiite areas and the displacement
of Shiites from Lebanon. The idea was to have the Shiites of Lebanon and
Syria flee to southern Iraq,” which is dominated by Shiites. “I am not
sure, but I smell this,” he told me.
Partition would leave Israel surrounded by “small tranquil states,”
he said. “I can assure you that the Saudi kingdom will also be divided,
and the issue will reach to North African states. There will be small
ethnic and confessional states,” he said. “In other words, Israel will
be the most important and the strongest state in a region that has been
partitioned into ethnic and confessional states that are in agreement
with each other. This is the new Middle East.”
Yet, while even the connections between the plans to destroy
Syria and the Bush administration are generally unknown, what is even
less well-known is the fact that there existed a plan to destroy Syria
as far back as 1983.
Documents contained in the U.S. National Archives and drawn up by the
CIA reveal a plan to destroy the Syrian government going back decades.
One such document entitled, “Bringing Real Muscle To Bear In Syria,” written by CIA officer Graham Fuller, is particularly illuminating. In this document, Fuller wrote,
Syria at present has a hammerlock on US
interests both in Lebanon and in the Gulf — through closure of Iraq’s
pipeline thereby threatening Iraqi internationalization of the
[Iran-Iraq] war. The US should consider sharply escalating
the pressures against Assad [Sr.] through covertly orchestrating
simultaneous military threats against Syria from three border states
hostile to Syria: Iraq, Israel and Turkey.
Even as far back as 1983, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s
father, Hafez Assad, was viewed as a gadfly to the plans of Western
imperialists seeking to weaken both the Iraqis and the Iranians and
extend hegemony over the Middle East and Persia. The document
shows that Assad and hence Syria represented a resistance to Western
imperialism, a threat to Israel, and that Assad himself was well aware
of the game the United States, Israel, and other members of the Western
imperialist coalition were trying to play against him. The report reads,
Syria continues to maintain a hammerlock on two key U.S. interests in the Middle East:
— Syrian refusal to withdraw its troops from Lebanon ensures Israeli occupation in the south;
— Syrian closure of the Iraqi pipeline has been a key factor
in bringing Iraq to its financial knees, impelling it towards dangerous
internationalization of the war in the Gulf
Diplomatic initiatives to date have had little effect on Assad who
has so far correctly calculated the play of forces in the area and
concluded that they are only weakly arrayed against him. If the U.S. is
to rein in Syria’s spoiling role, it can only do so through exertion of
real muscle which will pose a vital threat to Assad’s position and
power.
The author then presents a plan that sounds eerily similar to
those now being discussed publicly by Western and specifically American
corporate-financier think tanks and private non-governmental
organizations who unofficially craft American policy. Fuller writes,
The US should consider sharply escalating the
pressures against Assad [Sr.] through covertly orchestrating
simultaneous military threats against Syria from three border states
hostile to Syria: Iraq, Israel and Turkey. Iraq, perceived to be
increasingly desperate in the Gulf war, would undertake limited military
(air) operations against Syria with the sole goal of opening the
pipeline. Although opening war on a second front against Syria poses
considerable risk to Iraq, Syria would also face a two-front war since
it is already heavily engaged in the Bekaa, on the Golan and in
maintaining control over a hostile and restive population inside Syria.
Israel would simultaneously raise tensions along Syria’s Lebanon
front without actually going to war. Turkey, angered by Syrian support
to Armenian terrorism, to Iraqi Kurds on Turkey’s Kurdish border areas
and to Turkish terrorists operating out of northern Syria, has often
considered launching unilateral military operations against terrorist
camps in northern Syria. Virtually all Arab states would have sympathy
for Iraq.
Faced with three belligerent fronts, Assad would probably be
forced to abandon his policy of closure of the pipeline. Such a
concession would relieve the economic pressure on Iraq, and perhaps
force Iran to reconsider bringing the war to an end. It would be a
sharpening blow to Syria’s prestige and could effect the equation of
forces in Lebanon.
Thus, Fuller outlines that not only would Syria be forced to reopen
the pipeline of interest at the time, but that it would be a regional
shockwave effecting the makeup of forces in and around Lebanon,
weakening the prestige of the Syrian state and, presumably, the
psychological state of the Syrian President and the Syrian people, as
well as a message to Iran.
The document continues,
Such a threat must be primarily military in nature. At
present there are three relatively hostile elements around Syria’s
borders: Israel, Iraq and Turkey. Consideration must be given to
orchestrating a credible military threat against Syria in order to
induce at least some moderate change in its policies.
This paper proposes serious examination of the use of all three
states – acting independently – to exert the necessary threat. Use of
any one state in isolation cannot create such a credible threat.
The strategy proposed here by the CIA is virtually identical to the
one being discussed by deep state establishment think tanks like the
Brookings Institution today. For instance, in the Brookings document “
Middle East Memo #21: Saving Syria: Assessing Options For Regime Change,” it says,
Turkey’s participation would be vital for
success, and Washington would have to encourage the Turks to play a more
helpful role than they have so far. While Ankara has lost all patience
with Damascus, it has taken few concrete steps that would increase the
pressure on Asad (and thereby antagonize Tehran). Turkish policy toward
the Syrian opposition has actually worked at cross-purposes with
American efforts to foster a broad, unified national organization. With
an eye to its own domestic Kurdish dilemmas, Ankara has frustrated
efforts to integrate the Syrian Kurds into a broader opposition
framework. In addition, it has overtly favored the Syrian Muslim
Brotherhood over all other opposition groups. Washington must impress
upon Turkey the need to be more accommodating of legitimate Kurdish
political and cultural demands in a post-Asad Syria, and to be less
insistent on the primacy of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Some voices in Washington and Jerusalem are exploring whether Israel
could contribute to coercing Syrian elites to remove Asad. The Israelis
have the region’s most formidable military, impressive intelligence
services, and keen interests in Syria. In addition, Israel’s
intelligence services have a strong knowledge of Syria, as well as
assets within the Syrian regime that could be used to subvert the
regime’s power base and press for Asad’s removal. Israel could posture
forces on or near the Golan Heights and, in so doing, might divert
regime forces from suppressing the opposition. This posture may conjure
fears in the Asad regime of a multi-front war, particularly if Turkey is
willing to do the same on its border and if the Syrian opposition is
being fed a steady diet of arms and training. Such a mobilization could
perhaps persuade Syria’s military leadership to oust Asad in order to
preserve itself. Advocates argue this additional pressure could tip the
balance against Asad inside Syria, if other forces were aligned
properly.
While Syria is not in conflict with Iraq today, after being destroyed
by the United States in 2003, Western Iraq now houses the
mysteriously-funded Islamic State on the border between Iraq and Syria.
That being said, this plan is not merely being discussed, it
is being implemented as one can clearly see by the fact that Israel
routinely launches airstrikes against the Syrian military, Turkey
continues to funnel ISIS and related terrorists into Syria through its
own territory, and ISIS continues to present itself as an Eastern front
militarily. As a result, the “multi-front” war envisioned and written
about by the CIA in 1983 and discussed by Brookings in 2012 has come to
fruition and is in full swing today.
Full Document below:
Then three years later, another CIA report (found recently in CREST database by Wikileaks) confirms much of the above, raising
once again the goal of reducing Russian influence, and toppling any
Syrian leadership that was inclined to escalate tensions with Israel…
Under most circumstances Moscow’s position in Syria should remain strong, but should
Syria suffer another devastating military defeat at the hands of Israel
new leaders might decide to look elsewhere for military equipment.
A shift to a Western arms supplier also could prompt parallel efforts to seek Western financial advice and support.
Best case scenario for Washington…
We judge that US interests in Syria
probably would be best served by a Sunni regime as it might well include
relative moderates interested in securing Western aid and investment.
Such a regime probably would be less inclined to escalate tensions with Israel.
Russian relations…
Syria is the centerpiece of Moscow’s influence in the Middle East.
Moscow thus has a vested interest in major policy shifts or changes in
Syrian leadership. The Soviet Union and its East European allies provide
virtually all of Syria’s arms, and the Soviets deliver more weapons to
Syria than to any other Third World client.
We believe Moscow’s interests would be seriously jeopardized if Sunnis came to power through a civil war. Many
Sunnis resent the Soviets because they are closely identified with
Alawi dominance, and Sunnis would be especially hostile toward the
Soviets if they had supported Alawis with military equipment and
advisors in a civil war.
SCENARIOS OF DRAMATIC POLITICAL CHANGE
US biggest fear was series of coups over succession of Bashar al-Assad’s father… That did not come to be.
Civil war (similar to what is very evident now)…
Sunni dissidence has been minimal since Assad
crushed the Muslim Brotherhood in the early 1980s, but deep-seated
tensions remain–keeping alive the potential for minor incidents to grow
into major flareups of communal violence. For example, disgruntlement
over price hikes, altercations between Sunni citizens and security
forces, or anger at privileges accorded to Alawis at the expense of
Sunnis could foster small-scale protests. Excessive government force in
quelling such disturbances might be seen by Sunnis as evidence of a
government vendetta against all Sunnis, precipitating even larger
protests by other Sunni groups.
Best case scenario…
In our view, US interests would be best served by a Sunni regime controlled by business-oriented moderates. Business moderates would see a strong need for Western aid and investment to build Syria’s private economy, thus opening the way for stronger ties to Western governments.
Although we believe such a government would give some support–or at
least pay strong lipservice–to Arab causes, this group’s preoccupation
with economic development and its desire to limit the role of the
military would give Sunnis an incentive to avoid a war with Israel.
However…
We believe Washington’s gains would be mitigated, however, if Sunni fundamentalists assumed power. Although Syria’s secular traditions would make it extremely difficult for religious zealots to establish an Islamic Republic, should they succeed they would likely deepen hostilities with Israel and provide support and sanctuary to terrorist groups.
It’s a little late for that Islamic State genie to go back in the bottle now.
As Brandon Turbeville concludes,
the trail of documentation and the manner in
which the overarching agenda of world hegemony on the behalf of
corporate-financier interests have continued apace regardless of party
and seamlessly through Republican and Democrat administrations serves to
prove that changing parties and personalities do nothing to stop the
onslaught of imperialism, war, and destruction being waged across the
world today and in earnest ever since 2001. Indeed, such
changes only make adjustments to the appearance and presentation of a
much larger Communo-Fascist system that is entrenching itself by the
day.
*
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