World News

https://ericzuesse.substack.com/p/explaining-the-war-in-the-middle

https://theduran.com/explaining-the-war-in-the-middle-east/

Explaining the War in the Middle East

In-Depth Presentations by Vanessa Beeley and Other Experts.

7 December 2024, posted and introduced by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)

It’s the U.S., Israel, Qatar, & Turkey, backing the theocratic-Sunni al-Qaeda and ISIS to take over Syria, versus Russia, Syria, Lebanon, Iran, & Palestinians, backing the secular Assad, who has led and does lead Syria since 2000. Turkey’s leader Erdogan, supported by Israel’s leader Netanyahu, and America’s leader Biden, have brought into Syria — Turkey’s southern neighbor — through Turkey, tens of thousands of jihadists (fundamentalist Sunnis) recruited from all over the world into Syria, to replace Syria’s existing secular Government, whose leader is Assad, by imposing via force a fundamentalist-Sunni jihadist government, in an operation by the U.S., Israel, and Turkey, that’s financed by the hereditary ruler of Qatar, Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, whose family, along with Turkey’s Erdogan, have, in the past, supported the fundamentalist-Sunni, but not jihadist, Muslim Brotherhood. So, the U.S. and its allies (which have, in the past, armed and trained Al-Qaeda and even trained some ISIS, to overthrow Assad) are now going all-in (along with Turkey) to place the current leader of Al-Qaeda in Syria (which now calls itself “HTS”), Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, as being the leader of Syria, who will then allow the completion of the natural-gas pipeline from Qatar through Syria to Europe, to replace what had until recently been Europe’s largest natural-gas supplier, which was Russia. America’s blowing up the Nord Stream pipelines from Russia to Europe wasn’t enough. When this new pipeline will be completed, the inexpensive pipelined natural gas from Russia will become replaced from Qatar, and so the current deep recession or even depression in Europe (which is largely due to the shut-off of pipelined gas from Russia) will be able to end. America is doing this in order to prevent European nations from leaving America’s military alliance against Russia: NATO.

Up till now, Saudi Arabia (Mohammed bin Salman) and UAE (Mohamed bin Zayed) are not involved, nor are other Middle Eastern nations. This is a natural-gas play, not an oil-play.

On a broader geostrategic level, it’s a war between U.S. versus Russia. Turkey has all but opted out of the BRICS movement and recommitted itself to America’s NATO. Russia will become increasingly concerned about all other arrangements it had had with Turkey, such as regarding allowance of Russia’s marine passage through Turkey’s Dardanelles and the Bosporus Straits.

So, ultimately, this is all just another part of America’s war against Russia, which began on 25 July 1945.

Here is yet further explanation of this war, via the video and transcript [with occasional comments by me in brackets, and with highlights boldfaced by me] of a presentation by host Dmitry Simes Jr., and experts Vanessa Beeley, Kevork al-Masian, and Saeed Mohammed Marandi, which was released on 7 December 2024: 

https://beeley.substack.com/p/syria-on-fire-who-benefits

“Syria on fire! Who benefits?” (VIDEO with Transcript)

The independent journalist Vanessa Beely, the founder of Syriana Analysis Kevork al-Masian, and the Tehran University professor Saeed Mohammed Marandi, explain the war in the Middle East

0:00 SIMES: Hello, everyone. This is the New Rules Podcast, and I'm your host, Dmitry Symes Jr. Syria is back in the news again. Terrorists [jihadists] from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham have launched a large-scale offensive in northern Syria, capturing the city of Aleppo [Syria’s second-largest city, 2021 population 2,098,210]. The coming days and weeks will determine whether the terrorists will seize even more territory or whether the Assad government and its allies can regain the strategic initiative. Today we're recording a special episode on Syria. Our goal is to help you see the broader geopolitical forces driving this war. After all, the Syrian civil war is not simply a conflict between the Assad government and its opponents. Like it or not,

Syria has effectively become an international battlefield featuring the US, Turkey, Russia, Iran, Qatar, Israel, and other regional players. This is an ambitious and complicated topic. So to help us decipher what's really going on, we asked for help from top experts on Syria and the Middle East. Independent journalist Vanessa Beely, founder of Syriana Analysis Kevork al-Masian, and Tehran University professor Saeed Mohammed Marandi. For starters, let's take a look at Syria's broader role in the region. As Vanessa Beely told us, Syria is one of the most important bulwarks against Israeli influence in the Middle East.

1:44: BEELEY: Syria, if you look at it geographically, of course, it's the absolute spine of the resistance axis. It's the main central land bridge for materials to come from Iran through Iraq. through Syria and into Lebanon to Hezbollah and then on into Palestine, to the Palestinian resistance groups.

But not only that, Syria is also or has been historically manufacturing weapons on its own territory. It has multiple research and development centers. And it has been manufacturing and providing weapons to the resistance in Lebanon and in Palestine for years, even since the regime change war to topple the Syrian government began in 2011.

And of course, we shouldn't forget that one of the main reasons that this war was kicked off against Syria in 2011 was because among many issues that President Desaiad refused to come on board with the West with regard to these issues. One of them, of course, was to abandon the resistance axis, to end their historic alliance with Iran, to stop supporting Hezbollah and to stop supporting the Palestinian nationalist and justice movements.

3:21: SIMES: Now, as you can imagine, Assad's support for the Palestinian and Lebanese resistance has put Syria in Israel's crosshairs. In fact, just last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly fretted Assad, warning the Syrian leader that he was, quote, playing with fire. It's worth noting that this wasn't an isolated incident.

Syrian officials and lawmakers have been threatening Syria and Assad for months. Vanessa Bily explained that it's no coincidence that the fighting in Syria flared up almost immediately after the Israel Hezbollah ceasefire was announced.

4:04: BEELEY: Israel has been funding the terrorist groups, arming the terrorist groups, providing medical treatment for the terrorist groups inside Syria since 2011, and on occasions in the South, even providing covering artillery fire for the terrorist groups fighting the Syrian Arab army factions. If we look at the timing,

The attack came hours after the ceasefire came into effect between the Lebanese resistance, Hezbollah and Israel. At that point, Netanyahu, I believe, kind of wanted to take his foot off the pedal to stop the invasion, the ground invasion, which they were losing desperately. In the south of Lebanon, militarily, they were losing. and to bring into effect UN Resolution 1701, which would mean that the Lebanese army would take control of the south of Lebanon. The Lebanese army, unfortunately, is sponsored by the US and is kept at a level that it's incapable of. of defending itself against Israel.

And of course, Israel is receiving billions of some of the most sophisticated weapons from the US. And so this gave Netanyahu a breather. It allowed him to wait for the new weapons supply from the United States post the ceasefire. And we've seen him now responding to one rocket from Hezbollah with, I think it was 38 strikes last night on the south of Lebanon. And so for Netanyahu, at that point, I predicted that the pivot would be towards Syria. And we had been warned about a month ago that there was potential for a concerted attack from the northwest, from Jolani himself.

He canceled the attack, potentially waiting for the ceasefire to come into effect. So he was waiting for the instruction from Israel, in my opinion. And of course, that came immediately after the ceasefire. What is Israel doing? It's collaborating with Turkey also, because Turkey, as I said, has control of the SNA factions from the north.

And what it's attempting to do, I think, is to, without actually expending its own military and its own air force at this point, it's using the terrorists as a battering ram to take control of the supply line roads,

6:40: SIMES: Whenever you find an Israeli trace in these sort of conflicts, that usually means the United States is closed behind. And that definitely is the case for Syria. Ever since the Syrian civil war began in 2011, the U.S. has been arming and training anti-Assad missile militant groups. As part of the now infamous Operation Timber Sycamore,

The CIA allocated over $1 billion to extremist groups in Syria between 2013 and 2017. But the U.S. has gone beyond just proxy war operations in Syria. The U.S. military illegally occupies large swaths of Syrian territory, including the oil-rich Northwest and Al-Tanf, which is located on Syria's border with Iraq and Jordan.

Some people have expressed cautious optimism that Donald Trump will wind down the U.S. war in Syria. But as Kavorka Masin explained, that is highly unlikely.

7:42: MASIN: The United States has multiple strategic interests in Syria. First of all, they want to kick the Russian fleet from the Mediterranean, just like they wanted to kick out the Russian fleet from the Black Sea. And Russia sees these two seas in the Black Sea and in the Mediterranean as very important and strategic and existential threats against its national security because during the Cold War era, the Americans had an upper hand over the international waters. And during the Cold War, the Soviet Union and now Russia, they have learned the lessons of the past. So when the coup happened in Kiev in 2014, the first thing

the Russians have done, they have organized a referendum in the Crimea and they captured it. And similarly in Syria, we have the Russian fleet in the Mediterranean and from the Mediterranean to the Black Sea, there is a route that Russia can access both seas in an easy manner.

Unlike if the situation is upside down and they have been kicked out, for example, from the Mediterranean, they will have to do a very long turn. around the African horn. So this is number one. The second thing is they want to, of course, kick out any Russian influence in the region. Sorry, Iranian influence in the region.

And in this case, they see Syria, as I mentioned, as the strategic depth of the axis of resistance. And they understand that were it not for Syria, there is no Hezbollah. And were it not for Syria, the Palestinian armed struggle will be over. Therefore, they want to end the Arab-Israeli conflict through hitting Syria.

The third strategic, I would say, interest of the U.S. is to block China's road and silk initiative from reaching to the eastern shore of the Mediterranean. So by stationing their forces, for example, on the eastern shore of the Euphrates, they're blocking China's free access to the trade markets basically in the region by keeping the country destabilized and stationing their own troops basically there. One last important factor why the Americans are very interested in Syria is to extend the Qatari gas pipelines to Europe. Now, this was a project before the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines, but they wanted, by supplying or extending these gas pipelines from Qatar to Turkey, for Turkey to become the distributor for the Qatari gas to Europe. And if they manage to do that, Europe will no longer need the Russian gas pipelines. But when this project failed, because President Assad survived for now 14 years of war, and he vetoed these gas pipelines, the Americans went and they destroyed the North Stream pipelines in the seas. So they did what they wanted to do through soft power, which means like giving Qatar this privilege and power over Europe because Qatar is a a major non-NATO ally. This is the title of Qatar in the U.S. Foreign Secretary of State. Therefore, they wanted to kill the Nord Stream project through extending these pipelines, something that they have failed. But if, again, Assad is gone and country is divided and destroyed like they want it to be, then Qataris will have, again, the opportunity to extend their gas pipelines

11:34: SIMES: Let's take a closer look at Qatar. People generally don't think of Qatar as a military power and the right to do so. But Qatar has three geopolitical assets at its disposal. Huge oil and gas reserves, an effective media machine, and U.S. military support. As Kavorka Amazian told us, despite its small size, Qatar has played an outsized role in the Syrian civil war. 

12:03: MASIN: The country which gave the most financial support to the terrorist groups in Syria, especially to Al Nusra Front, the offshoot of Al Qaeda in Syria, was Qatar. Qatar funneled tens of billions of dollars to these militants in Syria. Qatar has played an instrumental role to its media outlets like Al Jazeera and other smaller outlets in the region. And they have waged serious psychological operations against the Syrian people and the Syrian army. And these psychological operations were one of the main reasons for the rapid crumbling of the front lines in Western Aleppo a few days ago when the invasion started. Many people haven't followed these psychological operations in Arabic. I did. And they were very scary and they gave the impression that the head choppers are coming and many people evacuated their places after fear. Because everybody still remembers the memories are alive, how these head choppers come and slaughter people based on their religion, sect, or their affiliation to the government.

Even if you're a teacher working for a government school, you could be killed. So imagine the fear that they have spread among the people. Qatar is a major player in this. 

Qatar sees in the Syrian an opportunity to present itself as a regional power to replace Saudi Arabia. [That’s] number one [in Qatar’s view].

Second, it sees itself as a country to impose new realities in the Arab world in terms of toppling the, for example, previously the Egyptian, Libyan, Tunisian governments, and then in Syria, and replace them with Islamist governments, especially the Muslim Brotherhood, which is the ideology, the ideology in Qatar and in Turkey, so by creating or replacing these governments with [Sunni, NOT Shiite] Islamist governments affiliated to the Muslim Brotherhood, then Qatar will have the great influence in the Middle East and North Africa also Qatar will extend as I mentioned the gas pipeline to Europe, something that could bring them huge profits, and they will have let's say a very big influence compared to their size.

So they had their aspirations in Syria, and their enthusiasm has never been diminished. Even though Syria liberated most of its territories in the past years, Qatar was the only Arabic country which objected [to] normalizing relations with the Assad government. And they've been very adamant and very determined to continue their propaganda through their media outlets and funneling these materials.

14:53: SIMES: But of course, this episode wouldn't be complete if we didn't talk about Turkey's involvement. From the very beginning of the conflict, Turkey has armed and trained anti-Assad militants. It's also facilitated the transport of fighters from Central Asia, North Africa, and the Caucasus to Syria.

But in this case, I think a picture is worth more than a thousand words. Here's a photograph of a HGS militant raising the Turkish flag over the Aleppo citadel. But I think one of the unanswered questions is whether Erdogan coordinated with the Americans and Israelis when it comes to the recent events in Syria.

15:49: MORANDI: Erdogan has loudly criticized Israel's war in Gaza. But as Professor Morandi points out, that doesn't mean he wasn't simultaneously cooperating with Israelis on Syria.

Erdogan cares about Erdogan. In that sense, he is very similar to Netanyahu, but also similar in other ways as well, as we're seeing in Gaza and what Netanyahu is doing in Lebanon, what he did, and in Syria, what Erdogan is doing.

Erdogan wants to increase his sphere of influence in Syria, and he has ambitions for many parts of Syria. But unfortunately for the Syrian people, Erdogan has been using the most extreme of extremists. He has been working very closely with ISIS and Al-Qaeda, of course, with U.S. support, with oil and gas money from the Persian Gulf, with NATO support. And along with Western intelligence agencies, he brought in tens of thousands of foreign fighters from across the world. And in the recent fighting, we've seen a large number of fighters from Central Asia, from China, and which tomorrow these terrorists will pose a security threat to the whole continent of Asia. I think that's something that the Americans would like. But he's been using these extremists to carry out mass slaughter, and to help him gain access to greater parts of Syria, to help him reach his ambitions.

And so he has weakened Syria significantly, but the timing of this particular attack is extraordinary. And it's clear that it was done in coordination with Netanyahu and the Americans. Because as soon as we saw the ceasefire in Lebanon, this large army of ISIS and Al-Qaeda extremists, they launched their attack across Syria.

And they tried to take as much territory as they could. And if you recall, Netanyahu had threatened Syria. And also one reason why he accepted the ceasefire was because he said he wanted to deal with the so-called Iranian threat. So putting two and two together is not very difficult.

18:25: SIMES: And that's all for today. Please like and repose this video so that the truth about Syria can reach as much people as possible. Also, if you enjoyed this special episode, please make sure to follow us on X for more detailed geopolitical analysis. Thank you all for tuning in. Till next time.

Vanessa Beeley 

Conversations with Vanessa Beeley

In depth informal discussions with experts in their field covering all manner of global issues

—

If you want to see an excellent 26-minute presentation on the U.S. Government’s effort to take over China and Russia, and South Korea’s role in this effort, that’s here.

PS: If you like this article, please email it to all your friends or otherwise let others know about it. None of the U.S.-and-allied ‘news’-media will likely publish it (nor link to it, since doing that might also hurt them with Google or etc.). I am not asking for money, but I am asking my readers to spread my articles far and wide, because I specialize in documenting what the Deep State is constantly hiding. This is, in fact, today’s samizdat.

—————

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.