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Page added on June 16, 2013
Iran Sends 4,000 Troops To Aid Syria’s Assad
While the world awaits Russia’s formal response to last week’s US escalation in Syria (as Putin demonstratively arrived an hour late for talks on Syria with UK PM David Cameron) another country: Iran – fresh from an election in which moderate candidate Hassan Rohani became the new president – is taking matters into its own hands. The Independent Reports that “a military decision has been taken in Iran – even before last week’s presidential election – to send a first contingent of 4,000 Iranian Revolutionary Guards to Syria to support President Bashar al-Assad’s forces against the largely Sunni rebellion that has cost almost 100,000 lives in just over two years. Iran is now fully committed to preserving Assad’s regime, according to pro-Iranian sources which have been deeply involved in the Islamic Republic’s security, even to the extent of proposing to open up a new ‘Syrian’ front on the Golan Heights against Israel.”
If it was the west’s desire all along to drag Iran into the Syrian escalation, and thus shoot two birds with one cluster bomb, Iran may have just happily obliged.
So while we now await for Israel in turn to ratchet up the war rhetoric one more time, perhaps while punctuating its sentences with the occasional bomb over Syrian soil, here is the Independent with a comprehensive analysis on how America, courtesy of its now formalized support of the Syrian mercenaries rebels, suddenly finds itself in uncharted territory: “For the first time, all of America’s ‘friends’ in the region are Sunni Muslims and all of its enemies are Shiites. Breaking all President Barack Obama’s rules of disengagement, the US is now fully engaged on the side of armed groups which include the most extreme Sunni Islamist movements in the Middle East.”
More:
In years to come, historians will ask how America – after its defeat in Iraq and its humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan scheduled for 2014 – could have so blithely aligned itself with one side in a titanic Islamic struggle stretching back to the seventh century death of the Prophet Mohamed. The profound effects of this great schism, between Sunnis who believe that the father of Mohamed’s wife was the new caliph of the Muslim world and Shias who regard his son in law Ali as his rightful successor – a seventh century battle swamped in blood around the present-day Iraqi cities of Najaf and Kerbala – continue across the region to this day. A 17th century Archbishop of Canterbury, George Abbott, compared this Muslim conflict to that between “Papists and Protestants”.
America’s alliance now includes the wealthiest states of the Arab Gulf, the vast Sunni territories between Egypt and Morocco, as well as Turkey and the fragile British-created monarchy in Jordan. King Abdullah of Jordan – flooded, like so many neighbouring nations, by hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees – may also now find himself at the fulcrum of the Syrian battle. Up to 3,000 American ‘advisers’ are now believed to be in Jordan, and the creation of a southern Syria ‘no-fly zone’ – opposed by Syrian-controlled anti-aircraft batteries – will turn a crisis into a ‘hot’ war. So much for America’s ‘friends’.
Its enemies include the Lebanese Hizballah, the Alawite Shiite regime in Damascus and, of course, Iran. And Iraq, a largely Shiite nation which America ‘liberated’ from Saddam Hussein’s Sunni minority in the hope of balancing the Shiite power of Iran, has – against all US predictions – itself now largely fallen under Tehran’s influence and power. Iraqi Shiites as well as Hizballah members, have both fought alongside Assad’s forces.
Washington’s excuse for its new Middle East adventure – that it must arm Assad’s enemies because the Damascus regime has used sarin gas against them – convinces no-one in the Middle East. Final proof of the use of gas by either side in Syria remains almost as nebulous as President George W. Bush’s claim that Saddam’s Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.
For the real reason why America has thrown its military power behind Syria’s Sunni rebels is because those same rebels are now losing their war against Assad. The Damascus regime’s victory this month in the central Syrian town of Qusayr, at the cost of Hizballah lives as well as those of government forces, has thrown the Syrian revolution into turmoil, threatening to humiliate American and EU demands for Assad to abandon power. Arab dictators are supposed to be deposed – unless they are the friendly kings or emirs of the Gulf – not to be sustained. Yet Russia has given its total support to Assad, three times vetoing UN Security Council resolutions that might have allowed the West to intervene directly in the civil war.
In the Middle East, there is cynical disbelief at the American contention that it can distribute arms – almost certainly including anti-aircraft missiles – only to secular Sunni rebel forces in Syria represented by the so-called Free Syria Army. The more powerful al-Nusrah Front, allied to al-Qaeda, dominates the battlefield on the rebel side and has been blamed for atrocities including the execution of Syrian government prisoners of war and the murder of a 14-year old boy for blasphemy. They will be able to take new American weapons from their Free Syria Army comrades with little effort.
From now on, therefore, every suicide bombing in Damascus – every war crime committed by the rebels – will be regarded in the region as Washington’s responsibility. The very Sunni-Wahabi Islamists who killed thousands of Americans on 11th September, 2011 – who are America’s greatest enemies as well as Russia’s – are going to be proxy allies of the Obama administration. This terrible irony can only be exacerbated by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s adament refusal to tolerate any form of Sunni extremism.
In short: meet the new world axis and allies, conveniently split by the Syria proxy war (h/t Xue):
22 Comments on "Iran Sends 4,000 Troops To Aid Syria’s Assad"
Plantagenet on Sun, 16th Jun 2013 6:46 pm
Its like a tag team wresting match—
Sunni vs. Shia vs. Obama vs. Putin vs. Qatar vs. Iran
DC on Sun, 16th Jun 2013 7:16 pm
The countries in the graphic above that voted ‘yes’, were actually expressing there approval of the US’s proxies to destroy Syria. The countries that voted ‘no’ in that provocative ‘red’ color, were actually voting to stop terrorism and the murderous US war\oilgarchy.
‘Political transition’ in USspeak=unconditional surrender to the IMF\WB\US oil corporations.
Its revealing as well, how many abstained. mostly in the South America and Africa-and SE Asia as well. My interpretation of the abstaining is, those nations arent buying into the idea that the US and its satraps have the peoples of Syria’s best interests at heart. Given who is doing the abstaining, I tend to regard there votes as a rebuff of amerikans endless war-mongering.
Plantagenet on Sun, 16th Jun 2013 7:37 pm
The war in Syria has nothing to do with any “US war/oligarchy.”
The war in Syria is a just another chapter in the 1400 year long Sunni-vs-Shia religious war. The US has nothing to gain by interfering in this religous war—the US simply blindly blundered into the middle of a religious civil war because of Obama’s stupidity.
J-Gav on Sun, 16th Jun 2013 8:08 pm
Ooh! Things do appear to be heating up, don’t they?
The U.S./ E.U. are playing ball with the Saudis, Kuwaitis and Gulf states, Qataris, etc (Sunnis), who are scared sh#^$less that their considerable Shia minorities will erupt in massive ‘civil disobedience.’ Why? Because they (for now) still supply the lion’s share of the region’s fossil fuels to the West.
Do the Sunnis have a legimitate claim to cultural and political hegemony amonst Muslims? No. They’d have to share that with the Shia. The Wahabi (Saudis)are actually the least legitimate of all, still trying to crawl out of the 19th century they were birthed in. The poetic, philosophical and general cultural contribution of the Shia to Islam over the centuries outweighs the Sunnis by an order of magnitude and they can’t afford to let that be known, especially when many $$$$ are at stake. So they will be suppressed. Whether it makes sense or not doesn’t matter – that’s not the way geopolitics works.
DC on Sun, 16th Jun 2013 8:17 pm
Keep telling yourself that. Your PNAC planned this war long before DroneBama came along, a fact your probably well aware. As for this 1400 year long sunni-shia ‘war’, I can find no reference to it…anywhere.
Do you even know what Arabs were doing 1400 years ago?
Well,in point of fact, those arabs you claim were fighting each other in ‘religous wars’, were sweeping through and taking territory from the eastern Roman empire, including Egypt and all the former Roman provinces in North Africa-as well as completely conquering Hispania. And as ig that wasnt enough, those Arabs, took time out from figthing each other to shelter what was left of western science,art and literature, which helped lead to the Arab golden age (8th Century to 1258), while your Xtian ancestors in Europe were torching 1500 years of western civilization and carving up its buildings to melt into limestone. Why? Because the xtian “Gawd(tm)” willed it.
Again, during none of these periods can I find reference to a multi-century sunni-shia war going on.
Arab rule in fractured and dis-ordered Europe, was by most accounts, an improvement over the dung ages hell-hole Europe had quickly become under X-tian rule.
Arthur on Sun, 16th Jun 2013 11:13 pm
“The war in Syria is a just another chapter in the 1400 year long Sunni-vs-Shia religious war.”
This is not true. Although some scepticism regards wikipedia is necessary, certainly in all matterns concerning US and ME politics, here is their opinion anyway:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrian_civil_war
Maybe it is true that originally the uprising was spontaneous, in line with what we have seen in the past few weeks in Turkey. People who want more freedom start to protest, the regime tries to suppress these protests and the situation escalates. Only then foreign powers start to study the situation to see if their can be something to be gained from it.
For some reason the US lead West sees advantage in topling Assad, probably because they fear the rising power of Iran, that is now allied to Irak and Syria, as well Iranian plans to construct the so-called ‘Islamic pipeline’ from Pars, the largest gasfield in the world, via Iraq and Syria to the Meditairanean, to service European markets. On the other hand, this would divert European dependency away from Russia, which is something both the EU and US want.
The zionists behind the Clean Break strategy paper had stated in 1999 that they wanted to destabilize Syria for God knows what reason. It obviously had something to do with Israel, but syria had been no real threat to Israel for decades. Now Israel has to face the fascinating possibility of thousands of Iranians potentially fighting near the Israeli border for the first time in history.
In its origins it certainly was no Shi’ite-Sunni conflict, but it slowly has become one, now that jihadis from all over the Islamic world and even Europe make it a Shi’ite-Sunni conflict, not envisioned by the original protesters. There are many Sunnis and Shi’ites who much prefer the status quo of a secular baath regime. But like in Yugoslavia and Iraq, you only need a fanatical minority to set an entire country in flames.
Plantagenet on Sun, 16th Jun 2013 11:18 pm
DC and Arthur need a refresher on the history of Islam. The schism between Shia and Sunni Moslems caused by the murder of Ali 1400 years ago is a historical fact, as are the centuries of conflict that have followed.
Arthur on Sun, 16th Jun 2013 11:52 pm
Nobody denies that fact, but it was not the reason why the conflict started.
Arthur on Mon, 17th Jun 2013 12:00 am
http://www.infowars.com/britain-prepared-for-war-in-syria-two-years-before-the-crisis-flared-up-frances-former-fm-says/
Whoops…
“Former French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas said that Britain had been preparing gunmen to invade Syria two years before the crisis there flared up in 2011.
During a TV show, Dumas said ”I was in Britain two years ago, and I met British officials, some my friends…they admitted that they were up to something in Syria.”
”They even asked me to join them in my capacity as a foreign minister, but I declined,” he added.
He indicated that the plan of striking Syria had been prepared in advance long before the 2011 events, adding that the goal was to overthrow the Syrian government that considers Israel an enemy.”
.
Where is the ‘Shi’ite-Sunni’ conflict? Maybe it was some ‘color coded revolution’ after all.
Plantagenet on Mon, 17th Jun 2013 12:06 am
The Assad regime consists of Alawites (Shias). Their allies in Hezbollah are Shia as are their Iranian backers.
On the other other side are the Sunni rebels—both the Syrian Free Army and Al Qaida. Their backers in Qatar, KSA , Egypt etc. are also Sunni.
NO wonder you guys are confused—you don’t even know the most basic facts about the makeup of the various groups involved in the Syrian war!
BillT on Mon, 17th Jun 2013 1:11 am
The whole Middle East mess is nothing more or less than the US/Israel/City of London stick beating on the hornet’s nest. And yes, Islam not only saved most of what was worthwhile in the Middle Ages, but it originated much of what was called science in those days. Christians were busy turning back the clock on humanity by killing anyone with a thought that was not approved by their god (the same one the Muslim’s worship, if you didn’t know).
DC on Mon, 17th Jun 2013 2:12 am
Yea, Ill leave it Plant to try to explain to everyone how the Arabs managed to engage in there fictional warfare, killing each other 1400 years ago, and still found the energy to have there own Golden Age that lasted nearly 5 centuries, and like BillT points out-laid the foundation for the rebirth of western science and rationalism. Though it still took many centuries. Did arabs have small local pissing matches throughout there history, yea they did. Everyone did. But again, if you can point out any scholarly references to your 1400 year old ‘sunni-shia warfare schtick, would be nice, which lets face it, is modern media creation and or fiction. Qausi-true at best. Its purpose is to make Arabs appear a lot more irrational, uncivilized and bloodthirsty than they are(?). If the situation were reversed, Arabs would be militarily occupying Eruope right now and refusing to leave on the basis that Catholics and protestants are too barbaric to live together and can only be kept apart by proxy dictatorships and armed occupation.
Its other purpose of course, is to deflect attention from the real root of ME violence. The US\Israeli\GCC dictatorships and resource theft. Americkans always go, Look Sunnis! Hey-shiites!,rather than admit its there own meddling and proxies that lie at the root of much of the regions problems.
Plantagenet on Mon, 17th Jun 2013 3:16 am
DC’s fantasy about “resource theft” in Syria is silly. Outside of DC’s fevered imagination, Syria has almost no oil or other resources.
Trying to blame the Shia vs. Sunni conflict in Syria on the US is equally ridiculous—the Shia and Sunni have engaged in conflicts for 1400 years. Do the math—thats 1100 years longer then the USA has even existed!
Others on Mon, 17th Jun 2013 3:50 am
America is trying to help Saudi Arabia which did 9/11 and this is like shooting in its own Foot.
Saudis are fanatics and they dont tolerate any minority.
Arthur on Mon, 17th Jun 2013 6:01 am
Plant is ignoring the fact that a French foreign minister no less, is acting like a whistleblower. The Clean Break document from 1999 proves that what is happening in Syria now, was already desired for in Washington. And the British do the dirty work for the Americans again. The Assad government is NOT a shia dominated government, but a secular one, with members from all communities. Most Syrians do not like what is happening now and support Assad, because the alternative is a blown up country with everybody ethnically cleansed and on the run. The West doen’t care and sees Syria merely as a pawn on the geopolitical chessboard.
BillT on Mon, 17th Jun 2013 6:11 am
Planet, either you are a CIA bot or seriously need to be educated. The US is in the Middle East for oil. If it were just sand, we would not be there or even think about it. The US started EVERY war since WW2. You don’t get the biggest military by not selling weapons and toy cannot sell weapons without a war or two or more. It’s ALL about money and mainly about keeping the dollar the world’s reserve currency. Because when that ends, so does the Empire and America (and Europe).
Plantagenet on Mon, 17th Jun 2013 6:35 am
BillT and DC—there is next to no oil in Syria. Try to understand the facts. Your fantasies about “oil” and “resources” don’t match up very well with the geologic facts.
Arthur—a French document from 1999 has nothing to do with the current war in Syria. Sheesh—do you really think the ancient 1400 year long hatred of Sunnis for Shia and vice-versa was caused by a French document written in 1999?
J-Gav on Mon, 17th Jun 2013 7:56 am
A couple of points re: above comments:
Syria has over 2 billion barrels of oil reserves. Though not massive, that’s hardly “next to no oil.” Extraction is pushing 400,000 barrels a day, also signicant, considering that no other Eastern Mediterrean extracts as much.
The real energy story in Syria is elsewhere, though – 1. in the recent gas finds offshore and,especially, 2. in using Syria as a transit country for pipeline delivery to Turkey and then further on to Europe. You get the picture – energy IS part of the equation in Western/Israeli policy towards Syria, along with the plan to weaken Iran’s regional position …
DC on Mon, 17th Jun 2013 8:18 am
Yes, precisely J, and behind both your considered points, lies yet another layer of ‘objectives’, namely to push that pipeline through to Europe to undercut(that is to say,weaken) Russia. Needless to say, the US does not want that pipeline because they care about Europeans utility bills, or even of the potential profits of that pipeline. Rather, the real payoff is the attempt to cut into Russia’s forex earnings from gas sales. The US doesnt even like like the idea of Russia having good, regular relations with Europe, much less they are providing them with energy that the US global corporations cant profit from at the expense of the peoples of Russia.
And why do that? Well, because Russia has enraged the US by not going meekly along with US plans to steamroll every country in the M/E, Africa, or anywhere else they feel like with there bogus RTP scam.
Layers on layers yes?
Rusty Baker on Mon, 17th Jun 2013 8:30 am
The reason for US involvement in Syria(and the rest of the Middle East)is pretty simple. They are there to achieve greater geopolitical power by controlling Middle Eastern crude oil. Don’t take my word for it, guys, retired American General Wesley Clark has explicitly stated the facts. Click on the link below if you still don’t believe me.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RC1Mepk_Sw
Arthur on Mon, 17th Jun 2013 9:01 am
“Arthur—a French document from 1999 has nothing to do with the current war in Syria. Sheesh—do you really think the ancient 1400 year long hatred of Sunnis for Shia and vice-versa was caused by a French document written in 1999?”
French document, what French document? You are confusing my statements about the revelations of a former French foreign minister (Roland Dumas) and an American (read: zionist) foreign policy paper:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Clean_Break:_A_New_Strategy_for_Securing_the_Realm
Dumas says that the British were preparing the instigation of an uprising in Syria, two years before it actually happened. That’s one.
Second observation is that the ‘Syrian rebels’ are not real Syrians at all, but jihadis (indeed Sunni) from all over the world, even hundreds Morocans from Holland, escaping a boring life at home and ‘make a killing’ in a foreign land, loot and rape a little and have all other sorts of fun. But hey, is that not the motivation of most soldiers, to rape someone else daughter?
http://www.amazon.com/What-Soldiers-Do-American-France/dp/0226923096
(The American government hinted at the possibility of a lot of sex in ‘liberated France’) when recruting soldiers. It was not as bad as what the Russians did, but a lot worse than the behavior of the Germans (ADL: “that’s because the Germans were too racist to have sex with non-German women”)
And yes, this fanatical minority do indeed want a Sunni Caliphate revolution. But the real Syrian Sunnis and Shi’ites do not want this at all to happen and why should they? What do they have to gain? It means millions of displaced and homeless people, thrown back into poverty.
To sum it up: the uprising did not start as a Sunni-Shia conflict. It started either as an uprising of discontent a la Istanbul in the recent weeks and/or by British incitement (see comments Roland Dumas yesterday). Next foreign jihadis, paid by Sunni states, like Qatar and SA and probably US/UK as well, start to fund foreign mercenaries to use the crack in the wall to set the entire country on fire.
But that does not mean it will not morph into a Sunni-Shia conflict. If you are a Shi’ite and your village is under attack by a gang of foreign Sunni jihadist, you have no choice but to defend your family and already the ‘600 year old Sunni-Shi’ite conflict’ is born.
Arthur on Tue, 18th Jun 2013 8:12 am
http://whowhatwhy.com/2012/08/10/tvwho-gen-wesley-clark-shocker-on-911-policy-coup/
Here is a 8 minute video for plant of a speech of Wesley Clark about the real motives behind the Syrian war. Has nothing to do with Sunni/Shia conflict.
Clark himself talks about a ‘policy coup’ after 9/11. He mentions PNAC. He mentions planned regime change in seven countries, among them Iraq, Syria and Iran. Clark stops short of calling 9/11 an inside job though.