http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2013/03/syrian-conflict-price-of-defying-west.html

Syrian Conflict: The Price of Defying the West

Haaretz piece reveals Syrian conflict is direct punitive result of Assad defying West, obstructing US-Israeli attack on Iran.

March 28, 2013 (LD) - Haaretz has recently published an exceptionally revealing article, confirming that the Brooking Institution's "Which Path to Persia?" report - a plan for the undermining and destruction of Iran - had indeed been set in motion, and that the current Syrian conflict is a direct result of Syria and Iran defying the West and disrupting what was to be a coup de grâce delivered to Tehran.

The article is titled, "Assad’s Israeli friend," appears at first to be a ham-handed attempt to portray Syrian President Bashar Al Assad as somehow allied with Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Instead, it actually reveals that Israel had attempted to execute verbatim, the strategies prescribed in the Brookings Institution's "Which Path to Persia?" report, where Israel was to lure Syria away from Iran ahead of a US-Israeli strike and subsequent war with Tehran.

Syria obviously did not fall into the trap, and as a result, has been plunged into a destructive, spiteful war of proxy aggression by the US, Israel, Saudi Arabia and their regional allies.

The Haaretz piece states specifically:

In moving closer to Assad, Netanyahu had a number of motives. First, he wanted to put some space between Syria and Iran, in the hope that Damascus would stand aside in the event of an Israeli strike against Iranian nuclear facilities in Natanz and Fordow.

Second, Israel’s loss of its alliances with Turkey and later with Egypt, compounded by apprehension about a deteriorating security situation in the south, pushed Jerusalem into buying quiet on its northern borders.

The third motive was to weaken Hezbollah, while the fourth was to address concerns that the Syrian rebels were in fact Al-Qaida operatives and that the fall of Assad’s regime would turn Syria into a hostile Islamic state.

Of course, while Haaretz admits that the so-called "Syrian rebels" are in fact vicious Al Qaeda terrorists with no intention of instituting anything resembling "freedom" or "democracy" in Syria, contrary to the West's own long-peddled narrative, Israel is in fact one of three primary co-conspirators in raising the terrorist army in the first place.

In Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh's 2007 New Yorker article, "The Redirection: Is the Administration’s new policy benefiting our enemies in the war on terrorism?" Israel was implicated directly in an insidious conspiracy to funnel aid and arms to sectarian extremists in a bid to topple Iran and its regional allies:

In the past year, the Saudis, the Israelis, and the Bush Administration have developed a series of informal understandings about their new strategic direction. At least four main elements were involved, the U.S. government consultant told me. First, Israel would be assured that its security was paramount and that Washington and Saudi Arabia and other Sunni states shared its concern about Iran.

Second, the Saudis would urge Hamas, the Islamist Palestinian party that has received support from Iran, to curtail its anti-Israeli aggression and to begin serious talks about sharing leadership with Fatah, the more secular Palestinian group. (In February, the Saudis brokered a deal at Mecca between the two factions. However, Israel and the U.S. have expressed dissatisfaction with the terms.)

The third component was that the Bush Administration would work directly with Sunni nations to counteract Shiite ascendance in the region.

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. The Saudi government is also at odds with the Syrians over the assassination of Rafik Hariri, the former Lebanese Prime Minister, in Beirut in 2005, for which it believes the Assad government was responsible. Hariri, a billionaire Sunni, was closely associated with the Saudi regime and with Prince Bandar. (A U.N. inquiry strongly suggested that the Syrians were involved, but offered no direct evidence; there are plans for another investigation, by an international tribunal.)

The Israeli belief that pressuring Syria would make it more "conciliatory and open to negotiations," as well as the "motivations" cited by the recent Haaretz piece, are torn straight from Brooking Institution's 2009 "Which Path to Persia?" report. The report stated specifically:

"...the Israelis may want to hold off [on striking Iran] until they have a peace deal with Syria in hand (assuming that Jerusalem believes that one is within reach), which would help them mitigate blowback from Hizballah and potentially Hamas. Consequently, they might want Washington to push hard in mediating between Jerusalem and Damascus." -page 109 (.pdf)

Which Path to Persia? .pdf
....

Clearly Syria refused the disingenuous "peace deal" with Israel, unlike its regional neighbors Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar who are now all working in lock step with US-Israeli interests. While these neighbors were spared the sedition and carnage visited upon other Arab nations during the US State Department orchestrated "Arab Spring," Syria has been hit hardest and longest. The resilience of Syria may have delayed or even shelved Western designs aimed at reasserting hegemony across the Middle East, including delaying indefinitely war with Iran.

Israel's disingenuous attempts to reproach Syria are only one of several prescribed strategies Brookings called for in their 2009 report that have already come to pass. Another was Brookings' suggestion to deslist and arm the bizarre terrorist cult, Mujahedeen e-Khalq (MEK). MEK had been listed as a foreign terrorist organization by the US State Department for decades, yet it was still heavily armed, funded, and its operatives even trained on US soil - this despite the group being listed for kidnapping and slaughtering US officers and civilian contractors.

In 2012, the US State Department would finally officially delist MEK, and announce that they would begin funding and arming them in earnest against Iran. The LA Times would report in their September 2012 article, "U.S. to remove Iranian group Mujahedin Khalq from terrorist list," that:

The small but influential Iranian exile group Mujahedin Khalq will be removed from the U.S. list of foreign terrorist organizations, a U.S. official said Friday, following a high-priced lobbying campaign claiming the controversial group had renounced violence.

The New Yorker and the Uk's Daily Mail would each in turn report that MEK was being armed, trained, and directed by the West in terrorist activities against Iran, including the assassination of Iranian scientists.

Image: MEK is just one of many terrorist organizations, that despite being listed by the US State Department as such, still receives weapons, training, cash, and political support from the US government. This is a pattern seen repeated in Libya and most recently in Syria - each case spun and excused with a myriad of lies wrapped in false, constantly shifting narratives.

....

The US' delisting and arming of MEK proves that the West possesses the political duplicity to hypocritically arm their own "declared" enemies. This double game of condemning terrorist organizations while simultaneously arming and directing them against the West's enemies goes far in explaining how thousands of tons of weapons NATO and its regional allies have sent to so-called "moderates" in Syria have ended up almost exclusively in the hands of Al Qaeda's Syrian franchise, al-Nusra , which has emerged as the most heavily armed, well funded, most organized militant front in the conflict.

The Brookings report is not just a piece of paper - it is a documented conspiracy, executed in plain sight bycorporate-financier interests that have transcended at least two US presidencies in their latest campaign against Iran, Syria, and the wider Middle East. Haaretz may hope that people quickly read the article and conclude that Israel is somehow backing the Syrian state, never realizing what is being reported is instead a disingenuous "peace deal" meant to lure in, then fatally betray Syria just as was done to Libya.

Haaretz also hope readers do not realize the obvious - that Syria refused these insidious advances by the West which lead chronologically to the 2011 "uprising," that Haaretz itself now admits is the work of terrorists, not "freedom fighters," and that the New Yorker in 2007 revealed as being engineered by the US, Saudi Arabia, and Israel itself.

It is clear that Syria is being punished, divided, and destroyed for obstructing Western designs against Iran. It is also clear that those forces fighting inside Syria against the Syrian people and their government, are aiding and abetting foreign aggression and what is essentially an attempt by Western interests to recolonize the Arab World. As mortars fired by NATO's proxy forces, aimed at Damascus University, claim another 10-15 innocent lives, the public must be aware of the premeditated, punitive nature of the unhinged atrocities now being committed by these "rebels."

http://www.debka.com/article/22857/Saudi-heavy-weapons-supply-to-Syrian-rebels-breaks-up-Arab-summit-in-uproar

Saudi heavy weapons supply to Syrian rebels breaks up Arab summit in uproar

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report March 28, 2013, 11:13 AM (GMT+02:00)

Tags: Saudi Arabia

Syrian rebels

Rocket launchers

Prince Bandar

Qatar

Turkey

Arab League

The heavy MLRS rocket launcher in Syrian rebel hands

Syrian rebels fighting for control of the Syria’s biggest town, Aleppo, have obtained their first heavy weapons – 220-mm MLRS rocket launchers – through a large-scale supply operation run by Saudi intelligence chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan, according toDEBKAfile’s exclusive intelligence sources.

His agents scoured the Balkans nations of Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo and for large wads of cash snapped up Russian-made MLRS (Smerch) and Hurricane 9K57 launchers capable of firing scores of 220-mm rockets to a distance of 70 kilometers.

The Saudis hope to expedite the rebel capture of the big Syrian Nairab air base attached to Aleppo’s international air port. The Saudi prince has personally taken the Nairab battle under his wing, convinced that it is the key to the conquest of Aleppo, once Syria's national commercial and population center, after more than a year’s impasse in the battle for its control.

The fall of this air base would also substantially reduce the big Iranian and Russian airlifts to Assad’s army.

Russia brings down its cargo planes loaded with weapons and replacement parts for the Syrian army at Nairab after the air facilities around Damascus were targeted by rebel fire. Moscow has since warned the rebels that if they attack incoming or outgoing Russian planes at Nairab, Russian special forces will come in to wipe out their strength around the base and take over its protection themselves.

Of late, Russian and Iranian arms lifts to Nairab were doubled, after rebels seized many Alawite villages in the Aleppo and Idlib regions of northern Syria.

Members of Bashar Assad’s Alawite sect, their inhabitants, mainly women and children, have been fleeing en masse from their homes in fear of rebel retribution. They are making for the coastal towns of Tartus and Latakia which are still under regime control.

The question is for how long. In the third week of March, Russian warships stopped docking at the naval port of Tartus after finding its piers and facilities crowded with Alawite refugees who came up to the Russian seamen begging for food, water and medical aid.

From March 21, Russian warships on the Mediterranean were ordered to avoid Tartus and relocate their visits to Lebanon’s Beirut port.

The Saudi operation for shipping heavy rocket launchers from the Balkans to Aleppo is complicated.

The rockets are fixed to vehicles weighing 43.7 tons each. The rockets themselves are 7.6 meters long and weigh 800 kilograms.

To arrange the transfer of this heavy artillery to the rebels in Aleppo, Prince Bandar contacted Hakan Fidan, head of the MIT-Turkish National Intelligence Organization. They agreed to set up an overland route from the Balkans via Turkey and across the Syrian border to Aleppo, under the protection of the Turkish army.

Our sources report that Ankara’s initial refusal of cooperation was overcome with a sharp reminder by Prince Bandar of the scale of Turkish exports to Saudi Arabia and the damage to the Turkish economy of their potential suspension.

The news that Saudi Arabia was supplying Syrian rebels with heavy weapons stunned the Arab League summit taking place in Doha, Qatar this week, bringing it to a clamorous end,DEBKAfile's intelligence and Middle East sources reveal.

Saudi and Qatari delegates were heard hurling shrill abuse at one another and exchanging blows in private meeting rooms down the corridors of the assembly hall. The conference proceedings were abruptly halted as Arab delegation members pitched in to separate them. A total blackout was quickly drawn down on the summit as it broke up in disarray.

The Saudi royal rulers and Qatar’s Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani have been at extreme loggerheads over the Syrian civil conflict. Riyadh - and Prince Bandar in particular - accuses the Qataris of conspiring to bring the Muslim Brotherhood to power in Damascus, including radical groups tied to Al Qaeda.

Qatari Prime Minister and Secret Service Chief Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem has shot back with the charge that Saudi Arabia is maneuvering for control of the Syrian rebel movement.

The Saudis condemn Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan's close ties with Qatar’s ruling family which they say eggs on Doha’s schemes for Syria.

For this reason, too, Bandar insisted on Turkey taking active part in facilitating the Balkan heavy arms route to Aleppo.

and..........

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2013/03/201332801947829802.html

Syria opposition opens embassy in Qatar

The move comes a day after opponents of Bashar al-Assad were given Syria seat at the Arab League.

Last Modified: 28 Mar 2013 00:28

Opposition chief al-Khatib and Qatari State Minister for Foreign Affairs Khaled al-Attiya inaugurated the Embassy [Reuters]

The Syrian opposition has opened its first embassy in Qatar, a day after opponents of President Bashar al-Assad were given Damascus's seat at the Arab League.
Opposition chief Ahmed Moaz al-Khatib and Qatari State Minister for Foreign Affairs Khaled al-Attiya inaugurated the Embassy of the Syrian National Coalition on Wednesday.
The original Syrian embassy itself remains closed.
Gulf states announced in March last year that they were closing their missions in Syria over Assad forces' crackdown on dissent that has transformed into a civil war that has killed more than 70,000 people.
The opening of the mission came a day after the Arab League welcomed the Coalition to take the seat of Syria an annual summit of the 22-member bloc in Doha.
In a speech addressing the leaders, al-Khatib said the opposition also wants to assume Syria's seat at the United Nations.
"This is the first embassy of the Syrian people," said Khatib in the ceremony that saw the rebel flag raised on a villa provided by the Qatari government.
Frustration
Al-khatib also used the ribbon-cutting ceremony to voice his frustration with world powers for failing to do more to help in the two-year-old struggle to topple Assad.
"There is an international willingness for the revolution not to triumph," he told reporters at the embassy, which was festooned with balloons in the red, green, white and black of Syria's national flag.
Nizar Haraki, named by the coalition in February as its "ambassador" to Qatar, told AFP he would "soon" present his accreditation letter to the emir of Qatar.
The coalition has named envoys in several countries, including Britain, France, Libya, Turkey and the United States, but has yet to open diplomatic missions in those countries.
Syria's seat at the Arab League has been vacant since the bloc suspended its membership in November 2011 after Damascus rejected an Arab proposal to end violence against protesters and instead pressed a bloody crackdown on dissent.
Russia, which gives Damascus military and diplomatic support, scolded the Arab League for taking "another anti-Syria step" by giving Syria's seat to the opposition.
Iran, which has sent advisers, money and weapons to help Assad stay in power, also lambasted the Arab League for allowing a foe of Assad to take Syria's seat at the summit, calling this "a pattern of dangerous behaviour".

and.......

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/03/28/295576/russia-to-confront-syria-opp-at-un/

‘Russia to confront Syria opp. at UN’

Russian Ambassador to the UN Vitaly Churkin (file photo)

Thu Mar 28, 2013 8:40PM GMT

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Russian Ambassador to the UN Vitaly Churkin says his country will strongly oppose any attempt to give Syria's UN seat to opposition forces.

“We will oppose it very strongly, but ... I don't think it is going to happen," Churkin said on Thursday.

“They (UN states) value this institution, they understand that if something of the sort were to happen, that would really undercut the standing of the United Nations,” he added.

This comes after Syrian opposition chief Ahmed Moaz al-Khatib said earlier that “We demand ... the seat of Syria at the United Nations and at other international organizations.”

Churkin also denounced a move by the Arab League (AL) to hand Syria’s seat to opposition forces, saying that the AL is now playing a ‘negative role’ in the Syrian conflict.

The Russian ambassador added that the Arab League decision damaged its standing and undermined the efforts of UN-Arab League peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi.

On Tuesday, Syria’s opposition bloc, known as the National Coalition, took Syria’s seat during the Arab League annual summit held in the Qatari capital, Doha.

The League also authorized its members to send all the means of what it called self-defense, including weapons, to militants fighting against the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

On Wednesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also criticized the League’s decision, saying that “In terms of international law, the league's decision on Syria is illegal and indefensible.”

Syria has been experiencing unrest since March 2011. Many people, including large numbers of Army and security personnel, have been killed in the violence.

The Syrian government has said that the chaos is being orchestrated from outside the country, and that a very large number of the militants operating in the country are foreign nationals.

Several international human rights organizations have accused foreign-sponsored militants of committing war crimes.

MAM/HN

http://news.antiwar.com/2013/03/27/al-nusra-doubles-as-syrians-join-from-iraq/

Al-Nusra Doubles as Syrians Join from Iraq

Al-Qaeda Backed Group Sees Surge in Membership

by Jason Ditz, March 27, 2013

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Syria’s Jabhat al-Nusra, long a small but exceedingly effective front-line of the Syrian rebel movement, has seen massive increasing in the number of jihadists fighting under their banner.

Once estimated to be between 300-400 hardcore fighters, the al-Qaeda endorsed movement is now believed to have nearly 1,000 fighters, with large numbers of them coming from neighboring Iraq.

This is a direct consequence ofJabhat al-Nusra’s increasingcontrol over the Syria-Iraq border, and their ties, virtually from inception, with al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), to the point that the US believes they are essentially the same group using two names.

Iraq has struggled to deal with this problem along their border, closing official sites but unable to do much to close the long, mostly desert, border with Syria, an influx that has bolstered AQI’s access to international weapons as well as al-Nusra’s access to seasoned fighters.