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Le relazioni in Medio Oriente sono complesse da definire e, anche quando funzionano, sono spesso effimere e raramente durano nel tempo. Recentemente abbiamo assistito alle manovre strategiche dell’Occidente in Siria con la caduta di Assad, seguita rapidamente dall’insediamento del terrorista più brutale emerso dall’Iraq o dalla Siria dopo la caduta di Baghdad nelle mani delle forze statunitensi nel 2003: Ahmed Al-Sharaa, il cui gruppo scissionista dell’ISIS, Al Nusra, si è distinto per il suo livello unico di depravazione e brutalità nei confronti degli ostaggi occidentali, alcuni dei quali sono stati bruciati vivi, il tutto filmato e pubblicato sui social media per ottenere il massimo impatto. Il suo sostegno da parte di Trump e Israele ha scioccato molti, poiché ha confermato i nostri peggiori sospetti di anni, evidenziati da un’e-mail inviata da Hillary Clinton in cui si affermava che i terroristi sunniti, indipendentemente da quanto medievali e barbari fossero i loro metodi, anche contro gli occidentali, dovevano essere utilizzati per due scopi: uno, combattere l’Iran e i suoi rappresentanti nella regione; e, secondo, come strumento di pubbliche relazioni da fornire a giornalisti creduloni a cui era stata raccontata la “guerra al terrorismo” e che erano tenuti a essere agenti diligenti per mantenere viva l’illusione.

La più grande ironia è che quando Trump è entrato in carica nel gennaio 2017 ha adottato una guerra in Iraq e Siria – iniziata da Obama – contro questi gruppi terroristici, uccidendone molti e cacciandoli dalla loro città califfale di Raqqa in Siria con l’assistenza di consiglieri militari iraniani. Questa guerra fittizia era importante per la sua immagine e per i suoi rapporti con i leader del CCG, che fingevano anch’essi che quei gruppi terroristici dovessero essere affrontati. La verità è che, sebbene molti siano stati uccisi e le città chiave dell’Iraq siano state liberate, sia dalle forze irachene che dalle truppe curde (queste ultime impegnate nei combattimenti più duri), in realtà tutto ciò che l’Occidente stava facendo era creare un enorme teatro dell’inganno. L’intera operazione e la sua filosofia erano come il Truman Show. È stato un grande atto di inganno. La realtà era che l’ISIS era uno strumento estremamente utile per gli Stati Uniti e l’Occidente, principalmente come arma brutale contro le forze di Assad, e che al mondo dovevano essere date alcune garanzie che i dollari o gli euro dei contribuenti occidentali non stavano sostenendo la sua barbarie in nome dell’egemonia statunitense. Un’altra scomoda realtà era che l’ISIS e Nusra, sebbene frammentati, cadevano in due grandi campi per gli americani: quelli che potevano essere effettivamente pagati e controllati e quelli che non potevano. Quando molte di queste città furono conquistate, furono create delle “rotte di fuga” per consentire a migliaia di persone di andarsene e stabilirsi altrove. Molti si trasferirono nella parte sud-orientale della Siria, vicino a una base statunitense.

In tutto questo caos, c’era anche un partner degli Stati Uniti che è stato utilizzato come strumento sia contro Assad che contro l’ISIS: i curdi. Il loro esercito, guidato principalmente dal PKK e chiamato YPG (Unità di protezione popolare), era composto da combattenti formidabili e si è rivelato molto utile agli americani durante l’intera guerra intrapresa per rovesciare Assad. Nel 2013, l’ISIS ha ottenuto una serie di conquiste territoriali in Siria, in particolare la città di Raqqa, che i jihadisti avevano dichiarato loro capitale. Il mondo è rimasto sconvolto dalla portata della brutalità, caratterizzata da decapitazioni pubbliche, schiavitù sessuale, torture e tentativi di genocidio del popolo yazidi. Per un certo periodo i giornalisti hanno scritto numerosi articoli sulle ragazze yazidi comprate come schiave sessuali e su come venivano trattate dai loro nuovi mariti dell’ISIS, molti dei quali provenivano dal Regno Unito e non parlavano nemmeno l’arabo.

E non dovremmo mai dimenticare che questi gruppi hanno anche istigato e ispirato atti di terrorismo in tutto il mondo.

Pertanto, l’Occidente ha un grande debito nei loro confronti per il loro impegno nella lotta contro l’ISIS e Nusra, ma in questa confusione di geopolitica ambigua che nessuno riesce a districare, men che meno lo stesso Trump, sono stati semplicemente abbandonati dal presidente Trump, con grande soddisfazione, ovviamente, del presidente Erdogan della Turchia. Proprio di recente alcune città chiave nel nord della Siria sono state conquistate dalle forze siriane, dando ad Al-Sharaa più territorio nella regione che controlla tutto il petrolio, lo stesso petrolio che per anni è stato spedito e venduto a Israele a prezzi ridotti e che dipende dalle strade che attraversano la Turchia. Non è chiaro cosa accadrà a quei convogli di petroliere, ma la vittoria di cui gode il leader siriano gli conferisce ora un vantaggio su Israele, che alcuni potrebbero vedere come un vantaggio di Trump. Trump ha abbandonato i curdi come mossa strategica per mostrare a Bibi la forza che esercita? È anche un modo per costruire una nuova struttura di potere con Erdogan ora pronto a distruggere il PKK? Inoltre, è un indizio del fatto che sta per ritirare tutte le forze statunitensi dall’Iraq, dato che è un segreto di Pulcinella che la base nel nord della Siria fosse un punto di rifornimento per loro? Se sta pianificando un attacco all’Iran, potrebbe prendere in considerazione la possibilità di ritirarle completamente dall’Iraq, il che spiegherebbe e giustificherebbe il motivo per cui non desidera più alcuna forza statunitense anche nel nord della Siria. È difficile vedere una logica nelle sue idee contrastanti, ma tradire i curdi può essere considerato solo poco saggio. Gli esperti di Medio Oriente saranno pronti a sottolineare che non è il primo presidente degli Stati Uniti a farlo – sia Ford che Nixon li hanno traditi e hanno stretto un accordo con Saddam Hussein nel 1975 – e che tutte le partnership con i curdi sono generalmente di breve durata, quindi lo hanno comunque tenuto conto nelle loro prospettive geopolitiche. Tuttavia, si potrebbe pensare che per qualsiasi tipo di intervento militare contro l’Iran egli avrebbe bisogno di tutti gli alleati che può raccogliere, dato che gli Stati arabi del CCG hanno già dichiarato la loro neutralità in qualsiasi guerra che dovesse scoppiare. L’America può permettersi un nuovo nemico che cerca vendetta nella regione?

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Relationships in the Middle East are hard to define and even when they work are often ephemeral and seldom last the course. Recently we have seen the smoke and mirrors of how the west operates in Syria with the downfall of Assad followed swiftly by the installation of the most brutal terrorist to emerge from Iraq or Syria since Baghdad fell to U.S. forces in 2003: Ahmed Al-Sharaa, whose ISIS splinter group Al Nusra was marked by its unique level of depravity and brutality against western hostages, some of whom were burned alive – all filmed and placed on social media for maximum impact. His support by Trump and Israel shocked many as it confirmed our worst suspicions for years, highlighted by an email sent by Hillary Clinton which stated that Sunni-based terrorists, no matter how medieval and barbaric their methods – even against westerners – were to be used for two purposes: one, to fight Iran and its proxies in the region; and two, for PR fodder to give to gullible journalists who were told about the “war against terrorism” and obliged to be the dutiful agents to keep the illusion alive.

The biggest irony is that when Trump took office in January 2017 he adopted a war in Iraq and Syria – which Obama started – against these terror groups, killing many of them and driving them out of their caliphate city Raqqa in Syria with the assistance of Iranian military advisers. This phoney war was important for his profile and his relations with GCC leaders who also pretended that those terror groups needed dealing with. The truth is that, although many were killed and key cities in Iraq were liberated, both by Iraqi forces and Kurdish troops (the latter doing the tougher fighting), in reality all the West was doing was creating one huge theatre of deception. The entire operation and its ethos was The Truman Show. It was a great act of deceit. The reality was that ISIS was a hugely useful tool for the U.S. and the West mainly as a brutal weapon against Assad forces and that the world needed to be shown some assurances that western tax payers’ dollars or euros were not supporting its barbarity all in the name of U.S. hegemony. Another awkward reality was that ISIS and Nusra, although splintered, fell into two broad camps for the Americans: those who could actually be paid and controlled and those who couldn’t. When many of these cities were taken, ‘rat lines’ were created to allow thousands to leave and set up elsewhere. Many moved down to the south eastern part of Syria close to a U.S. base.

In all this mayhem, there was also a U.S. partner which was also used as a tool against both Assad and ISIS: the Kurds. Their mainly PKK-led army, called the YPG – The People’s Protection Units – were formidable fighters and were very useful to the Americans during the entire war waged to topple Assad. In 2013, ISIS made a series of territorial gains in Syria, in particular the city of Raqqa which the Jihadists had declared their capital. The world was stunned by the sheer scale of the brutality, marked by public beheadings, sexual slavery, torture and the attempted genocide of the Yazidi people. For a period there was a wave of stories journalists wrote about Yazidi girls being bought as sex slaves and how they were treated by their new ISIS husbands – many of whom had come from the UK and couldn’t even speak Arabic.

And we should never forget that these groups also instigated and inspired acts of terrorism across the globe.

And so for their commitment to fight ISIS and Nusra the West owes them a great debt, but in this confusion of duplicitous geopolitics which no one can untangle, least of all Trump himself, they have just been abandoned by President Trump, to the delight of course of President Erdogan of Turkey. Just recently some key cities in the north of Syria were overtaken by Syria’s forces, giving Al-Sharaa more territory in the region which controls all the oil – the same oil which for years has been shipped and sold to Israel at cut price and relies on roads going right across Turkey. It’s unclear what will happen to those oil tanker convoys, but the victory that the Syrian leader enjoys gives him leverage over Israel now, which some might see as Trump’s leverage. Did Trump abandon the Kurds as a power play to show Bibi the strength he wields? Is it also a way of building a new power structure with Erdogan now primed to destroy the PKK? And add to that, is it a hint that he is about to pull out all U.S. forces from Iraq, as it is the worst kept secret that the base in Northern Syria was a supply post to them? If he is planning a strike on Iran, he might consider removing them entirely from Iraq, which would explain and justify why he no longer wants any U.S. forces in Northern Syria also. Whether there is logic in his own conflicting ideas is hard to see, but betraying the Kurds can only be seen as unwise. Seasoned Middle East hacks will be quick to point out that he is not the first U.S. president to do that – both Ford and Nixon sold them out and did a dirty deal with Saddam Hussein in 1975 – and that all partnerships with the Kurds are generally short term, so they have factored it into their own geopolitical outlook anyway. But you would have thought with any kind of military venture against Iran, he would need all the allies he can muster, given that the GCC Arab states have already stated their neutrality in any war which kicks off. Can America afford a new enemy who seeks to avenge in the region?

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The hour is getting late. Virtually all pieces of the puzzle are falling into place.

Even as his “massive armada” is being deployed, neo-Caligula social posts/vociferates to Iran: “MAKE A DEAL” (originally in caps). That’s maximum pressure in effect. Not even the possibility of negotiation. It’s Capitulation or War.

Neo-Caligula’s Top Three demands:

1. Iran should ditch its – civilian – nuclear program, as in total cessation of uranium enrichment.
2. Iran must reduce its missile program to a minimum.
3. Iran must stop supporting “proxy forces” – as in Hezbollah, Yemen’s Ansarallah and Iraqi militias.

There’s absolutely no way that Ayatollah Khamenei, the IRGC and the Majlis – the Iranian Parliament – will agree to any item on this ultimatum, dictated, of course, by the Zionist axis. Hence no capitulation.

Cue to Tehran dramatically raising the stakes.

The Majlis has already approved the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. The final decision is in the hands of the Iranian government/security apparatus. This is in fact binding for the government and the military, de facto authorizing the IRGC, under  full constitutional cover, to seal the Strait of Hormuz.

I’ve extensively written about that on Asia Times during the past decade. At the time, Goldman Sachs derivative experts were adamant: if Hormuz is blocked, before or during a full-scale naval war in the Gulf, oil may reach $700.00 a barrel.

And this will only be temporary – because the entire global economy will collapse.

Most of all, the blocking of Hormuz would trigger the detonation of the TWO QUADRILLION (caps mine) dollars derivative market – updating the initial, misleading calculation by the BIS (Bank for International Settlements), placed at $700 trillion. Over the years, several Gulf traders, off the record, have agreed with the “quadrillion” numbers.

Also during the past decade, the US Joint Chiefs of Staff admitted that they do not have the military ability to keep Hormuz open. That remains the case.

Now cut to clueless little gusano Marco Rubio – bought and paid for by Zionist vulture billionaire Paul Singer, who already profited from the Venezuela operation – talking about  US “force posture” near Iran.

As 30-40k US troops are “in reach of thousands of Iranian UAVs and ballistic missiles”, it’s “prudent” to have forces to “defend against what could be (Rubio’s own definition) an Iranian threat”.

Of course, this “threat” would never come from the  Empire of Chaos, Plunder and Permanent Strikes – following a neo-con dream already sketched in the late 1990s.

So, according to Rubio logic, the US Army now reserves the right to launch a preemptive strike against Iran.

Assuming this preemptive strike happens, Tehran has already signalled, via a Supreme Leader’s advisor and the Foreign Ministry, among others, that it won’t be a limited war.

Translation: even the ghost of a Tomahawk hitting Iranian territory will be answered by an “immediate and comprehensive response” targeting Tel Aviv and US bases across the Gulf.

Quick recap: neo-Caligula – at least at face value – frames his threats as a prelude to a “deal” which would in effect amputate Iran’s nuclear program and its whole defense/disuassion mechanisms.

Tehran’s response: you attack us, and we destroy Israel as a functioning entity – plenty of hypersonic missiles are up to the task – and you, neo-Caligula, becomes responsible for the collapse of the global economy.

“Unconventional” weapons and “strategic surprises”

Venezuela was just a rehearsal. Iran is the Holy Grail.

Neo-Caligula is not attempting to impose a mere military blockade of Iran. He is launching hardcore economic siege warfare – aimed not only at Iran but also China and Russia, disrupting at the same time Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) integration projects (China-Iran) and the International North South Transportation Corridor (INSTC, uniting Russia-Iran-India).

This is the next level – way beyond Hybrid, approaching Hot – of the comprehensive imperial war on BRICS, directed against no less than four top BRICS: Iran, Russia, China and India.

We are way beyond mere “containment” of Iran. This is a systemic threat, all-round, across the geopolitical and geoeconomic spectrum, directly disturbing energy flows, connectivity corridors and strategic partnerships. And all that disguised as a mere “security” operation.

Iran’s asymmetric naval strategy, painstankingly built since the start of the millenium, has myriad ways to counter-act an imperial attack: over 6,000 naval mines; deployment of swarm tactics via small, missile-armed boats; countless anti-ship cruise and ballistic missiles positioned along the Persian Gulf shoreline; scores of kamikaze drones, submarines and anti-ship missiles scattered on Gulf islands.

Iran is massing all its firepower on what it describes as the “first line of confrontation”, as in the Persian Gulf. Unlike during the 12-day war, everything will be used in the theatre: “unconventional” weapons; an array of “strategic surprises”; new hypersonic missiles; massive cyber-attacks.

Those with an IQ over room temperature at the Department of Forever Wars might do their homework, for instance, on the Khalij Fars supersonic anti-ship ballistic missile, part of Iran’s AAAD strategy: Mach 3 speed; over 300 km range; over 650 kg warhead with EO/infrared seeker. The Khalij Fars would have a ball against American sitting ducks.

Iran has already switched off its radars and is going dark, including the civilian radars at Imam Khomeini International Airport, to protect itself from US missiles and at the same time to allow the installation of Russian jamming systems Murmansk-BN (they need radar silence to be properly callibrated).

Then, on the imperial side, there’s the imminent entry in the theatre of the E-11A BACN: not a mere surveillance aircraft, but a sort of massive “flying router”: a sky-high Wi-Fi linking F-35s and F-22s using different communication systems with ground forces and ships, everything  in real-time and evading Iran’s notorious, mountanious terrain.

Are you ready to destroy the global economy?

NATO is, predictably, all over the place now, complete with strident regime change rhetoric. A sound scenario determines that neo-Caligula may have struck a bargain with the EUro-chihuahuas: I refrain from annexing Greenland (for now) but you support my war on Iran.

Enter yet another “coalition of the willing” (actually “the coerced”). It’s no wonder the IRGC is now being designated as a “terrorist organization” by Brussels – on a par with al-Qaeda and ISIS (these two, by the way, fully normalized by Washington, Brussels and even Moscow).

In parallel, several NATO bases are being set up to help the American “massive armada” with a massive air bridge.

Tehran now has fully understood that what neo-Caligula and his Zionist backers really want is regime change. This has absolutely nothing to do with Iran’s nuclear program.

Still, Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad-Baqer Qalibaf continues to stress that Tehran does not oppose the principle of dialogue and diplomacy, as long as it involves mutual respect. Turkiye’s Sultan Erdogan, for his part, is proposing a high-level trilateral between Iran, the US and Turkiye, possibly via video conference.

It’s now up to diplomacy-averse neo-Caligula and his megalomaniacal narcissist mood swings. So this is how the whole drama is coming to: either neo-Caligula and his “massive armada” pauses, opening some room for talks, and he ends up saving the global economy; or we have the Gates of Hell opened in West Asia.

It’s Zero Hour time.

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This past weekend, the Islamic State (ISIS) killed three Americans in Syria—two US soldiers and one civilian contractor—marking the first US casualties in the country since the fall of Bashar al-Assad in December 2024. 

President Donald Trump has vowed to respond with “very serious retaliation.” His best course of action is removing the needless and counterproductive US military presence in Syria. Absent such a move, disasters like this will only continue.

The United States currently maintains roughly 1,000 troops in Syria, down from the approximately 2,000 stationed in the country when Trump assumed office in January 2025. They are remnants of the counter-ISIS mission initiated by then-President Barack Obama in 2015. Yet, even after the destruction of ISIS’s so-called “caliphate” in 2019, US troops have remained in Syria indefinitely. Why? Because, as former US Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford noted, the “real (but unstated) reason the US is there is to block Iran from using a road coming from Iraq into Syria.”

To his credit, Trump did have plans to withdraw troops from Syria during his first administration, but America’s military presence remained, thanks, in part, to efforts by the Pentagon to sabotage a withdrawal. President Joe Biden maintained the US presence in Syria, despite these troops—and those stationed in Iraq—coming under attack roughly 200 times following the Hamas terror attack on October 7, 2023, and Israel’s subsequent war in Gaza. The individual responsible for this recent attack was reportedly a member of the Syrian security forces, led by Ahmad al-Sharaa—Syria’s new president and a former member of al-Qaeda.

Trump has an opportunity to bring the remaining troops in Syria home—particularly as the country remains rife with internal divisions and plagued by an array of competing external actors trying to advance their own agendas after Assad’s removal. The United States has very limited interests in Syria, chief of which is preventing terrorist attacks against the American homeland. US troops in Syria represent a remnant of the failed and counterproductive Global War on Terror. Maintaining a US military presence in Syria is not only strategic malpractice but also a direct affront to the lives of American troops.

Trump has repeatedly claimed he intends to reform US Middle East policy. The recently released National Security Strategy correctly recognizes the limited strategic importance of the Middle East and contends that the region should no longer consume US foreign policy. However, the chief obstacle to such a policy change has never been a lack of viable alternatives—it remains a matter of political will. Washington cannot realize this vision while maintaining its expansive military presence in the Middle East and constantly getting dragged back into the region’s affairs.

Trump should pursue real policy change, starting with the immediate removal of all US troops from Syria.

Original article:  www.cato.org

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Jean Ranc is a retired psychologist from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Department of Psychiatry.

Despite my repeated calls, then letters to the Washington and North Carolina offices of our Senators Ted Budd and Thom Tillis, as well as our Congressman Addison McDowell to stop the Gaza genocide and oppose the unprovoked & unconstitutional bombing and assassination of Iran & its citizens, I’ve received nothing but “form” letters in “Defense of Israel” from Budd (born in 1971), Tillis (in 1960) and McDowell (in 1994). Indeed, their letters are almost identical to those I received from my Senate & Congressional “reps” in Oklahoma a year before last, while I was with my brother who died from cancer even as this latest chapter of Israeli aggression against its Palestinian neighbors began.

Dismayed by most Americans’ ignorance of the history and lack of conscience as we’ve watched this massive slaughter of Palestinians by the Israelis with the support of our taxes & weapons day after day for almost 2 years, I’ve been digging deep in search of the roots of this psycho-political pathology.

And from the history of this time and space, I’ve been reminded that our first “populist” President, Carolina-born Andrew Jackson, succeeded in getting the “Indian Removal Act” passed in 1830 and hence began his confiscation of Native American lands throughout the Southeast—then driving its people across the country on what became known as the “Trail of Tears”, where so many died; all the way to “Indian Territory” together with the rest of the survivors of some 65 tribes “cleansed” from across America, were dumped to make way for white settlers. But that turned out to be only temporary “re-location” until oil was discovered and population pressure forced the “territory” to be opened to white settlers. And thereafter, the army and the “Cowboys” pushed most of the “Indians” onto “reservations” further west and “Oklahoma” became the 46th state on November 16, 1907. So it was where I was born as a “Great Depression baby” only 26 years later—what with my grandparents having been among the first “white settlers” on that barren land near the “panhandle”.

Nevertheless, my father, with savings from his meager salary as a public school teacher, had slowly put together a ranch so that with cattle and a garden, he, my mother, who was also a teacher, and I did not go hungry. Indeed, soon thereafter, we were rescued by President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps program to rescue & train unemployed young men, as my father, a reserve cavalry officer from WWI, was called to duty as an administrator of CCC camps around Denver. Hence, we moved from our Oklahoma ranch & cabin with no plumbing but a cold water pump in the kitchen to a comfortable, modern apartment in the center of Denver, yet within commuting distance of my father’s work in the surrounding camps, until he was again called to army duty in time for WWII, but state side because by that time, he was in his 50’s & had a family.

Hence, we were settled in our adobe duplex facing the Fort Robinson quadrangle in northwest Nebraska well before the December 7, 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, which, according to the “history books” catapulted the US into WWII. So my brother and I spent the rest of that war growing up in the West on old cavalry forts, which had served, not only as the military installations from Vermont to California for the genocide and ethnic-cleansing of America for white settlers, but as precursors for our cureent 800-some military bases around the world for enforcing & exploiting the last bastions of Western Imperialism. Because, after WWII with most of Europe in ruins, we inherited the leadership role, also due to our almost 50 years of “internship” following our 1898 intervention in Cuba’s war for independence against Spain, after which, we’d claimed victory, renamed it the “Spanish American War” and took over the Spanish Empire from Latin America and the Caribbean to the Philippines and other islands in the Pacific, where, in 1893 we had overthrown Queen Lili’uokalai of Hawaii and replaced her with the American pineapple plantation owner, Sanford B. Dole. So much for solving the “mystery” of our 50^th state (as of 1959) floating in the middle of the Pacific Ocean—happily just two years before Obama was born there in 1961 in time to qualify & serve as President despite Trump’s disputing his “birthrite”.

Thus, after the Europeans failed in their attempts to colonize the whole world, we inherited the leadership as “the winners”until we tried to replace the French colonization of Vietnam, where, despite our killing 3 million of its people, (as we were reminded by our young guide, Ho, in January 2007) in addition to losing over 58,000 American soldiers with how many thousands more of the “walking wounded” to this day, not to mention the bombing to death of some 300,000 Cambodians & at least 60,000 Laotians plus the deaths of millions more “boat people”, refugees, lost at sea. All in the cause of “Defending America & SE Asia from becoming “Falling Dominoes” at the hands of the Communists after our “loss of China”, according to our 50’s General-turned-President Eisenhower, less than a decade after our atomic-bombing of Japan.

Meanwhile, it seems that our presidents & politicians, not to mention our people, have never learned that in 1948, the US, the Brits & Europeans, who had failed to accept Jewish survivors of Nazi concentration camps in our own countries, instead, expelled some 750,000 Palestinians from their homes & land, then herded them into refugee camps to make way for the desperate survivors to take over their homes and country, whose descendents have since turned it into the apartheid state of Israel. Then years later even after agreements were made to permit some Palestinians to inhabit mere strips of land in the West Bank & Gaza, the Israelis continued their attacks on their neighbors: destroying their farms, grabbing more of their homes & land, turning the “West Bank” into a “Swiss cheese” of isolated Palestinian communities, schools, shops & hospitals with only grim, militarized “check points”, where, over the years Palestinians have had to wait in line for hours to reach their jobs, buy necessities or simply just get together with family & friends.

Also, no thanks to our “mainstream media“, which neglects to inform us that our “problem with Iran” did not start with “the 1979 Iranian revolution”. The truth is that we became the enemy of Iran in 1953, when we and the British employed our CIA and the Brits’ MI6, to overthrow their democratically elected President Mohammad Mossadegh after he’d attempted to take back his country’s oil from British Petroleum on behalf of the Iranian people. In his place, we set up “The Shah” as the dictator of Iran to do our bidding. Until finally in 1979, Iranians became strong & united enough to overthrow “Our Shah” and set up their own government to defend themselves against our continued attempts to dominate them and steal their oil by every means of intervention & threat including Trump’s & Israel’s latest bombing & assassination spree under the pretext that Iran had nuclear weapons. But, in fact, it’s the nuclear-armed & US-weaponized Israel, which is the most dangerous & destructive country in the Middle East, where the Israelis have continued to bomb and invade its neighbors…as it seeks to grab & occupy ever more land.

All the while, the Palestinians with their own defensive forces known as Hamas & Hezbollah, as well as neighboring Yemeni Houthis have resisted & fought back as best they could against the now nuclear-armed Israelis, whom our succeeding Presidents & Congressional puppets “defend” with billions of our tax dollars and weapons. But for all of the hysteria & religious hype about “anti-semitism”, the reality is that Israel serves, not as our pious Judaic-Christian ally, but rather as our military outpost in the Middle East, where we are obsessed with owning or, at least controlling the oil, global trade routes & dominating the global “chessboard”. Hence, just in the course of this 21^st century, we’ve invaded and overthrown leaders in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya & Syria (not to mention dozens before & beyond): destroying their cities, homes, schools, hospitals & centuries of civilization, spreading chaos & driving their desperate citizens toward Europe, whether on foot or into leaky boats destined to sink & drown these refugees. Even so, our Vice President J.D. Vance with his family on a luxurious European vacation, had the gall to denounce the former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, for her moment of compassion in the simmering summer of 2015, when she welcomed Syrian refugees, who’d fled our NATO bombing of their country and more recently, our “regime change” of their President Assad and replaced him with a former Al Qaeda-Isis terrorist.

And even after Trump and Netanyahu colluded through months of planning to bomb Iran & assassinate their nuclear scientists & military leaders on a weekend in June, when they were at home with their families, friends and neighbors, including an apartment building in Tehran, which was demolished together with its 65 inhabitants, in the midst of on-going nuclear negotiations between the US & Iran, even killing one of the Iranian negotiators. But if this weren’t evil enough, we followed up by bombing what had been Iranian “nuclear enrichment sites” (for domestic electricity production in compliance with international inspection). Never-the-less, our President was seen gleefully celebrating his “victory” after flinging 30,000-lb bombs into what proved to be basically empty nuclear enrichment sites. Meanwhile, have any of our “Green New Deal” environmentalists dared to ask, much less do research on the impact of such accelerated “ecocide”: As the possible cause of ever more traumatic floods, earthquakes, tsunamis ravaging our only earthen home?

Until now, after almost 2 years of our joint Israeli-US bombing assault and slaughter of Palestinians the Israelis are now herding the remaining survivors into a concentration camp of southern, demolished Gaza, while our president, our politicians & our military-industrial profiteers continue to defend & promote the on-going Gaza Genocide & Ethnic Cleansing, plus the Israelis latest chapter: murder by starvation after replacing 400 professional UN humanitarian aid centers with only 4 US-Israel-crafted “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” sites, which serve as deadly traps, where Israeli soldiers have shot & killed over 1000 of the desperately hungry Palestinians seeking food for their families.

What have we become in the course of slaughtering and starving most of the Palestinians to death, then “cleansing” the rest from Gaza so that Western “investors” can turn it into a Mediterranean resort for Israeli “supremacists”, “exceptional” Americans and our European “collaborators”?

Original article:  therealistreview.substack.com

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The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) has documented the violent deaths of nearly 10,000 people in Syria since the former ISIS commander, Ahmad al-Sharaa, was installed in power in Damascus.

After Sharaa toppled the government of former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad in December last year, he was widely praised. An article in the UK’s Telegraph described his armed group, the former Al-Qaeda affiliated Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), as “diversity friendly jihadists.”

Since that time, his HTS-led security forces have gone on a killing spree targeting Syria’s minority groups.

SOHR reported on 7 August that “due to ongoing violence and violations by local and foreign actors, coupled with widespread security chaos,” at least 9,889 people have been killed since 8 December 2024, the day Damascus fell.

The SORH said that 7,449 civilians were among the victims, including 396 children and 541 women.

It also stressed that there has been no accountability for killings carried out by members of Syria’s security forces and affiliated armed factions, while “in some cases, perpetrators are being covered up and facts are being distorted.”

The SOHR noted, for example, that the fact-finding committee formed to investigate the massacre of roughly 1,600 Alawite civilians in Syria’s coastal regions in March “did not provide results consistent with the facts,” and was released while government forces and affiliated factions were carrying out new massacres of Druze civilians in Suwayda.

At the same time, pro-government media have launched campaigns aimed at undermining any groups seeking to document or expose the human rights violations, including by “disseminating sectarian and inflammatory rhetoric” against specific religious minority groups.

For example, media campaigns have been launched to deflect from the massacres by calling Alawites “remnants of the regime” of Bashar al-Assad, calling the Druze “collaborators” with Israel, and calling the Kurds “separatists.”

In many videos posted online, Syrian government-affiliated fighters regularly refer to both Alawites and Druze as “pigs” before executing them in their homes and the street.

The SOHR stated as well that thousands of detainees – who have not had a proper trial or been allowed to appear before a judge – remain in prison.

Among the detainees are people arrested after the fall of Assad, and others who were arrested during raids or at security checkpoints. Many of these detainees have no clear charges against them and are being arbitrarily detained without due process, SOHR added.

On 5 August, SOHR reported that families of kidnapped civilians renewed calls for Syrian authorities to reveal the fate of young Alawite men taken from their homes without charges during the massacres on the coast in March.

The missing detainees are from the villages of Hmeimim, Bustan al-Basha, Al-Qabo, and Al-Sanober. Families told SOHR activists that armed groups stormed houses and took the young men to an unknown location without explaining the reasons or issuing official arrest warrants. Since then, Syrian authorities have provided no information about their fate despite repeated demands from their families.

Original article:  thecradle.co

The recent 12-day war between Iran and Israel—which ended after the United States bombed three Iranian nuclear sites—sparked hopes and fears of regime change in the Islamic Republic. Israeli and American leaders indicated that regime change in Iran was on the table, prompting enthusiastic support from hawks but also a flurry of warnings from anti-interventionists.

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Many of the warnings focused on how regime change could result in a hard-line military leadership under the Iranian revolutionary guards. Some analysts warned that ousting Tehran’s leadership could embolden separatists within Iran, with grave regional repercussions.

Less attention was paid to how toppling the Iranian state would work to the advantage of terrorist groups that have declared their intent to attack the U.S. homeland and interests. The relative lack of attention is odd, considering how large the disastrous U.S. war in Iraq still looms in political discourse. After all, one reason that war turned into a calamity is that the ouster of the dictator Saddam Hussein enabled Al Qaeda to establish a foothold in the country.

Given that Israeli and American advocates of regime change in Iran will not abandon their pursuit of this goal—notwithstanding the ceasefire that ended the 12-day war—it would be useful to anticipate and reflect on the possibility of terrorists filling the void that regime change would produce.

One of the most active and lethal terrorist groups operating today is Islamic State—Khorasan Province. Otherwise known as ISIS-K, this organization rose to prominence after the Abbey Gate bombing at the Kabul airport in 2021. A suicide bomber affiliated with the group carried out the attack, which resulted in the death of around 169 Afghan civilians and 13 American soldiers.

The threat posed by ISIS-K has grown more acute in recent years. The group was responsible for the 2024 attacks in the Iranian city of Kerman, which killed over 90 people. Months later, ISIS-K claimed responsibility for the Crocus City Hall massacre in Moscow that left more than 140 people dead. Both operations are among the deadliest spectacular mass-casualty terrorist acts in recent history.

U.S. officials have sounded the alarm over the threat posed by ISIS-K. In a Congressional testimony in March 2023, Centcom commander Gen. Michael Kurilla warned that ISIS-K “retains the capability and the will to attack U.S. and Western interests abroad in as little as six months with little to no warning.”

While the event Kurilla warned about hasn’t yet materialized, toppling the Iranian leadership would likely strengthen the group and bring it closer to achieving such goals. Former Centcom commander Joseph Votel recently cautioned that Washington’s policy towards Iran must take into account the likelihood that Salafi-jihadi groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda stand to benefit from a weakened state in the Islamic Republic. “The state still controls the population, but the degradation of control will provide them [ISIS and Al Qaeda] with operating space in the long term, either to co-opt the population or to further utilize the area as a sanctuary for their planning and operations,” Votel said in an interview with Newsweek.

Gaining a foothold in Iran would also serve ISIS-K’s agenda of establishing a caliphate in the historical Khorasan region from which it derives its name. This region includes parts of Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, along with several Central Asian countries. ISIS-K already maintains an active presence in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region, and the lawlessness that would prevail in the event of regime change in Iran would provide a strong boost to its transnational aspirations. This could be one reason why Islamabad came out so strongly against Israel’s recent military operations targeting Iran.

An ISIS-K presence in Iran would help the ISIS parent organization reestablish itself in neighboring Iraq. Moreover, ISIS appears to be returning with a vengeance in Syria, with whom Iraq also shares a border. A recent terrorist attack targeting a church in the capital Damascus led to the death of over 20 people. While a group calling itself “Saraya Ansar al-Sunna” took credit for the operation, Syrian authorities declared ISIS responsible.

Thus, if the Iranian regime collapses, an ISIS crescent stretching from Iran through Iraq to Syria isn’t out of the question. In that case, Iran would serve as a potential lynchpin connecting the ISIS South Asia branch (ISIS-K) with the parent organization in the Levant, a scenario which even ISIS itself likely never dreamt of. The surge in terrorism in post-Saddam Iraq would pale in comparison.

These potential realities strongly contradict the notion that a regime change scenario in Iran would spell the demise of “Islamism,” a term that elides meaningful differences between Islamic organizations, including between the Islamic Republic of Iran and Sunni terror groups. This argument has featured recently in expert commentary, with some analysts going so far as to suggest that there exists common cause between Tehran and ISIS. Such claims are dubious, at best, and ignore basic realities.

Chief among them is that ISIS sees Iran and Shiites more broadly as public enemy number one, which is reflected in the fact that ISIS has conducted deadly attacks in Iran on more than one occasion. Indeed, the Salafi-jihadi terrorist organization is a top national security threat for Iran. Another ignored fact is that groups like ISIS, as mentioned above, thrive on the chaos and power vacuum that often come with regime change, with Libya being a primary example.

Fortunately, President Donald Trump, after indicating an openness to regime change in Iran, appears to have abandoned the idea (at least for now), warning of the chaos that could occur as a result. From the standpoint of American national security interests, this is the right call.

ISIS has publicly declared its intent to attack the U.S. homeland, and it adheres to the same Salafi-jihadi ideology as Al Qaeda, the group behind 9/11. ISIS already has a history of inspiring attacks in the United States, including the terrorist attack in New Orleans earlier this year. Taking advantage of the turmoil in the event of regime change in Iran would better position ISIS to follow through on its threat to the United States, giving it a wider base from which to plan and prepare external operations. The president, to avoid such unintended consequences, should rebuff the hawks and say no to regime change in Iran.

Original article:  theamericanconservative.com

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After Abu Mohammad al-Julani (Ahmad al-Sharaa), self-declared president of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS)-led authority in Syria, shook hands with US President Donald Trump in Riyadh on 14 May, a storm of questions erupted over the future of the extremist Islamist coalition he commands.

Among the five conditions Trump presented for lifting sanctions was the removal of foreign militants from Syria. This demand carries the potential to challenge Julani’s leadership within the militant ranks.

This, however, is not Julani’s first test. His strategic pivot from Al-Qaeda and ISIS militancy to ‘moderate’ Islamism – under the tutelage of Turkish, American, and British intelligence – has already fractured Salafist extremist cohesion.

For foreign regime-change strategists, HTS’s appeal lay in its ability to form a governing structure, maintain internal discipline, and neutralize or assimilate rival factions in Idlib.

An example of this is Julani’s forcible dismantling of Hurras al-Din, formed by Al-Qaeda loyalists, which prompted western backers to proclaim, “This is our man.”

Al-Qaeda-linked outfits, including Ansar al-Tawhid, Ansar al-Islam, Ansar al-Din, Jaish al-Izza, and the National Liberation Front, aligned under HTS’s leadership in the Fatah al-Mubin Operations Room. They were joined by foreign fighters from the Turkistan Islamic Party (Uyghurs), Ajnad al-Kavkaz (Caucasians), Ajnad al-Sham (Chechens), Jaish al-Muhajirin wal-Ansar (Caucasians), and the Imam Bukhari Brigade (Uzbeks).

The fate of these foreign fighters in the “new Syria” has now become a central dilemma.

What made HTS palatable to western actors was Julani’s likely-scripted 2013 departure from ISIS and 2016 break with Al-Qaeda, narrowing his focus solely on Syria, targeting only the government of former president Bashar al-Assad, and redirecting foreign militants to this nationalist agenda. Critics of Trump’s condition argue that these foreign fighters had long since embraced this “near enemy” jihad and posed no external threat.

Trump’s framework – which tolerates Syrian extremist factions, excluding ISIS, while demanding the expulsion of foreign fighters – exceeds the boundaries set by the foreign intervention bloc after the 2015 fall of Idlib.

The strategic aim was to absorb these militants into the Syrian context, not repatriate or disperse them. HTS became both a bulwark and an antidote to global ‘jihadism’. Washington’s primary concern was directed at “the ISIS brand,” not the extremist Islamists controlling Idlib. Meanwhile, European governments, reluctant to take back foreign fighters, preferred paying the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to act as their jailers.

Western-Persian Gulf media narratives claiming these groups “supported the Syrian revolution,” “integrated into society,” and “pose no threat outside Syria” reflect this geopolitical calculus. Others downplay atrocities committed against Alawites, framing deportation as destabilizing.

Not like expelling Palestinians

Following former president Assad’s ouster on 8 December, Julani offered citizenship to foreign fighters to both reward their loyalty and deter defections. He granted the rank of major general or colonel to select commanders from Jordan, Egypt, Dagestan, Turkiye, East Turkestan, Tajikistan, and Albania.

These moves, while controversial, aimed to sidestep punitive measures against foreign militants. Although Damascus reportedly warned against these appointments, HTS has kept the issue ambiguous.

Deporting foreign fighters is not akin to expelling Palestinian resistance leaders. Within Salafist Islamist circles, such a move would be seen as a betrayal, risking division and violent backlash. Repatriated fighters face imprisonment or execution in their native countries.

Hence, HTS is exploring compromises: foreign extremist fighters could be sidelined from leadership roles, refrain from targeting other countries – especially Israel – and align with the new government. Those who threaten the emerging order may be quietly relocated to third countries.

In such scenarios, Turkiye remains the preferred destination, offering cover, mobility, and integration. If ISIS escapees from Mosul and Raqqa could find shelter in Turkish cities like Ankara and Bursa, then HTS-aligned factions can too.

The limits of pragmatism

Yet pragmatism has boundaries. ISIS has reemerged as a magnet for the disillusioned militants, branding Julani and HTS as apostates who betrayed Islam for political gain. On 29 May, ISIS claimed its first attack on Syria’s new government forces since the fall of Assad’s government.

In a statement, ISIS claimed it had planted an explosive device on a Syrian forces’ vehicle in the southern province of Suwayda.

Given the bloodshed between HTS and ISIS since 2014, Julani’s alliance with the international coalition against ISIS is unsurprising – and perhaps essential for survival.

HTS’s display of weapons allegedly seized from ISIS in western Ghouta serves as a message to coalition backers: HTS can be your partner.

But if Julani fails to broaden government support while ISIS regains influence, HTS could be vulnerable. This requires bringing all militant factions under a unified army. Yet the HTS-led government’s Defense Minister, Murhaf Abu Qasra, though claiming success after a 17 May ultimatum to fighters to dissolve their factions and integrate within the new national army, has shown little substantive progress.

The disputes between militants are less ideological than material – over positions, ranks, and control. Some groups like Ahrar al-Sham, Jaish al-Islam, Jaish al-Izza, and the Turkiye-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) units have joined the new structure. But the scale of this integration remains opaque, with no central command established.

During the same ultimatum period, the Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP) was rumored to have joined the new 84th Division – claims local sources denied. TIP remains crucial for Julani, even reportedly involved in his personal protection.

Beyond ISIS, other factions reject HTS’s legitimacy. Saraya Ansar al-Sunnah, a hardline group invoking Ibn Taymiyya, claimed responsibility for anti-minority massacres and threatens to ignite new fronts.

Although leader Abu Aisha al-Shami remains obscure, the group accuses HTS of apostasy but has not yet directly attacked them. Their message: “The struggle for Syria’s future is not over.”

Another group, Sayf al-Bahr, has vanished after claiming multiple attacks.

Fractures

HTS faces growing opposition within Salafist-extremist circles. ISIS declared war on HTS on 12 December, while Hurras al-Din, Al-Qaeda’s sleeper cell network, dissolved itself on 28 January but called on Sunnis to retain arms against tyrants and foreign threats.

These rifts sharpened with two key events: Julani’s 13 March constitutional declaration and his Trump meeting. While critics saw betrayal, pragmatists advised patience.

But the backlash has been fierce. Salafist cleric Abu Qatada al-Filistini, though previously lenient on religious dissimulation (taqiyya), warned Julani that even minor deviation from sharia constitutes apostasy.

Jordanian ideologue Abu Mohammad al-Maqdisi went further, denouncing Julani as a kafir for adopting secular laws and branding his defenders as apostates.

While Maqdisi denounced Julani as an apostate, an HTS founding member, Saudi cleric Sheikh Abdullah al-Muhaysini praised the HTS leader as a ‘rare phenomenon in history’:

“He is saving his country from sanctions, lifting it from the abyss and internal wars, and raising it to stand among the great nations. He has not abandoned his brothers or his principles.“

ISIS, too, lambasted Julani as a traitor and urged foreign fighters to abandon HTS.

Amid the intra-Salafi battles, Israel’s occupation of the Golan Heights and swathes of southern Syria remains a low-priority issue. Yet reports have surfaced of Julani negotiating a “security pact” with Tel Aviv, facilitated by Turkiye and the UAE. Alleged joint operations against HTS hardliners in Homs suggest an internal purge aligned with normalization efforts.

Despite divergent extremist Islamist strategies, pragmatism currently outweighs radicalism due to the allure of power, statehood, and resources – and the fantasy of reviving the Umayyad caliphate.

Original article: thecradle.co

Regardless of whatever names or ideological flavours they camouflage themselves with, the world’s various Jihadist outfits are so-called post-national groups whose ideas dovetail nicely with the ideology of globalist Western groupings.

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Regardless of whatever different names or ideological flavours they camouflage themselves with in the various theatres they commit their crimes in, the world’s various Jihadist outfits are so-called post-national groups whose idea of what they term a Caliphate dovetails nicely with the ideology of globalist Western groupings like the European Union and the World Economic Forum, which seek to dismantle sovereign nation-states in favour of top down global governance. Though this is most evident in Syria, where I have most experience, it is also evident in Balochistan, which is conveniently perched between Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan and where jihadism, whatever its other qualities, is sure to weaken those three already fragile nation-states and therefore serve the interests of any and all actors who want one or more of those nation-states dismantled or destroyed.

The extreme and gratuitous violence and genocides we see in Syria’s coastal regions and which we previously saw used against the Yazidi, Mandaeans and Shias of Iraq scare off effective opposition and it traumatises target populations into compliance, all the more so if they are like Syria’s Alawites and are unorganised beyond the village level. Though this violence is, again, most evident in Syria where noted Christians and other players are currying favour with Jolani and his immediate family, it has also been prevalent in the multi ethnic Russian Federation, where schools and theatres have regularly been targeted by these self-same post-nation-state groups.

We have, then, at least two common features which typify these groups. One is their antipathy to those nation states such as Russia and the Syrian Arab Republic on NATO’s naughty list and the other is extreme and gratuitous violence. To this, we can add their loosely defined ideology and poorly defined economic policies to get a fuller picture of where these characters stand and precisely whose interests they serve.

Syria, again, spells all this out in spades. The violence these jihadists have meted out to defenceless minorities and non-compliant Sunnis in Iraq and Syria is comparable to what the Israelis have dished out to the Palestinians over the last 80 years and Erdoğan’s falteringTurkish regime remains a byword in brutality. That both of those rogue nations have, along with the United States and their Kurdish proxies, grabbed large slivers of Syria for themselves indicates who precisely are the powers behind the jihadists’ masks.

To be more precise still, we can say that Jolani’s rapid installation of his jihadist Caliphate has more to do with the ousting of Hakan Fidan and his Kemalist allies from the MIT and the Turkish Army. This allowed the various jihadist gangsters operating in Syria to put their differences aside, to stop killing each other and to unite to overthrow the Syrian nation-state, which was a win-win for all of those, Israel and Turkey in particular, that wanted Syria destroyed.

That Jolani’s crew never ever threw as much as a cabbage head at Israel, whose assault troops now sit on the southern edge of Damascus, indicates that national or regional, never mind global jihad was never on their bucket list. And the fact that there was always freedom of movement for Syria’s head chopping jihadists between northern Syria and MIT controlled southern Turkey indicates Jolani’s head hackers never had any problem with Turkey’s machinations up north.

The problem, it seems, was with that Assad fellow and his Sunni wife. Get rid of them and his shock troops (read Alawite babies in swaddling clothes) and she’ll be right mate. Fair enough but what about the day after?

How will these jihadists earn a crust when there are no more Alawites or Armenians to shake down and slaughter? Although tourism would be one good money earner that costs little to implement (the ancient sites of Maaloula and Palmyra,or what is left of them, are still there and that garner hard currency, the first thing these savages did on getting rid of Assad was to smash all of the ancient Assyrian statues in the museums of northern Syria. Don’t expect any John Keats to rock up popularising these attractions by writing Ode on an Assyrian Urn as such cultural displays are haram with these ignoramuses.

As regards the long suffering Armenians, not only did the Turks and their Kurdish sidekicks try to exterminate the lot of them over a century ago but they deliberately destroyed the huge Armenian and Assyrian relics, churches and museums of Deir Ezzor when they first overran it. Don’t expect any Armenian or Assyrian tourists unless those Armenians, who have so far escaped their clutches, have a death wish. Much the same applies to Shias on pilgrimage, who will be treated even much worse than the money grabbing Saudis treat them in Mecca and Medina.

But why Syria? What great crime did the Syrian Arab Republic (SAR) commit that Turkey, Israel and their NATO backers sent every devil in hell to them? Although the SAR has been accused of many crimes, it main one was that it was independent, sovereign and secular and, in the days of Hafez Assad and Gamal Nasser was the main impediment both to Zionism’s pan-national project and to Turkey’s ambitions to recreate the pan-national Ottoman Caliphate. Not only is pan-Arabism now dead but Syria will now be just a dumping ground for cheap Turkish products and Trump’s Gaza Riviera plans will probably be instituted in Latakia and Tartous once the Alawite “natives” are sufficiently thinned out.

Although transforming Tartus and Latakia into cut price Ottoman harams is work for another day, the key thing for now is that these jihadists cats’ paws have destroyed the concept of the Arab nation-state and, from the perspective of Israel, Turkey and their sponsors, that is a very good thing.

Although the concept of the nation state owes it origins to even long before Cardinal Richelieu kicked France into shape, its key features are a centralising of power and an identification of its citizenry/subjects with the symbols of that centralising power. Although this can be seen most clearly in the United States, where kindergarten kids are made swear allegiance to their flag and their leaders every morning, multi ethnic countries like Saddam’s Iraq, the Syrian Arab Republic and modern Russia are not that different.

In Iraq, to take but one example, Saddam tolerated the Yazidi, as they were a link to the region’s Zoriastrian past, of which Sadam was rightly proud. And, though Syrians were likewise proud of their status of also being the cradle of civilisation, that does not sit easily with either the Israelis or the Turks or with the Western barbarians behind them. To them, Syrians, Libyans, Egyptians and Iraqis are to be hewers of wood and drawers of water with no national memories and no self-respect. Being made bark like dogs, as the defenceless Alawites were made do before being shot in the head, or being paraded semi-naked like the medics of Gaza were made do, is to be the lot of “those dogs”.

And, if we read this disturbing but typically incisive report by Bruna Frascolla or do even the most cursory google search on organ harvesting, much worse than that. The sad fact is that because the jihadists and other pan-national criminal groups allied to them have been indoctrinated to believe the rest of us exist only to serve them, even stripping us down for spare body parts is kosher, halal or whatever they wish to call it.

And, though Germany’s Annalena Baerbock can strut about Jobar like the Nazi clone that she is and give those criminals most responsible for Syria’s destruction billions of taxpayers’ euros as a reward for their handiwork even, as our Israeli friends tell us her face was pixelated on Syrian TV so as not to offend the head hackers’ moral sensibilities, she would, if she had a functioning moral compass, know that she is sowing, at great cost, the seeds of her own nation-state’s destruction.

But then again, that is the game of Baerbock, von der Leyen, Scholz, Merz and those other contemptible Germans, who are currently cock of the walk. Much like their own Hitler before them, they would sooner prefer to reduce Syria to ashes as a test run for invading Russia than they would to act like decent, moral people. But then, like Starmer, Macron and the rest of Europe’s political pygmies, they have been conditioned to believe that there are easy pickings in carving up nation-states like Syria, Libya, Iraq and even China and Russia.

And, of course there are, if the Germans and those jihadists they sponsor to do their dirty work can pull it off in China and Russia, like they did in those Arab and other countries already alluded to. Perhaps they will succeed and Iran, China and Russia will also be dismembered and the Fourth Reich’s Baerbocks, von der Leyens and Scholzes will enjoy another banquet on the graves of their latest victims. Though nobody can crystal ball all of that, it is up to the High Commands of those countries to ensure that these serial bullies will not be around, not only for the main meal but for the starters that precede it. If Russia and China cannot only take out the jihadist snake but the head of the jihadist snake, which resides not in Damascus but in Tel Aviv, Ankara, Paris, London and Berlin, they will be remembered long after the youngest of us have died of old age and have, like Baerbock’s jihadist buddies, been long forgotten.

Declan Hayes contends that the new rulers of Syria do not have a firm control over the country where resistance to the reign of terror is growing.

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Atrocities are being committed every day in Syria by the new rulers, according to Irish writer and peace activist Declan Hayes.

However, the Western corporate-run media are ignoring or censoring the horrific reality because the Western governments backed the regime-change operation.

He says that Syria – a cradle of civilization – is now being ruled by barbarians with the tacit support of Western governments and media.

The population is living under a reign of terror because the new rulers are terrorists affiliated with Islamic State who espouse an extremist version of Islam that does not tolerate other religions or versions of Islam.

Declan Hayes visited Syria as a peace activist and humanitarian many times during the decade-long war in that country. He witnessed the aftermath of atrocities carried out by insurgent groups in Latakia, Kassab, and Maaloula, among other places.

These mercenary groups were proxy forces financed and armed by the United States and its Western allies in a covert war for regime change against the former Syrian government.

The reasons for the regime-change operation were geopolitical due to the West’s support for Israel and antagonism towards Russia and Iran, as well as control of oil and gas resources.

Hayes maintains close contact with religious leaders and other community figures in Syria, especially among the Alawite, Christian and Shia Muslim communities. He says that the appalling violence and killings that were carried out by the Western-backed terror proxies during the decade-long war are continuing to be inflicted today.

Homes and villages are raided daily by armed supporters of Syria’s new ruling regime led by the de facto president, Ahmed al Sharaa, also known as Mohammad al Jolani, who is the leader of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) militia.

HTS was formerly an affiliate of Islamic State and other Al Qaeda-linked terror networks. HTS seized power two months ago in Damascus after former President Bashar al-Assad fled the country with his family. Assad is living in exile in Russia.

The collapse of his government surprised the world but in many ways, it shouldn’t have been a surprise because Syria was worn down and destroyed by a 10-year war sponsored by the U.S., European powers, Israel and the Gulf Arab kingdoms.

The country was also devastated by crippling Western economic sanctions. Assad’s allies, Russia and Iran, could not prevent the collapse and takeover by the Western terrorist proxies.

Syria is facing an extremely dangerous future where the new regime is exacting brutal retribution against minorities and communities perceived as being loyal to Assad.

What makes the situation all the more grim is that the United States and European Union governments and their media are propping up the new regime, whitewashing its violations and its terrorist links, or simply ignoring the daily atrocities being inflicted.

However, Declan Hayes contends that the new rulers of Syria do not have a firm control over the country where resistance to the reign of terror is growing.