Syrian War - The Prequel: 2007 New Yorker Article Exposed US-Israeli-Saudi Conspiracy to Overthrow AssadTony Cartalucci, Contributor Just as the US State Department feigned shock and confusion at the Arab Spring it had been preparing for the last 3 years, it is likewise reacting with feigned confusion and dismay over the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Arab Springs wake. In reality it is a premeditated consequence of US foreign policy spanning both the Bush and now the Obama administrations. While in 2007, all of this was, soon to be, in retrospect we see just how devastatingly accurate Hershs reporting was. It is clear now, with the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Sunni-extremist dominated, foreign-funded destabilization ravaging Syria, that this policy created during the Bush administration, has transcended presidencies and is being brought to its premeditated conclusion under Obama yet another example of continuity of agenda. Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the United States Are Behind Syrias Violence. The evidence trickling out of the corporate-media regarding who the armed Syrian opposition is, reveals that it is predominately an extremist Sunni-movement, not only including Syrian extremists, but militants crossing the border from Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and even from as faras Libya. An alliance of Gulf States led by Saudi Arabia have pledged funds for Syrias militants and has repeatedly called for openly arming them. The US is likewise openly equipping Syrian militants. This reality is not merely a spontaneous reaction by the international community, but verbatim what was planned in detail amongst the US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia years in advance to topple the Syrian government before moving on to Iran, according to Hershs 2007 report: To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coperated with Saudi Arabias government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda. The Redirection, Seymour Hersh Hershs report would also include: the Saudi government, with Washingtons 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. The Redirection, Seymour Hersh This mirrors sentiments included in the Brookings Institutions 2009 report, Which Path to Persia? where it was stated that reaching some sort of conclusion with Syria first was a prerequisite before attacking Iran: the Israelis may want to hold off 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.-Which Path to Persia? page 109 (.pdf) Robert Baer, a former longtime C.I.A. agent in Lebanon, has been a severe critic of Hezbollah and has warned of its links to Iranian-sponsored terrorism. But now, he told me, weve got Sunni Arabs preparing for cataclysmic conflict, and we will need somebody to protect the Christians in Lebanon. It used to be the French and the United States who would do it, and now its going to be Nasrallah and the Shiites The Redirection, Seymour Hersh That the United States, Israel, and Saudi Arabia premeditated a regional conflict utilizing militant-extremists with full knowledge they would commit wide ranging, genocidal atrocities, is clearly as much in reality a war crime as the US State Department and US representative to the UN Susan Rice have claimed the Syrian government has committed as it desperately attempts to restore order in the face of an admitted act of foreign aggression. The Muslim Brotherhood is a Tool of US-Israeli-Saudi Machinations. The Muslim Brotherhoods rank and file surely believe in what they are being told by their leaders, but their leaders are professional demagogues peddling anti-Israeli and anti-American rhetoric solely for public consumption while being fully complicit in the Wests designs against the Arab World. Hersh reports that a supporter of the Lebanese Hariri faction had met Dick Cheney in Washington and relayed personally the importance of using the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria in any move against the ruling government: [Walid] Jumblatt then told me that he had met with Vice-President Cheney in Washington last fall to discuss, among other issues, the possibility of undermining Assad. He and his colleagues advised Cheney that, if the United States does try to move against Syria, members of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood would be the ones to talk to, Jumblatt said. The Redirection, Seymour Hersh The article would continue by explaining how already in 2007 US and Saudi backing had begun benefiting the Brotherhood: There is evidence that the Administrations redirection strategy has already benefitted the Brotherhood. The Syrian National Salvation Front is a coalition of opposition groups whose principal members are a faction led by Abdul Halim Khaddam, a former Syrian Vice-President who defected in 2005, and the Brotherhood. A former high-ranking C.I.A. officer told me, The Americans have provided both political and financial support. The Saudis are taking the lead with financial support, but there is American involvement. He said that Khaddam, who now lives in Paris, was getting money from Saudi Arabia, with the knowledge of the White House. (In 2005, a delegation of the Fronts members met with officials from the National Security Council, according to press reports.) A former White House official told me that the Saudis had provided members of the Front with travel documents. The Redirection, Seymour Hersh It was warned that such backing would benefit the Brotherhood as a whole, not just in Syria, and could affect public opinion even as far as in Egypt where a long battle against the hardliners was fought in order to keep Egyptian governance secular. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, also interviewed by Hersh for his 2007 article, perhaps described best the geopolitical gambit the US, Saudi Arabia, and Israel were and are currently attempting to unfold: Nasrallah accused the Bush Administration of working with Israel to deliberately instigate fitna, an Arabic word that is used to mean insurrection and fragmentation within Islam. In my opinion, there is a huge campaign through the media throughout the world to put each side up against the other, he said. I believe that all this is being run by American and Israeli intelligence. (He did not provide any specific evidence for this.) He said that the U.S. war in Iraq had increased sectarian tensions, but argued that Hezbollah had tried to prevent them from spreading into Lebanon. (Sunni-Shiite confrontations increased, along with violence, in the weeks after we talked.) The Redirection, Seymour Hersh Indeed, divide and conquer has been used by empires since the beginning of time, and it appears that the very radical extremists the West has featured as civilizations greatest enemy in their fraudulent War on Terror is a creation and perpetuation of their own design. The role of Saudi Arabia and the Muslim Brotherhood, betraying millions of Sunni Muslims by exploiting their justified outrage of US-British and Israeli foreign policy, has resulted in terrorism and violence, both spontaneous and engineered, that has destroyed millions of lives. The very War on Terror is the management of these exploited and cultivated extremists: [Saudi Arabias] Bandar and other Saudis have assured the White House that they will keep a very close eye on the religious fundamentalists. Their message to us was Weve created this movement, and we can control it. Its not that we dont want the Salafis to throw bombs; its who they throw them atHezbollah, Moqtada al-Sadr, Iran, and at the Syrians, if they continue to work with Hezbollah and Iran. The Redirection, Seymour Hersh For Empire, not National Security. The only fault that can be found in Hershs tremendous journalistic accomplishment is perhaps the pandering to the notion that all of this demonstrative deceit and indeed, criminality, may be being done in the interest of protecting Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the United States. In reality, even the Brookings Institution, which was also included in Hershs report, admits that containing Iran is not a matter of national security for either the US or Israel (let alone Saudi Arabia), but a matter of maintaining the status quo, namely Western hegemony across the Middle East, with Saudi Arabia and Israel the principle dual benefactors. While behind closed doors US policy makers admit Iran, even if it were to obtain nuclear weapons, is driven by self-preservation and protecting the influence it is steadily gaining throughout the Middle Eastern region it borders, the message they desperately seek to relate to the public is one of an irrational apocalyptic theocracy eager to usher in Armageddon. However, reports out of the RAND corporation note that Iran has had chemical weapons in its inventory for decades, and other reports from RAND describe the strict control elite military units exercise over these weapons, making it unlikely they would end up in the hands of terrorists. The fact that Irans extensive chemical weapon stockpile has yet to be disseminated into the hands of non-state actors, along with the fact that these same elite units would in turn handle any Iranian nuclear weapons, lends further evidence to the conclusion that Iran is indeed driven by self-preservation and self-defense. Brookings notes on pages 24 and 25 of their Which Path to Persia? report, that the real threat is not the deployment of these weapons, but rather the deterrence they present, allowing Iran to counter US influence in the region without the fear of an American invasion. The US and the West in general, have viewed the Middle East as nothing more than a divided, broken Ottoman Empire to be used and exploited, and when nationalism or resistance emerges, to be pitted against itself in destructive conflicts. The fear of a powerful Iran overturning the status quo of Anglo-American hegemony expressed through proxies and multiple strategies of tension, Israel itself being one of them, would open the door for other nations to climb out from beneath the modern heirs of the British and French Empires and begin down the path of true self-determination. That includes freeing the people of Israel laboring under a hijacked government misleading them into a pointless and perpetual conflict with not only the Palestinians, but with the Islamic World itself. Indeed, the ploy described in incredible detail by Seymour Hersh in 2007, and demonstratively playing out before our eyes today, is not to protect against existential threats to the people of Saudi Arabia, Israel, or the United States, but against existential threats to their leaderships self-serving hegemonic ambitions. It is being peddled by a coalition of Saudis, Americans, and Israelis lying not only to the world, their allies, and their enemies, but to their own people about the nature of the conflict they demand troops and taxpayers to facilitate. Balking these murderous machinations is accomplished by Sunnis and Shiia not falling into the traps laid out by the US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia in the form of the Muslim Brotherhood, and terror groups and civil society NGOs alike, cultivated by these admitted international manipulators. Christians and Jews must likewise avoid the contrived clash of civilizations between themselves and hordes of terrorists created and cultivated by their own demagogic leaders. Finally, it is essential that people around the world recognize that the corporations and institutions they patronize on a daily basis with their time, money, energy, and attention are the ones ultimately devising and driving not only these plots, but the disingenuous politicians and media personalities weve mistakenly placed our trust in. We must begin to boycott andreplace these corporations and institutions with genuine local alternatives or suffer the tragic conclusion of allowing such deceitful megalomaniacs construct an inescapable world order they shall presume absolute dominion over. linkwithin_text=Related Articles: 