“7 Countries In 5 Years” – Regime-Change In Iran Coming Soon?

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Written by Gavin O’Reilly

In the early hours of last Sunday morning, a seismic geopolitical shift occurred when the 24-year Presidency of Syria by Bashar al-Assad came to an end in dramatic fashion.

Beginning just eleven days previously, an offensive led by the Western-backed Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group resulted in the capture of vast swathes of government-controlled territory, including, perhaps most notably, the key city of Aleppo. One of the first major cities to be captured by opposition groups amidst the outset of the conflict, Aleppo would be liberated in December 2016 in an offensive by the Syrian Arab Army, with Russian air strikes playing a key role in support. Thus, for the city to once again fall into the hands of insurgents was a foreboding sign.

As the militants subsequently began to close in on the capital Damascus, it soon became apparent that Assad’s fate was sealed. Leaving the country alongside his family on a chartered flight shortly afterwards, the former Syrian President would be granted asylum in Moscow, bringing to an end a 13-year coordinated attempt by various powers to topple his government.

In March 2011, following Assad’s refusal two years prior to allow US-ally Qatar to build a pipeline through his country, citing his relationship with Russia as a factor, a plan was put into action to remove the Syrian President from power. Amidst the wider Arab Spring protests taking place at the time, the CIA and MI6 began a covert operation to arm and train Salafist militants opposed to Assad’s secular rule. Joining Washington and London in this endeavour would be Saudi Arabia and Qatar, who would have been the starting points for the proposed pipeline, Turkey, who would have been its entry point to Europe, and Israel, owing to Syria’s membership of the Axis of Resistance and its key role as a conduit between Iran and Hezbollah.

Indeed, two years into the proxy war on Syria, both Iran and Hezbollah would launch a requested intervention in the hopes of preserving Assad’s government, as would Russia another two years later, again at the request of Damascus. Though both interventions undoubtedly played a key role in extending Assad’s far longer than had he acted in isolation amidst the beginnings of the conflict, it would ultimately be the militants, centred in a stronghold in the northwest city of Idlib, who would claim victory last Sunday, leading to a situation that historically does not bode well for either Syria or the wider region.

In 2003, following the US-Anglo invasion of Iraq and subsequent overthrow of Saddam Hussein, the country would be plunged into chaos, creating a power vacuum that, combined with the subsequent destabilisation of neighbouring Syria, would ultimately lead to the emergence of ISIS in 2013. In 2011, at the same time as the Syrian regime-change operation, a similar operation would occur in Libya, owing to Muammar Gaddafi’s proposed Gold Dinar currency. On top of the similar Western support for militant groups vying to remove Gadaffi’s rule, a No Fly Zone would also be imposed by NATO against Tripoli, causing the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, once the most prosperous nation in Africa, to collapse within eight months. Like Iraq, Libya would also be plunged into chaos, with the refugee crisis greatly exacerbated as a result. Syria, another Arab state now joining the list of having its ruler forcibly removed by Western interests, now looks set to suffer a similar fate of extreme instability and sectarian strife. The only noticeable difference being that Assad did not suffer a similar fate as his Iraqi and Libyan counterparts – Hussein being hanged in Baghdad in December 2006, and Gaddafi being lynched on a Libyan street in October 2011.

The removal of Assad from power now also signifies that a dramatic push from the West and Israel to enact regime-change in another long-time target may now be imminent – that target being Iran.

In a 2007 interview with independent media outlet Democracy Now! retired four-star General Wesley Clark would recount how on a visit to the Pentagon in the days following 9/11, an unnamed General informed him that the decision had been made to go to war with Iraq in response, despite there being no evidence to link Saddam Hussein’s government to the attacks.

In a subsequent follow-up meeting a few weeks later, at which stage the United States had already begun bombing Afghanistan, the same official informed Clark that a plan had been put in place to take out “7 countries in 5 years”, which alongside Iraq, also included Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia and Sudan, before “finishing it off with Iran”. A situation that, with the fall of Tehran’s Arab ally, now looks increasingly likely.

Indeed, a key donor to Donald Trump’s recent Presidential campaign would be Miriam Adelson, wife of casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, who donated $20mn to Trump’s 2016 campaign on condition that the US Embassy be moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. A move that the Republican candidate duly followed through with upon his 2017 inauguration. With Sheldon Adelson subsequently passing away in 2021, his wife would donate an even greater amount of $100mn to Trump’s 2024 campaign, this time on condition that the US endorses a Gaza-style land grab of the West Bank. A recent report in the Adelson-family owned Israel Hayom outlet, just over a week after Trump’s election, would subsequently outline how the incoming administration is planning on toppling the Islamic Republic also.

In order to implement such an event, two strategies seem the most likely.

The first, would be to launch a “Persian Spring”-style regime-change operation in Iran akin to what occurred in Libya and Syria in 2011 i.e. the instigation of violent protests, and the use of the subsequent instability to funnel arms to opposition groups in a bid to escalate the situation even further. Indeed, such a scenario played out in the Islamic Republic from September 2022 until early 2023, when following the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year old Iranian woman who passed away in a Tehran hospital after fainting following a verbal altercation with a female police officer, protests that began in response would soon escalate into extreme violence.

Despite being portrayed as an organic response to the rule of the Ayatollah, it would soon become apparent that external actors were playing a key role. Masih Alinejad, an Iranian exile in New York who had previously met with former US Secretary of State and long-time supporter of Iranian regime-change Mike Pompeo, became one of the most vocal supporters on social media of the Iranian protests. Former US National Security Advisor John Bolton, another notorious Iran-hawk, would subsequently admit in an interview with BBC Persian that arms were being supplied to opposition groups in Iran amidst the disturbances. Within days of the fall of Assad, Israeli President Benjamin Netayahu released a video, ostensibly directed at the Iranian population, in which he repeated the “Women. Life. Freedom” slogan of the 2022 colour revolution, indicating that plans are in place to attempt a repeat in Iran.

The second strategy, would be a false flag event, blamed on Iran, and used as a pretext for Washington to go to war with Tehran. A strategy that led to the initial “7 countries in 5 years” plan in the first place.

On the morning of September 11th 2001, as chaos unfolded in New York and the world was irrevocably changed forever, a New Jersey housewife noticed another alarming sight from her apartment window. Three young men, kneeling on the roof of a delivery van parked in the car park of her apartment complex, appeared to be in celebratory mood, dancing and high-fiving one another, in spite of the surrounding scenes of the collapsing Towers.

Reporting this incident and the vehicle registration number to the authorities, the van would be stopped by gunpoint later that afternoon, with 5 men aged between 22 and 27 detained at the scene. To the puzzlement of the arresting officers, it would transpire that the men were Israelis, with one of the men – Sivan Kurzberg – announcing upon his arrest “We are Israeli. We are not the problem. Your problems are our problems. The Palestinians are the problem”. $4,700 in cash was found on one of the men, one had two foreign passports, and traces of explosives were detected in the van by sniffer dogs.

Following the arrests of the five men, who would later be dubbed the “Dancing Israelis”, the office of their employers – Urban Moving Systems – would be raided by the FBI the next day, who concluded that there was little evidence to suggest a legitimate business was being operated from the building, owing to the disproportionate amount of computers and electronic equipment present for such a supposedly small company. Returning to the office a month later to conduct a follow-up search, FBI agents would find the building completely abandoned, and that company director Dominick Suter – another Israeli – had fled the United States for Israel two days after being questioned by the FBI on the day of the first raid.

The five Israelis arrested on 9/11 would be continued to be held in detention, with the FBI coming to the conclusion that at least two of them were Mossad operatives. Sivan Kurzberg’s brother Paul had initially refused to take a lie detector test while in custody, and would subsequently fail it when he eventually did. One of his legal team would later state that his reluctance to take part was due to his previous involvement in Israeli intelligence activities in other countries. After 71 days all five would be released on the order of US Attorney General John Ashcroft, who would later set up a consultancy firm that would count the Israeli government as one of its first clients.

Upon their return to Israel in November 2001, all five would be interviewed on the talk show Inside Israel, with one of the men, Oded Ellner, confirming foreknowledge of the attacks by declaring “our purpose was to document the event”. It would later transpire that more than 200 Israelis were arrested in the United States following the attacks, with many posing as arts students and granted special documentation that allowed them access to sensitive government buildings.

One year prior to the attacks, in March 2000, the World Trade Center would play host to the World Views artists in residence programme, which saw walls opened up and windows removed for a planned lighting exhibition that was due to take place on the 90th and 91st floors. In stunning coincidence, this would be where the planes would strike a year later. In even further coincidence, the same year saw the publication of the Rebuilding America’s Defenses document by the Project for the New Century think-tank, which in line with General Wesley Clark’s revelations, envisaged Washington capitalising on its position as the world’s sole superpower following the end of the Cold War and taking a dominant role in world affairs through military force. The document would admit however, that such a policy could only be implemented slowly and incrementally, save for a “catastrophic and cataclysmic event” such as a “new Pearl Harbor”.

Such an event would conveniently occur the following year in New York and Virginia, and now looks likely to occur again in the not-too-distant future, with a war on Iran being the intended result.

MORE ON THE TOPIC:

• Tahrir al-Sham, Zionism, Türkiye and Iran. The situation is rapidly becoming more complicated
• Israel Annexes Part Of Syria, Iran Recovers, Russia Pulls Out, Turkey Waits, West Applauds
• Israel Foiled ‘Iranian’ Attempt To Send Advanced Weapons To West Bank (Video)

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