Click to see the full-size image
Written by Gavin O’Reilly for SouthFront
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:
persians are a bunch of idiots like arabs.
the country that invented chess? think again – if you are capable of thinking, that is…..
jews prefer playing whack a mole
this bitch crying real hard when his mass murderous dictators ang being toppled one by one
your mass murdering dictator outdoes them all shlomo shekelstein
*you are the pagan worshipper of those islamic nazi “dick”tators
no country invented chess .grow up
chess was adapted by the persians from an indian board game named chaturanga so it would be accurate to say the european game of chess came from persia.
what does chess have to do with this?
the islam making the people stupid but the islam is made by arabs.
oh? what makes the satanic genocidal putrid pos zionuts insane butchers of humanity?
so you like the faggots genocidal satanic freakish zionuts eh clown?
i once told an iranian that the u.s. will first take out iran’s militias before iran itself, particularly hezbollah. they’ve done that now. america’s next focus is iraq. it’ll try to start a civil war in iraq designed to spill into iran or force iran to intervene like turkiye did in syria. it was a mistake for iran to create the p.m.u. in iraq. by doing that, iran created a fertile ground for a civil war that will occur at the same time as violent protests in iran.
threatwatchers.org
well the lesson is if those western violent protests start in iran get brutal and wipe them out, also if it looks like iran would go down unleash everything they have against israel what would they have to lose?
not at all iran’s i believe the last significant country to not use the reserve banking system from england’s bank of england exported to america from hyde park to jekyll island by morgan .join the dots .
yes you are fully right. iran indeed is the last one country without rothchild central bank system – the last straw between the jews full world domination and freedom of mankind !!!
…they have got nothing to lose by hitting hard, not limited and unbelievably restrained like recently, against the kazharian zionist cult. they must have learnt at the loss of their restrained leadership.
they didn’t ‘take out’ hezbollah, that’s quite an extrapolation based on what occurred in syria. at best, hezbollah will lack some of the heavier ordnance to threaten israel with but it will still exist and be very effective tactically for an indefinite period
they’re little bit players ,extras in the whole production. adding action .
“i once told an iranian” narrative is rich in fresh steaming excrement you hookie crud. threatwatchers.org more like circlejerk.org.
agree. but even bigger mistake was to not kill every single us american in iraq. in 2007 us army was done in iraq – no chance to win that mess for them, weak, worn-out militariarly+ public worldwide fully against usa. had iranians kept up the pressure +went through it, like the taliban did, the usa would have been forced to leave iraq completely+fully humiliated at least by 2012.
but iran decided to make foul deal with usa, selling out the sunni resistance to the usa, for getting “not touched” themselves & being granted good share of iraq’s oil.a deal with the devil. now they feel the result.
nicely written, gavin. unfortunately for the west they will have bitten off more than they can chew with iran. iran, like russia, is not iraq. iran can ‘see’ the supposedly ‘stealthy’ planes the west pays ridiculous amounts of worthless money for. and they can give as good (and probably better) than they can take. the west is a spent force; they couldn’t even defeat the taliban.
at the end of the day there’s no room on the stage for an ayatollah and a pope .simple as the ayatollahs redundant now .
if they really wanted to defeat the taliban, they would. but it was convenient for the establishment. it’s all about funding and proper delivery.
no afghanistan mujahedeen was to hard for england, to hard for soviet union and now too hard for usa. problem is – there is nothing to bomb, nothing to destroy, people look like fighters and fighters like normal people. terrain is bad for high-tech and tanks but perfect for guerilla war. and the people are absolute used to damn hard hardships – people are much much harder than the invading soldiers of all 3 nations mentioned. therefore none of the above mananged to conquer and stay afg.
iran has to cooperate closely with iraq and turkiye to prevent the resurgence of isis is iraq and parts of syria. it must also forge close cooperationg with muqtada al-sadr to prevent in-fighting between shia fighters in iraq. if iran fails to prevent or contain a civil war in iraq, then the regime’s days might be numbered. assad fell and large amounts of heavy weapons were looted. don’t be surprised if these weapons wind up isis.
threatwatchers.org
and i’m expected to be a fan of the us anglo american military. hell no 👎
no dumbarse your meant to be anti american anti democratic anti semitic are you stupid ?
the us military don’t fight for freedom or democracy
the us, uk eu and g7 shaping the world how they want it to be and who should be in power. coming soon also to russia, the proles are restless and wanting power and benefits and riches of governing.
bottom line ” they ” will have their experts tell you that wars are all trade wars or religious wars or political ideology wars or family feud wars but to me they’re all wars over who gets to own the land the seas oceans lakes rivers and airspace .and of course the people .
“7 countries in 5 years”… wasn’t that retired general wesley clark playing town crier 6 years after it happened in an interview at the aspen institute when someone in the g.w. bush administration told him bob kagan’$ plan for a new pearl habor less than a week after 9/11/2001?… and than of course the prc’s duplicity under zemin and vajpayee in india cutting deals for revolving door u.$. citizenship and manufacturing hauling away the crime scene.
… and the newest $billionaire “pootie-poot” staying silent at the unsc that would come back to haunt all of them 23 years later!?….
how many times do you have to keep playing dumb ” america is our barracks ” winston churchill .england runs the pentagon through the office in there called the special.operationz branch .so stick a sock in it bigfoot .
no doubt the wtc was rigged with explosives by mossad but blamed on an arab in a cave thus initiating the afghan war to secure the mideast for the zionists and the patriot act to suppress americans who questioned their zionist controlled government . the zionist faith allows the killing of non jews with impunity.
no you fool in fact you’re so far off track you’re like lost in the wilderness of propaganda designed specially for exactly suckers like you
call them by their real name – kikes
maybe in the first place they have built those towers that way with, say hollow pillars of steel to make they vulnerable to those types of demolishing. maybe they even made them to serve, when time comes for such purpose, a new pearl harbour.
so another us general talking crap and knows nothing and his fake made up predictions are laughable. after 20 years theh have only achieved 3 countries. nato countries generals are laughable they just have money behind them.
they ” just ” have money behind them!! wakey wakey .
iraq, syria, lebanon, libya, somalia, sudan are all fractured and unstable. only iran is holding on. so you better open your eyes and try to figure out which country spends more on military than the united states.
trump will firts deceive the hopper putin and dismantle russia.because no russian intelligence work in syria.russia intelligence only work on seeing erdogan and trump assassination.it also fail to see progizin and kurst invasion.syria and lebanon airspace is now open to israel iran on manue slow like putin.
the time when putin are going to test orniks missile ukraine and nato has already create counter detection and obstruction.assad wouldn’t have fled because he is stubborn and rather will die.putin betrayed.
in order to carry out the syrian scenario in iran, it would require even more media distortion. isis and others aren’t even shia, yet they would have to be brought into iran to exterminate the population. so what starts as “women life freedom” would in the end have nothing to do with women and everything to do with armed men arriving from abroad to exterminate the population
women birth. not men .people take up space on land .
not a single israeli can be trusted. they have proven that and israel civilians are not exempt from this. every single israeli has about the same right as all palestinians to “breathe”–none. fair’s fair.” the israelis are responsible for this genocide of the palestinians. that is very insane considering many israelis had family members who were annihilated by adolph hitler. netanyahu is the reincarnation of fuhrer hitler to a “t.”
hahahaha hilarious .
i sense you’re nervous and have an issue with being insecure. 🪝👃🦠
things turn quick. before syria succumbed israel appeared to be on the brink. now so many pundits are pulling a 180. we’ll see how long this winning streak of theirs lasts.
omg talk about cleopatra queen of denial.
i don’t get it. hezbollah didn’t let the idf get anywhere in lebanon, but they couldn’t stop this hts group? these hts guys got by hezbollah, the russian air force, and the syrian army, but can’t do anything against israel?
i think if syrian generals and higher ups were paid off and they took the easy way out. if it’s true these bribes could cost a huge percent of their country men’s live.
really ? are you sure ? how many lives ?
go and watch the welcome by america to the shah of iran under jfk the kiss of death imo from the ask pharoah how low you can go from the king of the democrats . now concurrently , the cia had used judith vary baker and dr ferry to develop incurable cancer they said was to be given to castro yeah right .sure join the dots .
iran better prepare for what is comming and defend its self. they messed up by not fighting the war effectively in any way these rockets they did nothing to the jewish cancer. and iran its self is infested with the jewish cancer. you can only solve the problem if you kill every last one of them. now trump is becomming president the game is up for iran unless they consolidate and start to fight back in a effective manner.
i have never liked the ayatollah regime because they islamized lebanon and never fought israel in an effective manner. saddam was atleast a more effective fighter he atleast launched scuds on israel inflicting some damage in these judeo parasites. but nothing effective enough its time all arabs persians and levantines team up and wipe israel and all the jews from the face of this earth for ever. these criminals need to be erased from existence.
if iran has done one thing its making israel stronger by being such a weak cucked nation not developing a effective airforce not fighting with drones effectively not helping the armenians win in artsakh not destroying aliyev for his assassination against raisi. iran needs to stop being a cuck nation. start becomming a fighting force and liberate the land from all the jews.
at this point i wish iran actually has nukes and would use them to wipe israel of the map it would be a blessing if they did. once that cancer is gone people in the west can rise up against our traitor governments and kill all the enemy jews who control us and liberate ourselves.
yes there are plenty of islamist muslims and traitor shabbos goy christians who defend these jews from the wrath of those who are jew wise but finally more then ever before are aware of the satanic entity that the jews are and what they did to the palestinians. please cure palestine from the cancer that is judaism. and erase it from existence forever.
unfortunately, the head of the snake is in uk, the ‘city of london’, filled with rothschilds and their ilk. killing israel might make the mideast safer, but won’t stop the cabal from new plans. their real weapon is financial.
you know aliyev is also tied to the crocus city concert hall massacre right? the place is owned by his in-laws.
hard to form a resistance when everyone is selling out for american dollars.
iran is already their. who doesn’t see that khamenei is zionistic puppet must be blind.
isn’t it obvious by now that iran blew up hezbollah’s beepers and radios? iran killed haniyeh because he was a liability to qatar. iran killed nasrallah, saffidiene, the radwan commanders, the hezbollah drone commander, etc etc. iran did all these things, because they ordered hezbollah to stand down, and hezbollah refused. trump and khamanei are competing for the position of biggest puppet.
a nice recount of the past, which will also be prologue. i argued much the same, but the goal is wrong. the path through syria to iran is now open…which also means that the other path, the important one, is on the horizon…the path to russia proper from the south. it is much preferred to the other from the north. many think iran is the prize they are after, due to the gulf. wrong, it’s russia’s vast untouched resources that the west has coveted forever.
did the u.s. build 800 bases to take out iran? not hardly. iran should have obliterated israeli bases, not just show they could hit them. they did no long term damage trying to scare them. this was doomed to fail from the first thought. they should have reduced at least one base to dust. that would have been a real deterrent, one that would have reduced their ability to attack others. but, no they played the western game.
all they have done is to impress upon them how important it is to the west to do it now…before israel is fully exhausted and western weapons depleted. iran’s play to ksa was futile, it was similar to minsk/russia scam, as they and the arab league were plotting assads demise with the u.s. and israel. iran was too concerned with making nice to the arab liars. yemen is now back under attack by ksa, yet another example of treachery. they need to make an example of ksa and now.
the real big war against russia will be in the caucasus, georgia, azerbaijan, and kurdistan.
iran is what stops the jews greater israel wet dream. as long as iran with 85 million citizens and a landmass of 1.8 million sqkm, the greater israel won’t happen and one thing is certain, the jews can’t defeat iran, and that’s why the hitler disciples in illegally occupied palestine is flailing aimlessly waiting for the americ*nts to step in. with trump and son in law, kushner, the pray like never before that trump will play ball!
scumbag satanic warp speed murdering epstein guilty israeli dingus slurping traitor antichrist pos jew freemason tump has filled the swamp yet again with all pro israeli hawks and covid freaks and peter thiel cia palantir freaks and jared gurlyman kushner crooks again
45 years of crap finally coming to an end yaaay
arabs need to smarten up and stop doing the work of the cia.
how can you be smarter? when the exceptionals (before that british empire) wanted to enslave your kind, they start a two centuries strategies to weaken your kind, they attack disguised in very field, the primary goal is to use the internal forces one against other, the master breed use every tool in civilization to corrupt the human cattle. we lie, we cheat, we deceit forever in order to control and rule over human cattle.
regime change in iran has already happened, but mainstream medias & sf dont tell you about it. iranian president was killed by israel & aserbaidshan and replaced by pro-israeli kurdish-aserbaidshanian puppet pezeshkian. wake up guys, and realize this truth !!!