Ever since the mysterious, unexpected bursting of ISIS on the global stage one year ago with much fanfare and even more carefully produced with just the right amount of lighting beheading video clip, we said from the very beginning [14]that when stripped of its "made in Hollywood" YouTube clip veneer and the media's clear agenda to cast the organization as a new, more evil, more aggressive al-Qaeda, the entire rehashed sequence of events in the middle east is about one thing: removing Syria's Assad from power just so the energy infrastructure from Qatar and Saudi Arabia can traverse the territory and enter Europe, eliminating Russia's energy dominance over the continent.
Today we got the latest confirmation of this in an AP report according to which [15]"Turkey and Saudi Arabia have converged on an aggressive new strategy to bring down Syrian President Bashar Assad."
Why take the unprecedented step of tipping their cards and revealing what the real motive behind all the constant commotion in the middle east is? Because "mutual frustration with what they consider American indecision has brought the two together in a strategic alliance that is driving recent rebel gains in northern Syria, and has helped strengthen a new coalition of anti-Assad insurgents, Turkish officials say."
According to the AP, this puts the US in a paradoxical position:
That is provoking concern in the United States, which does not want rebel groups, including the al-Qaida linked Nusra Front, uniting to topple Assad. The Obama administration worries that the revived rebel alliance could potentially put a more dangerous radical Islamist regime in Assad's place, just as the U.S. is focused on bring down the Islamic State group. A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issues, said the administration is concerned that the new alliance is helping Nusra gain territory in Syria.
Well, no, for the simple reason that Al Nusra was there in 2013 when the US nearly launched a proxy war against Russia in Syria, where just miles from shore one could find both US and Russian warships armed and ready to fire at each other.
And it certainly has nothing to do with concerns about "extremists" taking over: after all, there have been countless documented reports that CIA if not created, then certainly facilitated and funded the ascent of the Islamic State, just like it did with al-Qaeda. It would be naive to assume that said historic relations have been severed.
So where does the AP narrative go with this:
Turkish officials say the Obama administration has disengaged from Syria as it focuses on rapprochement with Iran. While the U.S. administration is focused on degrading the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq, they say it has no coherent strategy for ending the rule of Assad, Iran's key ally in the region.
Now that too is ironic, because as we reported just yesterday [16], Obama's entire "strategy" behind the so-called Iran rapproachement is to provide a media-friendly way of arming Saudi Arabia. In fact, any minute now John Kerry who is currently in Riyadh, should announce the terms of the arms delivery agreement that has been ironed out between the sharehodlers of the US military-industrial complex and Saudi Arabia.
Under Turkish and Saudi patronage, the rebel advance has undermined a sense that the Assad government is winning the civil war — and demonstrated how the new alliance can yield immediate results. The pact was sealed in early March when Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan flew to Riyadh to meet Saudi's recently crowned King Salman. Relations had been tense between Erdogan and the late King Abdullah, in great part over Erdogan's support of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Turkish officials say that the U.S. has no strategy for stabilizing Syria. One Turkish official said that the CIA has even lately halted its support for anti-Assad groups in northern Iraq. U.S. trainers are now in Turkey on a train-and-equip program aimed at adding fighters to counter the Islamic State group and bolster moderate forces in Syria, but Turkish officials are skeptical that it will amount to much.
Wait, you mean to say that the CIA is involved? And, even funnier, what they are doing there is unknown to anyone... except for Turkish officials who explicitly know what the CIA is doing on any given day.
So-called experts chime in: "It's a different world now in Syria, because the Saudi pocketbook has opened and the Americans can't tell them not to do it," said Joshua Landis, the director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma. "It's quite clear that Salman has prioritized efforts against Iran over those against the Muslim Brotherhood."
Meanwhile, avoiding "expert" commentary, what is going on
The Turkish-Saudi agreement has led to a new joint command center in the northeastern Syrian province of Idlib. There, a coalition of groups — including Nusra and other Islamist brigades such as Ahrar al-Sham that Washington views as extremist — are progressively eroding Assad's front. The rebel coalition also includes more moderate elements of the Free Syrian Army that have received U.S. support in the past.
In other words the country that the US is about to deliver an arsenal of ultra-modern weapons and warplanes to, just so it can "defend" itself from a potentially violent Iran, the same Iran that Obama has spent the past 2 years supposedly eager to put in the western sphere of influence, is actively supporting the same terrorist organizations that the US media, if only for popular consumption, blasts each day as the terrorist bogeyman the US government must urgently protect Americans from. One wonders how many of the weapons that are about to be sent to Saudi Arabia will end up in Al Nusra and ISIS hands...
But the one piece that puts everything in its place, is one small admission that it is, indeed, all about the natural gas.
Usama Abu Zeid, a legal adviser to the Free Syrian Army, confirmed that the new coordination between Turkey and Saudi Arabia — as well as Qatar — had facilitated the rebel advance, but said that it not yet led to a new flow of arms. He said rather that the fighters had seized large caches of arms from Syrian government facilities.
Ah Qatar...the country which we revealed two years ago as the "Mystery Sponsor Of Weapons And Money To Syrian Mercenary "Rebels [17]." The same Qatar for which only one thing matters. Recall further from our 2012 article [18]:
Why would Qatar want to become involved in Syria where they have little invested? A map reveals that the kingdom is a geographic prisoner in a small enclave on the Persian Gulf coast.
It relies upon the export of LNG, because it is restricted by Saudi Arabia from building pipelines to distant markets. In 2009, the proposal of a pipeline to Europe through Saudi Arabia and Turkey to the Nabucco pipeline was considered, but Saudi Arabia that is angered by its smaller and much louder brother has blocked any overland expansion.
Already the largest LNG producer, Qatar will not increase the production of LNG. The market is becoming glutted with eight new facilities in Australia coming online between 2014 and 2020.
A saturated North American gas market and a far more competitive Asian market leaves only Europe. The discovery in 2009 of a new gas field near Israel, Lebanon, Cyprus, and Syria opened new possibilities to bypass the Saudi Barrier and to secure a new source of income. Pipelines are in place already in Turkey to receive the gas. Only Al-Assad is in the way.
Oh, and remember that whole part in the narrative where the US did not want to support Syrian rebel groups? Well, here is what Reuters reported [19]moments ago.
Defense Secretary Ash Carter said on Thursday that U.S. military troops have begun training a small, company-sized group of Syrian fighters to battle Islamic State militants who have overrun parts of Syria and Iraq. Carter told a news conference a second company-sized group of Syrian fighters would begin training soon. The Pentagon chief said the company-sized unit that already has started training has about 90 personnel.
In other words, the vast majority of the carefully framed AP narrative was BS, except for one thing: the underlying fact - there is now an alliance between Turkey and Saudi Arabia to topple Assad, and the US is once again back and actively supporting anti-regime forces.
Which means that a rerun of the summer of 2013, when it was the entire world against the Syrian leader is about to be rerun. The entire world, that is, except for one person: Russia's Vladimir Putin.
