Zero Hedge In Shocking, Viral Interview, Qatar Confesses Secrets Behind Syrian War

A television interview of a top Qatari official confessing the truth behind the origins of the war in Syria is going viral across Arabic social media during the same week a leaked top secret NSA document was published which confirms that the armed opposition in Syria was under the direct command of foreign governments from the early years of the conflict.

And according to a well-known Syria analyst and economic adviser with close contacts in the Syrian government, the explosive interview constitutes a high level "public admission to collusion and coordination between four countries to destabilize an independent state, [including] possible support for Nusra/al-Qaeda." Importantly, "this admission will help build case for what Damascus sees as an attack on its security & sovereignty. It will form basis for compensation claims."

As the war in Syria continues slowly winding down, it seems new source material comes out on an almost a weekly basis in the form of testimonials of top officials involved in destabilizing Syria, and even occasional leaked emails and documents which further detail covert regime change operations against the Assad government. Though much of this content serves to confirm what has already long been known by those who have never accepted the simplistic propaganda which has dominated mainstream media, details continue to fall in place, providing future historians with a clearer picture of the true nature of the war.

This process of clarity has been aided - as predicted - by the continued infighting among Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) former allies Saudi Arabia and Qatar, with each side accusing the other of funding Islamic State and al-Qaeda terrorists (ironically, both true). Increasingly, the world watches as more dirty laundry is aired and the GCC implodes after years of nearly all the gulf monarchies funding jihadist movements in places like Syria, Iraq, and Libya....

"Shocking" refers to the admission rather than the events, which were widely suspected, with some evidence already available.

Now that the war seems to be winding down, the question of who is going to pay to rebuild Syria arises. Syria will be seeking compensation.

Zero Hedge

In Shocking, Viral Interview, Qatar Confesses Secrets Behind Syrian War
Tyler Durden

Pepe Escobar — A coup in the House of Saud?

Gives "MBS" new meaning. It's no longer mortgage backed security but Mohammad bin Salman.

But just as MBS were involved in the global financial crisis that began with the housing bubble in the US; so too, Mohammad in Salman is poised to initiate a global political crisis. Pepe Escobar explains.

Asia Times
A coup in the House of Saud?

Pepe Escobar

Darius Shahtahmasebi — We Finally Know Who Is Really Behind the Qatar Crisis

Anti-Media has covered some of the geopolitical undertones of this crisis (see here and here), but the UAE’s specific role in this crisis is worth highlighting on its own here. While the UAE is aligned with these other GCC nations in its distaste for Iran and its desire to bring Qatar to its knees, it transpires that the UAE has a hidden agenda of its own.

Qatar hosts the American military’s largest base in the region, al-Udeid, which currently houses over 10,000 American personnel. This is important because the UAE wants this base removed from Qatar and wants to host the American military themselves.

As usual, "follow the money."

AntiMedia
We Finally Know Who Is Really Behind the Qatar Crisis

Darius Shahtahmasebi

Pat Lang — The Saudi and UAE "crownies" are AQ supporters ...

Qatar strikes back.

Sic Semper Tyrannis
The Saudi and UAE "crownies" are AQ supporters ...
Col. W. Patrick Lang, US Army (ret.), former military intelligence officer at the US Defense Intelligence Agency

Moon of Alabama — The Saudi-Qatar Spat - An Offer To Be Refused

(Qatar is surely "supporting terrorism". So is the U.S. - the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services just rejected an asylum request because the person in question has relations with the Free Syrian Army which it considers to be an "undesignated terrorist organization". The CIA built and supports the FSA. But the biggest terrorist sponsors of all are and have been the Saudis.)

Moon of Alabama
The Saudi-Qatar Spat - An Offer To Be Refused

b

Gareth Porter — How America Armed Terrorists in Syria

Another tale of infamy involving the usual suspects.

What Porter does not mention is that this was largely covered up domestically by US media propaganda demonizing Assad personally.

The American Conservative
How America Armed Terrorists in Syria

Gareth Porter

Reposted at Consortium News

Sputnik International — Gulf States to Qatar: Limit Iran Ties, Shut Turkish Base, Close Al Jazeera

Will Turkey sit on the sidelines? Turkey has the largest military in the region.

Sputnik International
Gulf States to Qatar: Limit Iran Ties, Shut Turkish Base, Close Al Jazeera

Graham E. Fuller — Does Qatar Really Threaten the Gulf?

Backgrounder.

Graham E. Fuller
Does Qatar Really Threaten the Gulf?
Graham E. Fuller | adjunct professor of history at Simon Fraser University, formerly vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council at the CIA, and a former senior political scientist at RAND

See also

The Unz Review
Liars Lying About Nearly Everything

Philip Giraldi, former counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer of the CIA. and presently Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest

Pat Lang catches us up on Qatar

What on earth does DJT think he is doing by siding with SA against Qatar?

The US may have decided to use this a pretext to start war with Iran.

Sic Semper Tyrannis
Turkey has aligned with Qatar
Col. W. Patrick Lang, US Army (ret.), former military intelligence officer at the US Defense Intelligence Agency

Wilkerson — From Qatar Rift to Syria Battlefield, Trump & Gulf Allies Target Iran

Best short backgrounder I have seen on this.

TRNN
Wilkerson: From Qatar Rift to Syria Battlefield, Trump & Gulf Allies Target Iran

Aaron Maté interviews Lawrence Wilkerson, Lt. Col, US Army (retired)

Moon of Alabama — "The GCC States Led By Saudi Arabia Will Collapse Into Oblivion"

Backgrounder on goings-on in the snake pit.

Moon of Alabama
"The GCC States Led By Saudi Arabia Will Collapse Into Oblivion"

b

See also

Asia Times
Qatar’s US$1 billion deal with Iran that broke the camel’s back

Asia Unhedged

Sputnik — Al-Jazeera Films False Flag Fake Chemical Attack Against Civilians in Syria

Moar fake news/false flag in the making?

Al Jazeera is Qatari-owned and partly state-funded.

Sputnik International
Al-Jazeera Films False Flag Fake Chemical Attack Against Civilians in Syria

See also

Another twist to the story.

The Duran
European country is working with al-Jazeera to film false flag chemical attack in Syria. Why?

Alex Christaforou

ZH picks up the story.

Zero Hedge
Al-Jazeera Said To Film False Flag Chemical Attack Against Syrian Civilians

Tyler Durden

UPDATE:

Calling the story 'fake news', Al Jazeera says it will pursue legal action against Russia's Sputnik news agency

Middle East Eye
Al Jazeera rejects Russian news claim that it faked Syrian gas attack video

Alex Christoforou — Qatar-owned Al Jazeera reports Assad is bombing Idlib with White Phosphorus

Now that the Saudi-Qatari sponsored Al Qaeda and ISIS terrorists have successfully pulled off a false flag chemical attack in Idlib, prompting US President Trump to launch missiles against Syria, the Wahhabist terrorists, and their Al Jazeera media network, have decided to see how stupid Trump truly is, by throwing out some more false flag, fake news Assad “white phosphorus” attack....

The Duran

Qatar-owned Al Jazeera reports Assad is bombing Idlib with White Phosphorus

Alex Christoforou

Nassim Nicholas Taleb — The Syrian War Condensed: A more Rigorous Way to Look at the Conflict

I guess Taleb's blog is a fake news site that promotes Russian propaganda.

Medium
The Syrian War Condensed: A more Rigorous Way to Look at the Conflict

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Robert Parry — The Need to Hold Saudi Arabia Accountable

Background that is important in light of Donald Trump's stance on Iran, as well as that of Lt. General Flynn, Trump's choice for National Security Advisor and appointment of General Mattis as Secretary of Defense.

One of Official Washington’s favorite “group thinks” is to insist that Iran is the “chief sponsor of terrorism,” but the reality is that Saudi Arabia is much guiltier and U.S. officials know it, says Robert Parry.…

Parry shows that it is impossible for anyone in the deep state or the military not to know that Saudi Arabia is the chief state sponsor of terrorism and not Iran. Iran is opposed by Israel and the Wahhabi-Salafi Sunni states, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

Is Donald Trump either misinformed, or carrying water for Israel?  But if that is so, why would he be backing off replacing Assad in Syria, which IsraelI officials have stated as the number one goal?

Are the generals are also misinformed (which is highly unlikely), backing Israel also, or just uttering a shibboleth as a secret handshake to be admitted to the game.

Consortium News
The Need to Hold Saudi Arabia Accountable
Robert Parry

See also

Some of President-elect Trump’s national security appointees are part of Official Washington’s “we-hate-Iran” group think, raising concerns about another Mideast war, notes ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar.

Trump and His Iran-Haters

Paul R. Pillar

Assad Abu Khalil — I don't think that you have an idea of the language of Gulf regime media in Arabic

This is from the opinion page of the Qatari regime newspaper, Al-Quds Al-Arabi. It says: "as you do, o rabid dogs who you call yourselves secularists".

"Our guys."

Angry Arab News Service
I don't think that you have an idea of the language of Gulf regime media in Arabic
Assad Abu Khalil | Professor of Political Science, California State University, Stanislaus

also

The disgusting Arabic Huffington Post and its sectarian Wahhabi hatred

Larry C. Johnson — Hillary Knew the Saudis Were Funding ISIS

I have written for quite some time that Saudi Arabia and Qatar are funding ISIS. Glad to see that John Podesta informed Hillary of this fact back in 2014. Here’s a portion of that email:

While this military/para-military operation is moving forward, we need to use our diplomatic and more traditional intelligence assets to bring pressure on the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL and other radical Sunni groups in the region. This effort will be enhanced by the stepped up commitment in the KRG. The Qataris and Saudis will be put in a position of balancing policy between their ongoing competition to dominate the Sunni world and the consequences of serious U.S. pressure. By the same token, the threat of similar, realistic U.S. operations will serve to assist moderate forces in Libya, Lebanon, and even Jordan, where insurgents are increasingly fascinated by the ISIL success in Iraq.

If you read the entire email you will discern that there is a recommendation to “put pressure” on Saudi Arabia and Qatar using diplomatic and intelligence channels. But nothing concrete is proposed. The solution to Saudi Arabia and Qatar is very simple–work with Russia and China and pass a UN Security Council resolution that imposes sanctions on any country that provides any kind of support to ISIS. Very simple.

Why does Hillary not want to do that? Also very simple. The Saudis and the Qataris have pumped millions of dollars into the Clinton Foundation. This is the ultimate pay for play.…

No Quarter
Hillary Knew the Saudis Were Funding ISIS

Larry C. Johnson, counterterrorism expert formerly with the CIA and US State Department

Gareth Porter — The War Against the Assad Regime Is Not a "Pipeline War"

If it's not a pipeline war, why is the US intervening in Syria? The US decision to support Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia in their ill-conceived plan to overthrow the Assad regime was primarily a function of the primordial interest of the US permanent war state in its regional alliances. The three Sunni allies control US access to the key US military bases in the region, and the Pentagon, the CIA, the State Department and the Obama White House were all concerned, above all, with protecting the existing arrangements for the US military posture in the region.

After all, those military bases are what allow the United States to play at the role of hegemonic power in the Middle East, despite the disasters that have accompanied that role. The degree to which the US determination to preserve its present military profile in the region is illustrated by the case of US-Qatar relations over that tiny monarchy's arming of extremist Sunni groups in Syria in 2012. The Obama administration was very unhappy with Qatar's choice of proxies in Syria, and the National Security Council discussed a proposal to pull a squadron of US fighter planes from Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar as a way of putting pressure on the government over the issue, according to a story in the Wall Street Journal.

But the US Central Command (CENTCOM), which had moved its headquarters to Al Udeid in 2003, argued that the base was critical to its operations in the region, and that it was about to renegotiate its agreement with Qatar over the use of it. The Pentagon supported CENTCOM's opposition to any move that would disturb relations with Qatar over the issue and vetoed any such pressure on Qatar. The administration ended up doing nothing about the issue, and in 2013, the US-Qatar Defense Cooperation Agreement originally reached in 2003 was renewed for another ten years.

The massive, direct and immediate power interests of the US war state -- not the determination to ensure that a pipeline would carry Qatar's natural gas to Europe -- drove the US policy of participation in the war against the Syrian regime. Only if activists focus on that reality will they be able to unite effectively to oppose not only the Syrian adventure but the war system itself.

The upshot? To preserve its hegemony, which depends on military control of the Middle East, Washington, that is, both the WH and the deep state, have agreed to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey's support of Al Qaeda and ISIS as proxies. Porter doesn't mention it, but Israel is so opposed to Syria and Iran that it is on board with the plan to use jihadi terrorists, too. Hey, it’s the snake pit, why not?

Truthout | News Analysis
The War Against the Assad Regime Is Not a "Pipeline War"
Gareth Porter

Mike Whitney — Assad’s Death Warrant

"Secret cables and reports by the U.S., Saudi and Israeli intelligence agencies indicate that the moment Assad rejected the Qatari pipeline, military and intelligence planners quickly arrived at the consensus that fomenting a Sunni uprising in Syria to overthrow the uncooperative Bashar Assad was a feasible path to achieving the shared objective of completing the Qatar/Turkey gas link. In 2009, according to WikiLeaks, soon after Bashar Assad rejected the Qatar pipeline, the CIA began funding opposition groups in Syria.”

— Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Why the Arabs don’t want us in Syria, Politico

Counterpunch
Assad’s Death Warrant

Mike Whitney

See also

Fort Russ
The top ten western lies about the war in Syria [Part one, Lies 1 through 5]

rt.français, September 9, 2016
Translated from French by Tom Winter September 15, 2016

The top ten western lies about the war in Syria [Part two, lies 6 through 10]

Rakesh Krishna Simha — How the West used radical Islam and unleashed global terror

Western nations have backed fundamentalist forces at the expense of secular, nationalist Muslims. With western funding and support, the Islamic fringe has come to occupy the mainstream.…

How it all began.

“The British Empire had an overprotective attitude toward Islam,” writes Nu’man Abd Al-Wahid of the Lebanon-based Al-Akhbar.

Considering that Britain was one of the prime culprits in the destabilisation of Iran in the 1950s and is behind the devastation of Iraq, Libya and Syria in more recent times, one would be tempted to take the view the British are anti-Muslim. But in fact they are only opposed to nationalist Muslims and the moderate middle classes.

Al-Wahid explains: “When the Empire began to consolidate its lordship over the Arab world after World War I, it partnered with Saudi Wahhabis and the Muslim Brotherhood. The trends these movements represented were not so much ‘invented’ by the British but favoured and promoted.

"Before the British allowed the Wahhabis to establish themselves in Riyadh in 1901, they were an isolated, exiled cult in the Basra region known as ‘Kuwait’. With further support from the Empire, the Wahhabis expanded into the western part of the Arabian peninsula in 1924 and 1925.”

The British advocated the Muslim Brotherhood brand of Islam rather than the traditional moderate Islam as practised by the oldest university in the Islamic world, Al-Azhar.

“The British Empire...heroically and selflessly defended Islam, even if al-Azhar, the traditional bastion of Islamic learning in the world, didn’t comprehend this urgency. By the time these two major trends of Islamism strategically coalesced in the 1950s to meet the challenge of third world independence and socialism, the Americans had embraced the British Empire’s imperialist strategy.”

“This embrace meant bringing British puppets, such as the al-Saud clan of Saudi Arabia and the Thani clan of Qatar, under its protective umbrella. This American appropriation of the puppets had initially gained doctrinal credibility through the Eisenhower doctrine and extended all the way until the 1980s to support the Islamist mercenaries, or mujahideen, against the Soviets in the 1980s.”

Downhill from there.

During the Carter administration, under the influence of Zbigniew Brzezinski, the US began to employ Wahhabi, Salafi, Takfiri mujahideen as "freedom fighters" and used them subsequently in  proxy wars — until the mujahideen turned on them. But the mujahideen presented too good an opportunity to give up entirely so the US still incorporates them.

However, the desire to play cynical geopolitical games is too strong in the West. In most cases western politicians and generals are way over their heads in events they cannot begin to understand, let alone control. Meanwhile, the battle is spilling over into the streets of Europe and occasionally the United States. The West’s ‘Freudian Bargain’ is clearly coming unstuck.

Russia & India Report
How the West used radical Islam and unleashed global terror
Rakesh Krishnan Simha