In a December 2nd conference call, the leaders of Russia and China will officially launch a new era in relations between the two countries. The largest gas exporter and the fastest growing large market in the world will be connected by a pipeline system that will link the gas fields of Eastern Siberia with Shanghai; the pipeline network will extend more than 6,000 km....Valdai Analytics
A charismatic young murderer named Saddam Hussein was one of the distinguished leaders of the CIA’s Ba’athist team. The Ba’ath Party’s Secretary, Ali Saleh Sa’adi, who took office alongside Saddam Hussein, would later say, “We came to power on a CIA train,” according to A Brutal Friendship: The West and the Arab Elite, by Said Aburish, a journalist and author. Aburish recounted that the CIA supplied Saddam and his cronies a murder list of people who “had to be eliminated immediately in order to ensure success.” Tim Weiner writes that Critchfield later acknowledged that the CIA had, in essence, “created Saddam Hussein.”…
At the same time, the CIA was illegally supplying Saddam’s enemy, Iran, with thousands of anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles to fight Iraq, a crime made famous during the Iran-Contra scandal.…Fast forward:
…our war against Bashar Assad did not begin with the peaceful civil protests of the Arab Spring in 2011. Instead it began in 2000, when Qatar proposed to construct a $10 billion, 1,500 kilometer pipeline through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and Turkey. Qatar shares with Iran the South Pars/North Dome gas field, the world’s richest natural gas repository. The international trade embargo until recently prohibited Iran from selling gas abroad. Meanwhile, Qatar’s gas can reach European markets only if it is liquefied and shipped by sea, a route that restricts volume and dramatically raises costs. The proposed pipeline would have linked Qatar directly to European energy markets via distribution terminals in Turkey, which would pocket rich transit fees. The Qatar/Turkey pipeline would give the Sunni kingdoms of the Persian Gulf decisive domination of world natural gas markets and strengthen Qatar, America’s closest ally in the Arab world. Qatar hosts two massive American military bases and the U.S. Central Command’s Mideast headquarters.…
Of course, the Russians, who sell 70 percent of their gas exports to Europe, viewed the Qatar/Turkey pipeline as an existential threat. In Putin’s view, the Qatar pipeline is a NATO plot to change the status quo, deprive Russia of its only foothold in the Middle East, strangle the Russian economy and end Russian leverage in the European energy market. In 2009, Assad announced that he would refuse to sign the agreement to allow the pipeline to run through Syria “to protect the interests of our Russian ally.”
Assad further enraged the Gulf’s Sunni monarchs by endorsing a Russian-approved “Islamic pipeline” running from Iran’s side of the gas field through Syria and to the ports of Lebanon. The Islamic pipeline would make Shiite Iran, not Sunni Qatar, the principal supplier to the European energy market and dramatically increase Tehran’s influence in the Middke East and the world. Israel also was understandably determined to derail the Islamic pipeline, which would enrich Iran and Syria and presumably strengthen their proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas.
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.…This is just the tip of the iceberg. Read the whole thing.
But, if we are to have an effective foreign policy, we must recognize the Syrian conflict is a war over control of resources indistinguishable from the myriad clandestine and undeclared oil wars we have been fighting in the Mideast for 65 years. And only when we see this conflict as a proxy war over a pipeline do events become comprehensible. It’s the only paradigm that explains why the GOP on Capitol Hill and the Obama administration are still fixated on regime change rather than regional stability, why the Obama administration can find no Syrian moderates to fight the war, why ISIL blew up a Russian passenger plane, why the Saudis just executed a powerful Shiite cleric only to have their embassy burned in Tehran, why Russia is bombing non-ISIL fighters and why Turkey went out of its way to shoot down a Russian jet. The million refugees now flooding into Europe are refugees of a pipeline war and CIA blundering.…Politico.eu
Washington's true intentions with regard to Syria have long been a hot topic, with many saying that the Obama administration is still determined to pursue a regime change in the war-torn Arab country despite the fact that it has toned down its "Assad must go" rhetoric.
International relations expert Rob Prince shares this sentiment. He believes that Washington wants President Bashar al-Assad out of the picture "so that the oil fields and pipeline corridors could be secured by the western oil giants and protected by new US military bases sprinkled across the country."
In the expert's opinion, this has been Washington's "basic game plan since Day 1."
At the same meeting with Russian defense officials, Vladimir Putin stressed that military expenditures must be tightly controlled. “I have said this more than once, and I want to emphasize it again: we do not have extra money,” said the president.
Those familiar with the Syrian conflict would recognize this section of the Syrian-Turkish border as precisely the boundaries of the long-sought after “safe zone” the US, NATO, and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) have attempted to establish since as early as 2012. The Paris attacks and several minor border incidents recently reported, seem to be only the latest in a long line of cited provocations this axis has attempted to use to implement its preconceived plans.
This region between Jarabulus and Afrin constitutes the primary corridor through which the summation of Al Qaeda’s Al Nusra Front and the so-called “Islamic State” or ISIS, receive weapons, supplies, and fresh fighters. Through coordinated efforts between Syria’s Kurds and the Syrian government itself, the rest of Syria’s northern border with Turkey has been sealed. As this process has progressed, the desperation of the Western-led axis seeking regime change in Damascus has increased proportionally.
In reality, regardless of the West’s repetitive platitudes regarding its determination to “fight ISIS,” its actions and the actions of its regional allies have fully illustrated a desire to preserve the terrorist group. Its feigned “war on ISIS” helped open the door to the recent Russian military intervention. With Russia’s entry into the war, the West can no longer afford to drag out its nonexistent operations against ISIS, hoping for an opportunity to finally divide and destroy the country.
Russia and the Syrian Arab Army for whom it is providing air support, have nearly closed the Jarabulus-Afrin corridor themselves. In fact, the week before the Paris attacks, Syrian troops had established a corridor to the besieged Kweires airbase, just 40 kilometers from the Euphrates. Since then, the Syrian military has expanded its control around the surrounding area. Should it reach the Euphrates, along with taking Aleppo and moving northeast from Latakia in the west, Syria will fill the void NATO has long sought to establish its “safe zone” in.
In other words, there is a race between NATO to implement a partial occupation of Syria, and Syria and its allies racing to fill the void before this happens – and the race is nearly over.
ISIS is not only destined to divide and destroy Syria and Iraq. If the West has its way, the terrorist organization is destined to move into Iran, the Caucasus region of southern Russia, and Central Asia next. It is a proxy army built atop of what the United States and Saudi Arabia accomplished with Al Qaeda starting in the 1980’s, which itself was merely a continuation of the British Empire’s use of Wahabbi fanatics to overthrow its Ottoman rivals over a century ago.
When the West calls this a “long war,” they mean it. And it will be longer still until the people of the West realize their governments aren’t waging a “War on Terror,” they are waging a “War of Terror.”Russia knows this. Iran knows this. And China knows this.
OverviewFort Russ
The present war in Ukraine and events in Transnistria are already serious indications that the Balkans and West Black Sea regions are correctly forecasted to be theatres of instability in the coming period. Greece, Bulgaria, Macedonia, and Serbia are critical pieces.
Indisputably, the conflict in Ukraine greatly involves the future of Eurasian natural gas pipeline projects. These cannot be considered geopolitically distinct from Russia-Turkey bilateral relations nor from the pipeline 'cold war' presently taking place in the Balkans. As a general rule, it the Ukraine war demonstrates that between the major power blocs, outright war is indeed 'an option'.
In analyzing the events, the debate primarily surrounds the viability and status of Turkish Stream/South Stream on the one hand, and 'TANAP/TAP' backed by the Atlanticist network.…
This latest US war is so simple. Remove Assad in order to remove Russia’s gas supplies to Europe. Once Assad is gone the US can put its very own, home grown dictator to oversee the construction of a Qatar gas pipeline to Europe.Red Pill Times
Gazprom CEO Alexey Miller made the announcement on Wednesday and Europe just had a major coronary.…
Victoria Nuland must be a psychic or something…because her “F*** the EU” statement is about as precise a summary of Europe’s overall situation as you can get.Red Pill Times
So the EU “defeated” Putin by forcing him to cancel the South Stream pipeline. Thus ruled Western corporate media.
Nonsense.
Facts on the ground spell otherwise. This “Pipelineistan” gambit will continue to send massive geopolitical shockwaves all across Eurasia for quite some time.…Russia Insider
