With Western newspapers packed daily with reports of the US-led coalition fighting against the Islamic State ISIS/IS/ISIL in the Middle East, it is important to further illustrate the deceptive nature of this latest so-called ‘war against ISIS’. The Syrian Army, Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard have been the main forces battling against this Western-created group since the Syrian proxy war began, with the Iraqi army and factions of the Lebanese government also heavily involved.
Russia has been steadfast in fighting against international terrorism and its support for forces that are actively battling against rebel insurgency groups, with some reports speculating that Russian special forces have been active in Syria conducting counterterrorism operations. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has repeatedly expressed his support for a coalition against ISIS, but one that is authorised through the UN Security Council and is in accordance with international law. These forces constitute the true players fighting against ISIS, not the US-led coalition, whose position on ISIS is duplicitous as they continue to fund the group they claim to be at war with.
“The US and the so-called anti-ISIL coalition claim that they have launched a campaign against this terrorist and criminal group – while supplying them with weapons, food and medicine in Jalawla region (a town in Diyala Governorate, Iraq). This explicitly displays the falsity of the coalition’s and the US’ claims”, Deputy Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces, Brigadier General Massoud Jazayeri, told Fars news. Iran itself reportedly conducted airstrikes against ISIS positions outside of the US-led coalition in December 2014, which corroborates with Iran’s consistent policy of fighting against rebels that the West has been funding. Syrian government warplanes have also been bombing ISIS positions for years as the al-Assad regime has been fighting against Western-sponsored terror groups since 2011.
US Embassy in Baghdad – ISIS Command Base
Commander of Iran’s Basij (volunteer) Force, Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Naqdi, has stated that the US Embassy in Baghdad is a command base of ISIS, and that the US still “directly supports” the terrorist faction:
“The US directly supports ISIL in Iraq and the US planes drop the needed aids and weapons for ISIL in Iraq”.
This of course corroborates with the news that the US has airdropped weapons – including medical supplies, hand grenades, ammunition and other weaponry – to ISIS fighters, claiming these are just accidental drops that missed the drop zone. A captured Pakistani commander of ISIS also recently revealed that he received funds that were “routed” through the US to run an ISIS operation in Pakistan, which recruited rebels to fight against the Syrian regime. Head of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, Ammar al-Hakim, has criticised the US-led coalition for their hypocritical attitude towards ISIS, and has asserted that the coalition forces have not played a prominent role in “vital regions” that are strategically important for the terror group.
US-led airstrikes are “against international law”
Russian President Vladimir Putin has objected to airstrikes in Syria against ISIS without the consent of the Syrian government, and Russian FM Lavrov has stressed that using force without the governments consent “goes against international law”. As Lavrov also points out, if the coalition truly wanted to defeat ISIS it would fully cooperate with the Syrian army, Hezbollah and Iranian forces which would weaken ISIS dramatically in a matter of weeks, but this is about regime change in Syria under the pretext of fighting the terror group, not about actually wiping out the group. According to reports there has only been very limited cooperation between Iran and the US-led coalition (if any at all), with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani calling the anti-ISIS coalition a “joke” since the alliance is comprised of nations that sponsor “terrorist activities”. ISIS may well be eradicated after they have served their purpose however, or if regional players turn against the agenda due to political instability.
US President Barack Obama is set to ask Congress for further use of force tomorrow (which is Wednesday 11th Feb at the time of writing). Even though the campaign has been operational for months; Obama has had no formal congressional authorisation to use military force, which is a violation of the US constitution. The most worryingly prospect in the near future is that the US gets authorisation for a boots on the ground invasion of Syria itself (or just does it without authorisation), which many analystshave been warning will be used to weaken the position of the Syrian government and oust al-Assad.
Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah is another prominent figure that has denounced the US-led coalition as he believes it is a “pretext” for US hegemony in the region. As the Times of Israel reported in an article titled: Hezbollah condemns US-led strikes on Islamic State, Nasrallah stated:
“We are against an international coalition, whether it is against the regime … or whether it is against Daesh/[ISIS]… This is an opportunity, pretext, for America to dominate the region again.”
The rise of ISIS is a direct result of Western foreign policy in the region that has facilitated, funded, trained and armed this assortment of rebel bandits for years, either directly or through regional channels – in the form of Saudi Arabia and Qatar. IS’s core objective is the toppling of the regime of Bashar al-Assad for the benefit of NATO powers and their regional allies such as Israel (also known as al-Qaeda’s air force).
Pre-planned Rebel Invasion of Syria
The former French minister of Foreign Affairs Roland Dumas has revealed that the war in Syria was planned at least “two years before the violence” erupted. Dumas reveals that he was approached in the UK by “top British officials” to see if he would participate in “organising an invasion of rebels into Syria”, a proposal Dumas refused. Syria’s U.N. ambassador, Bashar Ja’afari, filed a complaint to the UN against US Senator John McCain illegally entering Syria in June 2013 in violation of the country’s sovereignty to meet Syrian rebels – McCain was photographed talking with the so-called Caliph of ISIS, Ibrahim al-Badri also known as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Jordan is now the latest country to join this deceptive alliance, another country that has facilitated the rise of ISIS through allowing their territory to be used by NATO forces to train fighters for war in Syria. It seems that in order to join this US-led coalition in their ‘war against ISIS’, you must have been complicit in supporting the rise and growth of the group in the first place. As Stuart J. Hooper correctly pointed out in an article for 21st Century Wire, the Jordanian government may well have been involved in training the very ISIS fighters that burned their pilot alive.
There is a real war going on between coalition forces and ISIS on the ground which has claimed the lives of coalition troops however, but it is a manufactured war where high-level NATO strategists control both sides of the conflict. The cost of the overt side of this operation to the US taxpayer from August 8th, 2014 to January 30th, 2015 was $1.5 billion ($8.4million a day) according to the US Department of Defense, yet more money poured down the drain on this phony war on terror. The US would save itself a fortune along with a lot of bloodshed if it simply stopped funding and creating crazed terrorists in the first place. But of course the Military Industrial Complex would be far less wealthy if they did, in addition to there being no justification for a surveillance state in the West that the Stasi would be envious of.
How long the US-led coalition can pursue this duplicitous policy against ISIS is difficult to ascertain, but with the majority of the mainstream media complicit in promulgating the deception of the ‘anti-ISIS’ coalition, I won’t be holding my breath.
Steven MacMillan is an independent writer, researcher, geopolitical analyst and editor of The Analyst Report, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
