PNAC: The Neocon Quest for US Hegemony through Regime Change Will Go Nowhere

Rasa - Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov couldn’t be more accurate when he said this week US, British and French Special Forces are “directly” engaged in the war on Syria and operating on the ground in the crisis-stricken country.

News ID: 436917

Date: 18 March 2018 - 23:34

RNA - In the words of the top Russian diplomat: “There are special forces on the ground in Syria from the US – they no longer deny it – the UK, France and a number of other countries. Thus, it’s not so much of a ‘proxy war,’ but rather a direct involvement in the war.”

It doesn’t take a strategic mind to see that the US-led coalition in Syria, which is purportedly fighting the ISIL Takfiri group, is illegitimate from the standpoint of International Law and the UN Charter. They are not there to fight terrorists – their own creation. They are there to carry on the second phase of their failed quest for regime change, and to that end, they are targeting the Syrian government forces and their allies. Any doubters should ask US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley, who said last week that Washington was ready to unilaterally act against Syria just as it did last year when it bombed a Syrian government air base over baseless allegations of a chemical weapons attack.

This is in line with the US, when France and the UK also say they will consider strikes on Syria if such gas attack claims are proven. Their comments and those uttered by Haley are only aimed at throwing their sinking terror proxies a lifeline, provoking a chemical attack by them, and fabricating evidence against Damascus. After all, they admit that they are backing militants fighting to topple the Syrian government. They have been bombarding what they call ISIL positions since September 2014 without any authorization from the Damascus government or a UN mandate, which says the strikes have on many occasions resulted in civilian casualties and failed to fulfill their declared aim of countering terrorism.

All this and more brings to mind an important US plan, though, A Clean Break: Project for the New American Century, to re-mold the Middle East. It first involved destroying Iraq. Destroying Syria was to be next. And then Iran.

It is important to remember that the chaos in Syria was not unforeseen by those who promoted the American regime change campaign. The country is now deliberately ripped apart by the American politics of divide and rule, foreign-backed terrorists, tribes, clans, sects, and suchlike, and out of the chaos in Syria, the US and its principal allies, namely Israel and Saudi Arabia, wanted to divide Syria and redraw the region’s map.

Of course, all this failed, but the bloody-minded arrogance and the classic imperial overreach remain in post-ISIL Syria, supported by many powerful American-Israeli-Saudi war interests and proxies – with an eye on Iran. President Donald Trump has even declared that Iran is violating its nuclear agreement although the IAEA and all the other signatories state that it is in compliance. Undermining the Iran nuclear accord, first with Washington imposing tighter economic sanctions to contain the growing power of the only nation standing against their imperial designs in the region, is now on the table as Washington’s next Middle East project.

The only problem is that the world is different from when the neocon plan was first hatched with Afghanistan and Iraq invasions. Firstly, it was the allied forces of Iran, Syria, Russia and Hezbollah that dismantled ISIL and its American caliphate. They are now standing their ground inside Syria and the US can’t do a thing about it. Secondly, Iran has a vastly stronger missile program to retaliate against the US Navy and nearby American air bases in the Persian Gulf. Iran is three times as large as Iraq and far less subject to fractional internal ethnic divisions.

In point of fact, America’s best policy option would be to treat ISIL and Al-Qaeda as its primary foes, to withdraw its coalition of more than 70 members that are conducting illegal airstrikes in Syria, and to strive for serious engagement with Iran and Russia to end its unending war. The War Party’s outdated Project for the New American Century should be dispatched to oblivion too. The neocon quest for the US hegemony through regime change paved the way for the rise of ISIL in Iraq, a symptom of the shortcomings of current Western - particularly US - strategy. The PNAC project failed miserably in Syria as the latest example. It won’t succeed anywhere else in the Middle East, much less in Iran.

Source: Fars News Agency

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