Syria and Greater Israel
Also featuring the Qatar pipeline project
Dear friends, you may remember that I warned that the march towards war with Iran was initiated decades ago and referred you back to the 1986 book by Benjamin Netanyahu, Terrorism: How the West can win. I suspect that this book was instrumental in shaping the aggressive Wolfowitz Doctrine, prepared by U.S. Under Secretary of State and leaked in 1992. That note also included a short video clip from General Wesley Clark where he expressed surprise that he was being told that the purpose of the U.S. army was to “start wars and change governments”1. This note is a short update given the events in Syria.
I am not an expert in this very complicated space, but based on what I have read over the years it looks like four initiatives led to the fall of Bashar al-Assad, in approximate order of importance these were:
· The Qatar-Turkey pipeline project (includes Sunni-Shia rivalry).
· The Greater Israel project.
· Putin Derangement Syndrome.
· President Erdogan’s Ottoman ambitions.
I discuss the first two initiatives below.
The politicians playing these games are generally far from Syria itself and will not have to suffer the disastrous consequences of installing the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) Jihadist regime in Syria. This is a burden that will largely fall on Syrian Christians, non-Sunni Muslims and most likely women and girls in Syria.
The pipeline war
The pipeline war theory was set out in detail by Robert Kennedy Jr. in 20162. He describes two competing gas pipeline proposals, one from Qatar to Turkey and another more or less parallel project from Iran-Iraq through to Lebanese coast (the “Islamic pipeline”, red line). The Qatar-Turkey pipeline was promoted by primarily Sunni Muslim countries and supported by the Western Deep State, the Islamic pipeline was backed by primarily Shia countries and supported by Russia. Both proposed pipeline routes went through Syria (see map)
In Kennedy’s analysis, he states that the Deep State refused to accept Bashar al-Assad’s decision to back the Iran-Russia proposal and subsequently decided to regime change Assad by funding Sunni insurgents. This plan was apparently hatched between U.S., Saudi and Israeli intelligence agencies around 2009. This is of course exactly the scenario that we saw play out over the past couple of months. When something that was apparently planned 15 years ago turns into a reality, it is reasonable to assume that U.S., Saudi and Israeli intelligence agencies steered events through to the final removal of Assad by the Jihadi terrorist organisation Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).
This rivalry between the Sunni and the Shia branches of Islam appears to be so strong that the Sunni Muslims were cooperating with Israel in the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad.
The entire Western propaganda apparatus, sorry free press, is telling us to sing the praises of the HTS “rebel fighters” who are providing an opportunity for freedom for the long-suffering Syrian people. The U.S. (and most other countries) classifies these “rebel fighters” as a terrorist group responsible for “terrorist activities, massacres and kidnapping.” The U.S. State Department even posted a $ 10 million reward for information concerning HTS’ leader, Muhammad Al-Jawlani, who is classified as a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist”3.
Western leaders are now busily reversing this designation and making pious statements about their hopes for peace together with empty calls to respect civilians. Calling on terrorists not to terrorise is pretty ridiculous in my view and our politicians must know that this group will certainly oppress and possibly kill Christians and non-Sunni Muslims. Initial reports from on the ground reporter Vanessa Beeley were terrifying.
Greater Israel
In addition to the Qatar-Turkey pipeline agenda, there is also a Greater Israel agenda. The Greater Israel agenda was documented by Oded Yiddon in 1982 and published in Hebrew in a journal called KIVUNIM. The paper starts with a biblical view of what the Promised Land is. The area that is claimed runs from the river of Egypt (Nile) up to the Euphrates (Genesis 15) and includes parts of Syria and Lebanon. This area is the shaded in the below map, which has been doing the rounds on social media.
Here Greater Israel goes not from the “river to the sea” but from the “river to the river”. Under ordinary circumstances, this plan may have stayed on a shelf somewhere, however these are not ordinary circumstances. The main problem now is that Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet includes two radical Zionists, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir. The political parties that these people represent (Religious Zionist Party and Otzma Yehudit) have a somewhat low, but growing level of support amongst the Israeli electorate at 10.8%, but because their support is important for Netanyahu’s governing coalition they are able to exercise outsized influence. The former head of the Israeli Intelligence Service (Shin Bet), Ami Ayalon, openly describes these two individuals as terrorists4.
Bezalel Smotrich has already said that he supports the Greater Israel project and wants to see Israel’s borders extend to Damascus.
Whilst the Yiddon document is morally reprehensible, there is a certain undeniable realpolitik logic to it. The document identifies competing religious and tribal loyalties within each country surrounding Israel and then seeks ways to exploit these rivalries in order to destabilise and weaken the countries. With regards to Syria, the document states "The dissolution of Syria and Iraq later on into ethnically or religiously unique areas such as in Lebanon, is Israel's primary target on the Eastern front in the long run."
There appears to be an almost exact overlap between the countries identified in the Yiddon paper and the 1986 Netanyahu book.
Based on the interview with the former head of Shin Bet, it appears that the Netanyahu government was willing to finance even Hamas in order to act a counter-weight to the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, so that these two Palestinian bodies would fight amongst themselves. Divide-and-conquer at work.
This is important because Israel is not any old foreign country, but it is a country which exercises enormous influence over the United States. The level of this influence was first described in Professor Mearsheimer and Professor Walt’s seminal paper “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” from 20065. This issue is only now receiving the widespread attention which it deserves, almost twenty years after their paper was first published.
Conclusion
What can we take away from all of this? As I suggested, it appears that a number of important forces have been driving events in the Middle East and particularly in Syria, including;
· The Qatar-Turkey pipeline project (includes Sunni-Shia rivalry).
· The Greater Israel project.
· Putin Derangement Syndrome.
· President Erdogan’s Ottoman ambitions.
The interests of the people of Syria, or the U.S. taxpayers who pay for these adventures don’t really seem to feature in these geopolitical machinations. The people playing these games in Washington have very little skin in the game, they are far away and won’t be oppressed by HTS or held accountable for any subsequent humanitarian disasters. They will however be well rewarded with campaign funds from the Israel lobby and probably cushy consultancy, or lobbying roles with the significant commercial interests pushing the Qatar-Turkey pipeline project.
The people of Syria will certainly pay a heavy price for the imposition of actual terrorists in Syria. Looking at a map of the Middle-East (see appendix), Syria was one of the few secular countries in the region which had a meaningful Christian population. Lebanon is another secular country, but there is no way of knowing if this will now be overrun too.
I don’t know much about the Bashar al-Assad regime and doubtless it was unsavoury in certain areas, but it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that the HTS regime will be significantly worse.
The propaganda fairy story being pushed by the U.K. politicians and media is so ridiculous that a large number of people are not buying it. It has also been interesting to see which social media personalities are pushing this propaganda, including Maajid Nawaz. The idea that a country run by Jihadi terrorists whilst being bombed and dismembered by its neighbours (Israel and Turkey) is going to enter a new dawn of freedom and prosperity must be for the birds.
Oppression of Christians in U.K.
I recently interviewed the brave Isabel Vaughan-Spruce about the rough treatment she received at the hands of the U.K. authorities for the “crime” of praying silently outside abortion clinics. I hope to post that soon.
If you are interested in suggestions about how to fix the U.K. please look at the post called “Ok give us some solutions”.
Let me have your thoughts below and please don’t forget to circulate our material and support our work, I hope you appreciate that it requires a lot of analysis to presents important facts which are not to be found in the mainstream media, or in the bulk of the controlled alternative media. If more people don’t take the time to convert to paid subscription and/or fund us via Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/c/ThinkingSlow) then we must close down, which would be a loss for all of us.
Alex Kriel is by training a physicist and was one of the first people to highlight the flawed nature of the Imperial COVID model6, he is a founder of the Thinking Coalition which comprises a group of citizens who are concerned about Government overreach (www.thinkingcoalition.com)
Appendix
Here comes the next forever war
Following the Hamas attack on Israel in October 2023, I wrote this background briefing on the geopolitical players and thinking that got us into seemingly endless wars with the Muslim world.