By Pete Papaherakles
A new article out on August 26 revealed that the United States and the UK are running the revolution in Syria out of a townhouse in a posh neighborhood in Istanbul. This news comes as another article by The New York Times details how the U.S. dominates global weapons sales, accounting for as much as 78% of the total trade in armaments.
The Syrian situation is presented as part of an “Arab Spring” rebellion. In truth, though, the turmoil is orchestrated by the West for its own geopolitical interests that include the hunt for natural resources like oil as well as making it safe for more Israeli land grabs.
In Istanbul, according to reports, dozens of Syrian dissidents have been brought to Turkey to be trained as leaders of the Assad opposition by the U.S. State Department’s Office of Syrian Opposition Support (OSOS) and Britain’s Foreign Office. They are given satellite communications and computers to act as a local “hub” linking rebels to the outside world.
The OSOS has officially set aside $25M to fund political opponents of Bashar al Assad, and the Foreign Office in the UK has handed out another £5M.
“There are groups inside and outside Syria beginning to plan for the day when Assad goes,” said the British consultant, “because he will go.”
Although this report reveals America and the UK are behind the Syrian insurgency, it does not address where the massive numbers of weapons the rebels use come from. The New York Times reported on August 26 that U.S. arms sales tripled in 2011 with massive sales to Middle Eastern countries. The volume of American weapons sales saw an “extraordinary increase,” the report said, “rising from $21.4B in 2010 to $66.3B in 2011, the largest single-year sales total in the history of U.S. arms exports.”
America is by far the biggest weapons exporter in the world, with 78% of the arms market. Russia is a distant second with only $4.8B in sales. The biggest purchaser by far was Saudi Arabia, with $33.4B. The Arab Emirates spent $4.5B, and Oman bought $1.4B worth of weapons. Hyped threats about an Iranian attack have brought huge profits for U.S. arms merchants. Western-backed Arab Spring “revolutions,” like the one in Syria, have also accounted for the rising demand for U.S. weapons.
There are other geopolitical interests at work in Syria that are eclipsed by the West’s alleged concerns about human rights and democracy. Syria has discovered in Qara one of the largest deposits of natural gas in the world. Russia, whose only military base in the Mediterranean is in Syria, is the world’s biggest natural gas producer and developer.
Control of energy resources is oftentimes the prime motivator for wars and “regime changes.” It was the main reason for the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, and it appears to play a major factor in the saber rattling by the West against Syria and especially Iran. Of course, the Zionist drive for the political conquest of the entire Middle East cannot be overstated.
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Peter Papaherakles, a U.S. citizen since 1986, was born in Greece. He is AFP’s outreach director. If you would like to see AFP speakers at your rally, contact Pete at 202-544-5977.
