US seeks an excuse to step up military campaign against Syria: Analyst

The anti-Syria Western regimes have been calling for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step down, but Russia and China remain strongly opposed to the Western drive to oust the Syrian president.

An interview with editor of Executive Intelligence Review Lawrence Freeman to talk about the unrest in Syria.The following is an approximate transcript of the interview.

Q: Let’s look at this development. It’s the arrest of a group of Turkish and Saudi officers in Aleppo. What is your take on that? Does this mean that Turkey and Syria are just a drop away from war, given their proximity as neighbors? I mean, will Turkey and NATO in essence by default be perhaps actively involved there?

Freeman: Well, you have to look at the policy that’s coming right now from the United States and [US] President [Barack] Obama with support from the British and the French. The US right now is looking towards trying to create a no-fly zone over Syria.

    That’s one of the things they worked on militarily as a possible plan and of course we know where that led to in Libya. So the Turkish government is behaving very foolishly in aligning themselves with this Western policy, and they are now in a dangerous situation because they could be entering a confrontation with a whole Kurdish region deployed against them.

So the problem is that with the orientation that the West has, which is regime change, and this is what we see from President Obama, this comes from [Former British Prime Minister] Tony Blair, we see this from [US Ambassador to the United Nations] Susan Rice. They are intent on trying to overthrow this government, even though there is a potential now, for a better policy.

    I think with the defeat in Aleppo, there now is a moment where we could have some alternatives, such as may be discussed at this summit in Iran. Up to this point, it’s been the Russians in particular, who have held fast that they will not allow another repeat of Libya.

But we have to move beyond that to actually get some kind of resolution that does not begin with regime change or excluding the government of Syria.

Q: There are many people who are not applauding Iran's role in almost any shape or form and the most vehement and aggressive way has been by the Americans. What are the Americans so afraid of? It’s not Iran just having this conference; they have actually shown initiative to be somewhat of a mediator for future conferences which of course politically is the emphasis of involving the Syrian people.

Freeman: Well, if you look at the combination of Syria and Iran, these are two countries that right now are being targeted. You look at a comment from the former Russian Foreign Minister [Yevgeny] Primakov the other day. He said we are possibly looking at war. We’re looking at the possibility of the crazy [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu faction against his own people and against his own government, attacking Iran sometime between September and October.

    There are discussions that the United States will step up a military campaign in Syria before September. So you look at these two together and the game that’s being played is to threaten the world and to threaten Russia and China that these super powers who are moving in a different direction in the West, which is financially collapsing now, they are being threatened to submit to the hegemony of the NATO powers. And right now the Russians have not gone along with that and that has stalled their operation. They would like to see an overthrown government in Syria and Iran.

And I think the conference in Tehran [Tehran International Consultative Summit on Syria] is appropriate to bring countries together in the region to include the Syrian government and say we’re not for a regime change, and to work out a way that we can actually restore order to the country.

    But the US right now, every statement they’re making is ‘what are we going to do after Assad leaves?’ One of the danger points is what happens if their wish comes true? There would be a horror show, because you have al-Qaeda and other groups in there and there would be no quality representation in the government the Syrian people and you could have a complete blood bath.

So the chaos regime-change faction which you see from the Brits and people like Susan Rice and Obama in the US, these are the most dangerous people in pushing this. And right now the Russians and the US military, those in uniform at the highest levels have resisted this because they’re afraid of what the consequences would be.