Tag: regime change

The US wants credit for Assad’s ouster

Officials in the Biden administration are taking credit for creating conditions in Syria that enabled opposition forces to overthrow the Syrian government.

Now that opposition forces have ousted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, administration officials are insisting that longstanding U.S. policies, including actions taken by the Biden administration against Assad’s supporters, made the overthrow of the Syrian government possible. Administration officials deny that they aided Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the U.S.-designated terrorist organization that led the drive to overthrow Assad, but they insist that they facilitated the opposition’s victory, citing years of U.S. efforts to empower the opposition and weaken the Syrian government.

U.S. policy “has led to the situation we’re in today,” State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller said in a December 9 press briefing, the day after Assad fled the country. It “was developed during the latter stages of the Obama administration” and “has largely carried through to this day.”

White House Spokesperson John Kirby agreed, giving credit to the president. “We believe that developments in Syria very much prove the case of President Biden’s assertive foreign policy,” Kirby said in remarks to the press on December 10.

US policy 

For over a decade, the United States has sought regime change in Syria. Officials in Washington have openly called for an end to the rule of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the repressive and authoritarian leader who first began ruling Syria in 2000, following decades of rule by his father, Hafez al-Assad.

U.S. efforts to oust Assad date back to 2011, when Syria descended into a civil war. As Assad responded to popular uprisings with violent crackdowns, the United States began supporting multiple armed groups, several of which were seeking the overthrow of the Syrian government.

The Obama administration designed the initial U.S. strategy to oust Assad. Hoping to avoid “catastrophic success,” or a situation in which extremists ousted Assad and seized power, the administration decided on a stalemate strategy. The United States provided opposition forces with enough support to keep pressure on Assad but not enough to overthrow him.

The administration’s goal was “a political settlement, a scenario that relies on an eventual stalemate among the warring factions rather than a clear victor,” U.S. officials explained at the time, as reported by The Washington Post.

The Obama administration came close to achieving its objectives in 2015, when opposition forces began moving into areas around Damascus. With Assad under growing pressure, it appeared that he might lose his grip on power and be forced to negotiate or surrender.

As opposition forces gained momentum, however, Assad received a lifeline from Russia, which intervened to save him. By coming to Assad’s assistance with airstrikes and military support, Russia enabled Assad to turn the tide against the rebels and remain in power.

Following Russia’s intervention, the civil war largely settled into stalemate, which left Syria divided into different areas of control. Assad consolidated his control of Damascus and the surrounding areas with support from Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah. Many opposition forces regrouped in northwestern Syria, where they received support from Turkey. Kurdish-led forces, which were separate from the opposition, carved out an autonomous region in northeastern Syria, keeping another part of the country outside of Assad’s control.

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Blinken Admits Past 20 Years Of US Regime Change Efforts Abroad Basically A Failure

Now with just weeks to go before the Trump administration takes over the White House, Secretary of State Antony Blinken has issued some interesting and surprising admissions. He told an audience of the Council on Foreign Relations on Wednesday that Biden’s policy on Iran hasn’t been more muscular because Washington’s regime change efforts in the region over the past two decades have basically been failures. 

It’s rare for a top official who is still in office to so bluntly describe that regime change efforts have been doomed. Blinken had been asked specifically of the US supporting Iranian opposition groups to overthrow the government in Tehran.

“I think if we look at the last 20 years, our experiments in regime change have not exactly been resounding successes,” he responded. “So, I think we have to have an appropriate degree of humility in focusing in that way on a problem.”

He also said at one point, “There’s no doubt this has not been a good year for Iran, and we’re seeing that play out every single day.” 

He laid out that Iranian leaders now have to make “fundamental” choices:

“One choice it could make and should make is to focus on itself and focus on trying to build a better, more successful country that delivers for its people … and to stop getting involved in these adventures or misadventures throughout the region.”

Foreign media seized on the comments, particularly state media in Russia and China. For example, Russia’s RT ran a headline which somewhat stretched Blinken’s words to say “US admits attempts at regime-change in Iran.”

“US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has publicly admitted that over the past two decades Washington has conducted experiments seeking regime change in Iran,” the RT report said. “Efforts to topple the Islamic Republic’s leadership, however, have failed, he admitted.”

And China’s Xinhua had this headline: “Blinken admits failure of decades-long U.S. effort seeking regime change in Iran.”

The Chinese state media report also reads a lot into Blinken’s words, claiming that he “publicly admitted Wednesday that his country’s efforts spanning the last 20 years to seek regime change in Iran did not yield much success.”

While it’s clear that countries from Afghanistan to Iraq to Libya to Syria were all targeted for regime change in the last twenty years, it’s uncertain whether Washington ever made a decision to focus efforts on overthrowing the leadership of the Islamic Republic. Certainly, however, there have been efforts to weaken and degrade the country, including Trump’s 2020 assassination by drone strike of IRGC Quds Force General Qasem Soleimani.

Blinken also had some interesting words on Iran’s nuclear program, saying that it is “not inevitable” that Iran will purse and achieve a bomb. “This is something that may be more a question now because they’ve lost different tools. They’ve lost different lines of defense,” he said.

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Serbian PM Vučić Says ‘He’s Not Assad’, Vows To Defend His Country, as He Accuses Foreign Intelligence Services of Attempting To Overthrow His Government

In today’s Europe, any leader who maintains neutrality in the West’s push against Russia is potentially an enemy – just ask much-maligned Hungary’s Viktor Orbán or Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico, who was shot several times by an angry leftist back in May and barely survived the vicious attack.

Read about that in Hungary’s Orbán Says That Poland’s Government and PM Tusk Were ‘Installed’ by the European Union To Topple the Previous Populist Leadership – And Now Budapest Is the New Target.

Now, it’s time for the Serbian leader to denounce pretty much the same, as globalists stage protests in the country to pressure President Aleksandar Vučić to resign.

Newsweek reported:

“Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić said on Tuesday he will not flee the country like ousted Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, in response to the protests that continue to spread across his nation.”

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Muhammad al-Bashir Authorized to Form Interim Government in Syria

Mohammed al-Bashir, the head of the so-called “salvation government,” said on Tuesday that the Syrian opposition had authorized him to form an interim government in the country.

“By decision of the General Command, we have been authorized to form an interim government. This will be done tentatively by March 1, 2025,” al-Bashir told Al Hadath broadcaster.

The so-called “salvation government” was formed by opposition forces in Idlib since January 2024.

Syrian armed opposition groups captured Damascus on Sunday. Syrian Prime Minister Mohammad Ghazi al-Jalali said that he and 18 other ministers had decided to remain in the capital. Jalali also said he was in contact with the leaders of militant groups that had entered the city. The Russian Foreign Ministry said that Syrian President Bashar Assad had stepped down and left Syria after negotiations with some participants in the Syrian conflict.

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What we know about Mohammed al-Bashir, head of Syria’s interim government

On December 10, 2024, news emerged about the appointment of Mohammed al-Bashir as the head of Syria’s interim government. The decision was made at a joint meeting of the Council of Ministers, which previously reported to President Bashar Assad, and an alternative government formed by opposition groups in 2017. The interim government’s mandate is expected to last three months.

Mohammed al-Bashir was born into a Sunni family in Syria’s northwestern Idlib province in 1983. In 2007, he received a degree in technology from Aleppo University and, in 2021, earned a Sharia law degree from Idlib University. He also completed a course in administration and project management and worked at a plant belonging to the Syria Gas Company.

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Assad’s Downfall Proves Neocons Have Learned Nothing From Disastrous Middle East Meddling

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has fled his country, now under the protection of Vladimir Putin in Moscow. In only a few days, a regime that had withstood over a decade of brutal civil war crumbled into dust before the onslaught of a new rebel offensive.

Now, Syria teeters on the brink of tribal mayhem as disparate factions espousing differing strains of radical Islamism begin to squabble over the carcass and jostle for power. ISIS has even reemerged as part of the victorious rebel coalition, prompting U.S. airstrikes over the weekend.

But, on cue, the neocons crawled out of the woodwork to gloat, finding some solace in the bloodshed and mayhem after their recent electoral drubbing. In a little over 24 hours, they proved that they’ve learned nothing from over two decades of disastrous American meddling in the Middle East.

Unrepentant warmonger and Never Trumper Bill Kristol wasted no time waxing poetic on the carnage, posting on X, “The fall of Assad. On some days, one can believe that while the arc of the moral universe is long, it bends toward justice.” Perhaps the image of a toppled Assad statue reminded Kristol of when the same thing happened during the fall of Saddam Hussein in Iraq — back when people actually cared about what he had to say.

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Will the West’s Gamble in Syria and Georgia Succeed?

If you are looking at the war in Ukraine, the attempted Maidan coup in Georgia and the Salafist jihadi offensive in Syria as separate, unconnected events, you are mistaken. The United States, with the collaboration of several NATO countries — the UK in particular — has embarked on a desperate campaign to try to salvage victory from looming defeat.

During the Cold War, the American public was sold a flaming-bag of dog excrement that portrayed the Soviet Union as an implacable foe intent on sowing communist revolutions around the world. Most Americans accepted that narrative and justified wars in Vietnam, Angola and Central America as existential threats that required ever increasing defense budgets.

But then, the Soviet Union imploded in 1991, and the Berlin Wall — an iconic symbol of the Cold War — was dismantled and the raison d’etre of fighting communism vanished. What to do? Follow Abraham Lincoln’s plan for reconciling with the South in the aftermath of the Civil War? Hell no. Russia still had to be treated as an enemy.

The fascism that is at the heart of the American establishment — i.e., a cozy, corrupt relationship were corporations grow wealthy from supplying over-priced military technology by bribing the Congress to pony up billions of dollars — continued to look for enemies abroad and launched meaningless, but profitable, wars of expedition in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Serbia and Syria. None of those ventures succeeded in bringing peace and stability to those nations.

Why fight these wars? To what purpose? The answer is simple: gain control of the vast resources controlled by Russia, China and Iran. During the first quarter of the 21st Century, the US milked the Global War on Terror to justify expanding a security state that resembles the heinous conduct of the Soviet Union in its darkest moments. Yet, while ostensibly focused on fighting Islamic extremism, we have seen the United States knowingly and wittingly arm and train some of the very Islamic radicals we claimed we were fighting.

Which brings us to the re-ignition of the war in Syria. Turkey is a useful and willing pawn in this lethal game. The goal? Create conditions to justify a war with Iran and weaken both Russia and China. Unfortunately, most Americans are still willing to accept the propaganda and will support these efforts until there is an economic or military crisis that inflicts pain and suffering on the US.

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Who Perpetrated the 2014 Ukraine ‘Maidan Coup’ That Started Ukraine’s War?

On 22 October 2024, the BBC headlined “The ex-British army chief on why peace with Russia is not possible,” and at 5:00 in the podcast he said “We’ve been there [in Ukraine] since 2014, we’ve had a presence in Ukraine, we’ve been working with them, and trying to build up their capability,” and then he immediately skipped forward to 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine. He didn’t say from what precise date in 2014 was — was it before, or instead only after, the 20 February 2014 coup — that the UK’s Army was “working with them, and trying to build up their capability,” to use those weapons so as to bring down the democratically elected President of Ukraine, but he went on to say that The West unfortunately “frittered away” “that wonderful unipolar moment” [the UK/U.S Governments’ control over the entire world] into “serious competition with the great powers — Russia, China, Iran, North Korea — this Axis [he was saying that this is the modern equivalent of WW2’s “Axis” or fascist-imperialist powers], and I think the world is as dangerous as I’ve known it, in some respects more dangerous than the Cold War, because The System, you know, The International Order, which kind-of kept us safe, that is a period of extraordinary peace and prosperity, has ended … and we’ve now got these great powers, this Axis of powers, trying to overturn The World Order, and I don’t think that peace with Russia is possible.” He is saying that unless and until The West will conquer Russia, there wil be war between The West and Russia. “Russia sees itself in existential conflict with The West. Putin’s aims are … take over Ukraine, dominate its near east, including parts of Eastern Europe, and dismantle the Euro-Atlantic security order that we enjoy. And so, this isn’t a crisis, this is a campaign … and it will go on for decades. … And this is why Ukraine is so important, because if you allow Russia to prevail in Ukraine, if you follow the path we’re on at the moment, which is leading inexorably to a Russian victory … then The International Order is unfrayed, so things like sovereignty, territorial integrity, don’t matter, war wins, you begin to see the dismantling of The European Order — these are institutions that have been tested by this conflict, and on a practical level, you end up with a bitter and angry Ukraine, a quarter of the world’s grain supplies being held by Russia, all of its [Ukraine’s] extraordinary military capability and technology — Ukraine is the most heavily armed country in Europe now — falling to Russia, … we should be really clear that the cost of failure is far greater than the price it would take in order to make sure that Ukraine prevails. … This is about OUR security, but by keeping Ukraine in the fight, you can get to a point where you achieve a mutually [blurred syllable] stalemate. … And we need to give Ukraine the ability to strike deep into Russia [bomb The Kremlin].” He wants World War Three, which the UK’s Prime Minister and Denmark’s Prime Minister likewise want.

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Did the Abraham Accords Pave the Way for Total War?

The Abraham Accords, the U.S.-sponsored alliance between Israel and several Arab states, were supposed to get the United States out of the Middle East. At least, that’s what many conservative proponents argued.

In 2020, neoconservative writer Michael Doran argued in Tablet magazine that the accords were an agreement to “step up and bear more of the burden so that America can step back.” Two years later, the hawkish Washington Institute for Near East Affairs claimed that the accords were allowing Washington “to gradually withdraw from the Middle East to focus its efforts and resources on the Pacific Ocean, the rise of China, and the consequences of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.”

Sen. J.D. Vance (R–Ohio) has even made this strategy a large part of his foreign policy pitch. A few months before being nominated as former President Donald Trump’s running mate, Vance told the antiwar Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft that “combining the Abraham Accords approach with the enduring defeat of Hamas” will ensure that “Israel, with the Sunni nations, can actually police their region of the world. That allows us to spend less time and less resources in the Middle East.”

That’s not how former Trump administration official Jared Kushner, a key architect of the accords, sees it. Over the weekend, he posted an essay to social media arguing that the United States should build on the “Abraham Accords breakthrough” by backing an Israeli war in Lebanon, and hinted that the time is ripe for a wider U.S. war. “Iran is now fully exposed,” he wrote, adding that “it’s not only Israel’s fight.”

Of course, the Trump administration has never pretended that the Abraham Accords were meant to allow U.S. disengagement; then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo bragged about unlocking more “defense cooperation.” The Biden administration itself promised a permanent U.S. military commitment to Abraham Accords member Bahrain in order to entice Saudi Arabia to join the alliance.

But Kushner’s essay moves the goalposts from a defensive commitment to an offensive one. It’s now hard to pretend that the vision is anything less than a regime change campaign on the scale that old-fashioned neoconservatives could only dream of.

Kushner wrote his essay in response to the Israeli assassination of Hezbollah commander Hassan Nasrallah. Hezbollah, a Lebanese militia backed by Iran, had been engaged in a low-grade border war with Israel for the past year. Israel decided to assassinate Nasrallah after he kept demanding an end to the Israeli war in Gaza in exchange for a ceasefire in Lebanon, an Israeli official told NBC.

The Israeli army is now beginning a ground incursion into Lebanon, after the Biden administration reportedly talked Israel out of a full-on ground invasion. However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has hinted at even larger plans, calling Nasrallah’s assassination “Operation New Order” and stating that the fall of the Iranian government “will come a lot sooner than people think.”

Nasrallah’s assassination “is significant because Iran is now fully exposed. The reason why their nuclear facilities have not been destroyed, despite weak air defense systems, is because Hezbollah has been a loaded gun pointed at Israel,” Kushner wrote. “The right move now for America would be to tell Israel to finish the job. It’s long overdue. And it’s not only Israel’s fight,” he added.

Kushner added that Iran is the “main issue between Lebanon and Israel” and brought up Hezbollah’s role in killing U.S. Marines in 1983, during the last U.S. military intervention in Lebanon.

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Leaked files expose covert US government plot to ‘destabilize Bangladesh’s politics’

Leaked docs reveal that prior to the toppling of Bangladeshi PM Sheikh Hasina, the US govt-funded International Republican Institute trained an army of activists including rappers and “LGBTQI people,” even hosting “transgender dance performances,” to achieve a national “power shift.” Institute staff said the activists “would cooperate with IRI to destabilize Bangladesh’s politics.”

On August 5, months of violent street protests finally toppled Bangladesh’s elected Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. When the military seized power and announced the imposition of a so-called “interim administration,” video footage showed Hasina fleeing to India aboard a helicopter. As vast swarms of student protesters overran the presidential palace, Western media outlets and many of their progressive-leaning consumers cheered the rebellion, framing it as a decisive defeat of fascism and the restoration of democratic rule.

Hasina’s replacement, Muhammad Yunus, is a longtime Clinton Global Initiative fellow granted a Nobel Prize for pioneering the dubious practice of micro-lending. While Yunus has hailed the “meticulously-designed” protest movement that thrust him into power, Hasina personally accused Washington of working to remove her from power over her alleged refusal to allow a US military base on Bangladeshi territory. The State Department has dismissed allegations of US meddling as “laughable,” with spokesman Vedant Patel telling reporters that “any implication that the United States was involved in Sheikh Hasina’s resignation is absolutely false.”

But now, leaked documents reviewed by The Grayzone confirm the State Department was informed of efforts by the International Republican Institute (IRI) to advance an explicitly stated mission to “destabilize Bangladesh’s politics.” The documents are marked as “confidential and/or privileged.”

IRI is a Republican Party-run subsidiary of the National Endowment for Democracy, which has fueled an array of regime change operations across the globe since it was conceived in the office of CIA Director William Casey over forty years ago.

The newly-uncovered files reveal how IRI spent millions in the lead-up to Hasina’s overthrow covertly coaching opposition parties and establishing a regime change network concentrated among the country’s urban youth. Among the GOP-run Institute’s front line foot soldiers were rappers, ethnic minority leaders, LGBT activists hosting “transgender dance performances” in the presence of US embassy officials – all groomed to facilitate what the US intelligence cutout called a “power shift” in Bangladesh.

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