Dirty war in Syria continues as media attention focuses elsewhere
The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Israel secretly coordinates with the U.S, on many of the airstrikes it carries out in eastern Syria near the al-Tanf military base, a U.S. outpost near the Syria-Jordan border.
Since 2017, the Israeli Air Force has cleared all planned flights with the U.S. Central Command, which conducts an assessment. The command also reports details of planned flights to the U.S. Defense Secretary and others, who can also choose to conduct assessments.
The Israeli strikes are illegal under international law and, according to the Russian ambassador to Syria, Alexander Yefimov, “leave human casualties, cause tangible material damage, violate Syria’s sovereignty, pose a threat to international civil aviation, and in general increase tension in the already escalating military-political situation.”
Officially, the purpose of the strikes is to interrupt Tehran’s flow of weapons to Lebanese Hezbollah—which established a “Golan liberation brigade” in support of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad”—and to diminish Iran’s military forces and proxies in Syria.
The U.S. claims that it wants to ensure that Israeli bombing raids do not interfere with the U.S.-led military campaign against Islamic State militants.
However, the Islamic State is the main opposition force to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, whom both Washington and Israel have long tried to overthrow.
The location of the strikes underscores an ulterior agenda, furthermore, which is to help sustain the U.S. military outpost at al-Tanf which has been targeted in drone attacks.
Al-Tanf houses prisoners of war and has been used as a base to train jihadists and other fighters seeking the overthrow of Assad. It is also located strategically near oil fields; U.S. troops have generally been positioned in Syria to “keep Syria’s oil,” as Donald Trump acknowledged when he was president.
In August 2020, Trump granted a sanctions waiver to a Delaware-based oil company, Delta Crescent Energy LLC with close ties to his administration, allowing it to develop oil fields that had been captured from the Islamic State by the Syrian Democratic Forces, Washington’s proxy troops consisting mainly of the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia.
The U.S. military trucked in components for two modular refineries to assist the company in exploiting and marketing Syrian oil.
Though the Biden administration rescinded the sanctions waiver, it has sustained at least 900 troops in Syria and bombed targets in Syria near the Iraqi border allegedly targeting pro-Iranian militias.
Syria’s Foreign Ministry told the official SANA news agency that the air raids—which killed a child on the Iraqi side of the border—demonstrated “the recklessness of U.S. policies and the need for Washington to withdraw its aggressor forces” from the region.
Washington’s Long War on Syria
As the World Socialist website put it, U.S. imperialism has been at war in Syria since launching a regime-change operation in 2011, using CIA-backed Islamist militias as its proxies in a bid to topple Assad’s government and impose a U.S. puppet government in Damascus.
The Obama administration launched a direct military intervention in Syria as well as Iraq on the pretext of combating the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), an offshoot of the very Islamist militias that it had previously armed and funded. The toll of these interventions is exemplified by the hundreds of thousands of dead and the millions of displaced.
Now the U.S. remains in Syria for the purpose of controlling and exploiting the country’s oil, as part of a broader military campaign to “impose a neo-colonial U.S. hegemony in the Middle East at the expense of Iran, and the countries the Pentagon defines as ‘great power’ rivals, China and Russia”—which is allied with Assad.
Working Together to Hemorrhage Syria to Death
For the Israelis, the overthrow of the Assad government would represent the final death of the Arab nationalist threat that has overhung the Jewish state since the early 1950s.
Such an outcome would also facilitate much greater freedom of action for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in the region, with Syrian ballistic missiles, chemical weapons and air defenses all having for decades been directed primarily at restraining Israel’s military power.
Israel furthermore wants to strike a blow at Hezbollah and Iran, which is allied with Assad, a Shia Allawite. Moshe Ya’alon, Israeli Defense Minister from 2013-2016, stated that, “in Syria, if it is a choice between Iran and the Islamic State, I choose the Islamic State … Our greatest enemy is the Iranian regime that has declared war on us.”
Former Israeli Consul General in New York Alon Pinkas told The New York Times in 2013 that, for Jerusalem, “this is a playoff situation in which you need both teams to lose, but at least you don’t want one to win [Syrian government forces]—we’ll settle for a tie. Let them both bleed, hemorrhage to death: that’s the strategic thinking here. As long as this lingers, there’s no real threat from Syria.”
These latter comments help to explain the purpose of the recent airstrikes better than anything and why the U.S. would assist with them.
By bleeding and hemorrhaging Syria to death—including also through the imposition of devastating sanctions—the U.S. could ensure that Assad remains isolated and Syria weak. Then it will remain unable to project its influence and revive the Pan-Arab project that several generations ago had begun to challenge U.S. primacy in the Middle East.
CovertAction Magazine is made possible by subscriptions, orders and donations from readers like you.
Blow the Whistle on U.S. Imperialism
Click the whistle and donate
When you donate to CovertAction Magazine, you are supporting investigative journalism. Your contributions go directly to supporting the development, production, editing, and dissemination of the Magazine.
CovertAction Magazine does not receive corporate or government sponsorship. Yet, we hold a steadfast commitment to providing compensation for writers, editorial and technical support. Your support helps facilitate this compensation as well as increase the caliber of this work.
Please make a donation by clicking on the donate logo above and enter the amount and your credit or debit card information.
CovertAction Institute, Inc. (CAI) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization and your gift is tax-deductible for federal income purposes. CAI’s tax-exempt ID number is 87-2461683.
We sincerely thank you for your support.
Disclaimer: The contents of this article are the sole responsibility of the author(s). CovertAction Institute, Inc. (CAI), including its Board of Directors (BD), Editorial Board (EB), Advisory Board (AB), staff, volunteers and its projects (including CovertAction Magazine) are not responsible for any inaccurate or incorrect statement in this article. This article also does not necessarily represent the views the BD, the EB, the AB, staff, volunteers, or any members of its projects.
Differing viewpoints: CAM publishes articles with differing viewpoints in an effort to nurture vibrant debate and thoughtful critical analysis. Feel free to comment on the articles in the comment section and/or send your letters to the Editors, which we will publish in the Letters column.
Copyrighted Material: This web site may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. As a not-for-profit charitable organization incorporated in the State of New York, we are making such material available in an effort to advance the understanding of humanity’s problems and hopefully to help find solutions for those problems. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. You can read more about ‘fair use’ and US Copyright Law at the Legal Information Institute of Cornell Law School.
Republishing: CovertAction Magazine (CAM) grants permission to cross-post CAM articles on not-for-profit community internet sites as long as the source is acknowledged together with a hyperlink to the original CovertAction Magazine article. Also, kindly let us know at info@CovertActionMagazine.com. For publication of CAM articles in print or other forms including commercial internet sites, contact: info@CovertActionMagazine.com.
By using this site, you agree to these terms above.
About the Author
Jeremy Kuzmarov holds a Ph.D. in American history from Brandeis University and has taught at numerous colleges across the United States. He is regularly sought out as an expert on U.S. history and politics for radio and TV programs and co-hosts a radio show on New York Public Radio and on Progressive Radio News Network called “Left on Left.” He is Managing Editor of CovertAction Magazine and is the author of five books on U.S. foreign policy, including Obama’s Unending Wars (Clarity Press, 2019), The Russians Are Coming, Again, with John Marciano (Monthly Review Press, 2018), and Warmonger. How Clinton’s Malign Foreign Policy Launched the U.S. Trajectory From Bush II to Biden (Clarity Press, 2023). Besides these books, Kuzmarov has published hundreds of articles and contributed to numerous edited volumes, including one in the prestigious Oxford History of Counterinsurgency . He can be reached at jkuzmarov2@gmail.com and found on substack here.
Minor correction: al-Tanf is on Syria’s southern border at the opposite end of Syria from its oilfields in the north-east. It has little to do with ”protecting the oil”. It has a lot to do with training Islamist jihadist terrorists, the Jabhat Maghaweer al-Thawra, a branch of al-Qaeda. al-Tanf also houses thousands of Syrian civilian prisoners — men, women and children, who are being slowly starved, as human shields. Progressively, these hostages are dying, or being ransomed by their own people. This is a Yanqui concentration camp.
[…] U.S. Exposed as “Secret Partner” in Israeli Airstrikes Against Syria that Violate Int’l La… […]
[…] Via https://covertactionmagazine.com/2022/06/29/u-s-exposed-as-secret-partner-in-israeli-airstrikes-agai… […]
There is a saying in Spanish…dime con quien andas y te dire quien eres. Tell me with whom you hang around and I’ll tell you who you are.
All war 0violate international Law. This makes no difference to our immoral, criminal, corrupt and greedy politicians because the ignorant, gullible and passive masses accept Militarism and the war industry. As for your “Dirty war in Syria continues”, remember that Assad is very well paid to allow his country to be destroyed. When the war started, the producer of it, and of the entire Arab Spring, “Peace” Envoy Tony Blair, speaking on behalf of the War Industry (War bank JP Morgan paid his salary) “We must keep Assad in power. He’s our best bet” The Film industry produces films, the Music industry produces instruments and concerts. The Car industry produces cars. the WAR INDUSTRY PRODUCES WARS. Any surprise????
Rubbish. Assad was offered many millions to leave his position. He answered, ‘I was made in Syria, and I will die in Syria’. You are a cynical nihilist. Your devious bollocks is a fail.