British Permanent War Plans
for Mideast Run into Trouble
by Nancy Spannaus
July 16—The evidence is conclusive: It was Muslim Brotherhood President Mohamed Morsi's decision to sever relations with Syria, without first consulting with his Defense Minister and Supreme Commander, Gen. Abdul Fatah al-Sisi, that tipped the balance in the Egyptian military's decision to oust Morsi from power. With that action, the Egyptian military put a block in front of the British Empire's plans for bringing Egypt in on its permanent war plans for Syria and beyond, plans that will, if unchecked, lead directly to a thermonuclear confrontation between the Empire forces, and Russia and China.
The source is Mohamed Hassanein Heikal, the grand old man of Egyptian journalism, born Sept 23, 1923. His first reporting assignment was covering the Second Battle of El Alamein in 1942. He was a close friend and confidante of President Gamal Abdel Nasser; editor of the main Cairo newspaper al-Ahram, 1957-74; and the author of a dozen widely read books.
"On the day of that Syrian conference [June 15], Morsi phoned al-Sisi to inform him that he had taken a decision to sever ties with Syria," Heikal said in a televised interview.
Heikal said that he had been in regular contact with al-Sisi in the run-up to Morsi's ouster.
"Al-Sisi told him that such a decision would not make any difference in the complicated situation there [in Syria], stressing the importance of maintaining relations. But Morsi told him he had already made up his mind, and that he only wanted to inform Al-Sisi."
EIR's own high-level Washington sources have confirmed this story, and have stressed that the top Egyptian commanders kept their American military counterparts fully informed about their plans. The U.S. military leadership, led by U.S. Chief of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey, has itself been working non-stop to try to prevent an escalation of conflict in the greater Middle East region, including objecting to a no-fly zone.
So far, that blocking action has worked. Opposition to arming the Syrian rebels—a policy announced by Obama a few weeks ago—is growing more strident on both sides of the Atlantic (see following article). At the same time, the Russians are making it clear, through their own unprecedented military preparations, and their revelations about the Syrian opposition, just how dramatic are the stakes of military escalation in the region.
Morsi's Threat
As the millions of Egyptians who took to the streets to demand his removal attested, Mohamed Morsi was never, in his view, the President of all Egyptians, but rather, a representative of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) sect, which is bent on winning power for its form of radical Islam. From the moment he took power, he moved to place members of the MB into crucial positions in all institutions, and to whip up jihadi sentiment, including by providing a platform for the message of Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Qatar-based spiritual leader of MB and Salafi terrorists who issued the fatwa in 2011 for Libyan rebels to kill Muammar Qaddafi.
Qaradawi, an Egyptian by birth, has issued a call for "Sunni jihad in Syria," reported London's Daily Telegraph June 3. He was the head of the International Union of Muslim Scholars, and the host of an Al-Jazeera TV program that goes out in 40 countries. Although not officially in the Brotherhood, he is a long-time Anglo-Saudi agent for holy war, who has used London and Qatar as bases. Qaradawi's organization, the International Union, provided the major speakers for the June 10-15 "Syria Solidarity Week" in Cairo where Morsi made his announcement of cutting relations.
According to the top Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar on July 9, unnamed Egyptian military sources report that Morsi had also planned to carry out a coup. He had ordered the military to arrest leading opposition and media figures—but Republican Guard chief Gen. Mohamed Zaki had declined to execute the order. Morsi had also begun to plan to fire al-Sisi and other senior commanders, but was thwarted by precisely executed precautions taken by the Zaki, up to the moment al-Sisi made his announcement that Morsi could be removed peacefully.
Permanent War
The decision by the MB President was in line with the overall British imperial plan for the Southwest Asia region—permanent sectarian war among Islamic factions, and every other religion, which will destroy lives, states, and prevent world peace for decades to come. That has been the overall policy of war and depopulation that has dominated the world increasingly since the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and again, with the British-Saudi act of terror on Sept. 11, 2001.
The Saudis remain key actors in feeding this mayhem, which has been destroying the nation of Syria and its neighbors. While the Assad government has remained intact, and is taking back territory, the Saudi-backed rebel forces are acting out the Empire's bestial script of war against Christians, Alawites, and those they accuse of being "secularist" Muslims.
On July 12, militants linked to al-Qaeda in Syria killed a member of the Free Syrian Army's Supreme Military Council, and announced that they consider the FSA to be heretics who should be wiped out. "The Islamic State [what al-Qaeda forces call themselves—ed.] phoned me, saying they killed Abu Bassel and that they will kill all of the Supreme Military Council," the FSA spokesman told Reuters.
Clearly, such threats, coming from forces that film themselves beheading, eviscerating, and even cannibalizing their enemies, have to be taken seriously.
The Russians Act
The British and French governments, and the Obama Administration, continue to declare their support for the Syrian opposition, whose backbone is comprised of these cannibals. The proposal worked out between U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov for an international peace conference has been allowed to languish, largely due to the fact that the Western countries won't demand that the opposition come to the table, and continue to insist on the removal of President Assad.
On July 9, the Russian government took a new action to try to isolate the jihadis. UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin delivered an 80-page report to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, on the conclusion of Russian experts that the Syrian rebels were responsible for the March 19, 2013 sarin gas attack in an Aleppo suburb, that killed 26 people and injured 86 others. Churkin said that the samples taken from the impact site were examined in a Russian laboratory certified by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, and that Russian experts personally collected the samples, rather than having them handed to them by third parties, as was the case for the samples analyzed by the U.S., Britain, and France.
A video released by the Arab news agency AhlulBayt on July 15 showed packs of chemical materials labeled "Made in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia," in a warehouse raided by the Syrian Army.
Yet, as Churkin stressed, the Western nations continue to throw out a confetti of "the maximum number of allegations with minimum credibility" about the Syrian government using chemical weapons, thus blocking a serious UN investigation.
The Russians Are Prepared
Faced with the seeming intransigence of the Western nations in pursuit of their regime-change policy—especially that of President Obama—the Russian government has drawn the logical conclusion: It has to be prepared militarily to defend itself. From the time, in August 2011, of the overthrow of Muammar Qaddafi, against all international law, the Russians have known, and said repeatedly, that ultimately, they will be the target of the Empire's policy of destroying national sovereignty, in the pursuit of its policy of world domination and depopulation.
The Chinese will not be far behind on the target list.
From the Fall of 2011 on, the Russian leadership has moved to up its military preparedness, with the reorganization of its military-industrial sector and leadership. President Vladimir Putin has also called a number of extraordinary military exercises, of which the world would do well to take notice.
The snap military exercises in Russia's Eastern Military District, ordered Putin on July 12, are the largest since the Soviet period, reported Russia Today, and may even be the largest anywhere since the end of the Cold War. According to various Russian press reports and statements from the Defense Ministry, 160,000 troops from all service branches are involved. TU-95 Bear strategic bombers based in the Amur region are involved, having been ordered to full combat readiness on Jan. 14. "The main goal of the drills is to check the readiness of units to carry out their missions, and to assess the quality of their training and technical preparedness," the Defense Ministry said in a July 13 statement, reported by RIA Novosti.
This exercise is the third or fourth in a series of snap drills which have been called since November 2012. It will run until July 20.
The Russian enterprise comes on the heels of the largest joint naval drill ever conducted by China and Russia, held in the Peter the Great Gulf near the city of Vladivostok. The exercise, which involved 4,000 servicemen, concluded on July 10.
The Russians and Chinese are determined to increase their military cooperation in the face of Western—largely U.S.—insistence upon a policy of encirclement, and transparent efforts to incapacitate the ability of both nations to defend themselves against a first strike. At the same time, however, they are seeking to find Americans, in particular, who will cooperate in long-term projects of cooperation—so far, only to see them sabotaged by British agent Barack Obama and company.
Tony Papert contributed substantially to this article.
