Source: Fars News
Political analyst Mark Taliano says that there is no evidence of a chemical attack in Douma and the alleged gas attack was only a false flag operation by the White Helmets.

Speaking in an exclusive interview with FNA, Taliano said that there was no justification for the US and its allies to bomb Syria after the theatrical incident in Syria’s Douma.

Commenting on the so-called White Helmets and their operations in Syria, the analyst told FNA that the members of the group are “al Qaeda auxiliaries” who support the terrorist groups and carry out false flag operations in Syria.

Mark Taliano is an author and political analyst who has recently visited Syria. In his new book titled “Voices from Syria”, he combines years of research with on-the-ground observations to present an informed and well-documented analysis that refutes mainstream media narratives about the war on Syria.

FNA has conducted an interview with Mark Taliano about the war on Syria and the most recent developments surrounding the issue.

Below you will find the full text of the interview.

Q: Multiple places in Syria came under attack by the United States and its allies, namely Britain and France, several months ago based on a video footage of an alleged gas attack in Syria’s Douma released by the White Helmets. Who are the White Helmets? How can their unverified video be presented as justification for a large scale attack on Syria?

A: The White Helmets are a Western propaganda construct. They are not the legitimate Syrian Civil Defence, nor are they affiliated with the International Civil Defence Organization.

They are essentially al Qaeda auxiliaries. They support the terrorists in Syria, and their membership is largely comprised of terrorists.

One of their important roles is to set up and conduct false flag terrorism operations in which crimes are falsely attributed to the legitimate Syrian government with a view to engineering consent for the West to commit Supreme International Crimes against Syria, an independent, sovereign state, and a founding member of the United Nations.

The so-called chemical weapons attack at Douma was one such false flag operation. No chemical weapon attack occurred, and yet the Syrian government was blamed for the theatrical incident, yet again, with no evidence.

Even if there was such an incident (and neither the Syrian government nor the Syrian army would in any way benefit from such an attack), it would not justify the commission of the Supreme International Crimes which France, the UK and the US committed in response to the (theatrical) event, by bombing Syria.

Unfortunately, the West has been committing war crimes against Syria for seven years now, all beneath an umbrella of false pretexts and big lies.

Q: We have seen the Israeli regime and the so-called US-led coalition targeting the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and its allied forces many times. What do you think is the reason for such moves?

A: Apartheid Israel and its allies, including NATO, Wahhabi Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, commit war crimes as policy against Syria. US-led NATO seeks to destroy non-compliant nations, including Syria, with a view to expanding its control, and its operations of looting and plundering prey nations. Apartheid Israel’s goals fit nicely into the West’s neo-con, criminal megalomania. Israel seeks to expand its territories and to demolish any opposition to its Oded Yinon-inspired plans. Needless to say, the sectarian, misogynist, anti-Christian, anti-democratic terrorists, including al Qaeda and ISIS, serve as excellent proxies for both Israel and the US Empire.

Q: Since the beginning of the crisis in Syria, Saudi Arabia has been actively supporting terrorists in the country. These terrorists are now losing ground every day. What do you think would be the implications of such failure for the Saudi foreign policy?

A: Terrorists are proxies for all of the countries invading Syria, including Saudi Arabia. Fortunately, Syria and it allies are defeating these terrorists. Remaining terrorists are being relocated and/or rebranded. It is the same game that has been repeated throughout the war. Moderate rebels never existed. Saudi Arabia and its allies will redirect funds towards alternate terrorist mercenaries with a view to supporting the illegal US occupation of Syria’s rich oil fields. The failure will be disguised as a victory.

Q: The so-called Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have received tremendous amount of arms and support from the United States, initially with the stated aim to fight Daesh (ISIL or ISIS). But apparently, the US is now preparing the ground to establish an independent Kurdish state in Syria. What do you think the US is seeking to achieve by disintegrating Syria?

A: The anti-democratic, ethnic-cleansing SDF are simply more of the same – rebranded mercenary terrorists. The establishment of a so-called “Kurdish state” will serve Empire’s goal of partitioning and destroying Syria, but it will not serve Kurdish interests at all. Empire’s proxies, including ISIS, are expendable. As I explain in “Voices from Syria”, Empire uses its proxies as “place-setters” to hold territory, to conquer territory, and to create false perceptions that conquerors are “liberators”. The whole process serves Empire’s goals of destroying and looting Syria, but the proxies are expendable.

Q: The US announcement of its plans to recognize a Kurdish state in Syria has seemingly provoked Turkish invasion on the Kurdish areas. What are Turkey’s objectives in its military intervention and how do you think this recent development would affect the process of reaching peace in Syria?

A: I believe the US gave NATO member Turkey the green light to invade. Turkey seeks to expand and to eradicate terrorist threats at its borders, while at the same time, all of the fighting creates chaos and destabilization, which is what the US seeks. The US and its allies do not want peace. The only solution to the externally orchestrated and perpetrated disaster in Syria is for Syria to regain its sovereignty and territorial integrity as per international law. The terrorist threat, which is an imperial threat, will only be eradicated when the imperialists are gone.

Source: 21st Century Wire
Once again, the US appears to be baiting the Syrian Army and Russia into a shooting war, and it wouldn’t be the first time.

Back on September 17 2016, the US-led Coalition led airstrikes near the Deir ez-Zor Airport in eastern Syria lasting one hour and killing between 90 and 106 Syrian Army soldiers and wounded 110 more. The US claimed they were aiming at an ISIS target, but in reality that US strike allowed ISIS to move in from the surrounding hills and retake a key position which they held for another year.

UPDATE 6PM ET: More confusion surrounds this recent event, as a US official told CNN that it was Israel who are behind the attack on Syrian forces near Deir ez-Zor.

In total there have been at least 12 such attacks by the US against Syria, and if confirmed, this latest incident will no doubt escalate tensions between the two countries, and is sure to raise further concerns from Syria’s strategic partners about the continued illegal US occupation in Syria.

Al-Masdar News reports….

BEIRUT, LEBANON (3:00 P.M.) – A Syrian military source in Damascus informed Al-Masdar News this afternoon that the death toll from the alleged U.S. attack on the army’s positions in Albukamal’s countryside has risen significantly.

According to the source, at least 40 soldiers from the Syrian Arab Army and Iraqi paramilitary forces were killed as a result of these airstrikes.

The source said the majority of the dead were Syrian Arab Army soldiers that were deployed to the Al-Harri front to protect against any potential Islamic State (ISIS) assault.

Furthermore, the source said the Syrian military believes the attack was carried out by the U.S. Coalition due to the location from where the aircraft came from in eastern Syria.

In response to these allegations, the Pentagon has denied carrying out this deadly attack in eastern Syria.

This is the second time in three weeks that the Syrian Army has accused the U.S. Coalition of bombing their troops in southeast Syria.

The Syrian Army has not responded to the attack and will not likely attack the US-backed forces in the region, as this would only escalate the situation and lead to violent confrontation.

Furthermore, it is not necessarily clear that the U.S. Coalition carried out the attack, a some pro-government activists have accused the Israeli Air Force of carrying out the airstrikes.

Albukamal is a long distance from the Israeli border, but it would be a viable target for their military, given the large presence of Iranian-backed forces near the Iraqi-Syrian border.

Israel has also never attacked the Syrian military this far from their border, so if they were behind this – this would be the first time they have ever bombed the Deir Ezzor Governorate.

Though, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did vow to attack the Iranian-backed forces anywhere inside Syria during his weekly cabinet meeting.

This is a threat that he and his Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman have made on several occasions in the past.

By Eric Zuesse
Source: Strategic Culture
Now that the United States (with the cooperation of its NATO partners) has turned the former Soviet Union’s states other than Russia into NATO allies, and has likewise turned the Soviet Union’s Warsaw Pact allies into America’s own military allies in NATO, the United States is finally turning the screws directly against Russia itself, by, in effect, challenging Russia to defend its ally Syria. The US is warning Syria’s Government that Syrian land, which is occupied by the US and by the anti-Government forces that the US protects in Syria, is no longer really Syria’s land. The US is saying that there will be direct war between Syria’s armed forces and America’s armed forces if Syria tries to restore its control over that land.

Tacitly, America’s message in this to Moscow is: now is the time for you to quit defending Syria’s Government, because, if you don’t — if you come to Syria’s defense as Syria tries to kill those occupying forces (including the US troops and advisors who are occupying Syria) — then you (Russia) will be at war against the United States, even though the US is clearly the invader, and Russia (as Syria’s ally) is clearly the defender.

Peter Korzun, my colleague at the Strategic Culture Foundation, headlined on May 29th, “US State Department Tells Syria What It Can and Can’t Do on Its Own Soil” and he opened:

“The US State Department has warned Syria against launching an offensive against terrorist positions in southern Syria. The statement claims that the American military will respond if Syrian forces launch an operation aimed at restoring the legitimate government’s control over the rebel-held areas, including the territory in southwestern Syria between Daraa and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Washington is issuing orders to a nation whose leadership never invited America in the first place! The very idea that another country would tell the internationally recognized Syrian government that it cannot take steps to establish control over parts of its own national territory is odd and preposterous by any measure.”

The pro-Government side calls those “terrorist positions,” but the US-and-allied side, the invaders, call them “freedom fighters” (even though the US side has long been led by Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate and has increasingly been relying upon anti-Arabic Kurds). But whatever they are, the United States has no legal authority to tell Syria’s Government what to do or not do on Syrian land.

Russia’s basic position, at least ever since Vladimir Putin came into power in 2000, is that every nation’s sovereignty over its own land is the essential foundation-stone upon which democracy has even a possibility to exist — without that, a land cannot even possibly be a democracy. The US Government is now directly challenging that basic principle, and moreover is doing so over parts of the sovereign territory of Syria, an ally of Russia, which largely depends upon Russia to help it defeat the tens of thousands of invading and occupying forces.

If Russia allows the US to take over — either directly or via the US Government’s Al Qaeda-linked or its anti-Arab Kurdish proxy forces — portions of Syrian territory, then Russia’s leader, Vladimir Putin, will be seen as being today’s version of Britain’s leader Neville Chamberlain, famous, as Wikipedia puts it, for “his signing of the Munich Agreement in 1938, conceding the German-speaking Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia to Germany.”

So: Putin will now be faced with either knuckling under now, or else standing on basic international democratic principles, especially the principle that each nation’s sovereignty is sacrosanct and is the sole foundation upon which democracy is even possible to exist or to evolve into being.

However, this matter is far from being the only way in which the US Government now is challenging Russia to World War III. On May 30th, the Turkish newspaper Yeni Safak bannered “US trains armed groups at Tanf base for new terror corridor” and reported that:

New terror organizations are being established by the US at the Tanf military base in southern Syria that is run by Washington, where a number of armed groups are being trained in order to be used as a pretext to justify US presence in the war-torn country. …

Military training is being conducted for “moderate” opposition groups in al-Tanf, where both the US and UK have bases.

These groups are made up of structures that have been established through US financing and have not been accepted under the umbrella of opposition groups approved by Turkey and the FSA.

From Deir Ezzor to Haifa

Claiming to be “training the opposition” in Tanf, the US is training operation militants under perception of being “at an equal distance to all groups.”

Apart from the so-called opposition that is linked to al-Qaeda, Daesh [ISIS] terrorists brought from Raqqa, western Deir Ezzor and the Golan Heights are being trained in the Tanf camp. …

The plan is to transport Iraqi oil to the Haifa [Israel] Port on the Mediterranean through Deir Ezzor and Tanf.

Actually, Deir Ezzor is also the capital of Syria’s own oil-producing region, and so this action by the United States is more than about merely a transit-route for Iraq’s oil to reach Israel; it is also (and very much) about America attempting theft of oil from Syrian land.

Furthermore, on May 23rd, Joe Gould at Defense News headlined “House rejects limit on new nuclear warhead” and he reported that the US House, in fulfillment of the Trump Administration’s Nuclear Posture Review, which seeks to lower the threshold for nuclear war so as to expand the types of circumstances in which the US will “go nuclear,” rejected, by a vote of 226 to 188, a Democratic Party supported measure opposing lowering of the nuclear threshold. President Trump wants to be allowed to lower the threshold for using nuclear weapons in a conflict. The new, smaller, nuclear warheads, a “W76-2 variant,” have 43% the yield of the bomb that the US dropped on Hiroshima, but it’s called a ‘tactical nuclear weapon’ meaning that it is supposedly intended for use in ‘conventional’ wars, so that it is actually designed to eliminate altogether the previous meta-strategic principle, of “Mutually Assured Destruction” pertaining to nuclear war (that nuclear weapons are justifiable only in order to prevent another World War, never in order to win such a war) that successfully prevented nuclear war till now — that once a side has introduced nuclear weapons into a military conflict, it has started a nuclear war and is challenging any opponent to either go nuclear itself or else surrender — America’s new meta-strategic doctrine (since 2006) is “Nuclear Primacy”: winning a nuclear war. (See this and this.)

US President Trump is now pushing to the limit, presumably in the confident expectation that as the US President, he can safely grab any territory he wishes, and steal any oil or other natural resource that he wishes, anywhere he wants — regardless of what the Russian Government, or anyone else, thinks or wants.

Though his words often contradict that, this is now clearly what he is, in fact, doing (or trying to do), and the current US House of Representatives, at least, is saying yes to this, as constituting American values and policies, now.

Trump — not in words but in facts — is “betting the house” on this.

Moreover, as I headlined on May 26th at Strategic Culture, “Credible Report Alleges US Relocates ISIS from Syria and Iraq into Russia via Afghanistan.” Trump is apparently trying to use these terrorists as — again like the US used them in Afghanistan in order to weaken the Soviet Union — so as to weaken Russia, but this time is even trying to infiltrate them into Russia itself.

Even Adolf Hitler, prior to WWII, didn’t lunge for Britain’s jugular. It’s difficult to think of a nation’s leader who has been this bold. I confess that I can’t.

By Moon of Alabama
Source: The Ron Paul Institute
The Syrian government and its Russian ally plan to clean up the southwest region of Syria around the city of Daraa. The move should open the M5 highway, Syria’s lifeline, between Damascus and Jordan and secure the border with Jordan as well as the demarcation line with the Israel occupied Golan Heights.

The operation was supposed to start in a day or two, but the US has now threatened to intervene. As the southwest Daraa governorate is infested with a large Islamic State (ISIS) group as well as al-Qaeda and associated groups the US move must be interpreted as protection for these terrorists.

On July 7 2017 The US, Russia and Jordan agreed to set up a de-escalation zone in southwest Syria. The parameters were not publicized and the implementation lagged. Russia had offered to let its military police supervise the zone but the US rejected that. The opening of the important M5 highway to Jordan which was originally part of the plan did likewise not happen. The ceasefire in the region was broken several times. There was also infighting between ISIS and al-Qaeda.

In November 2017 the presidents of the United States and Russia met and agreed to a Memorandum of Principals which covered southwest Syria. The memorandum was not published.

The neo-conservatives at the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) disliked the agreement. It headlined Southern Syria Deal Fails to Constrain Iran, al Qaeda. Israel had demanded that no groups associated with Iran should come near the zone, but no such rule was agreed upon. ISW also noted:

Al Qaeda has exploited the ‘de-escalation zone’ to develop a new durable safe haven along the Syrian-Jordanian border.

Neither al-Qaeda nor the Islamic State are covered by the de-escalation and ceasefire agreement. UN Security Council resolutions 2249 and 2254 demand that all UN members fight Al Qaeda, ISIS, and individuals and groups associate with them. It calls upon UN member states “to eradicate the safe haven they have established over significant parts of Syria”.

At that time ISW published a map of southwest Syria which shows the strategic positions taken by ISIS (grey), al-Qaeda (brown) and aligned groups (light brown):

In December 2017 the US stopped payments to “rebels” in the south west. Some of the groups, including al-Qaeda, receive money, weapons and fire support from Israel.

In April 2018 ISW published a new version of its map of the area. Amusingly al-Qaeda had vanished from it:

Over the last days Syrian helicopters have dropped leaflets over “rebel” held towns in the western part of the rebel held areas. They demand that the rebels give up fighting and reconcile with the Syrian government.

The Iranian ambassador to Jordan Mojtaba Ferdowsi-pour publicly declared that Iran has no role in any military operation in south of Syria. He added:

After ending its mission in Syria, Iran will not remain in Syria and whenever Syrian government ask us, Iran will leave the country.

It is obvious that the Syrian government and its Russian allies have all rights to fight ISIS and al-Qaeda independent of any de-escalation agreement. The UNSC resolutions even demand that. But the US thinks different.

Last night the US State Department published this threat:

The United States is concerned by reports of an impending Assad regime operation in southwest Syria within the boundaries of the de-escalation zone negotiated between the United States, Jordan, and the Russian Federation last year and reaffirmed between Presidents Trump and Putin in Da Nang, Vietnam in November. The United States remains committed to maintaining the stability of the southwest de-escalation zone and to the ceasefire underpinning it. We also caution the Syrian regime against any actions that risk broadening the conflict or jeopardize the ceasefire. As a guarantor of this de-escalation area with Russia and Jordan, the United States will take firm and appropriate measures in response to Assad regime violations.
…

One wonders what “firm and appropriate measures” the US has planned for. Strong words? Cruise missile attacks? Nukes?

I have not seen any reaction yet from the Syrian or Russian side.

Source: Press TV
Syria has announced that several of its military bases located in the provinces of Hama and Aleppo have come under missile fire.

According to Syria’s state news agency on Sunday, “a new aggression with hostile missiles” happened at 10:30 pm local time, in which military positions in the Hama and Aleppo villages were targeted.

The origins of the attacks are still unclear, but come several weeks after Russia and Syria said Israeli warplanes struck an air base in the Syrian province of Homs.

It also comes a few weeks after, the US, Britain and France carried out a string of airstrikes against Syria over a suspected chemical attack against Douma. Washington and its allies blamed Damascus for the suspected assault.

The Syrian government has strongly denied the allegation, calling on Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) to send a fact-finding mission for investigations.

Over the past few years, the Israeli military has launched sporadic attacks against various targets on Syrian soil, in assaults slammed by Syria as attempts to boost terrorist groups who have been suffering heavy defeats on the battlefield with Syrian government forces.

On several occasions, the Syrian army has confiscated Israeli-made arms and military equipment from militants fighting pro-Damascus forces. Israel has also been providing medical treatment to the extremist militants wounded in Syria.

*************
Russia and Syria say Israeli warplanes struck an air base in the Syrian province of Homs and that Syrian air defense systems shot down five of eight missiles fired.

The Interfax news agency cited the Russian Defence Ministry as saying Monday that two Israeli F-15 warplanes carried out strikes from Lebanese air space on the T-4 air base on Sunday.

“Two F-15 planes of the Israeli army hit the airbase between 03:25 am and 03:53 am Moscow time (0025 GMT and 0053 GMT) with the help of eight missiles controlled remotely from Lebanese territory, without entering Syrian air space,” Russia’s Defense Ministry said.

The Russian military noted that Syrian air defense systems had shot down five of the eight missiles fired.

Hands Off Syria, Sydney, strongly condemns the US/UK/France Coalition bombing against Syria.

This war of aggression against Damascus occurred in the early hours of Saturday 14.04.2018 morning, Syrian time, and lasted almost two hours to punish the Syrian people for refusing to submit to regime change.

Hundreds of US missiles rained in the densely populated ancient city, many of its residents internally displaced civilians who sought refuge following the destruction of their homes by Western backed terrorists.

The people of Syria have endured seven years of a proxy war, a dirty war perpetrated by mercenary terrorists from all around the world funded, trained and armed by the US/NATO/Israel & Gulf monarchies.

Among those terrorists groups are Daesh/ISIS, al-Nusra, al-Qaeda in Syria, FSA, Jaish al-Islam and many more which have perpetrated grand scale destruction, torture and vile acts against the people of Syria.

The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and allies have been liberating towns and cities which had been held hostage to Daesh and other terrorist groups.

In the last couple of weeks the SAA liberated all of East Ghouta, a town near Damascus, which saw the freedom of 400,000 civilians who had been kept hostage by terrorists for six years.

The US/UK/France bombing of Syria was unilateral, illegal under international law and a war crime.

The OPCW was given no time to investigate an alleged chemical attack which took place in Douma, and was blamed on the Syrian Government and used as an excuse to carry out the criminal bombing. This is a clear indication that these US/UK/France had no interest in the investigation and its outcome.

This criminal attack is a blatant Imperial aggression, a cowardly act which only demonstrates how vile these Western powers are, attacking a small nation which has suffered seven years a proxy dirty war and has endured many more years of sanctions.

Hands Off Syria joins the call by the Syrian-Australian Community for a protest/Vigil commencing at 6pm this coming Thursday 19 April 2018 in Martin Place, Sydney, outside the US Consulate.