“Iran and Hezbollah support in Syria’s anti-terrorism campaign was critical in not only backing up the badly battered Syrian army but boosting its fighting capability when much of the officer corps had defected, bought off really by the Saudis,” Dean said Sunday in an exclusive interview with the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) answering a question on Iranian Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) assisting the Iraqi and Syrian governments to fight ISIS.
“The Iranians played a key role in helping to organize the various Syrian anti-terrorist groups. The local ones were then able to take over local security in areas that had been cleared of jihadists, so the army combat power was not diluted by endless garrison duty. This had also exposed the SAA to endless resupply convoy IED ambushes and having small garrisons wiped out,” he said.
He went on to say that the Russians were upgrading and replacing the older Syrian weapons, plus providing the needed technical maintenance training. And even the Syrian officers, old and new, went through combined operations training for close coordination between the various intelligence branches, cyber warfare, drones, and even increasing Special Forces strength.
“Iran’s anti-terrorism partners helped the Syrian Army build its pride back up after so many defeats. But in the end, without the Russians coming in with their additional air power, the jihadist might have been marching into Damascus. Veterans Today had our last team there in September of 2015. It was a nervous time for the Syrian command.”
“They could not tell us about the pending Russian mission but did share the order of battle for the ISIS command structure, which showed they had excellent on the ground situational Intelligence. All they lacked was the firepower to go on the offensive with a full spectrum plan, which we see was a brilliant success.” He added.
This set the example for how resist what is really a Western War of Terror on everyone that will not submit to the Unipolar Power pirates. Only a strong, well-coordinated real counter-terrorism coalition can defend itself, by forming in effect a mini anti-terrorism version of NATO, where an attack on one is an attack on all.
“No one expected a turnaround of events like we have seen in Syria, a bitter defeat for the US, Israel and the (Persian) Gulf State autocracies. And hence, we see the US coalition trying to steal the victory away with its continual mission creep to justify remaining in Syria with the Kurds as its permanent proxy forces.'
Elaborating on US approach to increase military presence in Afghanistan instead of regional cooperation to address security challenges in the country, he said, “Diplomacy is a path toward a solution, which would lead to eventual pressure for a US troop withdrawal, which it does not want. It prefers to keep its bases in Afghanistan to be closer to both Iran, Russia and China.”
“When the US went in to Afghanistan, it had an estimated 1000 al-Qaeda member there. The Taliban and the resurgence of ISIS there now number many more. Despite 16 years of war and the usual corrupt government in Kabul, the US continues to push for a military victory, when everyone else agrees that it is not feasible, but will only mire the country in continued war
Trump is following the fools before him in thinking that airpower can defeat an adversary in a landscape like Afghanistan. He is even using B-52’s to bomb now, which has become a big recruiting tool for the opposition, as the attacks always kill a lot of civilians, he reiterated.
“At the end of the day Afghanistan is just part of the forward deployment of US military power toward Russia and China, where yet, offensive and defensive anti-missile systems and the new offensive nuclear weapons will be deployed. How many Afghans suffer and die is of no concern to the US imperialists,” he said.
Elsewhere in his remarks, he referred to US-Saudi partnership in the context of the US counter-terrorism policies saying, “This was a marriage made in hell. US military power hooked up with the richest Arab country and biggest buyer of American weapons. This included a Muslim religious smokescreen to cover the Wahhabi extremism that it had earlier exploited with the Mujahedin in the Soviet Afghan War, where they even had huge numbers of children in the madrassas being mind-control trained as future cannon fodder fighters in that war.'
As we have editorialized at Veterans Today, the War on Terror became a War of Terror, yet our own supposedly free media ignored the obvious and abandoned their sacred duty to keep the public informed about what its government was really doing.
Even when the former Qatari prime minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber al-Thani stated on the well-known Charlie Rose TV show, that the US Coalition had spent $132 billion trying to takeover Syria, the admission was ignored by the rest of Western media.
Despite being in the post-Cold War era, we find ourselves in the middle of “might makes right” US foreign policy, where it simply states that a targeted country is a threat, where the US then gives itself the right to do whatever it wants under the guise of defense when it is really wanton aggression.
This corrupt foreign policy has managed to convert our all-volunteer military force into what many, including former military people and families, consider a mercenary force for US multinational corporations. This is one sad day for America; and we see too little domestic resistance to this sad state of affairs. War propaganda is winning the day, and we fear for the future.
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Publish Date: 4 March 2018 - 11:40
New York, March 4, IRNA - Jim W. Dean, Managing Editor of the American media ‘Veterans Today’ hailed Iran’s role in fighting the terrorist group Daesh (ISIS).