Monday, September 23, 2013

Why Is Syria Under Attack?

The White House is working overtime to generate as much support as possible for an overt attack on Syria. Everyone is doing his part, and Secretary of State John Kerry is aiming high: in front of the cameras, by means of his now famous speech, and behind the scenes, by comparing Assad to Hitler and warning the world not to make the same mistake that it did in 1938. Russia is eyeing the situation with astonishment. 'To us, it looks as though [George W.] Bush, [Dick] Cheney and [Donald] Rumsfeld never left the White House,' says Alexei Pushkov, head of the foreign affairs committee of the Russian parliament. 'I am at a complete loss to understand what the US thinks it is doing.'
 
On the surface it’s straightforward: the U.S. wants to liberate Syria from a brutal dictator who is attacking his own people with poison gas. But beneath the surface there is something very different going on. For it is there that the story about chemical weapons turns out to be different than first thought, and with other arguments appearing to play a leading role in the battle for Syria. The main prize at stake in this battle: Iran. Earlier, once the parties involved proved unable to claim this prize, it became obvious to them that the road to Tehran runs through Damascus.
 

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