Official: Contradictory US Behavior Destabilizing Region Evermore

Tehran, June 21, IRNA – Presidentˈs adviser for political affairs reacting to US president’s Friday remarks on Syria, Iraq and ISIS wrote in his Facebook page: Contradictory US behavior is destabilizing Mideast region more and more with passage of each new day. “President Barack Obama’s remarks today on Iraq, Syria and the ISIS were highly questionable; was it not the US that took sides with one side of the conflict in Syria? Weren’t the players in the other side of the conflict there the same ISIS and Al Qaeda terrorists?” argued Hamid Aboutalebi. The proposed new permanent ambassador of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nations furthermore posed a series of questions: Didn’t the US oppose the peace process in Syria between the two sides of the conflict? Why is the US proposing to enter a war in Iraq against the same terrorists that were supported by Washington in Syria? Why is the US not taking any serious practical step even today against the terrorists? The former Iranian envoy to the EU draws conclusion: The US cannot keep on adopting contradictory policies in the region; in Syria Washington supports the continuation of the war, while in Iraq it has become a peacemaker; in Syria it is an ally of the terrorists, but in Iraq it says they should be suppressed. “The US policies and strategic objectives in the region are highly objective based on the nature of the crises and it is those self-contradictory US behaviors in the region that keep destabilizing the region more and more with the passage of each new day,” he wrote. Aboutalebi on the other hand evaluated the Iranian polices towards the rapid regional developments as “stable and harmonized.” “Iran’s polices are stabilizing though; both in Syria and in Iraq; Iran fights against the terrorists; this can be a lesson for the US to change its major regional polices,” he wrote. The US President Barack Obama focusing on the Syria, Iraq and ISIS developments, had said earlier on Friday that a part of what happened in Syria was due to the heavy and enthusiastic entry of the Iranians in favor of one side of the conflict. On Thursday, President Obama held an afternoon press conference in which he announced that the US would send 300 military advisers to Iraq as part of a military deployment that includes plans for a bombing campaign ostensibly targeting an insurgency led by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Following this announcement, a conference call was held with three unnamed administration officials. When a reporter asked whether the US attacks on ISIS would be limited to Iraq, given that ISIS operates on both sides of the Iraq-Syria border, and controls significant territory in eastern Syria, one official responded that “we donˈt restrict potential US action to a specific geographic space,” World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) reported. “The president has made clear time and again that we will take action as necessary including direct US military action if it’s necessary to defend the United States against an imminent threat,” the official added. ISIS “operates broadly, and we would not restrict our ability to take action that is necessary to protect the United States.” The official also included “our homeland” among the regions threatened by ISIS. Citing “senior administration officials” the Washington Post reported that the administration “has begun to consider the conflicts in Syria and Iraq as a single challenge.” The situation in Iraq could “force the administration to reconsider its calculations in Syria”—including military strikes and more advanced weaponry to the US-backed opposition. As the WSWS warned, the American ruling class has “no shortage of foul and bloody tricks up its sleeve” in response to the debacle in Iraq, a debacle created by a brutal and bloody war and occupation. The US is now seizing on the crisis it created to reverse its failure to launch air strikes against Syria last August, a retreat now widely viewed as disastrous within US ruling circles. The diplomatic and military shift to target Syria was prepared the day before Obama’s press conference in an op-ed column published Wednesday in the New York Times, written by Anne-Marie Slaughter, a leading member of the Democratic foreign policy establishment who served as director of policy planning for the State Department under Hillary Clinton from 2009 to 2011. Slaughter’s commentary criticizes Obama’s failure to act in Syria. “Why is the threat of ISIS in Iraq a sufficiently vital interest, but not the rise of ISIS in Syria?” Slaughter asks, before concluding, “The answer … may well involve the use of force on a limited but immediate basis, in both countries.” Slaughter’s former boss, Hillary Clinton, has in recent days given a number of interviews in which she states that she favored bombing Syria, a position that she also outlines in her newly published memoir. With no public discussion, and in the face of widespread popular opposition, the Obama administration is now preparing to drag the country into an open-ended conflict that threatens to engulf the entire Middle East, involving Syria, Iran, Turkey and the Persian Gulf monarchies. Nor is the conflict confined to the Middle East. The war drive against Syria is inextricably tied to the US and the European-backed campaign against Russia, a major Syrian ally. Opposition from Russia was a significant factor in the decision by the Obama administration to temporarily pull back from war against Syria last year. This was followed by the operation in Ukraine to unseat a pro-Russian government and provoke a confrontation with Russia itself. In its reckless war fever, the foreign policy of the United States is riven by contradictions. While the operations in both Iraq and Afghanistan are supposedly aimed at targeting Islamic militants, the US and its allies Saudi Arabia and Qatar have in fact financed these forces—including ISIS—as part of the campaign against Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad. While the ISIS-led insurgency in Iraq is the pretext for bombing Syria, it is in fact the Syrian government, not ISIS, which would be the target./end