05/12/16 – Gareth Porter – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, introducing our good friend Gareth Porter.
He's got a new one this time in Truthout.
That's truthout.org.
It'll be running tomorrow on antiwar.com.
Obama broke pledge to demand Syrian opposition's separation from Nusra Front.
Welcome back to the show.
How are you doing, Gareth?
I'm good.
Thanks very much, Scott.
Glad to be back.
Did I mention that you wrote the book debunking every single lie that any idiot ever told about Iran's nuclear program?
Well, you did.
It's called Manufactured Crisis, The Truth About the Iran Nuclear Scare, and it's great.
OK.
So now I'm really glad that you're writing about this issue.
Very complicated stuff here.
But, well, I don't know.
I guess, first of all, catch us up.
There's a cessation of hostilities and there are problems with it.
Gareth, go ahead.
Well, the cessation of hostilities that was first announced jointly by the U.S. and Russia February 22nd, if I remember correctly, was actually much more effective than anyone had expected, including myself, for several weeks.
And that appears to have been at least in part because there was an understanding.
It's not it has not been officially stated by either side, but it can be deduced from what we now know about what happened that the Russians agreed that they would, if not suspend, at least reduce dramatically their airstrikes in and around Aleppo and Idlib.
And the premise appears to be that the premise of that agreement by the Russians not to continue the heavy rate of airstrikes seems to be related to a commitment by the Obama administration to agree that it would get the U.S. supported armed groups, the anti-Assad groups in the Aleppo area in particular, to separate themselves from Al-Nusra Front forces physically, that is geographically.
They would move further away to a distinctly different location from the Al-Nusra Front forces.
And, of course, this was against the background in which it was admitted beginning just around that time by the State Department.
And, you know, the press began to report it for the first time that that the so-called moderates, and I emphasize so-called moderates, were commingled, quote unquote, with Al-Nusra Front forces, meaning that they were operating in close proximity.
They were based in close proximity to Al-Nusra Front units.
And that's a fairly significant factor in the nature of this war.
So it was a huge development, a major commitment with very large implications for the future of how this war would be unfolding.
So that's really the background of this story.
Okay, so let me take it one notch further back, if it's okay, and you correct me if I'm wrong.
But it was U.S., Saudi, Turkish support for what they called the Army of Conquest, which was a coalition of these mythically moderate, I guess they do exist, they're just not moderate, Arar al-Sham and Jaysh al-Islam in coalition with Al-Nusra.
And audience, when we say Nusra, we're saying al-Qaeda.
These guys are sworn loyal to Ayman al-Zawahiri, the butcher of New York City.
That's who they are.
There's no daylight.
No daylight.
I think is one way of putting it.
Yeah, to paraphrase Joe Biden.
Joe Biden, yes.
All right, so who's also interesting on this subject.
But anyway, so it was American support for this Army of Conquest in Idlib province, what, six months ago or so, that really is what crossed the line.
And basically that was the point where Vladimir Putin decided to call Obama's bluff and go ahead and cancel the regime change once and for all by intervening on the side of Assad, not just with arms and money, but outright.
And then so now they have the ceasefire.
And you're saying that even though the ceasefire did not include the Al-Nusra Front, that there was sort of a side understanding between the Russians and the Americans, where the Russians were being nice enough to hold their fire on the Al-Nusra Front in order to give the Americans time to split off their mythically moderate groups from Al-Nusra, and then the Russians could go back to bombing it again, except that that latter split never did happen.
So the Army of Conquest remains, whether the CIA likes it or not.
And maybe they do like it.
I don't know.
Well, that is correct.
And just to clarify, to be clear, I mean this is not, again, something that is on the record anywhere.
This is my interpretation based on the circumstantial evidence.
But it's difficult to understand this series of developments any other way as far as I'm concerned.
Well, and so, I mean, and you're saying actually in the article that Kerry has basically conceded that, yeah, well, I mean, not all the terms of the side deal that I just talked about, but he's conceded that, geez, yeah, I mean, in a sense we were supposed to split them off, but it didn't work.
That's right.
So this is the next step in this story, is that we now understand that the United States made the pledge to, that is, Kerry made the pledge to Lavrov in their negotiations of the February 22nd ceasefire agreement and never carried it out.
And so Kerry, as you have just indicated, has publicly confirmed what Lavrov said on April 18th of this year, which was that the United States did make that promise and it hasn't delivered.
It just never delivered.
In fact, Lavrov said that the United States repeatedly promised to do that.
So in other words, over a period of weeks from February 22nd on, the Russians were noticing that nothing was happening and they bugged the United States about it.
And the U.S. said, oh, yeah, we're doing it.
We're working on it.
We're doing it.
And they never did it.
Now, that raises the question, you know, why did that not happen?
And here again, I mean, we have to rely on interpretation because there's no hard evidence about what was going on with U.S. policy.
But one interpretation, and I don't really go into this in my article, this is beyond the article itself, is that the United States thought that it could simply influence the clients, its Syrian clients, to move to other locations.
And they found out that those clients were much more strongly committed to the present arrangements than they realized.
That's a possibility, but I must say that I'm a little bit skeptical that the United States was really taken by surprise.
I think that all along, the U.S. knew that its clients were going to be resistant to this.
And so it was really a question of how much leverage the United States was really willing to use to force the issue with regard to all of these armed groups that the U.S. CIA has been supplying over the past year or two.
So I do think that it's more likely that what happened was that some political considerations intervened here that changed the U.S. policy, that made it less desirable or undesirable for the U.S. to really use the leverage that is inherent in its position as supplier to these groups.
And again, there are two possibilities, not necessarily mutually exclusive.
One possibility is that what happened was that the opponents of the Obama preferred policy of relying on the Russians as the primary vehicle for a ceasefire and political settlement and really not trying to use the supplies, military supplies to our clients as a means of putting pressure on Assad.
And by that, I'm referring to the CIA and some people in the Pentagon who are unhappy with, for one reason or another, with the whole idea that we're relying on the Russians, that is that the Obama administration is relying on the Russians.
And it appears that those forces were criticizing it within the administration, were criticizing that policy, arguing against it.
And then at some point in April, they began to come out of the woodwork and take the offensive and insisted that this should not be done and that Obama leaned in that direction and said, OK, forget it, we're not going to do that.
That's a distinct possibility.
I think it's probably there's something along those lines actually happened.
But there's another possibility, which, again, is not mutually exclusive with that.
And that is that the U.S. was picking up signals from the Russians that maybe the Russians were not going to really insist on it, that they were committed to their role in the ceasefire in ramping down the Russian air campaign, particularly around Aleppo and Idlib, and that they would concentrate much more on ISIS and that that would be fine with the United States and that there was no pressure on them to deliver on that commitment.
So I think that there's something about both of those that's true.
I think that both of those help to account for this ultimate refusal of the United States to deliver on its promises.
Well, I mean, do they even have the ability to split off Arar al-Sham and order them to stop piling around with all this or so much or?
Arar al-Sham is not one of those that the C.I.A. is supplying.
So we do not have direct direct leverage over them that could be theoretically used.
I'm thinking of other much less well-known armed groups that have been vetted as, you know, sort of safe for the United States to give some arms to that they wouldn't be automatically turned over to al-Nusra Front.
I think that's naive.
But in any case, I think that's the calculus that that has been used.
And so it's it's those smaller groups that the United States has been has been promising to try to had promised to try to get them to move away from al-Nusra Front.
Well, and then I'm sure you read the Wall Street Journal article from a couple of weeks ago about Plan B during the ceasefire where the CIA just wants to rearm these guys and, in fact, arm them even with anti-aircraft weapons now, whereas before they had been reluctant to.
Can you tell us about the significance of that, you think?
Yes, absolutely.
I mean, I think that particular article, the significance of it is very clear that the opponents of the policy of relying on the Russians, those people who were pushing for ramping up U.S. military assistance to the armed groups that it's been supporting, were doing two things there.
One was that they were putting pressure on Obama over this issue, saying, you know, we're not doing enough to support the our clients there in Syria.
And the second thing, in addition to that, I think, was that they were also planting this story that, well, if things don't if we don't see more cooperation in our terms from the Russians and the Syrian government, we're just going to have to open up the spigot for manpads, the anti-aircraft shoulder fired anti-aircraft missiles.
This, of course, is the perpetual threat that has been trotted out from time to time as as potential leverage or as an effort to gain leverage over the Syrian government and ultimately ban against or over the Russians to be more cooperative and to agree to U.S. demands that Assad step down.
And so I think that that was part of the calculus that was involved in that story.
Now, however, as I'm sure you were aware, the Saudis have already announced that they, at least by implication, have begun to give some shoulder fired anti-aircraft weapons to their clients in in Syria.
Now, you know, I don't know precisely what lies behind that.
It may not be true, but but there is a very distinct possibility that they have done something like that.
Yeah, there's a real question about whether the Americans in charge of this policy are absolutely insane or what, when we've already seen, you know, some veterans of the Syrian fight launch terrorist attacks inside Western Europe.
And now I mean, this is what they used to always fear back from even the old jihad against the Soviets in the 1980s was would have some of these Stinger missiles made it into the West in in range of civilian aircraft, you know.
And I'm sure, you know, Scott, you'll recall that it was reported later that that this was the main argument that Obama was making in a crucial period in 2013 when the the CIA and Kerry at that point were pushing him to agree, I guess, in 2012 as well.
Before Kerry, it was when when Clinton was secretary of state, this this unholy alliance between the secretary of state and the head of CIA was pushing Obama to go ahead with a significant program of military assistance to the rebels in Syria.
And Obama's main argument was, well, wait a minute, hold on.
What about what happened when we did that in Afghanistan?
We know what the the blowback was.
And this was it was even admitted.
I mean, Hillary Clinton admits in her in her memoirs that he had a very solid point.
I mean, she couldn't refute that point.
Well, and they were on the record panicking about all of Muammar Gaddafi's anti-aircraft stuff that went up for grabs and how, oh, my God, these could end up in the Sinai Peninsula, et cetera, et cetera.
And I think that is certainly one of the key things that leads to policies that look like they're crazy and and they are crazy in any rational calculation.
But of course, when you're the CIA or the Pentagon, your interests have nothing to do with the actual interests of the American people, as I've said many times on your show.
But they are bureaucratic interests that have to do with your budget, your prestige, your power in the national security state.
And that means that you can do things that are totally irrational, but they come back, you know, they they benefit you in these in terms of bureaucratic and political interests.
All right.
Now, speaking of which, there's, you know, especially with me, it's so easy to oversimplify.
Seemed like there's a little bit of a split between the CIA and the Pentagon on this.
Cy Hirsch reported, I guess, the worst of it, where the Pentagon has kind of made it a point to give intelligence to the Germans that they know the Germans will pass on to Assad, which Patrick Coburn actually reported that in the summer of 2014 after the rise of the Islamic State.
But I think Hirsch's article says that that kind of thing was already going on.
Well, I mean, the declaration, obviously, ISIS already existed, but the declaration of the caliphate in 14.
Anyway, Hirsch has said, well, this has been going on for years, basically, because it just drives the military guys crazy that Obama's having them take the side of al Qaeda.
So they're kind of insubordinate here and undermining the CIA's work.
And then we've seen where the YPG Kurdish groups, which they they have a coalition, supposedly at least, Gareth Wright, with some Arab groups called the Syrian Democratic Forces.
And these guys have gone up against the CIA backed groups or at least, you know, Saudi and Turkish and allied backed groups fighting there.
But but one more thing in your article, you say the Pentagon, CIA and State Department are strongly committed to ramping up assistance to anti Assad forces.
So I was thinking maybe you could provide me with a little bit of clarity about that.
Yeah, you know, I think that it's true that that the CIA was backing, you know, units in Syria, which ended up fighting against YPG units, which are, you know, more aligned with Assad, the Assad regime than with with the United States.
But, you know, in my mind, at least the broader situation, the larger situation is that that is that embarrassing situation for the CIA is is not really indicative of a fundamental conflict here between the Pentagon, the CIA and the State Department.
Over the broad outlines of the policy that they would like to see the Obama administration take in Syria at this point, which is that every one of those three players in the national security state agree that that Obama should really take seriously trying to put a lot of arms into the U.S.
Client armed groups.
And this is precisely what Obama has refused to do up to now.
And this whole business of the ceasefire with the Russians, you know, is a is a fundamental exhibit of the policy that is opposite of what the of what the other major players in the national security state would like.
They want Obama to minimize reliance on the Russians and maximize reliance on our armed group clients in Syria.
That's the way I read it.
And I think that they are increasing the pressure.
There were leaks, not just the Wall Street Journal story, but other stories that have come out.
There was a Reuters story which was very clearly put out by that by somebody who was part of that coalition of national security state interests, implicitly putting down the idea of that the Russians can be relied upon, saying that, you know, putting out the false idea that the Russians were bombing moderates again.
Which was clearly not true.
And using that as as the basis for arguing that that we really need to resume or not to resume, but to increase the military assistance to our Syrian clients.
So I think that's really the main thing going on here.
And then.
So overall, have they basically backed off getting rid of Assad for now?
They just want to keep the war going.
Same as always.
You know, I think that there was a period when the the idea that of getting rid of Assad was viewed as a bridge too far, something that they were not going to be able to achieve, even though, you know, Perry would continue to verbally pay obeisance to it.
And that that that coincided with the decision to try to negotiate something with with the Russians to to get a ceasefire and to rely on the Russians as the main source of leverage on not just the main source of leverage, but the source of leverage on Assad to to try to bring about an agreement, a political agreement.
And I don't think that they've fundamentally changed that policy, but I do think that the opponents of that policy, the people who are pushing for less reliance on the Russians and more reliance or, you know, exclusive reliance on the the Syrian rebels as the means of pressuring Assad have gained some ground.
Somehow over the last few weeks, that's my guess.
So I don't think it's I don't think it's a clear cut result yet.
I think it's still a muddle.
Is there any reason to believe that the Russians are going to tell Assad that you've got to hit the road or that they have any real incentive to?
I don't think the Russians are going to do that.
I don't think they're going to put direct pressure on him.
But it's it's very possible.
I think it is likely that the Russians anticipated that the delay that the that the ceasefire itself, a period during which Russia was laying off the the the airstrikes.
If not ending them completely.
Was going to put in itself would put pressure on Assad to be more cooperative in the political talks, to be more aggressive in putting forward some proposals and and showing that, in fact, he was serious about trying to reach some kind of an agreement.
So I do think that there is a relationship there between.
The the tactics that we've seen play out, at least tactics that we've seen play out in the ceasefire since February 22nd and the calculus regarding the political negotiations.
Again, you know, this is really very murky and I'm still trying to figure this out and, you know, do a follow up piece on what what are the Russians really up to in this regard?
Because I haven't alluded to this yet, but I do want to mention it.
Well, I have a chance that there's a new article by a very well placed, a very well positioned journalist in the Middle East named Elijah Magneer, who covers Middle Eastern military and political affairs for Al Rai, which is the leading daily newspaper in Kuwait.
And he has just published a story that says there is a very serious rift between the the Iranians and the Russians over the course of the military struggle against Al Qaeda and and its allies in Syria.
And this is this is because the Russians have apparently not delivered on what they told the Iranians they would deliver on with regard to supporting giving air support for major operations in the Aleppo area, as well as in Idlib.
And the Iranians are very disturbed about this, as is Hezbollah, according to Elijah Magneer.
So, I mean, this suggests that there's something else.
There's a there's a larger picture here, which has to do with the Russian calculus, which needs to be understood.
And so that's where I am in this.
I'm trying to I'm trying to understand that.
Yeah.
Do you have a good guess as to why the Russians wouldn't want to go ahead and help as much as they could?
I'm my guess is that it has something to do with ongoing negotiations with the United States of minimizing Iran's influence and that kind of thing.
That makes sense.
Yeah, I don't think it's about the Iranian situation so much as it is about the political settlement in Syria.
That would be the logic.
That would be the only logical explanation for this, in my view, that that the United States is agreeing.
I'm sorry, is negotiating on the basis of some, you know, some kind of U.S. use of much stronger leverage to get its side to be more reasonable.
If the Russians can get the Assad regime to be more forthcoming.
That something like that seems to me to be the the only the only possible explanation.
But that's as far as I've gotten.
All right.
Well, good things.
And I appreciate it, Gareth.
Thanks so much.
Good to talk to you again.
All right.
So that's the great Gareth Porter.
This one is at Truthout.org.
It's called Obama broke pledge to demand a Syrian opposition's separation from Nusra Front.
Very important piece there at Truthout.org.
And, of course, check out his great book, Manufactured Crisis, the untold story of the Iran nuclear scare.
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