Your trusted source

Press TV has conducted an interview with Webster Griffin Tarpley, author and historian from Washington, to discuss the crisis in Syria.

- I need first to get your reaction on what the Syrian president has said about Saudi Arabia and this was in a meeting with the Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.

He has warned that Saudi Arabia’s political and religious ideologies is a threat to the world.

- Well, I think that there is ample evidence that that is exactly correct. The nature of the conflict in Syria from the very beginning has been primarily a foreign influx of foreign fighters, terrorists and adventurists from around the world but none of this would have been possible without the funding from the Saudi Arabian government and in particular the adventurist reckless policy of Prince Bandar, who is now leading the intelligence establishment there. Seems to reflect a certain desperation.

If we just look at the last couple of weeks, what seems to have happened is that the Saudi leadership lead by Bandar, has decided that they are defeated within the framework of Syria. That is to say their terrorists, the death squads that they had been fostering there, the Wahhabis and other extremists, are simply militarily incapable of overthrowing Assad and also incapable of holding their own.

We are constantly on the verge of the liberation of Aleppo from these forces. So that the Saudis have said, Well if we cannot within the framework of Syria alone we will escalate, we will include Lebanon, that has been going on for some months. But then they also seem to say, Let us also escalate inside Iraq.

So they have activated the assets that they have kept in Iraq over a long time. And at the same time remember the famous visit of Bandar to Moscow, which was marked by a threat from Bandar to Putin, which was in effect, stop supporting Syria or we, Saudi Arabia, will foster terrorism in conjunction with the Winter Olympics that are now coming up next month in Sochi.

So we have had these attacks in Pyatigorsk and the two lethal attacks in Volgograd, Stalingrad of course; and that would seem to be the threat being made good on.

So from the expansion of Syria to include Iraq and Lebanon, one prong, and then the other one what the Saudis seem to be doing, encouraging Dokka Umarov and the other Chechen terrorists, it looks like they are in a very dangerous flight forward. So I think Assad is quite correct.

- Your reaction to what Sharif Nashashibi said.

- Well, it is certainly true that there are longstanding problems in Lebanon and especially in Iraq. What I was trying to suggest is that the very dramatic flare-up, the seizure of Ramadi and Fallujah in the last couple of weeks seems to reflect this decision by the Saudis to unleash their minions and start something which was not going on before and it seems to reflect this strategic desperation. So that is certainly true.

I also think that you have to draw, under the international law, a very clear distinction between governments that are invited to support Syria by the duly constituted government, right? Syria, a UN member state, sovereign state, existing nation, widely recognized for many decades. They have the right to ask foreign states or others to send them assistance but that is quite different from Saudi Arabia saying, Look! We have got a bunch of Chechen terrorists, let us send them across the border and create mayhem. Those are not to be put on the same plane. So there is no equality between those two.

[In response to Sharif Nashashibi]: I just like to point out that under the UN charter and under natural law, since time immemorial, every state has the inalienable right to self-defense.

It is self-defense in the sense that… that is what we have been hearing for so many months but I think the course of world history is going the other direction.

Let me just point out two important statements here from Washington, which I think show a qualitative shift in the mentality. First we have Ryan Crocker, ambassador to Pakistan, to Iraq and other countries, he is a distinguished former diplomat, he is the head of the Bush school of foreign affairs at Texas A&M University and his opinion, as of December, is that Assad is the least worst. Ungrammatical, I guess that is the modern state department, but you get the idea. He is saying that Assad is the lesser evil, which I think is basis for any rational discussion.

Then we have also got General Michael Hayden, the former head of the CIA, saying something similar that in Syria you can choose between endless civil war and endless radicalization or the breakup of the country or Assad and he points out that Assad is the most acceptable of those three alternatives.

So here we have the State Department old boys and the CIA, Air Force old boys, essentially agreeing that the bet on these death squads is a failure; that it has not worked. It is a loser, and if you follow Saudi Arabia down that road, then whoever does that is going to be in tremendous trouble.

- Webster Griffin Tarpley, your reaction to what Sharif Nashashibi said?

- Well, what I said is that this is the lesser evil. The future of civilization in some places like Syria is not going to be served by having rebels who have engaged in cannibalism and massacres, for whom beheadings seems to be a common practice.

One of the reasons that the rebels of the more extreme type, the Islamic Emirate of Iraq and the Levant, they are having trouble holding on to the areas that they have been able to grab because simply the populations are absolutely fed up with these benighted, brutal, failed administration that they are being subjected to. This is one of the dangers of a ceasefire. The call for a ceasefire is being raised and I think that it is meant in goodwill but a ceasefire could not be interpreted as saying this will freeze certain areas under the control of these mad men because then you are condemning those populations to what? To being beheaded, having their hands lopped off or whatever...

The democratic opposition in Syria has long since rejoined Assad.

- Webster Griffin Tarpley, our guest there says it pales in comparison. Do you agree - in terms of the support?

- I do not think that this is the right way to discuss it. First of all you do not want to get involved in academic discussion about who is worse, who kills more. This does not lead you anywhere. The goal is to find a way out… that is a completely abstract and useless futile exercise. The question is how you can save the civilization in this part of the world. What can you build on? Can you build on the Islamic Emirate of Iraq and the Levant, where beheading and cannibalism are the order of the day, or a very flawed but somewhat stable Syrian government under Assad with an army and other institutions of a modern state? Seems to me it is obviously the latter.

So if you are going to try to get out of this crisis, you have got to rely on those structures. I would say the most useful initiative would be to proclaim the repatriation of foreign fighters. Please go back to Chechnya, to Indonesia, to Libya, to Egypt, to Saudi Arabia, all these other places. Those people should go home and at that point Syrians might be able to decide.

[In response to Sharif Nashashibi]: Again, this is somewhat different because these are forces that have been invited by the existing government which is a United Nations member state.

[In response to Sharif Nashashibi]: One of the things that I would like to stress the most is the need for an economic reconstruction program. This country now has been devastated. It needs an economic reconstruction program that would essentially rebuild the cities, rebuild the infrastructure, rebuild the water systems, hospitals, public buildings, transportation.

Syria of course is located close to that point, where Asia and Africa and Europe come together, right? It is in the middle of everything. It could become a tremendous hub of transportation, various kinds of sea, air and rail transportation. It could have a great future. That is what I would like to see. But you are kidding yourself. You are not going to get that with the Islamic Emirate of Iraq and Sham (the Levant).