You Could Say that Syria is Being "Denazified and Demilitarized" As We Speak

Is Putin taking notes on how it is supposed to be done?

Tsargrad made the case in an essay that actually Shoigu is to blame for Syria. He apparently lied to everyone about how stable and popular and cool Assad was for many years. Go figure! Me, I just wonder who hired Shoigu to his post though? Does anyone know who his boss is? Anyone? Is it Putin? Why not say then that Putin was to blame? Did his generals lie to him? Was he fooled again because of how kind and trusting and Christian he is by his dastardly ministers?

Or is Tsargrad tiptoeing to the line of what is acceptable to say in Russian media without being thrown into a cage by Putin’s FSB Chechens?

You decide.

Anyway, here is the essay in which the case against Shoigu is made:

Now that the fate of Russian military bases in Syria is decided by a handful of militants, there are those who accuse the current generals of being responsible for what is happening. Few dare to pronounce the name of the one who is actually responsible. Syria was a project at that time by Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu - it became a showcase. Moreover, the international vector has remained in his new position - on the Security Council of Russia. So why blame the generals on the ground? Isn't it better to dig deeper? After all, the failure of Shoigu in Syria is a consequence for all of Russia. Isn’t it really a pity for all of the invested billions?

In Syria, there are still two Russian military bases – aviation in Khmeimim and a navy in Tartus. According to agreements with Bashar al-Assad, who fled the country, we could maintain these supports for many more years. But ... in just two weeks, militants seized power in Syria. And the president, who promised not to behave as the ex-president of Ukraine Yanukovych, decided to give power and leave. Prior to this, he silently watched the Syrian army surrender the cities one after another, without even engaging in battle with the enemy.

Was the militant offensive sudden?

Not at all. They warned about the preparation long before the events. What is there. Let's be honest! General Ivan Popov spoke about the risk of assault, when he was sent to Syria. And Popov, as you know, has been under arrest since May of this year (and this is a separate conversation – as far as legitimate accusations against him) There were warnings about the upcoming offensive from Iran, which was confirmed the day before by Foreign Minister Abbas Arakchi:

Everything was clear. Both the analyst and the information messages indicated in advance that a similar (opposition - ed.) Movement would occur (activation - ed.). Both from the point of view of the analyst and from the point of view of intelligence, we (Iran - ed.) Did know that there was a backstage plan from the United States and the Israeli regime, which ... would create problems for the "axis of resistance" ... From the point of view (arising - ed.) "On the sidelines" and intelligence intelligence intelligence services in our country and in Syria were fully aware of the movements (opposition - ed.) In Idlib ... and all information was transmitted to the Syrian government and the Syrian army.

Reminder: Popov is the hero general that disobeyed orders and decided to put up a fight against the Ukrainian counter-offensive in the south that was repulsed successfully. The UAF were stunned. More and more I think they expected there to be a rout set up by Shoigu for them ahead of time. And yes, Popov was arrested for his success, not promoted.

Just like all of the other “surprise” offensives, many were warning about what was coming.

But they were ignored. Because this was a controlled handover of power to the “rebels”.

The Syrian government did not respond to warnings. The Syrian army too. But such passivity was never a surprise, which was confirmed by State Duma deputy, General Andrei Gurulev on the air of the political talk show "Sunday Evening with Vladimir Solovyov":

Everything related to the Syrian army, it was simply incompetent. We have already prepared a training center, we equipped people, and (…) gave weapons. But no one wanted to fight. Nobody wanted to. If they themselves do not want, who should do for them?

And so it was in 2015, and throughout all the years later. Did Shoigu, who was at the origins of the Syrian project, know about this? Of course. But to hide this passivity was possible thanks to the private military companies. The main success was achieved thanks to the Wagner PMC.

(…)

Prigozhin also spoke candidly about Wagner’s role in Syria. He claimed that they had been given ZERO support by Shoigu and had accomplished their successes armed like “aboriginals” with “broken Chinese guns” and simply raw nerve. Like most of his interviews, no one in the Z-camp bothered to translate it. I am the only English-language blogger who translated any of Prigozhin’s interviews, to my knowledge.

Things began to go south with the departure of the Wagner PMC, which the late Eugene Prigozhin spoke about:

When there was a patriotic rise after the Crimea, we thought we were the strongest. Then we went to Syria. But it was a hunt against aboriginals. Yes, it was scary, hard, for some it was really scary. We went there to Syria, holding Chinese machine guns in our hands, which fell apart after the third horn, and especially had nothing else. Therefore, we also suffered losses. And when we worked in Syria, the support from the Ministry of Defense was zero as much as the hell of the tenths [idiom]. And most of the tanks that we had there, we took off ISIS *. But ISIS * were also aboriginals [he means primitives]. We are now fighting in other countries of the world with ISIS * and Al Qaeda *. And we perfectly understand now with hindsight that these were just gopniki [street hoodlums, petty criminals]. Which can collect a check, blow shit up (…) but these are just gopniki. Among these Aboriginal people, we flew at them by plane, helicopter, and bombed some places. Were these strikes effective [he means Shoigu’s bombings]? Unclear. But history has now restored some justice, and everyone understands that the Wagner PMC played the main role in the Syrian war. We went and resolved the issue on the spot.

Turns out that Shoigu spent more money on propaganda than on stability.

"Venkoras have long talked about the problems of the Assad regime. The Ministry of Defense under Shoigu literally "pumped" up the public with stories of stability in Syria and the increasing influence of Russia there. That Assad was a best friend. The negative side was completely removed from the official agenda. "

Sources insist that there will be no public proceedings [against Shoigu]. But no one will write off the failure either. This is already evident from the changing tone of messages related to the affairs of Syria. But back in September, it was reported that Sergey Shoigu, two years later, arrived in Damascus to meet with Bashar al-Assad. "Bilateral relations and prospects from strengthening" were discussed.

The consequences of the Syrian collapse will indeed affect all of Russia. The ISIS fighters *, whom we drove so hard that their heels sparkled [idiom], were already released from Syrian prisons. And for sure, they did not abandon plans for attacks on the territory of our own country. And now this is the problem of the special services.

I want to believe that they will do their jobs.

Bold of them to discredit The Shoigu, which may or may not still be illegal to do in Russia.

…

The most pressing story is the fate of all the weapons and soldiers in Syria. As it turns out, huge stockpiles were just abandoned by the SAA and the Iranians (and possibly Russia). These are being scooped up now to be used in the next war.

It is also unclear who Israel is bombing now in Damascus.

But the more pertinent point to make her is to stress that regime change is always just the beginning, not the end goal of the special military operations. The goal is to create even more chaos. With the government in Damascus gone, a civil war can now break out in Syria between Kurds and Turks and Arabs and whatever is left of the SAA. People seem genuinely baffled that bombs are still falling on Syria now that Assad is gone. Wasn’t the goal to remove Assad? No, the goal was to destroy the stability in the territory known as Syria and to cull the people living there. With Assad gone, that becomes easier. Now we can have a civil war funded by all of the key players involving the FSA, the Kurds, the Turks and other terrorist groups.

This will then be decried as a “failure” of Bidens’ policies or short-sightedness or the new Resistance narrative is that now Bibi will have his hands full with all the chaos that he has created in Syria! HA! They shot themselves in the foot! Gosh, those globalists sure are stupid!

Except the goal is the chaos.

The real idiot is the Twitter poster, not the downie in the suit

Libya wasn’t a failure, nor was Iraq before it. Both countries had their governments eliminated and a state of permanent sectarianism established. You could say that the Globalists pursue a kind of “Libertarian” foreign policy where they do whatever they can to simply destroy stable governments in target countries. The goal for all targeted, non-Core countries is to reduce them to the state of, say, Somalia or Libya or Yemen or any other number of failed states.

That is also why Washington appoints weak puppet-rulers to these territories in the first place. The mission of CIA or Mossad-appointed leaders is to set the stage for the dissolution of their countries. They achieve this by making bafflingly bad decisions that lead to political calamities down the line. This strategy has stages and so you need a Saddam or a Milosevic in power first to then do nothing and let his country get bombed or dismembered. In most of the target countries, you had a strong military with an equally strong nationalist streak among a significant portion of the population. To deal with this delicately, you get a Yeltsin or a Khomeini into power first to start stupid wars, decimate the economy, alienate and demoralize the population, arrest the competent military people and kill off civil society. Only after do you move in and topple the hollowed out nation.

Look: Washington never picks fights with opponents that fight back.

There was no real resistance to them in Kosovo and Serbia. There was no real resistance to them in Iraq. There was no real resistance in any of the South American countries that they toppled either. And now there was no resistance in Syria either.

Clueless people will bleat over the internet, “but why fight a government if you already control that government? Why start a war with Russia if ____ already works for them?”.

This is because people can’t seem to wrap their head around the cleverness of picking fights with people who don’t fight back as a concept. But the scheme is simple and you only really need to recall the typical middle school experience to come to grips with it. The bullies always picked on the weak kids who didn’t resist and who, despite being bullied, would often insist that they were friends with the bully and would even do them favors. Remember that? Surely, you still remember how basic playground power hierarchies worked, right? Use that as a template going forward.

…

Also, compare and contrast the “demilitarization” being carried out in Syria now to the mess that Putin has created in Ukraine.

Here:

JERUSALEM (Reuters) -Israel will step up airstrikes on Syrian stores of advanced weaponry, Israeli officials said on Monday, and keep a "limited" troop presence on the ground, hoping to head off any threat that could emerge in the fallout of president Bashar al-Assad's overthrow.

Israel has watched the upheaval in Syria with a mixture of hope and concern as it weighs the consequences of one of the most significant strategic shifts in the Middle East in years.

"We are taking all the actions necessary to try to ensure our security with regard to the new situation in Syria," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told reporters in a late-night press conference at his office without going into detail.

While Assad's fall wiped out a bastion from which Israel's arch-foe Iran had exercised influence in the region, the lightning advance of a disparate group of rebel forces with roots in the Islamist ideology of Al Qaeda poses risks.

Defence Minister Israel Katz said the military would "destroy heavy strategic weapons throughout Syria, including surface-to-air missiles, air defence systems, surface-to-surface missiles, cruise missiles, long-range rockets, and coastal missiles".

A senior Israeli official said airstrikes would persist in the coming days, while Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said Israel had no interest in interfering in internal Syrian affairs and was concerned only with defending its citizens.

"That's why we attack strategic weapons systems like, for example, remaining chemical weapons or long-range missiles and rockets in order that they will not fall into the hands of extremists," Saar told reporters in Jerusalem.

^this is how you demilitarize a country.

Of course, these arms will simply find their way into the hands of Washington’s and Turkey’s and Israel’s allies. Many of the higher-end gear that can’t be used by simply jihadi-gopniks like the planes and helis will probably be transferred to Kiev.

Meanwhile, Assad and his crime family have already set up shop in Moscow, with hundreds of millions in stolen assets in tow. Here:

Bashar al-Assad's relatives bought 19 apartments in Moscow City for $40 million. The properties were purchased between 2013 and 2019.

Documents on the purchase of the properties were obtained by journalists from the Financial Times. According to the papers, 13 properties are owned by Assad's cousin Hafiz Makhlouf or companies controlled by him. Two more apartments were bought by the wife of another cousin, Assad Rami Makhlouf.

According to the FT, four of the properties are used as housing, one of which is owned by twin brothers Ihab and Iyad Makhlouf, Assad's cousins. Assad's cousin Makhloub also bought a three-room apartment a few minutes' drive from Moscow City. Experts valued the property purchased by Assad's family at $40 million (estimated in 2019, when the FT article was published).

As journalists write, offshore companies were mainly used for the transactions, and the properties were officially registered to them.

It is a small blessing that they didn’t invest all their stolen Syrian money into London properties, I suppose.

…

Katyusha had a good write-up worth sharing. Here:

Yuri is absolutely right (https://t.me/barantchik/22321). Remember we wrote that the lack of response to the murders from Israel will lead Iran to trouble - well, it is on the doorstep. On September 30, Katyusha wrote (https://t.me/riakatysha/34965):

"Until now, the West has done everything to ensure its victory and destroy the authority of the country's authorities to zero. They killed the IRGC generals, killed the rebellious president, killed the real legendary leaders of the "Axis of Resistance", everyone except the Yemeni Houthi, who are being hunted, promised the rest mountains of gold and began to exterminate to zero, spitting on norms and decency.

Only God knows what will happen next, but the lesson that this story has given us is priceless. It allowed us to look at ourselves from the outside, allowed us to see the result of the work of the "peace party" and hundreds of thousands killed and destitute only because of faith in the words of the West.

And it also showed that any concessions to the other side, any position that is not backed by force, and most importantly - the determination to use this force, leads to only one thing - your destruction. And the other side does not care whether you are the president, the leader of public opinion or an ordinary Persian, Arab or Russian. You are doomed by the fact of existence and residence."

Now Iran has received a full-fledged geopolitical catastrophe, which nullifies all the work of the legendary General Suleimani, who was eliminated by the same Trump.

Wouldn’t it be interesting if Iran’s pro-Western government helped Trump kill Souleimani? With Souleimani and his military hardliners silenced, they could wash their hands of Hezbollah and eventually Syria. Iran certainly did nothing to punish the assassination of Souleimani and his closest. A performative rocket shower on an evacuated US base was the punishment they inflicted on Trump for his brazen assassination. We should thank Allah that Trump and his lunatic government didn’t use that little limp-wristed fireworks display as an excuse to bomb Iran then and there, I suppose.

Yes, this situation would not have happened without the connivance of Tehran, where they turned on the "we were deceived" and "it is their own fault" mode, but it does not change the essence. The death of the "war party", internal squabbles and an attempt to rely on agreements with the West led to the fact that Iran is close to losing control of the entire Axis of Resistance.

We will not say anything new, the fall of Syria for Russia is a painful blow to its prestige and a blow to its positions in negotiations with Trump on Ukraine - Trump does not talk to the weak - he tells the weak what to do.

Trump has already said that he’s open to changing his mind on ending support for Zelensky.

This is being spun as him being for “peace through strength” of course.

I am on the record for stating that Trump’s shoo-in appointment to president by the Israeli Deep State would only lead to more support for Ukraine, not less.

We will see who was right — the people who are paid big money to use their platforms to convince you to support Trump, or the starving lone blogger who destroyed his own income stream by being too “negative” and scaring away the normie-cattle with his blunt criticisms of Putin’s wunderstrategies in Ukraine.

The fall of Syria is a painful blow to China, which began to invest there in order to obtain a new sea corridor, bypassing Turkey and Russia, by the way. The Chinese lost money there and a lot more money in the future.

But for Iran, the loss of the corridor with Hezbollah, that is, the impossibility of transferring weapons and reinforcements to it, is a catastrophe - although the movement has made up for its losses in people, they still need to be armed with something, trained, they need to undergo "testing" and coordination. It is unlikely that Israel will allow them to do this, and there is no one to expect help from.

Hamas has already effectively broken away from Iran and is counting more on the HTS that came to power in Syria than on Tehran. The Iraqi resistance is in thought, trying on the Syrian scenario, and the Houthis are far away.

Look: Hamas was a creation of Mossad and October 7th was planned by Bibi.

Hamas are a useful boogeyman to justify Israel’s wars. They are not putting up a serious fight against the IDF, nor could they. When the dust settles on the ruins of Gaza, we will tally up just how many Israeli soldiers were killed and you will see the truth of what I am saying. The same people who were claiming that 1-2 million Ukrainian soldiers were dead already a year ago with only 15 thousand Russian dead are the ones making the claims that Hamas is defeating the IDF.

We will see who is right on this count as well.

Well, you will say, as do some Iranians - why feed all these movements when the money can be spent on more important matters within Iran. They were fed by Suleimani and Raisi, as they were created for one reason - while they were fighting in Lebanon, Palestine, Yemen, Syria and Iraq, the war did not reach Iran itself.

Now Israel has a direct route to a country where a huge knot of contradictions is slowly accumulating, an aging Haymani, a beheaded IRGC and a liberal president who "deceived us". In a country where, in addition to Persians, there are Azerbaijanis and Kurds who will be pumped up and offered all sorts of tasty things. In a country doomed to war in the coming years.

Iran will fold like a cheap suit when the time comes. How do I know? Well, because they are in the same situation as Syria:

• Ethnically diverse country ruled by a titular ethnos (Persians) sharing a country with other groups who hate them (Kurds, Turks, Azeris, Arabs, Afghans)

• Liberal, pro-Western government and Deep State that wants to cut deals with Washington to save their own skin

• Backwards military that has been sidelined and defunded

• Hated government that hides its own unpopularity (Assad claimed 95% support, Putin 88%)

• Powerful opposition groups with friends in the West

• Large diasporas in the West being prepared to replace the current government

• Overall poverty and lack of self-sufficiency to be able to mount any effective resistance

• Allies like Russia who won’t even sell them air defense systems

• The same enemies (Gulf States, Turkey, America, Israel, now Syria, the Taliban, Saudi Arabia, etc.)

For us, given the creation of the Beijing-Moscow-Tehran geopolitical axis, the loss of Iran also does not bode well, because it turns out to be the only stumbling block for both the neo-Ottomans and Israel in their global projects, which are ultimately tied to the US and the EU, which are not our friends at all, but quite the opposite.

However, everything is just beginning and there is hope that Iran will turn on its "besieged fortress" mode and hold out. There is still a margin of safety there. At least, I would like to believe so.

If I had to make a guess about the play that will be used on Iran it would go something like this:

1. Color revolution kicked off by the pro-Western faction in the government and their allies in the streets (no-hijab women, students, irate minorities, Abrahamic fundamentalists and other riff-raff) in a coalition together to topple the government

2. Armed uprisings in the non-Persian areas calling for secession/autonomy that the government refuses to quash

3. Injection of pre-prepared terrorist groups from Syria, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, Iraq

4. American intervention to counter the rising threat of ISIS in Iran

5. De facto partition of Iran

6. Formal partition several years later

7. Millions displaced, tens of thousands butchered, Europe and Russia forced to bear the brunt of most of the refugee flows

The stage has been set quite nicely for Trump to sign off on this plan and to get the party started. Maybe even in the first 100 days. I have no idea what could possibly be stopping him or Bibi and Erdogan at this point. Maybe they end up squabbling too much in Syria over who gets what and so they focus on deposing Erdogan first like they did before.

Let’s see.

**

I need you to sign up to support the blog now. There are 200 new readers here since Assad fled Syria. And I only get any growth in the immediate aftermath of one of my “pessimistic” predictions coming true and people realizing that I may have been onto something. That is why I milk this period of vindication for what it is worth, not because I’m callous or cruel or greedy. It is very important that I start making some money from this blog. I make very very little and I write very very many analyses. This is not a sustainable model, I am sure you can understand. More importantly, it is very important that people acclimate themselves to the concept of paying to be told the harsh truth instead of paying to be told pretty lies.

It is a radical notion, I know.

But I have faith of a kind that we can make some progress in this regard.