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| Ali Abdullah Saleh, King Abdullah and Assad. |
Although the Houthi rebels based in Yemen claimed the
responsibility for the September 14 complex attack involving drones and cruise
missiles on the Abqaiq petroleum facility and the Khurais oil field in the
Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, and they have UAV-X drones having a range of
1,500 kilometers, Washington dismissed the possibility.
Instead, it accused Tehran of mounting the attack from
Iran’s territory which is unlikely because Tehran would never leave behind smoking
gun evidence because the Persian Gulf is monitored round the clock by American
satellites and surveillance aircraft. The most likely suspects were Iran-backed
militias in Iraq because 18 drones and 7 cruise missiles were launched from the
north.
Quoting Iraqi intelligence officials, David Hearst reported
[1] for the Middle East Eye a day after the September 14 attack that the attack
was mounted by the Hashed al-Shabi militias from its bases in southern Iraq.
What lends credence to the report is the fact that in the weeks preceding the
attack, Washington had accused the Hashed al-Shabi militias of mounting another
attack in eastern Saudi Arabia claimed by the Houthi rebels because the
oil-rich Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia is nearer the Iraq border than to the
Houthi stronghold in Saada, Yemen.
Moreover, weeks before the attack, the Iran-backed militias blamed
[2] the US and Israel in August for airstrikes on their bases in Iraq targeting
the missile storage facilities. The missiles were recently provided to the
militias by Iran. It’s worth noting that 5,000 American troops and numerous
aircraft are still deployed in Iraq, therefore the likely culprit targeting the
Iran-backed militias in Iraq was Washington.
Besides planting limpet mines on the UAE’s oil tankers and
shooting down an American Global Hawk surveillance drone, the September 14
attack on the Abqaiq petroleum facility was the third major attack against the
US interests in the Persian Gulf. That the UAE had forewarning about imminent
attacks is proved by the fact that weeks before the attacks, it had recalled
forces from Yemen battling the Houthi rebels and redeployed them to man the
UAE’s borders.
Nevertheless, a puerile prank like planting limpet mines on
oil tankers can be overlooked but major provocations like downing a
$200-million surveillance aircraft and mounting a drone and missile attack on
the Abqaiq petroleum facility that crippled its oil-processing functions for
weeks can have serious repercussions. Unless Iran got the green light to go
ahead with the attacks from a major power that equals Washington’s military
might, such confrontation would amount to a suicidal approach.
Therefore, the recent acts of subversion in the Persian Gulf
should be assessed in the broader backdrop of the New Cold War that has begun
after the Ukrainian crisis in 2014 when Russia occupied the Crimean peninsula
and Washington imposed sanctions on Russian entities.
The Kremlin’s immediate response to the escalation by
Washington was that it jumped into the fray in Syria in September 2015 when the
militant proxies of Washington and its regional clients were on the verge of drawing
a wedge between Damascus and the Alawite heartland of coastal Latakia, which
could have led to the imminent downfall of the Assad government.
With the help of the Russian air power, the Shia-led
government has since liberated most of Syria’s territory from the Sunni
insurgents, excluding Idlib in the northwest occupied by the Turkish-backed
jihadists and Deir al-Zor and the Kurdish-held areas in the east, thus
inflicting a humiliating defeat on Washington and its militant proxies.
Several momentous events have taken place in the Syrian theater
of proxy wars and on the global stage that have further exacerbated the New
Cold War between Moscow and Washington:
On February 7, 2018, the US B-52 bombers and Apache
helicopters struck a contingent of Syrian government troops and allied forces
in Deir al-Zor province of eastern Syria that reportedly
[3] killed and wounded scores of Russian military contractors working for the
Russian private security firm, the Wagner Group.
The survivors described the bombing as an absolute massacre,
and Moscow lost more Russian nationals in one day than it had lost throughout
its more than two-year-long military campaign in support of the Syrian
government since September 2015.
Washington’s objective in striking Russian contractors was
that the US-backed and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) – which is
mainly comprised of Kurdish YPG militias – had reportedly handed over the
control of some areas east of the Euphrates River to Deir al-Zor Military
Council (DMC), which is the Arab-led component of SDF, and had relocated
several battalions of Kurdish YPG militias to Afrin and along Syria’s northern
border with Turkey in order to defend the Kurdish-held areas against the
onslaught of the Turkish armed forces and allied Syrian militant proxies during
Ankara’s “Operation Olive Branch” in Syria’s northwest that lasted from January
to March 2018.
Syrian forces with the backing of Russian contractors took
advantage of the opportunity and crossed the Euphrates River to capture an oil
refinery located to the east of the Euphrates River in the Kurdish-held area of
Deir al-Zor.
The US Air Force responded with full force, knowing well the
ragtag Arab component of SDF – mainly comprised of local Arab tribesmen and
mercenaries to make the Kurdish-led SDF appear more representative and
inclusive in outlook – was simply not a match for the superior training and
arms of the Syrian troops and Russian military contractors, consequently causing
a carnage in which scores of Russian nationals lost their lives.
A month after the massacre of Russian military contractors
in Syria, on March 4, 2018, Sergei Skripal, a Russian double agent working for
the British foreign intelligence service, and his daughter Yulia were found
unconscious on a public bench outside a shopping center in Salisbury. A few
months later, in July last year, a British woman, Dawn Sturgess, died after
touching the container of the nerve agent that allegedly poisoned the Skripals.
In the case of the Skripals, Theresa May, then the prime
minister of the United Kingdom, promptly accused Russia of attempted
assassination and the British government concluded that Skripal and his
daughter were poisoned with a Moscow-made, military-grade nerve agent, Novichok.
Sergei Skripal was recruited by the British MI6 in 1995, and
before his arrest in Russia in December 2004, he was alleged to have blown the
cover of scores of Russian secret agents. He was released in a spy swap deal in
2010 and was allowed to settle in Salisbury. Both Sergei Skripal and his
daughter have since recovered and were discharged from hospital in May last
year.
Nevertheless, besides the killings of Russian contractors in
Syria, another factor that might have prompted the Vladimir Putin government to
escalate the conflict with the Western powers was that the Russian presidential
elections were slated for March 18, 2018, which Putin was poised to win anyway
but he won a resounding electoral victory with 77% vote by whipping up
chauvinism of the Russian electorate in the aftermath of the war of words with
the Western powers.
After the Salisbury poisonings in March last year, the US,
UK and several European nations expelled scores of Russian diplomats and the
Trump administration ordered the closure of the Russian consulate in Seattle.
In a retaliatory move, Russia also expelled a similar number of American,
British and European diplomats, and ordered the closure of American consulate
in Saint Petersburg. The relations between Moscow and Western powers reached
their lowest ebb since the break-up of the former Soviet Union and the end of
the Cold War in December 1991.
Then, an alleged chemical weapons attack took place in
Douma, Syria, on April 7, 2018, and Donald Trump ordered a cruise missile
strike in Syria on April 14 last year in collaboration with the Theresa May
government in the UK and the Emmanuel Macron administration in France. The
strike took place little over a year after a similar cruise missile strike on
al-Shayrat airfield on April 6, 2017, after an alleged chemical weapons attack
in Khan Sheikhoun, though both cruise missile strikes were nothing more than a
show of force.
It bears mentioning that the American air and missile
strikes in Syria are not only illegal under the international law but are also
unlawful according to the American laws. While striking the Islamic State
targets in Iraq and Syria, Washington availed itself of the war on terror
provisions in the US laws, known as the Authorization for the Use of Military
Force (AUMF), but those laws do not give the president the power to order
strikes against the Syrian government targets without the approval of the US
Congress which has the sole authority to declare war.
The Intercept reported
last year [4] that the Trump administration derived the authority to strike
the Syrian government targets based on a “top secret” memorandum of the Office
of Legal Counsel that even the US Congress couldn’t see. Complying with the
norms of transparency and the rule of law were never the strong points of the American
democracy but the Trump administration has done away even with the pretense of
accountability and checks and balances.
The fact that out of 105 total cruise missiles deployed in
the April 14, 2018, strikes against a military research facility in the Barzeh
district of Damascus and two alleged chemical weapons storage facilities in
Homs, 85 were launched by the US, 12 by the French and 8 by the UK aircrafts
demonstrated the unified resolve of the Western powers against Russia in the
aftermath of the Salisbury poisonings in the UK a month earlier.
Finally, over the years, Israel has not only provided
medical aid and material support to the militant groups battling Damascus –
particularly to various factions of the Free Syria Army (FSA) and al-Qaeda’s
Syrian affiliate al-Nusra Front in Daraa and Quneitra bordering the
Israel-occupied Golan Heights – but Israel’s air force has virtually played the
role of the air force of Syrian militants and conducted hundreds of airstrikes
in Syria during the eight-year conflict.
In an interview
to New York Times [5] in January, Israel’s outgoing Chief of Staff Lt.
General Gadi Eisenkot confessed that the Netanyahu government approved his
shift in strategy in January 2017 to step up airstrikes in Syria. Consequently,
more than 200 Israeli airstrikes were launched against the Syrian targets in
2017 and 2018, as revealed
[6] by the Israeli Intelligence Minister Israel Katz in September last year.
In 2018 alone, Israel's air force dropped 2,000 bombs in
Syria. The purpose of Israeli airstrikes in Syria has been to degrade Iran’s
guided missile technology provided to Damascus and its Lebanon-based proxy,
Hezbollah, which poses an existential threat to Israel’s regional security.
Taking cover of the Israeli airstrikes, however, Washington
has conducted several of its own airstrikes on targets in Syria and Iraq and
blamed them on Israel. Besides the airstrikes on the missile storage facilities
of Iran-backed militias in Iraq, it is suspected that the US could be behind a
recent airstrike at the newly built Imam Ali military base in eastern Syria at
al-Bukamal-Qaim border crossing alleged to be hosting the Iranian Quds Force
operatives.
Though after Russia provided S-300 missile system to the
Syrian military after a Russian surveillance aircraft was shot down during an
Israeli incursion into the Syrian airspace, on September 18 last year, killing
15 Russians onboard, and then after the recent subversive events in the Persian
Gulf threatening the global oil supply, the Israeli and American airstrikes in
Syria have been significantly scaled down. In fact, the main objective of the
attack on the Abqaiq petroleum facility was to send a clear signal to Washington
and its regional clients that any further confrontation in the region will be
met with befitting reprisals.
Footnotes:
[1] Iranian drones launched from Iraq carried out attacks on
Saudi oil plants:
[2] Iranian-backed militia blames US and Israel for attacks
on bases in Iraq:
[3] Russian toll in Syria battle was 300 killed and wounded:
[4] Donald Trump ordered Syria strike based on a secret
legal justification even Congress can’t see:
[5] An interview with Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot, Israel’s chief
of staff:
[6] Israel Katz: Israel conducted 200 airstrikes in Syria in
2017 and 2018:
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