A few days ago, the US House of Representatives passed a bill titled the “Assad Regime Anti-Normalization Act”, which would guarantee preventing US federal officials from undertaking any activity that recognizes the Syrian government. The Act, which is still a bill that needs to pass the US Senate to become a law, would also expand and tighten the sanctions imposed on Syria.
Most those following the Syrian file agree that it is “currently frozen”. When looking for an explanation, what comes up is talk about the “Israeli” aggression in Gaza that has been ongoing for over four months and the accompanying major tensions in the region. Prior to that, the explanation was the earthquake and its consequences, and before that the Ukrainian war and the major contradictions it produced (and, in fact, clarified), and so on.
The recent US strikes on Syria, Iraq, and Yemen have stimulated analyses such as ones that say our region is on the verge of an all-out war. It is not a world war, but it is a broad war that includes several countries in the region at the same time, against the US and its alliances, along with the Zionist entity. These analyses also propose that this war is possible even if there is no decisive American decision to wage it, but things could slide towards it as a result of gradual mutual escalation.
Whether US forces in remain in Iraq and Syria or withdraw therefrom is not determined by US internal electoral conflicts, but rather by the grand strategies of how Washington and its dollar elite manage its global struggle to maintain its hegemony.
Violence and military activity started in Syria less than a year after protests began in March 2011. As violence gradually dominated, ending up completely taking over the scene, expressions such as “safe zones”, “buffer zones”, and “no-fly zones” started emerging. Individuals and entities categorized as Syrian opposition were the first to demand them. Majority of those individuals and entities were, in reality, implementers of regional and international agendas. They helped and offered the pretexts necessary to destroy, undermine, and change the path of the popular movement. In the end, they helped their counterparts of extremists within the regime to prevent the required and deserved process of national democratic change.
The Anglo-Saxon aggression against Yemen calls for serious thinking about the real reasons behind it, the expected repercussions therefrom, and perhaps most important of all, its position within the general context of the American plan, with regard to our region and with regard to the entire global conflict.
Since October 7, a unique state of division has prevailed among Syrian media professionals and politicians who present themselves as opposition and as political analysts. After many years of completely identifying with the West, particularly the US, and after having completely adhered to the Western prescription in defining enemies and friends, where the enemies of the US became their enemies and the friends of the US their friends, they find themselves facing a major moral, humanitarian, and patriotic crisis, which grows deeper with every new day of the barbaric Zionist-American aggression against the Palestinian people. Most importantly, they find themselves in direct contradiction with the feelings, thoughts, and emotions of all Syrians, whether those considered “opposition” or “loyalists”.
The year 2023 will pass with all the pain, blood, and destruction it brought to the vast majority of humanity, particularly to the peoples of our region. However, just as deep a pain it carried, it bolstered and established realistic hopes for building a new world. A world in which the power of the Western and American-Zionist center is receding, and with it the power of criminal global financial capital, as well as the modern colonial system, and its affiliated branches all over the world.
The Americans announced their three “NOs”: “NO to a ceasefire, NO to expanding the war, and NO to a widespread ground invasion”, a few days after the Zionist aggression on Gaza started. Since then, it became possible to predict the nature of the goals that Washington set before it, and subsequently predict the boundaries of the required battles and the general lines according to which it would seek to manage said battles.
Syrian and international parties continue to talk about what they call the “step for step” plan. In parallel, there continue to be media-political analyses and readouts, classifying this or that detail of what is happening in and around Syria as part of the implementation of said plan. However, the unanswered question remains: What is this “step for step”?
