Press TV
September 1, 2013
Israel, Saudi Arabia after elimination of Syria sovereignty: Expert
“Israel would like to see, as would several other neighboring countries, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, the elimination of Syria as an independent force in the Arab World and in the general Middle East.”
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Press TV has conducted an interview with Rick Rozoff, with Stop NATO, from Chicago, to shed more light on the issue of foreign intervention in Syria.
What follows is a rough transcription of the interview.
Press TV: What do you think Mr. Rozoff? Why do you think that many of the Israelis are so adamant that the strikes must take place?
Rozoff: Because Israel would like to see, as would several other neighboring countries, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, the elimination of Syria as an independent force in the Arab World and in the general Middle East. That is, one that is not alligned militarily with the United States; that is not, like all its neighbors, I should mention, either member of NATO as in the case of Turkey or a member of NATO military partnership like the Mediterranean Dialogue and the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative as are Israel, Jordan and so forth, and Iraq, incidentally, has been pulled into NATO’s latest military partnership program which is called, I suppose, aptly enough Partners Across the Globe, so that Syria and its neighbor Lebanon remain, throughout the entire Arab world, the only two countries out of 22 members of the Arab League that are not subordinated militarily to the United States and its Western allies.
So, I mean the incentive for Israel as well as for Saudi Arabia to eliminate such a bastion or outpost of independence or non-alignment in the Middle East seems fairly obvious. I think your listeners and viewers may want to recall that roughly 13 months ago, that is on August 4th of 2012, during the course of a General Assembly meeting in the United Nations, the Israeli ambassador to the UN, Ron Prosor, made a comment to the effect, I am almost quoting him, saying that a regime, meaning the government in Damascus, that would kill its own children would not hesitate to kill them with chemical weapons.
Now, Ambassador Prosor is hardly a Hebrew prophet on the order of a Daniel, Amos, Isaac, Jeremiah and so forth, rather I think that that was a tip-off that the United States and Israel were going to use the chemical weapons issue 13 months ago and longer as its so-called redline in order to justify unjustifiable military attacks against the government in Syria.
Press TV: Mr. Rozoff you seem like you want to comment, go ahead Sir!
Rozoff: Yes, I mean that is specious reasoning of the lowest type, this alleged omniscience of the person who just spoken, as though he is privy to information that evidently nobody else in the world is.
You know, yesterday the president of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, again referred to the claim that the government of Syria had used chemical weapons outside of Damascus as, and I quote him, unimaginable nonsense, and then took the argument apart logically bit by bit and then stated, which I think everyone should be stating right now, if the US indeed has such “gnostic” knowledge to what had occurred, it has an obligation to bring evidence of that contention to the UN Security Council and prove its case rather than through innuendo and media leaks and so forth.
Contending something that they cannot substantiate and using that as a justification for an illegal military attack against a sovereign nation. That is outrageous.
Press TV: Mr. Rozoff, you want to make a comment? Go ahead!
Rozoff: Yes I do. This is part of the accusation or the condemnation of Obama and Kerry et al.’s presumptious statements about what occurred with the tragic event outside of Damascus, which is to say why at this point of all times would the Syrian government have done this? This was what Vladimir Putin said yesterday and I think that it was echoed in the debate or rather it was anticipated in the debate in the British Parliament last week and it’s a question that every sensible person asks.
Why, when the armed forces and the internal security personnel of the government of Syria are scoring victory after victory against the US- and the Persian Gulf states-backed al-Nusrah Front and the other armed insurgents in the country, would they chose this precise moment while United Nations inspectors are in the country, moreover, you know, to use chemical weapons?
You know, first of all the accusation that Syria somehow is paralleling what was done by the regime in Baghdad in its war against Iran, certainly the chemical weapons used by Saddam Hussein’s forces in the first Persian Gulf war were used after the war was already in progress.
I think the insinuation from the other guest was that somehow Iran launched military hostilities as a result of that and that is not true. Second of all, we do have a record. I mean Syria went to war in 1967, Syria went to war 1973, Syria intervened militarily in Lebanon in 1976 and stayed there for almost a decade. If they have a history of using chemical weapons, and it is yet to be substantiated, so to claim that this is part and parcel of a standard procedure, if you will, for the Syrian armed forces is another ridiculous contention.
Press TV: Mr. Rozoff, your take? Our guest in New York basically said that the United States wants to bomb them into sitting down to have talks.
Rozoff: They want to bomb them into submission, they ultimately want to bomb the government out of power. And the statements by my fellow guest are the sorts of disingenuous and unconscionable apologetics that we heard on the eve of the 78-day air war against Yugoslavia in 1999 and the six-month long bombing onslaught against the government of Libya two and a half years ago, so this is not to be taken at face value. A no-fly zone and destroying air defenses is simply the opening salvo in a common scenario that ranges from Kosovo in 1999 through Libya two and a half years ago to Syria now, which is the use the airpower and particularly rocketry, Tomahawk cruise missiles stationed by the United States right now perhaps to the number of 600 as we speak in the eastern Mediterranean ready to pulverize the capital of Syria and a good deal of the rest of the country in conjunction, closely allied with, arming and training and commanding insurgent forces on the ground.
So what you are saying is a replication of the Yugoslav model 1999 and the Libyan model of 2011. It is a coordinated effort to have armed insurgents, including bona fide terrorist elements, wage war against the security personnel of a legitimate nation, a member of the United Nations, at the same time Western missiles and bombs are falling on the country and preventing the government from defending itself and its population. That is what we are talking about. Let us not fool ourselves.
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