The US and Iran have no Alliance in the Struggle Against ISIS

US and Iranian military involvement in Iraq against ISIS does not amount to an 'alliance'. Both powers find themselves temporarily aligned against the spread and threat of ISIS for different reasons. For Iran it is about maintaining the Sh'ite 'axis of resistance' against Sunni insurgents in Syria and Iraq.

For the US, its deployment of drones and military advisors is mostly about helping check ISIS so that it could not threaten Baghdad or the south where attacks by ISIS could threaten global oil prices and even to blowback into the land of its main ally in Saudi Arabia.

It was Saudi Arabia, along with Qatar, that in 2012 and throughout 2013 supported and bankrolled the most effective Sunni insurgents in Syria and created the space within which ISIS could gain ground and control over oil installations to fund its activities.

Throughout 2014 Saudi Arabia has moved away from the policy under pressure from Washington and the obvious fact the policy failed in so far as ISIS broke with the Free Syria Army it had previously been aligned with back in 2013 in its struggle against Kurdish seperatists.

That allowed Assad to roll back the FSA from Damascus, leading the Syrian National Council and some intelligence observers to start claiming he had been funding ISIS himself through buying oil from them. But that, of course, would not change the fact that most past funding for came from donors in the Gulf states.

In turn, due to the threat of blowback Saudi Arabia and Qatar sought to accuse each other of backing the wrong sort of Sunni jihadists. One senior Qatari official stated, “ISIS has been a Saudi project.”. Other GCC members have been critical of Qatar for 'playing with fire' and continuing to back Islamist groups with links to Al Qaida.

So even if Iran and the US are seen to be in 'alliance', they are not. Iran's regional policy would be in ruins if Iraq fell into the hands of Sunnis as it was under Saddam Hussein. The construction of a Shi'ite gas pipeline via Iraq and Syria, agreed on back in 2011, would be impossible.

Likewise, the US, along with Qatar and Saudi Arabia, are not going to stop opposing that plan by supporting Sunni insurgents in Syria against Assad. Qatar wants a Qatar-Turkey pipeline that would supply European markets and that is backed especially by Britain and France.

Iran is already under sanctions and the last thing Washington would like would be a lucrative gas pipeline through which it could export gas to the Eastern Mediterranean, interests it has in common which Russia which is backing Assad so as ensure gas supplies are controlled by it and its regional the US, partners.

Egypt : The Military Crackdown and the Threat of ISIS.

The fate of the three al-Jazeera journalists jailed in Egypt is bound up in Egypt's attempt to clamp down on the Doha based new station because it is seen as favourable to the Muslim Brotherhood backed by Qatar after 2011 in rivalry with Saudi Arabia which supports the military state.

Washington, in turn, remains a stalwart ally of Saudi Arabia in its attempt to create a wall of Sunni Arab states in the Middle East to deter Iranian influence in the region. This is a goal broadly shared by the US which in 2013 accounted still for 17.2 % of its total crude oil imports.

General Sisi's crushing of dissent and imprisonment of political opponents is the unfortunate cost to be paid for 'stability' in Egypt as it faces the increased threat of radical Sunni jihadist violence from those angry about the coup against Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood supporters.

More ominously, an insurgency on the Sinai Peninsula has attracted radicalised jihadists from Syria fighting for groups such as Ansar Beit al-Maqdis and heeding the call from Al Qaeda and ISIS to go and take the battle to Egypt, the homeland of Al Qaida's leader Ayman al-Zawahri.

But the attempt by Sisi's regime to yoke Al Qaida together with the Muslim Brotherhood is as much about shoring up its own domestic legitimacy as it is about pleasing its Saudi sponsors who after the coup offered $5billion in aid to help support Egypt's tanking economy.

When President Morsi was in power, Saudi Arabia feared the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood could embolden Islamists at home. But it has been in competition with Qatar both in Egypt and in Syria where both powers have vied for political control over the anti-Assad Sunni militias.

The geopolitical energy dimension to this struggle for regional influence is that while both Qatar and Saudi Arabia have a joint interest in overthrowing Assad, to prevent an Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline, they are at variance on Qatari attempts to build a gas pipeline from the Gulf which could circumvent Saudi Arabia.

Yet in competing for influence in Syria by backing the most effective Sunni jihadists on the ground and fracturing the unity of the Free Syrian Army, by 2013 Saudi Arabia and Qatar had enabled Al Qaida affiliated groups and ISIS to gain a strong foothold and for blowback into Egypt.

There are already jihadist organisations with connections to ISIS operating on the Sinai Peninsula which is said to be 'fertile ground' for the group to expand. Israeli-Egyptian cooperation to crush the jihadist insurgency in Sinai has resulted in large numbers of civilian casualties and surging support for the jihadists.

Washington's decision to release a $650m aid package to Egypt and continued military assistance, including Apache helicopters, is connected to the need to keep in check the threat of jihadist blowback caused by Syrian and Libyan conflicts and the military's coup and cack handed crackdown on Sinai.

Scores of civilans have continued to get killed in the cross fire in Sinai in villages said to be contain jihadist groups and Muslim Brotherhood supporters along with the use of torture centres, mass arrests and arbitrary imprisonment in a region where the government has made it difficult for journalist to enter.

Washington may not like the Egyptian states's imprisoning and suppression of journalism but it is a necessary consequence of the shoddy and failed foreign policies of its Gulf allies and which has contributed towards the havoc, mayhem and death spreading across the Middle East.

US Foreign Policy on Iraq: Breaking the Shia Alliance in From Syria to Iran.

The US is unlikely to intervene militarily in Iraq again unless the Kurdish region were threatened or if Baghdad were to fall under an an attack by ISIS and revived Baathist forces, thus opening the way for the major oil producing regions in the south to be menaced.

For the Obama administration the threat from ISIS presents an opportunity to put pressure on Maliki not to allow Iraq to be used as either a land bridge for Iran's support for President Assad or for its air space to be used to transport weapons to Lebanon's Hizbollah.

It has been a continued aim of the foreign policy of Clinton from 2011 onwards as Secretary of State and then, as potential presidential candidate, that 'Assad must go'. Washington is concerned at the possibility that Assad has looked like stronger in Syria and that Baghdad is moving too close to Tehran.

Not only has Iraq signed a $195m arms deal with Iran, the threat of the 6,000-kilometer "Islamic Pipeline' from the South Pars gas field to the Eastern Meditteranean would become closer to realisation, thus angering Qatar with whom Iran shares the huge reserves of gas in the Gulf.

Qatar has bankrolled and funded Sunni jihadists, some in groups that are affiliated to Al Qaida, as a means of both removing Assad and furthering the rival plan to build a gas pipeline to Turkey and thence on to European markets, one reason why Britain and France have allied with Qatar.

One reason for the speed and scale of ISIS's surge from northern Syria into central Iraq, and Al Qaida's break with ISIS, is that Assad was cunning enough to have left it alone, realising it would fight against the other jihadists and tie up both the FSA and Kurdish separatists in the north.

ISIS was able to operate and spread because in 2013 Qatar was prepared to finance and arm the most fanatical jihadists such as Ahrar al-Sham and Turkey was prepared to allow ISIS to develop so as to fight alongside the FSA as a means of countering the threat of Kurdish irredentism.

Until 2014, ISIS was a staunch ally of the Free Syria Army until it became apparent that by attacking the Kurds, they were allowing Assad down south in Damascus the freedom to roll back the FSA from its positions outside the Syrian capital ( leading to accusations Assad was funding ISIS ).

In fact, the chaos and the rise of ISIS is more to do with the FSA being riven with factional struggles between those backed by Qatar and those by Saudi Arabia, both of which are vying to impose their leadership on the Sunni insurgent forces should Assad be overthrown.

Saudi Arabia has been wary that Qatar's preparedness to back the Muslim Brotherhood which is a traditional enemy and hostile to the Wahhabite state. But it has been more concerned with rivalling Qatar with Salafists that would do their bidding such as the Jabhat Al Nusra Front.

The upshot of this sordid power politics is that ISIS has grown into a major threat because of the way Syria has acted as a cockpit for backing the most ruthless Sunni jihadists so as to get rid of Assad and advance energy interests with the tacit backing of the US and Britain.

As a consequence of a shoddy realpolitik, the entire region has become even more unstable and Iraq more so than at any time since the sectarian warfare that erupted after the US invasion of 2003. ISIS is regarded by Maliki in Iraq as part of a Saudi plot; Assad is blamed by the FSA for supporting it.

Saudi Arabia clearly could have an interest in seeing Iraq descend into sectarian warfare. ISIS would engage the Shia government in Iraq and thwart Iran's plans to extend its interests westwards. The US would only intervene if the Kurdish oil fields or those in south Iraq were threatened.

Washington would be quite content to see Iran checked by having Maliki's government embroiled in a struggle against ISIS as it could then make military intervention to shore up his government conditional on moving away from Tehran and abandoning such plans as the Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline.

Back to Iraq: The Syrian Conflict and Jihadist Blowback.

The capture of Mosul and Tikrit by ISIS-and the potential military intervention of the US in Iraq once more being considered-is a consequence of the 'blowback' created by Western geostrategy in Syria and the continued chaotic aftermath of the US and British invasion of Iraq in 2003.

One of the unintended consequences of Bush and Blair's invasion was that it has empowered the Shi'ites whose militias were needed to defeat the threat of Sunni militias and the remnants of Saddam's army which are now clearly involved in the retaking of the old Iraqi dictator's home city.

The US and Britain have been concerned since the Syrian Civil War broke out in 2011 that should President Assad and his Alawite Shia government not be overthrown, that Maliki's Iraq would form a land bridge between Syria and Iran through which weapons and men could be sent to Lebanon's Hizbollah.

ISIS has been gaining ground throughout 2014 and so brutal and successful has it proved in battle, that both Saudi Arabia and Qatar,along with their ally the US, have been secretly backing jihadist groups in Syria in their opposition to ISIS which was considered 'al-Qaeda's most extreme wing'.

However, it is a fact that one of the jihadist groups fighting ISIS is the Jabhat Al Nusra Front. This organisation is funded and supplied with arms by Saudi Arabia as a means to bolster the power of Salafists against the Shia and also as a rival to the power of the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood ( backed by Qatar).

Saudi Arabia and Qatar are aligned in opposition to the power of Assad in Syria and Maliki in Iran as both are Shi'ite administrations. However, the Sunni insurgents in Syria are divided between those backed by either regional power and that has weakened the military opposition to Assad.

Saudi Arabia opposes the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood and went as far as labelling it 'a terrorist organisation' recently because Saudi Arabia has always feared Muslim Brotherhood ideas as subversive and because it Qatar is trying to assert its leadership over the Free Syrian Army.

With ISIS being rejected by Al Qaida for being 'too extreme', the absurdity is that Saudi Arabia , and by extension the US, are going to be effectively backing groups such as the Al Nusra Front, an Al Qaida affiliate, to fight against ISIS and bring the jihadist movement back 'under control'.

Moreover, ISIS's success in northern Syria threatens to destroy the military opposition to Assad from the Free Syrian Army that the US and Britain have tacitly backed through supporting Saudi Arabia and Qatar as well as Turkey which had intitially allowed ISIS to operate along its borders.

This colossal mess is a consequence of Qatar and Saudi Arabia using Syria as a proxy war battleground against both Iran and Iraq, a strategy aided and abetted by the US and Britain. Baghdad has remained close to its Shia neighbour to the east as has, of course, Assad.

Both Qatar and Saudi Arabia fear a Shi'ite axis stretching from the Gulf to the Eastern Mediterranean.Qatar has been allowed to 'play with fire' because it is a major supplier of liquified natural gas to Britain and France and a huge source of investment in both London and Paris.

In addition, Qatar and its allies in Britain and France has wanted Assad to go because they fear Iran could use its influence in Iraq and Syria, should the Free Syria Army be defeated, to construct an 'Islamic pipeline' which would allow gas from the South Pars field ( shared with Qatar) to flow west.

With ISIS poised to strike at Baghdad, the US would be clearly wary of Iraq being taken over by fanatical jihadists, even if both it and Saudi Arabia could see it as a chance to use the potential threat  as a means of getting a less militantly Shia and pro-Iranian government in Iraq.

Even so, ISIS would be poised to capture important oil installations in Kirkuk and threaten the Kurdish regions of Iraq, where the US and Britain have been at the forefront of vying for oil exploration contracts, and so affect global oil prices which are already running at a three month high.

More ominously, ISIS is believed to contain at least 20 British nationals in it as well as jihadists from across the world being trained in the art of terror and machine gunning and beheading civilians at random. The threat of terrorists coming back to Western capitals could increase.

Western foreign policy has clearly failed as far as the publicly declared aim of 'countering extremism'. The reason is that it has been too closely associated with backing the irresponsible policies of Qatar and Saudi Arabia because of the hold they have over the US, France and Britain as regards energy and finance.

Syria: The Geopolitical Constellation and the Move Towards Military Involvement in the Syrian civil War.

'While stressing that Washington's primary goal remained "limited and proportional" attacks, to degrade Syria's chemical weapons capabilities and deter their future use, the president hinted at a broader long-term mission that may ultimately bring about a change of regime.

"It also fits into a broader strategy that can bring about over time the kind of strengthening of the opposition and the diplomatic, economic and political pressure required – so that ultimately we have a transition that can bring peace and stability, not only to Syria but to the region"' 

President Barack Obama, Tuesday Sepember 3 2013 ( The Guardian, Obama hints at larger strategy to topple Assad in effort to win over Republicans )

Washington has always wanted regime change from the outset of the Syrian Civil War in April 2011. That Obama is now indicating that a policy of siding with the Syrian 'rebels'  is back 'on the table' in addition to missile strikes. one advocated staunchly by the neoconservative John McCain, reflects a continuity in policy.

The rationale is clear: the US, France and UK will not tolerate any extension of Iranian influence in Syria through Assad and Hizbollah while they are tacitly backing the attempt by Qatar, Turkey and Saudi Arabia to extend their influence by backing the armed Sunni Islamist opponents of the government.

The bottom line is that Qatar is an ally with a strategic partnership with Britain in a variety of military and economic bilateral ties which is completely opposed to Iran's rival geopolitical designs for Syria in the future-if it has one-including proposed pipelines to pump gas west towards Europe.

Turkey is already has sections of gas pipeline to hook up to Qatar and that requires the potential Shi'ite axis of influence from Iran to the Eastern Mediterranean be broken and Assad removed in Syria. That requires the playing the role of a revived Ottoman Empire and extending greater friendship ties to other Arab states.

Turkey wants to stand with Qatar not only due to the desire to increase its prominence as an energy hub between Europe and Asia. Gas rich Qatar now provides most of Turkey's tourist revenue. As Professor Norman Stone emphasised, after the protests in Turkey back in June 2013,

'Arab money is behind the shopping malls and is underpinning the Turkish current-account deficit. The Saudis and Qatar seem to be mainly involved, and now they buy up land in Yalova, over the water from Istanbul, as well. This has delighted the foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu'.

The danger is that in pushing for the support for the Sunni insurgents aligned to the Muslim Brotherhood, Iran would step up its support for Kurdish militias who want autonomy in Syria and Turkey leading to the conflict spilling over into a NATO member. The al Nusra Front is already in conflict with the Kurds.

So Syria is the proxy war ground not only for external powers but also for ethnic and sectarian enmities that straddle borders and have created fault lines across the Middle East. It is a lethal theatre in the New Great Game being played by the world's largest powers for control over energy flows across the region and beyond.

The ultimate target is Iran. Hemmed in to the east by a government installed by the West through the Afghanistan war and occupation, Iran is also having its gas export routes west thwarted by the US and other allies who have opposed Iran as an independent geopolitical player since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

If the US embarks on military intervention through missile strikes, Assad could react in a dangerous way and Iran is not going to be prepared to see him removed or overthrown by pro-Washington opponents. Hizbollah will step up operations and Iraq under a Shia president leans towards Tehran as well.

That is why measures towards what  David Cameron  called the need to 'tilt the balance', in the rebel's favour is now back' on the table' in Washington. No doubt Britain will be a willing partner in funnelling aid to the Sunni militias in order to put Assad in the position of negotiating his exit at a second Geneva Conference.

Washington's foreign policy and the insistence that 'Assad must go' exacerbated the problems in Syria to the point where any political settlement looks unlikely and yet where military intervention could intensify the level of killing and instability as well as committing the West to the Sunni side in a complex conflict.

Syrian Crisis: France's Stance and Its Strategic Partnerships.

“I am struck by how eager Great Britain and France appear to be in favour of military action. And I am also mindful of the fact that both of these two powers are former imperialist, colonialist powers in the region.” -former US National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski

France has been more hawkish over Syria throughout the conflict there than either Britain or even the US. When news of the alleged chemical weapons strike on East Ghouta broke on 21 August, the French Foreign Minister, Laurent Fabius, was first out calling for a 'reaction with force'.

A continuous stream of the most belligerent rhetoric has emanated from Paris since then, with calls from President Hollande that France was 'ready to punish' Assad to Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault claiming the attack involved a "massive use of chemical agents".

France's knowledge about Syria's chemical weapons stock may come from the fact that in the 1980s it was French pharmaceuticals that were imported for 'dual use purposes'. The French dossier is technically specific about Syrian CW capabilities but adds nothing towards exact responsibility for the attacks.

The 'public diplomacy' behind the dossier is to back up Washington's version on Saturday and John Kerry's rhetoric about 'we know' everything and 'we have assessed'. Indeed France has been more persistent in backing the Syrian opposition than the US as it was responsible for setting up 'Friends of Syria'.

The 'Friends of Syria Group' or 'Friends of the Syrian People Group' was set up in June 2012 by Sarkozy to bolster support for the Syrian National Council and to prepare for a post-Assad government. The aim is 'revolution' but the reality from the French perspective is its national interests.

France is a staunch ally and strategic partner of Saudi Arabia and Qatar both in the Friends of Syria Group and which support militias with arms and money against Assad. French military ties with the oil rich kingdom have put it at the forefront of the push to directly provide weapons to the Syria rebels.

The FT reported on June 21 2013 an analyst close to ruling circles, Jamal Khashoggi, revealing that Saudi Arabia would never let its Persian Gulf rival Iran 'win a victory in Syria' because Assad had had the upper hand until the alleged chemical weapons attack by his regime occurred.

'”Saudi Arabia has to do something now, even if it will do it alone. The goal now must be toppling Bashar, even if the US is not involved. If Saudi Arabia leads the way, Sunni tribes and o ther countries, including France, will eventually join.”

France, concerned that Syrian opposition forces are losing ground, has suggested it is ready to push ahead with increasing the scale of equipment it supplies to the rebels, but it remains coy on what weapons it may be prepared to include.

Officials said this week that Paris had already “ticked the boxes” of materiel it was willing to deliver on a list presented to the Friends of Syria members by the Free Syrian Army. But they declined to say what these included.'

France's defence of Saudi Arabia's policy in Syria so as to check Iran, its main regional geopolitical rival and Shia enemy, is a lucrative and mutually beneficial partnership. On the August 30 news broke of 'a billion euro defence contract with Saudi Arabia to overhaul four frigates and two refuelling ships'.

France's bilateral ties with Qatar, the other main funder of the Islamist militias, brings numerous benefits from Total's stake in the liquefied natural gas ( LNG ) market and the supply of it as an increasing part of the gas energy portfolio for north west Europe via France's EDF group.

France's energy policy is interconnected to geopolitical strategy and competition with Russia and Gazprom for control over the global market for LNG. The volume of Qatari LNG threatens to displace the importance of Russian gas. The proposed Qatar-Turkey pipeline would rival Russian imports and so it backs Assad.

France's interest in energy diversification coincides with many EU states. However, only France ( apart from Britain ) is a military power that can assert those energy security interests in the Middle East. More than that, Qatar invests billions of petrodollars in French real estate and grand projets.

Syrian Crisis: Red Lines and Green Lights.

Regionwide war could break out if , in response to US and UK cruise missile strikes, Iran steps up the arms supply to Assad's government and its proxy Hizbollah attacked Israel. Then Israel, a nuclear power, may well decide to try and use the rhetoric about WMDs to take out Iran's suspected WMD sites.

Israel has kept fairly quiet during the Syrian crisis and threats of military action against Syria. Some Iranian spokesmen and commanders have made oblique statements about how an attack on Syria would 'fan the flames' of 'outrage' across the Middle East.

If Israel sees Assad or Hizbollah as being directly supported by Tehran while they are attacking Israel it could deliver an ultimatum to Iran or just act if the situation on the ground deteriorates into an ever greater life and death struggle between Assad's most Shia Alawi backed government and majority Sunni militias.

Another regional flashpoint is Bahrain. The tiny Gulf Kingdom is ruled by a Sunni monarch in a land where 70% of the population is Shia. Since the Arab Spring of 2011 there have been revolts and riots so bad that Saudi forces had to roll in and crush the protests.

If Qatar and Saudi Arabia step up their arms supplies to the insurgent groups they are backing in Syria further ( they did on August 25 after Western military intervention was first put forth ) Iran could, if pushed too far, try to stoke up unrest to increase its regional influence against Saudi Arabia.

Bahrain was relatively stable in 2013. However, in July Shia terrorist groups were already setting off explosions in order to exacerbate sectarian tensions. Bahrain is also the naval base for the US Fifth Fleet which would be used in Tomahawk cruise missile strikes against Assad's Shia state.

Tensions are simmering in Bahrain because leading members of high society close Bahraini royal court such as the Salafist Sheikh Faisal al-Ghurair las month announced “We are happy to tell you that we have sent arms and ammunition to the mujahedeen in Syria”.

However, the real tensions that could create the greatest instability would be the chaos in Syria developed greater and turned into a failed state such as Afghanistan, not least as Saudi Arabia is terrified not only by potential Shia opposition in the east near main oil producing zones but Al Qaida 'blowback'.

Syria: Enter the Arab League.

'the Arab League threw its weight behind the allies' judgement that the Assad regime was responsible for the chemical attack, the US and Britain paved the way for intervention, saying it would be a response to a violation of international law and not aimed at regime change.'

The final part of the plan to attack Syria is to get the Arab League to back it. The goal is regime change in that missile strikes are designed to get the Assad to negotiate his departure on the West's terms. But this is still a dangerous calculation in the New Great Game to control oil and gas.

The real stakes in the Syrian conflict are energy resources and global power politics. Qatar has funded the Muslim Brotherhood, as has Turkey, because Iran is a major geopolitical rival that is also vying with it to pump gas from the South Pars field it shares with its tiny neighbour, a leading state in the Arab League.

Qatar is a major supplier of liquefied natural gas ( LNG ) to the West where numerous states want energy diversification and not to be too dependent upon Russia. The depletion of North Sea Gas has also made Britain anxious to please Qatar and benefit from the colossal amounts of money it invests in London.

The facts are instructive as to where Britain's future strategic interests lie even though the vast majority of gas still comes from the North Sea and Norway. The UK economy has become increasingly a rentier one since the 1980s and dependent upon oil money and its export of weapons to oil rich Arabic states.

'Qatar investments in the UK have reached QR125bn ($34bn), including stakes in grocery chain Sainsbury’s, BAA (British Airports Authority), London Stock Exchange, Barclays, the US Embassy building in Grosvenor Square and the Shard of Glass development, which is Europe’s tallest building'

Qatar is a regional gas rich superpower upon which the EU states especially depend upon and hence why Britain and France were pushing Washington to intervene militarily. But the US has vital interests there too as it has become a major player in the global LNG market after its 'shale revolution'.

The Gulf states became increasingly hostile to Assad as Iran stepped up its supply of arms via Iraq and to its Lebanese proxy Hizbollah. Saudi Arabia also fears its non-Arab and Shia rival across the Persian Gulf. The oil rich kingdom fears an axis of influence between Iran, Iraq and Syria to the north and a planned pipeline.

Saudi Arabia even offered Russia a deal on control of the oil market if it gave up its support for Assad. But Russia fears that Western missile strikes could embolden Al Qaida affiliated groups within Syria, some of whom come from Chechnya and are allegedly funded by the West's strategic partner.

If Russia drops its support for Assad, then Saudi Arabia's Head of Intelligence Prince Bandar has offered an alliance between the OPEC cartel and Russia and to safeguard its gas interests in the Eastern Mediterranean such as those discovered near Tartus on the border with Lebanon where Russia has a naval base.

The lack of compliance would result in Saudi Arabia not being able to guarantee the security of the Sochi Winter Games as the West proceeds with removing Assad Bandar claimed of the jihadists “We use them in the face of the Syrian regime but they will have no role in Syria’s political future.”

The imminent US and British attacks on Syria have not much to do with humanitarian outrage at chemical weapons use as these are largely a pretext for an intervention they wanted. The aim is continuity with that of getting regime change while not leading to a collapse of Syria into a failed state.

That's the reality. European states and their economies are basically too overdependent upon gas for energy from states such as Qatar and do not wish to be dependent on states such as Russia which are global geopolitical rivals with huge resources of oil and gas that it doesn't have enough of any more.

Instead of wasting time denouncing 'hypocrisy', 'warmongering' and so on ( as if this were some surprise ) it is better to concentrate on the underlying reasons why the double standards in the West's foreign policies have become increasingly obvious since the end of the Cold War.

Syria: The Impact of the Chemical Weapons Attack on Ghouta

With today's claims of chemical weapon attacks by Assad's regime on Ghouta near Damascus, the danger is  an instantaneous flurry of media coverage in which the rush to judgement benefits those statesmen wanting to harness it to support their realpolitik agenda under the cover of humanitarian concern.

It is obvious that the FSA would want to ramp up the claims of chemical weapons use in order to get Western intervention to overthrow Assad. But it is not impossible that Al Qaida could get its hands on chemical weapon. If it were to use them for an attack, they would hope to draw in the West.

Assad's regime would have had to be seemingly insane to use chemical weapons just days after the UN inspectors arrived in Syria because the US and Britain were bound to want to use this as a pretext to demand the inspectors have access and, if they cannot, this can act as a sign of his 'non-compliance'.

However, the fact is that even if Assad had rained down nerve gas on Ghouta, the West has no means of controlling events in Syria. If it sends huge supplies of weapons to the 'rebels', the chances are that they will fall into the hands of Al Qaida and help them 'liberate' chemical weapon stocks.

The bleak fact is that Syria is in such a situation that states, such as Britain with statesmen such as Hague at the forefront especially, are going to have to recognise that they cannot affect the outcome of this brutal civil war having been partly responsible for it in demanding 'Assad must go'.

Britain's diplomacy has been catastrophic. By backing the 'rebels' and refusing to engage in diplomacy with Iran, and so stay onside with Turkey and Iran's Persian Gulf rival in Saudi Arabia, Hague has blundered into a position where the oil rich kingdom is now calling the shots in Egypt.

In effect, this means widening already existing divisions among 'the rebels', as those backed by Qatar and Turkey belong to the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood are hardly going to want to fight alongside those backed by Saudi Arabia and who are less inclined to want the ballot box in any post-Assad Syria.

The only possible motive the Assad regime could have had in using chemical weapons ( assuming this attack is its work ) was to show that if the US and Western nations could allow the Egyptian military to repress the Muslim Brotherhood by 'eliminating them' then he could do something similar.

If that is so, it is hard to think what the Assad regime could think it was going to achieve, other than to show that he is still a force to be negotiated. In the absence of any realistic alternative to ending the civil war and with Iran and its Lebanese based proxy in Hizbollah backing him, he might have tried to play his hand this way.

All We Can Do for Syria Now

Timothy Garton Ash has claimed that politics as present has reached a deadlock in dealing with the Syrian civil war. In his column 'All we can do for Syria now is donate to the relief effort', he seems to want to distance the West from having had any control over events on the ground politically,

'Beside the external Islamic patron states, including Saudi Arabia and Turkey on the Sunni side, there is Russia arming al-Assad's forces against rebels who are being (very tentatively) supported by the US – almost as if we were back in the cold war.'

Yet the US and Britain is already doing things it should not ( covertly backing the insurgents and trying to dictate the terms of any peace ) and not doing the things it should ( most obviously engaging in diplomacy with Iran). But it will not do this because Iran is regarded as the enemy of the UK's geopolitical interests.

Garton Ash does not mention the obvious fact Turkey is a NATO member which is irresponsibly stoking up the conflict in Syria by training Syrian Muslim Brotherhood militias to fight Assad. He omits that Saudi Arabia is the lynchpin of Britain's strategic policy for controlling Gulf oil and Iran's main regional competitor and foe.

The alliance with Saudi Arabia preserves the balance of power in the Middle East against Iranian influence. In Syria, it was the fear of Iran propping up its ally Assad, when set against having a Shia government in Baghdad, which has led to Saudi Arabia backing Wahhabi militias in a proxy war.

Saudi Arabia is a vital supplier of oil to the West and locked into a strategic partnership in which billions of pounds worth of arms deals bring profit for Britain's aerospace industries. Along with Qatar and other Gulf states fearing Iranian influence, Saudi Arabia is a major investor in Britain.

All of this is not mentioned by Garton Ash. Yet these basic facts are essential in understanding the geopolitical stakes in the civil war in Syria and why the only way of securing a ceasefire, which would  involve Iran and not making Assad's departure a precondition to negotiations, is unlikely to happen.

Garton Ash knows diplomacy that involves Iran is vital but just asserts 'it's simply not happening, nor likely to happen any time soon' and that politics is 'blocked' for reasons that seemingly have nothing to do with Western interests or its heavy dependency upon oil from Saudi Arabia. 

Garton Ash goes on to claim,

'The record of western military intervention in this region is disastrous. Yet the notion that not intervening in any way, militarily or otherwise, is always the most moral option simply does not stand honest scrutiny.' 

Yet if Garton Ash had scrutinised the West's actual intervention in Syria and its wider context in effectively backing those states funding Sunni fundamentalists, he would see that this was not a moral option but based very much on a cynical realpolitik to preserve oil and arms interest.

Playing with Fire : The Syrian Crisis and " The Options on the Table"

The response to the Syrian Civil War in Washington and London seems to vacillate from the tough talk about 'all options being on the table' and claims that neither power will send arms to the Syrian opposition. Cameron indicated on the BBC that Britain would not now supply the "rebels" with weapons.

As with anything Cameron says, it is 'Public Diplomacy' ( i.e. propaganda ) designed to try to reassure the pubic that Britain is not doing anything as irresponsible as arming the 'wrong' elements in the Syrian opposition. Nor has Cameron actually denied that the opposition will, in fact, be armed.

What Cameron said was this,

“What we should be doing is working with international partners to help the millions of Syrians who want to have a free democratic Syria, who want to see that country have some chance of success.”

“We’re not intervening by supplying weapons, but I think we can with partners to strengthen those parts of the Syrian opposition that really do represent the Syrian people.”

The strategic partners that Britain has with regards Syria are Turkey and Qatar, which have been funding and aiding Syrian Muslim Brotherhood insurgents, and Saudi Arabia which has been backing Wahhabi jihadists as a proxy against Assad, the Lebanese Hizbollah and, by extension, its main Gulf rival in Iran.

Cameron only states that Britain is not supplying the opposition with weapons and not that it is not working with its strategic partners in the Middle East to funnel weapons into the favoured opposition militias. The claim of "stalemate" means essentially that there will be no diplomatic attempt to get a ceasefire.

This explains why in Washington military experts such as General Martin Dempsey are being called in to discuss the military options which involve continuing to work covertly with insurgent groups via the CIA or to establish no fly zones or, ominously, even to use kinetic strikes.

So despite all the reassurances that the US and UK will not supply weapons, the possibility of a disastrous attempt at intervening militarily is actually being pondered as under no circumstances would they allow Iran to win in Syria. This is why they are still worried about Assad becoming stronger.

Fears in the US about Iran's regional power have only grown with a Shia government under Maliki in Iraq allowing its airspace to be used by Iran to shuttle weapons to Damascus as well as the paramilitary Quds Force. Iraqi volunteers have also been joining Hizbollah to fight the Sunni militias.

So the potential for war exists no less than it did a moth ago when Hague got the EU to lift the embargo on supplying weapons to Syrian opposition groups that are still absurdly termed 'rebels' .The attempt to talk tough cannot alter the outcome of either the civil war on the ground nor persuade Russia to stop favouring Assad.

What this sabre ratting in Washington can do is to ramp up the pressure to act in order to defend the US and UK's global 'credibility'' .Clinton and Hague's bad diplomacy prepared the way in insisting 'Assad Must Go' from the outset. Hague remains determined to remove Assad as his prestige depends on it.

For the fear of not 'losing face' in the Middle East and thus emboldening Iran is bound to become a recurring one. John McCain obviously wants to portray Obama as weak and dithering. Hague is itching to exploit his supposed diplomatic victory with the EU over the embargo to prove himself 'right'.

The geopolitical situation is too volatile for this sort of posturing. With Israel having been claimed to used Turkish airbases for a strike to knock out Syrian anti-ship cruise missiles, on July 5, the danger is that Iran will see Turkey as a greater threat to its security.

As historian Mark Almond put it,

“It [Turkey] could be a conduit for a potential air strike into Iran through its own aspects. It would be much more difficult for the Iranians to detect something coming from Israel..Even if the Israelis have plans to strike at Iran from a completely different direction the risk is that the Turks will be held responsible and Turkey could be drawn into a conflict.”

The terrifying part of any potential conflict between Turkey and Iran is that Turkey is a NATO member and Article 5 is clear that any attack on a member state is construed as an attack on all. The failure of the US and UK to try to involve Iran in diplomacy over Syria could mean the potential collision of these powers over it is growing.

Syria: Proxy War and Battleground in a Global Jihad

On whether the US, UK and France will directly arm the Free Syria Army, not only is the more 'extreme' wing fragmenting and going over to militant jihadist splinter groups but the foreign fighters, seeing Syria as a national battleground in a global jihad, are in fierce combat with the FSA.

'Months of uneasy calm between jihadists and the mainstream Syrian opposition spilled into fierce fighting in Aleppo on Saturday, days after a senior Free Syria army commander was assassinated by a jihadi group...The fighting was in Bustan al-Qasr in the south-east of the divided city.

The battle underscored the fast-splintering nature of the Syrian opposition, which made sweeping military gains across much of northern Syria last year, but has been unable to advance from its key strongholds in Aleppo and elsewhere since January.'

The danger is that the US, UK and France will try to use any advance in Al Qaida inspired jihadists as even more of a pretext to arm the 'right' rebels in order to prevent 'another Afghanistan' on the borders of Turkey. Arming the insurgents would, however, be more likely to create just that.

The plan to arm Sunni Islamists, whether 'moderate or 'extreme', is worse than useless and the only way forward is to bring Iran into diplomatic negotiations instead of asserting as a precondition the demand that Assad must step down.It simply is not realistic and can only only prolong the bloodshed.

The West needs to drop the neo-Cold War style poses against Iran merely to please Saudi Arabia and Israel. The chaos in Syria could spread into Lebanon and Iraq and ultimately even blowback into Jordan and Saudi Arabia itself. Then the strategic interests it wants to uphold at any cost will be destroyed anyway.

It is also ominous that Al Qaida in Syria is acting as a recruiting base for UK born jihadists.

'Al-Qaida elements fighting with rebels in Syria constitute the most serious terrorist threat to Britain, and if they were to get their hands on Syria's chemical weapons the consequences could be catastrophic, according to British spymasters.'

The latest annual report of the parliamentary intelligence and security committee (ISC) claims that "Al Qaida linked elements" are trying to gain chemical weapons. If so, that would surely mean that the safest course of action is not to arm the Sunni insurgents but to engage in diplomacy with assad.

"There is a risk of extremist elements in Syria taking advantage of the permissive environment to develop external attack plans, including against western targets. Large numbers of radicalised individuals have been attracted to the country, including significant numbers from the UK and Europe."

The question is why the government has seemingly allowed that to happen and is not using their surveillance apparatus to arrest these people. If it does not know who these jihadists are and cannot arrest them then the British government needs to drop its insane plans to arm Sunni insurgents.

The risk of blowback will affect all those in the region from Turkey and Saudi Arabia who backed Sunni fundamentalists in accordance with shoddy realpolitik calculations and fear of Iran. That includes he US and UK and it now must promote peace negotiations that include Iran and do not insist 'Assad must go'.

This is yet another example of how Britain's strategic 'lethal embrace' of Saudi Arabia and overdependence upon oil is mortally endangering the securiry of Britain and its population. Greater terrorism is the price to be paid for a high octane lifestyle and we need to grasp that fact urgently..