{"id":313561,"date":"2017-06-19T19:35:44","date_gmt":"2017-06-19T18:35:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/the-syrian-nightmare-no-end-in-sight\/"},"modified":"2017-06-19T19:35:44","modified_gmt":"2017-06-19T18:35:44","slug":"the-syrian-nightmare-no-end-in-sight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/the-syrian-nightmare-no-end-in-sight\/","title":{"rendered":"The Syrian Nightmare: No End in Sight"},"content":{"rendered":"<div itemprop=\"articleBody\">\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cWashington\u2019s strategic objectives in Iraq and Syria are not those of \u201cfighting terrorism,\u201d but rather consolidating US hegemony over the oil-rich Middle East and preparing for war against the principal obstacles to this objective, Iran and Russia. For US imperialism, undisputed control over both the Persian Gulf and Central Asia would provide the means to cut off energy supplies to its global rival, China.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Bill Van Auken, World Socialist Web Site<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>On June 10, the Syrian Army\u00a0blitzed\u00a0across an arid stretch of countryside in southeastern Syria\u00a0to reach\u00a0the Iraqi border for the first time in three years. The move,\u00a0 which caught US war-planners off guard, prevents US-backed\u00a0rebels from moving north from al Tanf\u00a0to join the fight against ISIS in Raqqa and Deir Ezzor. More important, the move makes it impossible for Washington to achieve its broader strategic objective\u00a0of consolidating its territorial gains into a contiguous landmass along the Euphrates River.\u00a0 Washington wants to control the eastern part of the country so it can continue its attacks on the regime\u00a0while overseeing\u00a0the construction of gas pipelines from Qatar to Turkey. The prospects of that plan succeeding are now greatly in doubt due to the surprise advance of the SAA.<\/p>\n<p>Aside from the humiliation of being\u00a0caught flat-footed\u00a0by a Syrian Army that has been battered by 6 consecutive years of war,\u00a0\u00a0Washington has\u00a0allowed\u00a0loyalist troops\u00a0to seize a swath of land that splits US&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2017\/06\/19\/the-syrian-nightmare-no-end-in-sight\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cWashington\u2019s strategic objectives in Iraq and Syria are not those of \u201cfighting terrorism,\u201d but rather consolidating US hegemony over the oil-rich Middle East and preparing for war against the principal obstacles to this objective, Iran and Russia. For US imperialism, undisputed control over both the Persian Gulf and Central Asia would provide the means to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-313561","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=313561"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313561\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=313561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=313561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=313561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}