Lebanon Next in US War on Middle East

October 31, 2017 (Ulson Gunnar - NEO) - US politicians, policymakers and commentators insist that the United States military's involvement in Syria and Iraq is solely aimed at defeating militants from the self-titled Islamic State (IS). However, it is abundantly clear that before the Russian intervention in Syria in 2015, the United States was engaged in a proxy war against Damascus, not IS and that as the Russian intervention began rolling IS back and the organization clung to existence, Washington found itself revising its narrative around a new pretext to remain in the region, the "Iranian threat."

Geopolitical analysts have long-warned that regime change in Tehran was always America's ultimate goal and that the conflicts ignited across the Middle East and North Africa region (MENA) was a means of reorganizing the Arab World into a united front against Tehran and its allies and in turn, against Moscow and Beijing.

More recent news articles like the Associated Press', "US pushes Saudi Arabia, Iraq on united front to counter Iran," would report that:

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Sunday promoted a Trump administration goal of uniting Saudi Arabia and Iraq in common cause to counter Iran's growing assertiveness in the Middle East.

Tillerson participated in the inaugural meeting of the Saudi Arabia-Iraq Coordination Committee, along with Saudi King Salman and Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, telling the leaders that the event highlighted the improving ties between the longtime rivals and showed "the great potential" for further cooperation. He noted the August reopening of a major border crossing and the resumption of direct flights between Riyadh and Baghdad.

Attempts by the US to virtually seize control of Iraq's western Anbar governorate to provide a safe haven for militants now on the losing half of an emerging regional balance of power is an indicator that steps are already being taken toward what is in all intents and purposes an escalation, not a withdrawal from the Middle East by the US.

Riyadh's attempts to depict itself as undertaking socioeconomic reforms and its claimed intentions of abandoning its longstanding abuse of Islam through its politically-motivated Wahhabi interpretations appears to be little more than a means of assuaging fears of regional and global partners that Washington and Riyadh's dangerous game of using state-sponsored terrorism as a geopolitical tool has spiraled out of control costing all involved credibility and even stability.

War with Iran, Via Lebanon 

Additionally, the US seeks to pursue conflict along yet another familiar axis, through war between Israel and Lebanon and more specifically Hezbollah.

An editorial written by retired German General Klaus Dieter Naumann, former Chief of Staff of the Bundeswehr and former Chairman of the NATO Military Committee and General Richard Dannatt, former Chief of the General Staff of the British Army, titled, "A third Lebanon war looms: To stop it, US must curtail Iran, sanction Hezbollah," lays out the details of this looming conflict.

While the article portrays a "third Lebanon war" as inevitable, precipitated by Hezbollah and its sponsors in Tehran's aggression against Israel, careful reading and consideration of recent history exposes the editorial as an attempt to create the pretext upon which the US and its allies will provoke this war, not Hezbollah, and not Iran.

The article claims:

Neither Iran nor Hezbollah have any remotely credible reason for their enmity of Israel today — yet they are engaged in an implacable campaign of deadly hatred animated by their version of radical Islam. Hezbollah additionally has to explain to the Lebanese population it claims to represent why it has been killing Muslims in Syria at a furious pace. The best way to close this credibility gap is to attack Israel. Both Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah’s rhetoric, and his terrorist operatives’ actions on the border with Israel confirm this.

Nowhere in the article is it noted Israel's participation in the Syrian conflict, its own state sponsorship of terrorism in neighboring Syria including militants from Jabhat Al Nusra, a US State Department and UK Home Office proscribed terrorist organization, Israel's contributions to US-Kurdish proxies in northern Syria and Iraq and multiple Israel provocations aimed at Iran itself, including the sabotaging of its infrastructure with the Stuxnet computer virus. All of these are more than credible reasons for Iran and Hezbollah's enmity of Israel. 

Hezbollah Wages an Existential Battle in Syria

June 27, 2016 (Tony Cartalucci - NEO) - Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah has announced his intentions to reinforce positions within Syria, particularly in Aleppo. Al-Manar in its article, "S. Nasrallah: Hezbollah Will Reinforce Troops in Aleppo to Achieve Major Victory," would report that:

Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah confirmed on Friday that the party will send more troops to Syria's Aleppo where a major battle goes on in order to defeat the takfiri-terrorist project backed by Saudi and the US.

Nasrallah would add that the US and its regional allies were preparing to flood Syria with thousands of additional terrorist proxies in a bid to seize Aleppo. He also pointed out how the so-called "ceasefire" was used by various US-Saudi backed terrorist groups to retrench and prepare for the next phase of fighting.

Nasrallah Warned the World in 2007 of Syria's Coming Catastrophe  


In 2007, Nasrallah would give an interview to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh in his article "The Redirection: Is the Administration’s new policy benefitting our enemies in the war on terrorism?"

In it, Nasrallah would state the following while discussing the ongoing civil war in Iraq, years before the onset of the current Syrian crisis:

Nasrallah said he believed that America also wanted to bring about the partition of Lebanon and of Syria. In Syria, he said, the result would be to push the country “into chaos and internal battles like in Iraq.” In Lebanon, “There will be a Sunni state, an Alawi state, a Christian state, and a Druze state.” But, he said, “I do not know if there will be a Shiite state.” 

He believed that attempts would be made to drive Shia'a from Lebanon and Syria as far as southern Iraq, which may explain why the self-proclaimed "Islamic State" (ISIS) finds itself operating conveniently in both Syria and Iraq, serving as a tool to influence not just Syria, but the entire region geopolitically.

Hersh's 2007 article would also reveal another important aspect of US foreign policy evident at the time and now prophetic in retrospect. The article stated that (emphasis added):

To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.

In essence, Hersh's research and interviews revealed that even as early as 2007, the US was working together with regional allies like Saudi Arabia to bolster armed terrorist groups and their political networks, including the Muslim Brotherhood, in preparations to divide and destroy the region, including Syria, as well as Lebanon.

"Revolution" in Lebanon: From Piles of Trash to Piles of Rubble

September 5, 2015 (Tony Cartalucci - NEO) - "Spontaneous." "Genuine." Defiant." The US State Department's marketeers have used these labels in attempts to differentiate its latest wave of global "color revolutions" from the now tired, ineffective, and familiar formulas used everywhere from the US-engineered "Arab Spring," to the Euromaidan in Ukraine, to Bersih 4.0 in Malaysia.

The latest target is Lebanon where protests have begun in the streets of the capital, Beirut. Branded the "YouStink!" marches, the alleged provocation was dysfunctional municipal garbage collection services. However, very predictably, the protests have shifted quickly from what could have been perceived as legitimate demands to outright calls for regime change.

Color Revolutions 2.0

Just recently in Armenia, the US conducted what appeared to be a test run of its new and improved "color revolution" system of regime change. It attempted to create a movement with little if any initial political affiliation and with deeply hidden ties between protest organizers and their US State Department affiliations. Ultimately the so-called "Electric Yerevan" protests, whose alleged grievances were rising electric bills, spent so much time trying to convince Armenians and people around the world that they weren't a US-backed mob, they never succeeded in building up sufficient momentum to move on to the next step.

The trick was to first use rising electrical costs as a pretext to stage the protests, then quickly swing them around to demand a change in government. Likely, provocations and violence were planned for later stages, as well as opportunities for America's client opposition parties to take over and swell the ranks of street mobs with their supporters.

In Armenia, America's next generation of color revolutions failed.

In Beirut, however, it seems that the protests have made it at least to the point where the alleged pretext - piles of garbage - have now been replaced with demands for regime change.

Despite the 2005 so-called "Cedar Revolution" being exposed as entirely US-engineered, paving the way for the expulsion of Syrian troops from Lebanon and an Israeli attack on the country the following year, many even in the alternative press have been taken in by what should be an obvious, albeit more carefully concealed, follow-up to 2005's events.

Spot the Leaders, Follow the Money 

Transcending emotional appraisals of street mobs and reciting the alleged demands and motivations of the protesters themselves, protests are like anything else in the real world - they require leaders, organization, money, logistics, and infrastructure to function.

The "YouStink!" protest is no different.

Lebanon Protest Leaders Reveal Connections To Western Color Revolution Apparatus

September 3, 2015 (Brandon Turbeville - Activist Post) - Over the past few weeks, Lebanon has found itself embroiled in protests and social unrest the likes of which it has not experienced since 2005. The original issue, legitimate as it may be, surrounded the issue of lack of garbage disposal, yet the protests were soon infiltrated and morphed into an exercise of public rage over shadowy issues like “government corruption.” These protests have gone from peaceful demonstrations to violent clashes between demonstrators and police, with “infiltrators” largely responsible for provocative behavior.

Sectarian tensions are now beginning to surface, a very real fear and dangerous proposition in Lebanon, with members of the “movement” typically resorting to association with tribal identity groups (Christians with Christians, Sunni Muslims with Sunni Muslims, etc.) even during the protests.

As I mentioned in my article, “Color Revolution In Lebanon Designed To Weaken Hezbollah, Syria, Iran,” all of these aspects – shadowy reasons like “government corruption” for protesting, lack of demands, violence, and infiltrators – are hallmarks of a color revolution. So are the clever marketing strategies of “Branding” that see a protest movement, allegedly organic and spread across so many differing and various sectarian groups, develop a mutually agreed upon name for itself so early on.

The most telling aspect of whether or not a movement is actually a color revolution, however, is the “leadership” of that movement and the connections that leadership may have to the color revolution apparatus.

In the case of the You Stink! Movement, those connections are becoming increasingly visible.

Assadd Thebian is represented as one of the leaders of the You Stink! Movement by a number of Western press outlets and, in the Lebanese Press outlet, the Daily Star, he is described as being the “co-founder” of You Stink! Yet, far from being a truly organic Lebanese revolutionary, Thebian is closely connected to the United States Department of State.

Thebian is a participant in the Middle East Partnership Initiative, a program directed by the US State Department for the purposes of directing NGOs in foreign countries in order to facilitate US foreign policy. In other words, the MEPI is yet another program and initiative in the color revolution apparatus.

MEPI was created in December 2002 by the State Department. Its creation was announced in a speech by Secretary of State Colin Powellto the Heritage Foundation in Washington D.C. Powell stated that MEPI was an initiative that was to bear fruit over the long term, not merely 3-5 years. It was created to help pick up the slack in areas where USAID was not able to fully service. Although it was initially dependent upon USAID for support, MEPI has taken off on its own as a formidable color revolution organization.

Lebanon Bombing is Impetus for West's Planned Sunni-Shi'ia War

Repost: Saad Hariri Aides Western Syria Destabilization from Lebanon.
by Tony Cartalucci


October 20, 2012 - It was, starting at least in 2007, the goal of the US, Saudis, and Israelis to trigger a region wide sectarian war with which to overrun the governments of Lebanon, Syria, and Iran. This was documented in detail in Seymour Hersh's 2007 New Yorker article, "The Redirection" which was covered in depth in, "Syrian War: The Prequel.

A recent bombing in Beirut, Lebanon left high ranking security chief Brigadier General Wissam al-Hassan dead. Al-Hassan is described as "anti-Syrian." Before Al-Hassan's death was announced, and literally as bodies were still being pulled from the wreckage caused by the bombing, politicians from Saad Hariri's faction began immediately blaming Syria for the attacks. Hariri himself also laid the blame on Syria, offering no other details or supporting evidence.

Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran have all condemned the bombing and cite it as a provocation to start a greater sectarian war, from which none will benefit. Each in turn suspect Israel and the West, as greater sectarian tension is expected to result, playing into long documented attempts by US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia to trigger a sectarian war they hope will be the downfall of Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran.

Suspicious op-eds in pro-Western "Lebanon Now" insist that Syria is responsible, and again without evidence, concludes that blaming Israel is inappropriate, and that the Wall Street-London militant beachhead is by far a lesser threat to Lebanon than what it calls "the most deadly virus" of President Bashar al-Assad's Syria.

The blast has given impetus to Hariri's mobs to flood into the streets, who will no doubt portray themselves to be as "spontaneous" and "independent" as US-engineered mobs were throughout the equally premeditated "Arab Spring."

Hariri in 2007 was, according to US journalist Seymour Hersh, building an armed militant front in northern Lebanon, across the boarder from Homs, Syria. Many of these militants admittedly had direct ties to Al Qaeda, and with US, Israeli, and Saudi support, they were continuously armed, funded, and prepared for the sectarian bloodbath now unfolding. Homs to this day remains as one of the strongholds for terrorist militants operating in Syria.

While the Western media claims it is a shocking revelation that Al Qaeda is "amongst" the fighters attempting to overthrow the Syrian government, it is well documented that it was Al Qaeda from the very beginning who began armed operations against Syria, using Lebanon and Turkey as a base of operations, with explicit support from the West. The operations were carried out under the tenuous cover of "pro-democracy" protests and with a constant torrent of disinformation provided by the Western media.

While the current story in Lebanon develops, it will be useful to understand the role Hariri has so far played. The republished article below, originally posted in May, 2012, is by no means an exhaustive expose of Hariri and his role in executing the foreign agenda driven by Wall Street, London, Tel Aviv, Doha, and Riyadh, which starts well before 2007.

.... 

Originally posted May 21, 2012 -The United Nations has been inexplicably silent over revelations that the United States, Saudi Arabia, and other Persian Gulf states, are arming militants in Syria in direct violation of a UN brokered ceasefire. Additionally, the US has openly threatened to arm Kurd militants in Syria to "rise up" against the government. While in reality this constitutes a greater threat to neighboring Turkey, and perhaps an attempt to motivate Ankara to take a more aggressive stance against Syria, the threat of purposefully inciting more violence in a conflict that has allegedly claimed "10,000" lives, seems not only grossly irresponsible, but a violation of international peace.

Image: A bomb detonates in Syria, May 19, 2012, killing and maiming scores. This is the latest manifestation of overt US and Gulf State military support for terrorists attempting to destabilize and overthrow the Syrian government. The West has planned and prepared years in advance for implementing bloody regime change in Syria and Iran.

....

The West's meddling in Syria does not end there. Recently, clashes have broken out in Lebanon, revealing a large base of operations supporting the destabilization in neighboring Syria, located along the Lebanese-Syrian border. The significance of this discovery, and extremist groups in Lebanon being directly involved, highlights the veracity of a 2007 New Yorker article by Seymour Hersh titled, "The Redirection," which exposed a joint US-Israeli-Saudi operation to create a violent extremist front and direct it at Hezbollah in Lebanon, President Bashar al-Assad in Syria, and at the Iranian government.

In the article, the fact that these extremist forces had direct ties to Al Qaeda was noted, including the fact that many of these militants either participated in fighting US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, or were affiliated with groups that did: 

"In 2005, according to a report by the U.S.-based International Crisis Group, Saad Hariri, the Sunni majority leader of the Lebanese parliament and the son of the slain former Prime Minister—Saad inherited more than four billion dollars after his father’s assassination—paid forty-eight thousand dollars in bail for four members of an Islamic militant group from Dinniyeh. The men had been arrested while trying to establish an Islamic mini-state in northern Lebanon. The Crisis Group noted that many of the militants “had trained in al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan.”

According to the Crisis Group report, Saad Hariri later used his parliamentary majority to obtain amnesty for twenty-two of the Dinniyeh Islamists, as well as for seven militants suspected of plotting to bomb the Italian and Ukrainian embassies in Beirut, the previous year. (He also arranged a pardon for Samir Geagea, a Maronite Christian militia leader, who had been convicted of four political murders, including the assassination, in 1987, of Prime Minister Rashid Karami.) Hariri described his actions to reporters as humanitarian.

In an interview in Beirut, a senior official in the Siniora government acknowledged that there were Sunni jihadists operating inside Lebanon. “We have a liberal attitude that allows Al Qaeda types to have a presence here,” he said. He related this to concerns that Iran or Syria might decide to turn Lebanon into a “theatre of conflict."" -"The Redirection," Seymour Hersh, The New Yorker 2007

 The report also made mention of extensive US funding behind Hariri's faction, led then by Fouad Siniora, augmenting the creation of this militant force:

"The United States has also given clandestine support to the Siniora government, according to the former senior intelligence official and the U.S. government consultant. “We are in a program to enhance the Sunni capability to resist Shiite influence, and we’re spreading the money around as much as we can,” the former senior intelligence official said. The problem was that such money “always gets in more pockets than you think it will,” he said. “In this process, we’re financing a lot of bad guys with some serious potential unintended consequences. We don’t have the ability to determine and get pay vouchers signed by the people we like and avoid the people we don’t like. It’s a very high-risk venture.”

American, European, and Arab officials I spoke to told me that the Siniora government and its allies had allowed some aid to end up in the hands of emerging Sunni radical groups in northern Lebanon, the Bekaa Valley, and around Palestinian refugee camps in the south. These groups, though small, are seen as a buffer to Hezbollah; at the same time, their ideological ties are with Al Qaeda." -"The Redirection," Seymour Hersh, The New Yorker 2007

It becomes clear then that Lebanon's recent unrest is a result of a greater gambit targeting not just Syria, but the Hezbollah-Syrian-Iranian sphere of power, following the US-engineered "Arab Spring" installing proxy leaders across the Arab World to specifically support this last leg of geopolitical reordering. Such support has manifested itself as political support from US-proxy president Moncef Marzouki of Tunisia, and similar support from US-installed Libyan Prime Minister Abdurrahim el-Keib, who's nation has also committed not only arms and cash to Syrian terrorists, but fighters as well.

Image: Saad Hariri, former prime minister of Lebanon, is admittedly a co-conspirator in US-Israeli-Saudi designs to destabilize with militant extremists and violently overthrow the Syrian government. While Hariri feigns anti-Israeli sentiment and makes public calls for Lebanese to refrain from sectarian violence, he is the primary facilitator of both extremists crossing over into Syria, and their creating of chaos in the streets of Lebanon. A 2010 Fortune 500-funded International Crisis Group report describes in detail Hariri's deep ties, and indeed dependence, on the West.

....

Now, it is reported that "anti-Assad clerics" have been shot by Lebanese soldiers - and just as was seen during the assassination of Rafic Hariri, demagogues are attempting to draw Sunni Muslims into a conflict with Shi'ias. A strategy of tension is being used to divide the Lebanese people into a deadly conflict mirroring the sectarian, not "democracy," driven unrest ravaging Syria. With Saad Hariri, the US, and Saudi Arabia overtly working to undermine Syrian stability, it appears that all of the characters described by Hersh in 2007 are now openly implementing their plans.

The purposefully nebulous coverage by the Western media over violence in Lebanon so far, and a disingenuous depiction of it being "spill over" from Syria is meant to portray a general sense of chaos consuming the region. In reality, it is a premeditated destabilization dependent on fostering violence between Sunni and Shi'ia Muslims, just as was purposefully done in Iraq to balk an effective Sunni-Shi'ia alliance that achieved initial success fighting a foreign occupation led by the US starting in 2003.

While exposing the premeditated nature of the destabilization consuming Lebanon and Syria is essential, as well as calling for international condemnation of the US for openly attempting to escalate violence in the middle of a mediated ceasefire, calling on people across the Islamic World to refrain from falling into this sectarian trap, and being used as tools of their own division and subjugation by the West is equally important.

Saad Hariri portends that his alliance with the US, Israel, and the Saudis is simply an attempt to protect "Sunnis" from a "Shi'ia threat." In reality, as empires have done all throughout history, Hariri's invitation to the West to meddle in his own nation's affairs will open the door to the destruction and dismemberment of not only his enemies, but inevitably his own movement as well. A faction too weak to fight its rivals is certainly too weak to fight an invited foreign imperial power that decides to overstay its welcome. A strategy of tension is at play in the Islamic World, the trap set, hatred for Israel and rival ideologies the bait. Time will answer the question, "have the people of the world learned enough collectively to avoid it?"

Saad Hariri Aides Western Syria Destabilization from Lebanon

Attempts to trigger Sunni-Shi'ia strategy of tension. 
by Tony Cartalucci

May 21, 2012 -The United Nations has been inexplicably silent over revelations that the United States, Saudi Arabia, and other "Gulf States," are arming militants in Syria in direct violation of a UN brokered ceasefire. Additionally, the US has openly threatened to arm Kurd militants in Syria to "rise up" against the government. While in reality this constitutes a greater threat to neighboring Turkey, and perhaps an attempt to motivate Ankara to take a more aggressive stance against Syria, the threat of purposefully inciting more violence in a conflict that has allegedly claimed "10,000" lives, seems not only grossly irresponsible, but a violation of international peace.

Image: A bomb detonates in Syria, May 19, 2012, killing and maiming scores. This is the latest manifestation of overt US and Gulf State military support for terrorists attempting to destabilize and overthrow the Syrian government. The West has planned and prepared years in advance for implementing bloody regime change in Syria and Iran.

....

The West's meddling in Syria does not end there. Recently, clashes have broken out in Lebanon, revealing a large base of operations supporting the destabilization in neighboring Syria, located along the Lebanese-Syrian border. The significance of this discovery, and extremist groups in Lebanon being directly involved, highlights the veracity of a 2007 New Yorker article by Seymour Hersh titled, "The Redirection," which exposed a joint US-Israeli-Saudi operation to create a violent extremist front and direct it at Hezbollah in Lebanon, President Bashar al-Assad in Syria, and at the Iranian government.

In the article, the fact that these extremist forces had direct ties to Al Qaeda was noted, including the fact that many of these militants either participated in fighting US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, or were affiliated with groups that did: 

"In 2005, according to a report by the U.S.-based International Crisis Group, Saad Hariri, the Sunni majority leader of the Lebanese parliament and the son of the slain former Prime Minister—Saad inherited more than four billion dollars after his father’s assassination—paid forty-eight thousand dollars in bail for four members of an Islamic militant group from Dinniyeh. The men had been arrested while trying to establish an Islamic mini-state in northern Lebanon. The Crisis Group noted that many of the militants “had trained in al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan.”

According to the Crisis Group report, Saad Hariri later used his parliamentary majority to obtain amnesty for twenty-two of the Dinniyeh Islamists, as well as for seven militants suspected of plotting to bomb the Italian and Ukrainian embassies in Beirut, the previous year. (He also arranged a pardon for Samir Geagea, a Maronite Christian militia leader, who had been convicted of four political murders, including the assassination, in 1987, of Prime Minister Rashid Karami.) Hariri described his actions to reporters as humanitarian.

In an interview in Beirut, a senior official in the Siniora government acknowledged that there were Sunni jihadists operating inside Lebanon. “We have a liberal attitude that allows Al Qaeda types to have a presence here,” he said. He related this to concerns that Iran or Syria might decide to turn Lebanon into a “theatre of conflict."" -"The Redirection," Seymour Hersh, The New Yorker 2007

 The report also made mention of extensive US funding behind Hariri's faction, led then by Fouad Siniora, augmenting the creation of this militant force:

"The United States has also given clandestine support to the Siniora government, according to the former senior intelligence official and the U.S. government consultant. “We are in a program to enhance the Sunni capability to resist Shiite influence, and we’re spreading the money around as much as we can,” the former senior intelligence official said. The problem was that such money “always gets in more pockets than you think it will,” he said. “In this process, we’re financing a lot of bad guys with some serious potential unintended consequences. We don’t have the ability to determine and get pay vouchers signed by the people we like and avoid the people we don’t like. It’s a very high-risk venture.”

American, European, and Arab officials I spoke to told me that the Siniora government and its allies had allowed some aid to end up in the hands of emerging Sunni radical groups in northern Lebanon, the Bekaa Valley, and around Palestinian refugee camps in the south. These groups, though small, are seen as a buffer to Hezbollah; at the same time, their ideological ties are with Al Qaeda." -"The Redirection," Seymour Hersh, The New Yorker 2007

It becomes clear then that Lebanon's recent unrest is a result of a greater gambit targeting not just Syria, but the Hezbollah-Syrian-Iranian sphere of power, following the US-engineered "Arab Spring" installing proxy leaders across the Arab World to specifically support this last leg of geopolitical reordering. Such support has manifested itself as political support from US-proxy president Moncef Marzouki of Tunisia, and similar support from US-installed Libyan Prime Minister Abdurrahim el-Keib, who's nation has also committed not only arms and cash to Syrian terrorists, but fighters as well.

Image: Saad Hariri, former prime minister of Lebanon, is admittedly a co-conspirator in US-Israeli-Saudi designs to destabilize with militant extremists and violently overthrow the Syrian government. While Hariri feigns anti-Israeli sentiment and makes public calls for Lebanese to refrain from sectarian violence, he is the primary facilitator of both extremists crossing over into Syria, and their creating of chaos in the streets of Lebanon. A 2010 Fortune 500-funded International Crisis Group report describes in detail Hariri's deep ties, and indeed dependence, on the West.

....

Now, it is reported that "anti-Assad clerics" have been shot by Lebanese soldiers - and just as was seen during the assassination of Rafic Hariri, demagogues are attempting to draw Sunni Muslims into a conflict with Shi'ias. A strategy of tension is being used to divide the Lebanese people into a deadly conflict mirroring the sectarian, not "democracy," driven unrest ravaging Syria. With Saad Hariri, the US, and Saudi Arabia overtly working to undermine Syrian stability, it appears that all of the characters described by Hersh in 2007 are now openly implementing their plans.

The purposefully nebulous coverage by the Western media over violence in Lebanon so far, and a disingenuous depiction of it being "spill over" from Syria is meant to portray a general sense of chaos consuming the region. In reality, it is a premeditated destabilization dependent on fostering violence between Sunni and Shi'ia Muslims, just as was purposefully done in Iraq to balk an effective Sunni-Shi'ia alliance that achieved initial success fighting a foreign occupation led by the US starting in 2003.

While exposing the premeditated nature of the destabilization consuming Lebanon and Syria is essential, as well as calling for international condemnation of the US for openly attempting to escalate violence in the middle of a mediated ceasefire, calling on people across the Islamic World to refrain from falling into this sectarian trap, and being used as tools of their own division and subjugation by the West is equally important.

Saad Hariri portends that his alliance with the US, Israel, and the Saudis is simply an attempt to protect "Sunnis" from a "Shi'ia threat." In reality, as empires have done all throughout history, Hariri's invitation to the West to meddle in his own nation's affairs will open the door to the destruction and dismemberment of not only his enemies, but inevitably his own movement as well. A faction too weak to fight its rivals is certainly too weak to fight an invited foreign imperial power that decides to overstay its welcome. A strategy of tension is at play in the Islamic World, the trap set, hatred for Israel and rival ideologies the bait. Time will answer the question, "have the people of the world learned enough collectively to avoid it?"

Fighting Erupts in Lebanon

US, Israeli, and Saudi-funded terrorists destabilizing Syria now under fire in Lebanon. 
by Tony Cartalucci 

May 15, 2012 - According to a 2007 New Yorker article by Seymour Hersh, "The Redirection," the US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia had been assembling a region-wide army of extremist-mercenaries to battle Hezbollah in Lebanon, destabilize and overthrow Syria, and create a united front against Iran. The forces recruited for this effort would come from the ranks of the CIA-created "Arab foreign legion," Al Qaeda itself - extremist groups fresh back from fighting US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, including listed terror organizations like the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) from Libya.

Hersh's 2007 report exposed the groundwork for the very violence unfolding in Syria today, and now Lebanon. Forces to destabilize Syria were primarily to be staged in northern Lebanon, as explained in the article, and indeed the heaviest fighting over the last year has been seen in the Syrian city of Homs, just across the border from northern Lebanon. Syria's President Bashar al-Assad and his government have been, since the beginning of the violence, attempting to illustrate just this - explained in detail in 2007, and demonstratively being carried out today, with responsibility for deadly bombings being claimed by terrorists, the Pentagon itself admitting Al Qaeda is present in Syria, and reports indicating foreign fighters, weapons, and cash are flowing over Syria's borders.

Lebanon's Turn?

Now, the very staging ground in northern Lebanon being used to destabilize neighboring Syria has erupted into violence. Not by Syrian troops crossing the border, but by indigenous Lebanese factions facing off against each other. News is trickling out slowly and the Western media appears intent on keeping the violence as nebulous and confused as possible, but initial information indicates that extremist groups backed by the US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia are fighting factions connected to Hezbollah. Extremist leaders across the region are attempting to frame the violence as "Sunni versus Shi'ia," a ploy Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah warned against back in 2007:

"Nasrallah accused the Bush Administration of working with Israel to deliberately instigate fitna, an Arabic word that is used to mean “insurrection and fragmentation within Islam.” “In my opinion, there is a huge campaign through the media throughout the world to put each side up against the other,” he said. “I believe that all this is being run by American and Israeli intelligence.” (He did not provide any specific evidence for this.) He said that the U.S. war in Iraq had increased sectarian tensions, but argued that Hezbollah had tried to prevent them from spreading into Lebanon. (Sunni-Shiite confrontations increased, along with violence, in the weeks after we talked.)" -The Redirection, Seymour Hersh

Far from genuine sectarian violence, it was planned since 2007, to use terrorist proxies in a battle stretching from Lebanon to Iran with Arab nations from North Africa to the Middle East aiding the effort, dominated by freshly installed US proxies (Tunisia & Libya) and the Muslim Brotherhood, stated in Hersh's 2007 article to be wards of the West.

Violence has raged for nearly a week, in and around Lebanon's northern port city of Tripoli. While being depicted as violence "spilling over" from Syria, it is clear that the violence is indigenous, sectarian in nature, and directly related to the larger conflict envisioned by US-Israeli-Saudi machinations in 2007 - pitting Sunnis against Shi'ia. An editorial from NOW Lebanon reveals the "sectarian" nature of the violence in Lebanon and how both sides identify as either supporters or opponents of the neighboring Syrian government.

This prevailing "sectarian" aspect reveals what has been stated by geopolitical analysts since the beginning of unrest in Syria - that the violence was driven not by "pro-democratic" aspirations, but by sectarian violence exploited for the sole purpose of advancing the agenda of foreign meddlers - sectarian violence that has now manifested itself in attacks on Christians, Druze, and Alawites, as well as moderate Sunnis across Syria in the midst of this so-called "democratic revolution." 

The sectarian violence now unfolding in Tripoli is not unheard of in Lebanon. The Lebanese military has already been reportedly deployed but is sitting on the sidelines as factions war in the streets. The violence may ebb, as it has in the past, but with the Syrian unrest reaching a critical point and foreign powers desperate to change momentum that's been working against them, foreign-backed terrorist forces could try to ignite a wider sectarian battle in Lebanon. This could be to paralyze Hezbollah ahead of either a coup de grâce delivered to Syria by Turkey, or to simply inflame the entire region in conflict, making the movement of weapons, cash, and foreign support to proxy forces easier to move around, as well as grease the skids for introducing a Kosovo-style intervention.

Regardless, "sectarian" differences between Sunni and Shi'ia Muslims were planned for exploitation since at least as early as 2007 by the US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, for the sole purpose of advancing their self-serving hegemonic agendas throughout the region. The violence that both sides are playing into will deprive their communities of the security and stability needed for all to prosper and progress, and ultimately leave them at the mercy of foreign dominion.