Mahdi Nazemroya - NATO, Arab Spring, and the Axis of Resistance (2012)

Taylor: Taylor Report, CIUT 89.5 FM. I think I just mentioned it. And we're going to be talking to Mahdi Nazim Roya. You find his writings in Global Research. He recently wrote a piece called The Chess Game in Gaza. And... We want to talk about that because we've been focusing on this issue of the attack on Gaza by the Israelis and the way that it's all played out. We just had the UN vote over the peculiar definition of the status of the Palestinian representatives at the United Nations. Canada, once again, punched below its weight and went with the Marshall Islands and Panama and the Czech Republic and showed just how big and powerful we are. And we earned it. Was that the attention of the world? Not the respect, exactly, but the attention. And so he said, Panama, Canada, Marshall Islands, got it. So at any rate, Mahdi has written a wonderful book. article and very edifying one. It's in, I noticed, in Global Research. It was originally published in RT.com. You can find it. And we want to learn more about his thoughts on these matters. And today's, while we're waiting for him, today's Counterpunch has a great article by, what's his name, John Walsh. John Walsh. Who's been on our program. John Walsh is a I'm going to call him a medical worker. That's a strange expression. In Washington, no, pardon me, Massachusetts.

Mahdi Nazemroya: Massachusetts, Boston.

Taylor: And he's got an article today's Counterpunch titled Michael Moore is a Big Fat Hypocrite. I really recommend you read it. It's in keeping with Alexander Coburn and some other writers, and Ralph Nader and others who oppose the Obama administration. And we are joined by Mahdi Nazim Roya. There, sir. Hi, how are you? Good, and we're really glad to be talking to you. We have spoken in the past, and you were the last actually occasion we were talking about Libya, and I think all your comments were accurate, and most of your predictions have come true. Now you've turned your attention in a recent article to what is going on over Gaza, the dispute, The fighting, but also the greater interest, the power interests who are focusing on the matter at this time. In the global research, you have an article called, well, involves a title, a chess match. Yes. Your thesis, and I'll just put it this way. In recent programs, I've been asking people, what is going on with Qatar's sudden interest in Gaza, the visit there of the emir, followed two weeks later by an attack by Israel? You must have been watching the same thing. What are these interests, and what are they trying to achieve?

Mahdi Nazemroya: Well, I'd like to start by saying that There should be no mistake, and we should be very clear about this, that the Qatari leadership of the Sheikhdom of Qatar are aligned with Tel Aviv and the Israelis. They have business ties. They have shared interests in cultivating or restructuring the Middle East into what's called the New Middle East. which benefits Israel, as well as the feudal Gulf Cooperation countries, which includes the dictatorship of Qatar. So I want to be clear about this. They went to Gaza with the intention of tempting the Hamas-led government there of realigning itself. This is all about... breaking up what is locally called the Axis of Resistance, but what I refer to in all my work and writing as the Resistance Bloc, which includes Hamas, as well as various Palestinian movements referred to as the Palestinian Rejectionists, because of their rejection of Oslo, and because of their rejection of the PLO's stance, which they see as a surrender of Palestinian rights. This includes the Palestinian Rejectionists. This resistance bloc includes Iran, the biggest and most powerful member. A central player is the besieged Syrian Arab Republic, a country right now that is being besieged by NATO and its Israel and the Gulf Cooperation Council countries. Lebanon is a part of this through Hamas, the Amal Movement, the Free Patriotic Movement. and their allies in something called the March 8th Alliance. And also Iraq is increasingly falling into this bloc's configuration. So Qatar and Israel, what's happened is the Qataris want to tempt Hamas and the Palestinians to leave this access with Iran. And at the same time, the Israelis... They have the rod, while the Qataris have the carrot. They have the stick, and they launch this war, followed by a truce, brokered by Egypt. Very unique. First time that Egypt has been involved in this, in a truce that doesn't seem to be one-sided. First time articles are written in paper. They're trying to break Hamas from the resistance axis, while they also defang it and pacify it. You know, they're giving Hamas the choice of, do you want to be respectable? Do you want respectability? Do you want to be part of the mainstream Arab fold? Do you want to have dialogue with Saudi Arabia?

Taylor: Would you like to meet Hillary Clinton?

Mahdi Nazemroya: Would you like to meet? Exactly. Sit down with the Obama administration. Be welcome to European capitals. Go to Brussels. You know, see that type of stuff. And so Hamas is being... tempted into making a choice between governance which is kind of like Palestinian authority style governance in the West Bank where it's basically being outsourced Israeli occupation do you want a choice between governance and respectability or do you want a choice between fighting and combat and resistance and staying with the Iranians and Hezbollah and these these rejectionists and these radicals. So that's the choice that's being put in front of them.

Taylor: Yeah, so would you like to end up like Gaddafi?

Mahdi Nazemroya: Would you like to end up like Gaddafi or Bashar al-Assad? Do you want the bombings to continue? This truce is basically, some can also argue that it's meant to give America's Arab allies in the Middle East, they're not all Arab, but it's allies uh... good uh... public uh... good public image you know book katar turkey egypt they all shed crocodile tears for what what was happening in in uh... in gaza and i believe the people genuinely do care about what happened at the government are a different story in the government there they shed tears there was no concrete action whatsoever while they are uh... the anti-government militias in syria which they say oh it's our duty to arm them they're fighting against tyranny They refuse to do the same thing in Palestine. So you see the real double standards here. And they're basically arming who the anti-government forces in Syria, and they're not arming the Palestinians because they're helping restructure the Middle East, and this is to the benefit of Israel and the United States through the Obama administration, which is really showing its character now. Mm-hmm. Unlike the previous administration, this administration supports covert wars and intelligence wars. This is the big difference between this administration and the last one. The last one was very overt. This one is a very covert one. And these are the hallmarks. The hallmark of the Obama administration is regime change through covert operations, not necessarily through war. And it's becoming very clear now in his upcoming second term.

Taylor: We're speaking to Mari Nazim Roya. His article is Not Black and White, the chess game behind the recent Gaza-Israel war, an op-ed piece, as I say, at NRT.com. You can also find it at globalresearch.org. And Nazim Roya is the author of the book The Globalization of NATO, published by Clarity Press, The Globalization of NATO Research. a very important book. Nazim, I'm sorry, I keep calling you Nazim. It's Mahdi, Nazim Roy. What about the really ugly game, and I shouldn't call it, it is being played in Syria with repercussions for Gaza and elsewhere, of inciting a... violent conflict between Sunni and Shia. We saw it in Iraq. I guess it's still going on in Iraq. Is this a U.S. strategy? And what do you make of that idea that this is what they're trying to foster?

Mahdi Nazemroya: Yes, it is. We are almost at a full decade since the invasion of Iraq. March 2003 was the invasion of Iraq. Now we are a few months off. We're in December 2012. But from a few months off, it's almost a full decade from that invasion, we see the contours of the American strategy in the Middle East. It is definitely aimed at igniting sectarian wars in the region, to bloodlet, to make the region bleed, to divide people. And it's using identity politics.

Taylor: And by the way, Western media is happily joining in the way they did with African mercenaries, right? They actually foster the idea.

Mahdi Nazemroya: Yes, they definitely do. And it's very easy for me to point out how they do. Every single media report that talks about Syria and mentions Iran as their ally or their key ally or their most important regional ally will always say, that secular Sunni Muslim Syria's relationships with Iran a religious a theocratic Shiite Muslim country is unnatural and it's mostly emphasized on one being Sunni and the other one being predominantly Shiite they say it's unnatural and they're saying that all the Syrians want to be back with the other Sunni Arab countries that's not how it works at all and that's not the reasons for this it's unnatural so if relations between Shiite Muslim Iran and Sunni Muslim Syria are natural, then are relations between the United States and Muslim Saudi Arabia natural? Are relationships between Britain and any of these Muslim countries natural? No, this is really double standards. We never hear them saying predominantly Christian Britain relations with... predominantly Muslim Egypt are natural. No, but it's unnatural when it comes to countries you want to separate from one another. We're talking in an era where we're talking about global unity, and we're talking about distancing countries. People in Syria who oppose the government are not predominantly opposed to it on a sectarian basis. I'll be the first to admit that sectarian politics are being used, but those are political tools fundamentally. It's not because Sunnis and Shiites hate each other and they're fundamentally opposed and there's some genetic basis for this inside their blood to kill one another. No, not at all. If you look at even Saddam's previous government, it was not a Sunni Muslim government. It was not a sectarian government. It was just as much Shiites represented in it as there were Sunnis. Actually, the Shiites were more representative based on popular demographics, because Shiites are the majority in Iraq. There was a representation based on that. Same thing in Syria. The deputy prime minister and defense minister who was killed was a Christian. He was a Greek Orthodox Christian. The vice president is a Sunni Muslim. The head of parliament is a Sunni Muslim. I mean, there's Christians and there's Muslims and the Roos equally in parliament. So this discourse about... this being Sunnis versus Shiites, it's total fabrication, and it's meant to justify and naturalize the conflict that the United States is brewing along with Israel and the region, that ultimately it wants to lead to a Muslim civil war. And this is why it's important to distance and de-link Hamas from Iran and its allies, because they want to reduce the Iranians and Hezbollah and their allies into this Shiite axis that wants to dominate The Sunni Muslims, which isn't true. And the dictatorships in the Arabian Peninsula benefit because this is their way of staying in power, saying, oh, our legitimacy is that we're Sunni and our populations are Sunni, so we have to stay in power.

Taylor: It works for Queen Elizabeth.

Mahdi Nazemroya: Sure, these monarchies are using these constructs.

Taylor: This is a construct. Yeah, I like that. Your subhead here is Shiite and Sunni divisions are political constructs. I really urge people, by the way, to read this article because you devote attention to that very point. This is Mahdi Nazim Roya, and the article is in Global Research and RT.com. He's also the author of The Globalization of NATO, published by... uh... clarity press on the matter of hamas you know just before the fighting uh... this most recent I was reading reports that they were under pressure. They'd had the visit by the Emir, but also the Emir's visit wasn't actually very successful in the sense that they tried to, for example, to have a rally at a soccer stadium, but they said because people weren't going to go, they decided not to have it. Hamas has its own problems over this issue, don't they?

Mahdi Nazemroya: Well, we have to... We have to understand that Hamas has to play politics. It has to be pragmatic. You know, they have to accept support. They believe that they have to accept support from wherever it comes, be it an Arab dictatorship. Last countries in the world to talk about supporting democracy anywhere, including Arab dictatorships who have worked to undermine Hamas. Saudi Arabia... has worked to undermine Hamas for the last almost a decade. It's really worked against Hamas. It's helped the Israelis from the Mecca Accord to the 2008 bombings. It's supported the Israelis in one way or another. I was just speaking to someone who returned from Dubai, the United Arab Emirates. He said that none of the newspapers took a political line on the attacks on Gaza. He said the population were... They were in favor of the Palestinians, but none of the state media took a line against the Israelis, and that's because their government is in favor of Israel. So going back to your point, there's a lot of delegations that have come and gone. It's ironic that the Egyptians have prevented the Palestinians and Gaza's number one supporters from visiting, and that's the Iranians. I believe the Iranian foreign minister... wanted to go and the Egyptians prevented it. I know that there was rumors from the Israeli media that the Iranian Speaker of Parliament was about to go when he did a regional tour that included Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq, that he wanted to go to Gaza, but it was declined. But this was a rumor. But I think that the reports about the Iranian foreign minister wanting to go and being declined says a lot about what's happening. Like, you have people, you have a lot of delegations, including the Turkish foreign minister, go, you know, these are really good political points for them in the Arab world and amongst Muslim populations. Even from Lebanon, there was a March 14th, the March 14th, by the way, is supplying arms to the anti-government forces in Syria, and they're very anti-Palestinian fundamentally. A lot of their supporters helped kill Palestinians. they sent a delegation to Gaza. And what you just said, I can confirm, happened when their delegation went, because it included the Falange. It included right-wing...

Taylor: Yes, I saw a photograph of them.

Mahdi Nazemroya: Yeah, they went to... And a lot of Palestinians were upset. These guys, after all, massacred Palestinian women and children. with the Israelis in Lebanon, in one of the worst atrocities in modern time, in a refugee camp. So these guys ended up going there trying to score points because they're trying to say we support the so-called Arab Spring. And we can see the contradictions in the Arab Spring. Now, when it comes to Gaza, you see who's... Why are they only sending arms to the anti-government forces in Syria? Why don't they send arms to the Palestinians? I mean, this really exposes where they stand and why they support certain groups and not other groups. All they're going to do is give lip service to the Palestinian cause. They're going to try to make themselves, and I'm talking about Turkey and Qatar in particular, look good in the eyes of the Arab public and the broader international public. And they're going to work to... de-link Hamas from Iran and the resistance bloc, or the axis of resistance. Ultimately, this is the direction that things are being taken towards.

Taylor: This is Mahdi Nazim Roya. Where these interests are going is, of course, a crucial thing. I want to ask you this, bringing in a Canadian sort of factor here. Canada in NATO, and NATO is about to do something, or appears to be about to do something very, very dangerous, that is put missiles on the border of Syria, which could, we assume the goal being to create a no-fly for Syrian planes. We're that close to being shot at, aren't we?

Mahdi Nazemroya: I mean, number one, the whole idea of putting Patriot missiles there reinforces something that's already been happening in Turkey, and that's the U.S. missile shield, which is a NATO project now. I mean, it's a reinforcement of that. Number two, you don't need to put Patriot missiles there. Is Syrian air power attacking Turkey? No. In fact, The Syrian government's too busy with internal matters to even think about attacking any of its neighbor states. So this is actually an aggressive and offensive move. It could be the prelude to future intervention. There already is an intervention. Let's be clear about it. There's a covert intervention in this country. It is a NATO intervention. There is NATO aggression against Syria. It started all the way since... NATO's involvement in this country has started since 2001, to be honest. It started with Operation Active Endeavor, which stationed NATO vessels off Syria's coast permanently for the first time. But talking about NATO's aggression, I want to point out that I'm sure you know and listeners know that a Turkish... jet was shot down by the Syrians a few months ago. Well, this was bona fide a NATO spy mission against the country to study its air defenses.

Taylor: It's a classic way to do it, right? You send a plane into the area and you see what lights go on so you know where they are.

Mahdi Nazemroya: It was more than that. I will elaborate and explain what happened.

Taylor: If

Mahdi Nazemroya: you check the report about when the jet was shot down you would know that a Syrian jet with its pilot defected and went to Jordan just before the Turkish jet went into Syrian airspace what happened was when this Syrian jet defected to Jordan it gave the air security codes for the air security codes for that plane to NATO NATO used it and put it in the Turkish plane, which renders it basically invisible as a friendly jet. So the air defenses would not shoot at it. And this is what the Turks did. They took the codes from the Syrian jet that defected to Jordan on a NATO spy mission to go and check the air defenses. What happened is that the Syrians were aware of this, and... They caught the Turkish jet, and it was a bona fide spy mission. And this is actually a repeat of what they did in Libya. When in Libya, when the problem started in 2011, two Libyan jets defected. They went to Malta, I believe, and the air defense codes were passed on to NATO. And this is why you didn't see a really good performance from the Syrian air defenses when NATO attacked. And everybody was talking about, what about... all the Syrian air defense, Libyan air defenses. It's because they had the codes. And the Libyans never bothered to readjust things on the basis of the codes being passed on to NATO. But the Syrians are very different. They had Russian and Iranian help. And the Russian defense ministry has officially even stated that this was a NATO spy mission. So, I mean, the Patriot missiles is part of this continued behavior by Turkey and NATO of aggression and siege against They basically want zones where the Syrian military can intervene, where the rebel forces can build up and then attack the rest of Syria's territory from.

Taylor: Now that leads, I think, I guess to our last question, and I probably should have made it the first when we were speaking to Madi Nazim Roya, author of the Globalization of NATO, Clarity Press. And You mentioned Turkey and other countries. You know, at least in their parliaments, parties actually stand up and say to the government, what are you doing? I don't hear a voice in the United States Congress, and I don't hear a voice in the Canadian parliament saying, what are you doing?

Mahdi Nazemroya: That's a very good point you're making.

Taylor: Aren't we a little less democratic than Turkey? Yes.

Mahdi Nazemroya: I think you made a very good point. I think we're seeing in Canada political diversity is not what it used to be at all, and politics has been watered down. People have been zombified, and you don't see any opposition, real opposition, to the current minority-elected Harper government at all. So that is a really good point. In Turkey, you have massive opposition, parliamentarians. in regards to the parliament. The main parties in Turkey all oppose the government's move. Activists have been arrested. There's been massive demonstrations. The business entrepreneurs are against what's happening, because they know that there's a possibility that it'll be a Turkish civil war if Syria is... If there's a war against Syria, it's going to affect all the regional countries, and it could really draw Turkey into civil war. Even in the military, there's opposition to what's happening. And all the... There's ethnic minorities that are tied, but... Going back once again to what's happening in North America, we see that there's this apathy. I mean, there's this feeling of neutrality amongst people. I mean, I think fascism loves it when people are apolitical. Absolutely. Fascism can do whatever they want. They love the apolitical. That's what they prefer more than anything. You don't even need to be a fascist to agree with their views. You just need to be apolitical, and then the fascists can do whatever they want while you stay in your neutralism.

Taylor: Absolutely. Mahdi, you've written a great article, Not Black and White, the chess game behind the recent Gaza-Israel war, found at RT.com and globalresearch.org. Appreciate your time very, very much.

Mahdi Nazemroya: Thank you for having me.

Taylor: Okay. Bye-bye. That's Mahdi Nazim Roya, and he's written a great piece, as I said. You're listening to The Taylor Report, CIUT 89.5.