The territory shown on the map is not controlled by Iranian forces or the Syrian Army, but only in part by US supported Syrian Kurds. The largest swat of land is under control of Turkey, Al Nusra and the Turkmen. All these militant groups get their weapons and supplies from the West though Gaziantep and Hatay pronince. Even if the Syrian Army broke the rebel siege of the eastern district of Aleppo, nothing would change further north to the border.

Amid Syrian chaos, Iran’s game plan emerges: a path to the Mediterranean | The Guardian |

“If we lose Syria, we lose Tehran,” Suleimani told the late Iraqi politician Ahmed Chalabi in 2014. Chalabi told the Observer at the time that Suleimani had added: “We will turn all this chaos into an opportunity.” [In earlier article, same author attributed the quote to an unidentified Iranian cleric – Oui]

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Securing Aleppo would be an important leg in the corridor, which would run past two villages to the north that have historically been in Shia hands. From there, a senior Syrian official, and Iraqi officials in Baghdad, said it would run towards the outskirts of Syria’s fourth city, Homs, then move north through the Alawite heartland of Syria, which a year of Russian airpower has again made safe for Assad. Iran’s hard-won road ends at the port of Latakia, which has remained firmly in regime hands throughout the war.

Ali Khedery, who advised all US ambassadors to Iraq and four commanders of Centcom in 2003-11 said securing a Mediterranean link would be seen as a strategic triumph in Iran. “It signifies the consolidation of Iran’s control over Iraq and the Levant, which in turn confirms their hegemonic regional ambitions,” he said. “That should trouble every western leader and our regional allies because this will further embolden Iran to continue expanding, likely into the Gulf countries next, a goal they have explicitly and repeatedly articulated. Why should we expect them to stop if they’ve been at the casino, doubling their money over and over again, for a decade?”  

What We Left Behind | The New Yorker – April 2014 |

In the effort to put down the upheaval, Maliki ringed the province’s two largest cities, Falluja and Ramadi, with artillery and began shelling. Forty-four Sunni members of parliament resigned. In Falluja and Ramadi, Sunni police abandoned their posts.

Maliki, apparently realizing that he had miscalculated, ordered the Army to leave both cities. Within hours, dozens of armed men, their trucks flying black flags, swept into the downtowns, declaring that they were from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, an Al Qaeda splinter group. Locals said that it was made up of men who had fought the Americans. “They are sleeper cells–local people,” a Falluja resident, who watched the rebels come into the streets, told me. “Al Qaeda was here all along, lying low. And now they control Falluja.”

Just as in Vietnam with the lies from Westmoreland and McNamara, the US public has been misled and lied to about US involvement with Saudi Arabia and the proxy war in Syria against Iran.

○ Obama Admits He Lacks A Strategy to Combat ISIL in the Levant by Oui on Aug. 29, 2014
○ US With Both Feet in Syrian Quagmire by Oui on June 27, 2014