January 15, 2021
Timothy Alexander Guzman, Silent Crow News – As the Trump’s era is coming to an end, his legacy in the Middle East will be described by the Palestinians, Syrians, Iranians and the rest of the Arab world as aggressive, dangerous and extremely reckless. Israelis will say that Trump was one of the most supportive and loyal American presidents to the state of Israel. The Israeli government even named a settlement after Trump in the Golan Heights called ‘Trump Heights.’
So how will history judge Trump’s Middle East policies?
For starters, Trump had increased tensions with all of Washington’s and Israel’s long-time enemies including the one country whose been on the hit list since 1979, Iran. Last Wednesday, Iran’s president Hassan Rouhani criticized Trump’s policies towards Iran, “a president who lacked political understanding took the helm of a country, and was accompanied by a stupid foreign minister and an ignorant and radical national security advisor. He handled everything with his gambling and business-oriented mind, and we finally saw how his term ended” and that “no one could believe this law-breaker [Trump] would order riot against his own nation, his own security, and the country’s legislature, and provoke people against the very democracy they believe in” proclaimed Rouhani. On February 2017, Trump’s former National Security advisor Michael Flynn presented a short and threatening statement towards Iran:
Recent Iranian actions involving a provocative ballistic missile launch and an attack against a Saudi naval vessel conducted by Iran-supported Houthi militants underscore what should have been clear to the international community all along about Iran’s destabilizing behavior across the entire Middle East
Flynn spoke on the types of threats that come from Iran “including weapons transfers, support for terrorism and other violations of international norms.” Flynn’s final words of the statement did not at all sit well with Tehran “as of today, we are officially putting Iran on notice.” Not a good start to diplomatic relations. Fast forward to May of 2018, taking advice from Israel’s Prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump announced the US withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal with Iran, calling it “a horrible one-sided deal that should have never, ever been made” and that “It didn’t bring calm, it didn’t bring peace, and it never will.” The next day, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei called Trump’s decision “inane and superficial.” In the following months, the Trump regime prepared to impose economic sanctions on Iran targeting its banking, energy, shipbuilding, and financial sectors if they did not follow Washington’s demands. As tensions, increased, Washington designated the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a branch of the Iranian Armed Forces as a “foreign terrorist organization,” Iran retaliated by designating the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) as a “terrorist organization.” In the following year, President Trump then imposed new sanctions on Iran by targeting numerous areas of production including aluminum, copper, iron and the steel sectors. A number of incidents including tanker explosions in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and a pipeline attack in Saudi Arabia prompted Trump to order US troops to the region and that created more tensions between Tehran and Washington. Then in early 2020, the Trump regime approved a drone strike that killed Qasem Soleimani, the well-respected commander of Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Forces who led the fight against terrorists in the region and Mahdi al-Muhandis, the vice president of Hashd al-Shaabi group. Trump said “what the United States did yesterday should have been done long ago.” Tehran condemned the attack vowing to retaliate. History will remember when Trump threatened to hit 52 Iranian targets including cultural sites as a response to any attack on U.S. citizens on twitter:
Iran has been nothing but problems for many years. Let this serve as a WARNING that if Iran strikes any Americans, or American assets, we have targeted 52 Iranian sites (representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago), some at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture, and those targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD. The USA wants no more threats!
A few days later, Iran made its threat a reality when the Revolutionary Guards Corps fired several missiles at the Ain al-Assad airbase in Iraq where US and Iraqi forces were based. The Revolutionary Guards released an official statement after the retaliation:
In Operation Martyr Soleimani in the early hours of Wednesday, tens of ground-to-ground missiles were fired at the U.S. base and successfully pounded Ain al-Asad Base
Luckily, a war between the US and Iran did not happen. On January 20th, Trump is set to depart from the White House, now Iran will have to wait and see what happens under the new President-Elect and self admitted Zionist and long-time supporter of Israel, Joe Biden.
From Planning the Assassination of Bashar al-Assad to Stealing Syrian Oil
In September 2020, The Hill published a report on Trump’s plan to assassinate Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad titled ‘Trump says he wanted to take out Syria’s Assad but Mattis opposed it’ claimed that Trump had admitted to a plan to have Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad assassinated while he criticized former Defense Secretary James Mattis. Trump’s “assassination operation” was discussed on Fox & Friends when he said that “I would’ve rather taken him out. I had him all set. Mattis didn’t want to do it. Mattis was a highly overrated general.” According to The Hill “The president added that he did not regret the decision not to target Assad, saying he “could’ve lived either way.”
The report also noted another quote from Trump on the idea of assassinating the Syrian president in a book written in 2018 by mainstream-media journalist Bob Woodward titled ‘Fear; Trump in the White House’ which Trump denied when he was asked about the plot and said that it was “never even discussed” and “No, that was never even contemplated, nor would it be contemplated and it should not have been written about in the book.”
However, according to Woodward “Trump urged Mattis that the U.S. should f—— kill Assad” after a chemical attack that occurred on April 2017 on civilians in the town of Khan Shaykhun in Idlib Syria. “Mattis reportedly went along with the president’s demands during the phone call, but immediately told aides after hanging up that they would take a “much more measured” approach.” Despite the fact that the mainstream media journalists have an extreme hatred towards Trump, it is quite possible that Israel did attempt to influence him to assassinate Assad and create a political crisis in Syria.
Trump also has been calling for the US to take Iraq and Syria’s oil for some time. An ABC news report has claimed that Trump said that the “U.S. will be keeping the oil” in Northeastern Syria after that his administration was “looking into the specifics” of the situation at hand. In 2020, Trump kept his promise. Last August, Newsweek published a report ‘Syria Says Donald Trump ‘Stealing’ Its Oil, After U.S. Company Makes Deal to Drill.’ The report said that Crescent Delta Energy and ‘Pentagon-backed militia’ or elements of ISIS and other terrorist groups who are allied with US and Israeli forces are operating in Syria’s oil fields:
Syria has accused President Donald Trump of stealing the country’s oil, after U.S. officials confirmed that a U.S. company has been allowed to operate there in fields under the control of a Pentagon-backed militia.
In remarks delivered Tuesday and sent to Newsweek by the Syrian permanent mission to the United Nations, representative Bashar al-Jaafari told the U.N. Security Council that “the U.S. occupation forces, in full view of the United Nations and the international community, took a new step to plunder Syria’s natural resources, including Syrian oil and gas” through the recent establishment of a company called “Crescent Delta Energy.”
This firm, “with the sponsorship and support of the US Administration, has entered into a contract with the so-called ‘Syrian Democratic Forces/SDF’ militia, an agent of the US occupation forces in northeastern Syria, with the aim of stealing Syrian oil and depriving the Syrian state and Syrian people of the basic revenues necessary to improve the humanitarian situation, provide for livelihood needs and reconstruction,” he added
Last December, another development took place against Syria with the Trump regime sanctioning President Bashar al-Assad’s wife, Asma and several members of her family. Sanctions were also imposed on the Central Bank of Syria, a member of parliament and several businesses that are associated with the Assad government according to The Hill. “Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the sanctions mark the fifth anniversary of the adoption of the United Nations Security Council resolution aimed at laying out a political solution to end the conflict in Syria.”
Trump Announces Jerusalem As Israel’s Capital
In 2017, Trump announced the recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and the new location of the US embassy that was originally located in Tel Aviv, the Palestinians responded by the ‘Day of Rage’, setting off protests in several areas including where 2 Palestinians were killed and hundreds more wounded after Israeli forces bombed the Gaza strip and many more were injured by either live fire or by rubber bullets in the West Bank. Fast forward to January 2020, the Associated Press reported on Trump’s Mideast peace plan that favored Israel which at this point in time, should not have surprised anyone:
Trump’s plan envisions a disjointed Palestinian state that turns over key parts of the West Bank to Israel. It sides with Israel on key contentious issues that have bedeviled past peace efforts, including borders and the status of Jerusalem and Jewish settlements, and attaches nearly impossible conditions for granting the Palestinians their hoped-for state
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called it “nonsense” and Netanyahu called it a “historic breakthrough” and that “it’s a great plan for Israel. It’s a great plan for peace.” Then Netanyahu promised to move forward to annex the Jordan Valley and the rest of the illegal Israeli settlements.
The US-Saudi Arms Deal and the Houthis Are Now a State Sponsor of Terror
Trump was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for bringing peace between Israel and UAE which was not about peace between the two, it’s was about creating a US-Israel-UAE alliance against Iran and creating long-term buyers of US and Israeli made weapons to the Emiratis. Israel and the UAE have been collaborating in the areas of security in terms of protecting the UAE’s oil fields for more than a decade or so. Israel’s Mossad has a long-time relationship with the UAE’s military that conduct covert spying operations against Iran adding to the fact that high-level Israeli officials had been visiting the UAE for many years. So Trump’s peace deal was another complete farce. The US and Israel basically have a good-long standing relationship with the Gulf State monarchies who both view Iran as their common enemy.
One of Trump’s first visit to the Middle East as US president was to Saudi Arabia to sell US weapons which he did successfully after sealing a $110 billion deal plus an additional $350 billion deal over a 10-year period. The US is preparing Saudi Arabia for a long-term war with its adversaries in the region which brings us to the Houthis of Yemen who the Trump regime will designate as a terrorist organization by January 19th. The US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo released a statement on the matter and said that “the designations are also intended to advance efforts to achieve a peaceful, sovereign, and united Yemen that is both free from Iranian interference and at peace with its neighbors.”
Despite the fact that Trump fired his advisor at the time, Neocon John Bolton, a war hawk who wanted to launch more wars in the Middle East was a good move. However, Trump’s legacy based on his decisions during his time in the White House will be remembered as a disaster, a president that made Israel great for Israelis and America hated even more than ever.
Published at silentcrownews.com
