{"id":12970,"date":"2015-10-03T09:31:04","date_gmt":"2015-10-03T14:31:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=12970"},"modified":"2015-10-03T09:31:04","modified_gmt":"2015-10-03T14:31:04","slug":"the-largest-us-foreign-policy-blunder-since-vietnam-is-complete-iran-readies-massive-syrian-ground-invasion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=12970","title":{"rendered":"The Largest US Foreign Policy Blunder Since Vietnam Is Complete: Iran Readies Massive Syrian Ground Invasion"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Largest US Foreign Policy Blunder Since Vietnam Is Complete: Iran Readies Massive Syrian Ground Invasion<\/a><\/h3>\n

On Thursday, in \u201cMid-East Coup: As Russia Pounds Militant Targets, Iran Readies Ground Invasions While Saudis Panic<\/a>\u201d, we attempted to cut through all of the Western and Russian media propaganda on the way to describing what Moscow\u2019s involvement in Syria actually portends for the global balance of power. Here are a few excerpts that summarize what\u2019s taking shape in the Middle East:<\/p>\n

\n
Putin looks to have viewed this as the ultimate geopolitical win-win. That is, Russia gets to i) expand its influence in the Middle East in defiance of Washington and its allies, a move that also helps to protect Russian energy interests and preserves the Mediterranean port at Tartus, and ii) support its allies in Tehran and Damascus thus preserving the counterbalance to the US-Saudi-Qatar alliance.\u00a0<\/em><\/div>\n

Meanwhile, Iran gets to enjoy the support of the Russian military juggernaut on the way to protecting the delicate regional nexus that is the source of Tehran\u2019s Mid-East influence. It is absolutely critical for Iran to keep Assad in power, as the loss of Syria to the West would effectively cut the supply line between Iran and Hezbollah.<\/em><\/p>\n

It would be difficult to overstate the significance of what appears to be going on here. This is nothing short of a Middle Eastern coup, as Iran looks to displace Saudi Arabia as the regional power broker and as Russia looks to supplant the US as the superpower puppet master.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In short, the Pentagon\u2019s contention that Russia and Iran have formed a Mid-East \u201cnexus\u201d isn\u2019t akin to the Bush administration\u2019s hollow, largely bogus attempt to demonize America\u2019s foreign policy critics in the eyes of the public by identifying an \u201caxis of evil.\u201d<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Largest US Foreign Policy Blunder Since Vietnam Is Complete: Iran Readies Massive Syrian Ground Invasion On Thursday, in \u201cMid-East Coup: As Russia Pounds Militant Targets, Iran Readies Ground Invasions While Saudis Panic\u201d, we attempted to cut through all of the Western and Russian media propaganda on the way to describing what Moscow\u2019s involvement in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[4445,441,522,542,620,1150,694,776,1174,1440,862,965,4318],"class_list":["post-12970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-ground-invasion","tag-iran","tag-middle-east","tag-moscow","tag-pentagon","tag-proxy-war","tag-russia","tag-syria","tag-us-foreign-policy","tag-vietnam","tag-war","tag-west","tag-zerohedge"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12970"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12970\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12971,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12970\/revisions\/12971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}