{"id":38638,"date":"2018-10-03T10:37:56","date_gmt":"2018-10-03T15:37:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=38638"},"modified":"2018-10-03T10:38:37","modified_gmt":"2018-10-03T15:38:37","slug":"wikileaks-to-weaken-iran-us-undermined-democratic-elements-of-syrian-opposition-to-empower-radical-groups","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=38638","title":{"rendered":"Wikileaks: To Weaken Iran, US Undermined Democratic Elements of Syrian Opposition to Empower Radical Groups"},"content":{"rendered":"<header class=\"site-header\">\n<nav class=\"nav-primary\">\n<div class=\"wrap\"><\/div>\n<\/nav>\n<div class=\"socialicons-container social-icons\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.mintpressnews.com\/wikileaks-us-undermined-democratic-elements-of-syrian-opposition-to-empower-radical-groups-to-weaken-iran\/250154\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"attachment-featured-banner size-featured-banner\" src=\"https:\/\/www.mintpressnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/AP_17215409938792.jpg\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.mintpressnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/AP_17215409938792.jpg 1600w, https:\/\/www.mintpressnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/AP_17215409938792-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.mintpressnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/AP_17215409938792-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.mintpressnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/AP_17215409938792-800x450.jpg 800w, https:\/\/www.mintpressnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/AP_17215409938792-1145x644.jpg 1145w, https:\/\/www.mintpressnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/AP_17215409938792-820x460.jpg 820w\" alt=\"An al-Qaeda-linked militant standing in a bus, after being evacuated from the town of Arsal, near the Syrian border, in northeast Lebanon route to the rebel-held Idlib province in northwest Syria. Syrian Central Military Media via AP\" width=\"1600\" height=\"900\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"site-inner\">\n<div class=\"featured-post\">\n<div class=\"featured-post-text first-featured-post-text black-box\">\n<h3><a href=\"https:\/\/www.mintpressnews.com\/wikileaks-us-undermined-democratic-elements-of-syrian-opposition-to-empower-radical-groups-to-weaken-iran\/250154\/\">Wikileaks: To Weaken Iran, US Undermined Democratic Elements of Syrian Opposition to Empower Radical Groups <\/a><\/h3>\n<p>While seven years have come and gone since the leaked document was written by USMC intelligence, little has changed when it comes to the U.S.\u2019 long-standing goals in Syria and its callous disregard for the will of the Syrian people and Syrian democracy.<\/p>\n<div class=\"featured-post-author\">\n<hr \/>\n<p><b>WASHINGTON \u2014 <\/b>A recently uncovered<a href=\"https:\/\/search.wikileaks.org\/gifiles\/emailid\/2867729\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> U.S. government document<\/a> published by WikiLeaks has revealed that the U.S. directly advocated for undermining \u201cdemocratic\u201d elements of the so-called Syrian \u201crevolution\u201d of 2011 in order to ensure the dominance of authoritarian, sectarian Sunni groups within the Syrian opposition.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"content-sidebar-wrap\">\n<article class=\"post-250154 post type-post status-publish format-standard has-post-thumbnail category-highlights category-world tag-iran tag-saudi-arabia tag-syria tag-syrian-opposition tag-united-states-marine-corps tag-wikileaks first-post has-thumbnail item-count-1 entry\">\n<div class=\"entry-content\">\n<p>The document, written by the United States Marine Corps (USMC) Intelligence Department in late 2011, further asserts that empowering these radical Sunni groups over democratic and secular ones would be ideal for the United States and its regional partners, as ensuring the decline of the current Syrian government, and with it a secular Syria, would harm Iran\u2019s regional clout.<\/p>\n<p>In other words, the U.S. openly supported undermining democratic opposition forces in Syria in order to challenge Iranian influence and, with it, the influence of the Middle East\u2019s \u201cresistance axis\u201d that obstructs the imperialistic agendas of the U.S. and its regional allies such as Saudi Arabia and Israel.<\/p>\n<p>According to the document, which was buried in a previous WikiLeaks release and<a href=\"https:\/\/mondediplo.com\/outside-in\/syria-democracy-documents\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> recently uncovered<\/a> by journalist Dr. Nafeez Ahmed, U.S. military intelligence was well aware that the Syrian opposition movement in 2011 did not pose \u201ca meaningful threat against the [Syrian] regime,\u201d given that it was \u201cextremely fractured\u201d and \u201coperating under enormous constraints.\u201d It also noted that \u201creports of protests [against the Syrian government] are overblown,\u201d even though \u201cthe exiled [Syrian] opposition has been quite effecting (sic) in developing a narrative on the Syrian opposition to disseminate to major media agencies.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wikileaks: To Weaken Iran, US Undermined Democratic Elements of Syrian Opposition to Empower Radical Groups While seven years have come and gone since the leaked document was written by USMC intelligence, little has changed when it comes to the U.S.\u2019 long-standing goals in Syria and its callous disregard for the will of the Syrian people [&hellip;]<\/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":[204,441,22082,776,818,827,22084,22083,22021,880],"class_list":["post-38638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-democracy","tag-iran","tag-mpn-news","tag-syria","tag-turkey","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-marine-corps","tag-usmc","tag-whitney-webb","tag-wikileaks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38638","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=38638"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38638\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38640,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38638\/revisions\/38640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}