Syrian government forces reinforced by Lebanese Hezbollah forces have been consolidating their control over the strategic rebel held district of Homs, which is Syria’s third largest city. Homs has been controlled by rebels in part since 2011. The recent military success by the Syrian military and Hezbollah fighters has left the rebels in retreat and Washington’s battle plan for Iran disintegrating.
As of July, Syrian government forces appeared to be on the verge of retaking most of the northern neighborhoods in Homs and were continuing to advance on the remaining crumbling rebel positions. In addition to its symbolic value, Homs is a strategic lynchpin in Syria. Homs controls the main highways from Damascus to the north and the coast. The government offensive has already successfully expelled rebels from a 13th century landmark mosque in Khaldiyeh the rebels controlled for more than a year. Previous to this, government forces captured the strategic town of Qusair near the Lebanon border in June.
The danger of these victories is not that Assad and his government forces will prevail, but that Washington and its allies will now be forced to take more drastic measures to make sure their Al Qaeda proxies are not defeated. In light of this, it foreseeable that the White House will soon authorize more overt support to include providing military weapons and advisors to train rebel fighters outside of Syria in Turkey and Jordan. However, it is unlikely this level of support will turn the tide in favor of the rebels. Instead, for a rebel victory to be engineered, Washington will be forced to put Americans (most likely in the form of CIA and Special Forces) in Syria and institute a no-fly zone coupled with air strikes on Syrian government targets. False flag attacks and copious applications of war propaganda will be necessary to justify these ill-fated operations. This action will cement the US entrance into another undeclared, unconstitutional war that historians will point to as a disastrous misstep in US Foreign Policy that will ultimately eclipse the US strategic defeats in Iraq and Afghanistan.
By Guiles Hendrik
July 29, 2013
For more information:
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2013/07/201372817314489545.html
