by Gordon Duff, Senior Editor and Nahed al Husaini, Bureau Chief, VT Damascus
In direct consultation with the highest levels of the government in Baghdad, VT is uniquely placed to assess the disaster in Iraq that is currently unfolding.
Thus far, Erdogan has agreed to stop or perhaps slow his whatever he is doing in Iraq. Baghdad says that Erdogan, working with rich Kurds, has seized Iraqi territory.
What Baghdad also knows is that Erdogan cannot be trusted. Even the Israeli’s figured this out. They thought they were using Turkey against Iran while Erdogan played a double game on Netanyahu. It was Netanyahu who finally realized that Erdogan was going to use him as a fall guy with Russia.
Israel is vulnerable to Russia, Turkey with control of the Bosporus is not.
What is behind it is more complex. First, let’s look at this as “step two” in his war on Russia. Erdogan, seeing both Obama and Kerry as weak and the EU in shambles, has decided to “push the rope” by assuming that he has a blank check written by Secretary of State Kerry to do anything he wants under Turkey’s odd “combined” nuclear umbrella.
With Russia as the new sheriff in the Middle East, Erdogan is taking down Russia. The easiest way of doing this is by going after, not Syria, but Iraq. Syria is “hardened up” with Britain and France and even Germany moving forward with their own air campaigns. There is no room for the new caliphate of Erdogan, the real ISIS, to step in.
Oh? Let us assume that ISIS is a pipe dream and nothing else. Note that ISIS claims responsibility for everything, no matter what grief it brings on them. They already pissed on the bear and are paying the price. They don’t care, they aren’t real.
This is like “bin Laden” and 9/11. The whole thing is a fiction, no terrorist selects the only enemy that can crush them and then gives that enemy a perfect excuse to do so. When we see these scenarios, we know something else is going on and in this case, if ISIS trucking oil into Turkey, being armed by Turkey and, as it now looks, is defended by Turkey, then ISIS is Turkey.
You see, the new Turkish incursion is there to defend Mosul, not attack it. ISIS supply lines to Turkey could have been disrupted. ISIS is not doing so well. It has really lost Raqqah, its former capitol. That area has been flanked and is abandoned.
Now, the real hub, Der Ezzor, the oil capital of Syria, is under attack by air and will be flanked if Palmyra falls and Palmyra will fall. This exposes Mosul. If Ramadi falls and Palmyra falls, the two big moves last year by ISIS done with the help, we are told, of Israeli and American war planners, then the jig is up.
With Turkey sitting on Mosul’s flank. they can save ISIS, and in doing so, dictate terms to the other ISIS other client states, America, Israel and Saudi Arabia. Turkey’s move into Iraq, seizing territory, protecting its oil smuggling stranglehold on Iraq and Syria, and pushing NATO to the brink of nuclear war with Russia, makes Erdogan, in his own mind at least, the “man of the hour.”
If Iraq runs to Putin, then Erdogan smashed America. If they don’t, Erdogan has destroyed Iraq, a nation that will quickly explode into a dozen pieces.
Iran is flanked, sidelined by their complex trade arrangements with Turkey and their current “dance of death” with the US over the nuclear settlement. Iran is incapable of moving in Iraq without playing into Erdogan’s hands and sending the Sunnis, including all of Kurdistan, into the Turkish cesspool.
Erdogan now has the Queen on the Middle East chessboard unless someone else comes along who knows the game better.
The only people with those skills are Nouri Maliki and Putin.
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Gordon Duff posted articles on VT from 2008 to 2022. He is a Marine combat veteran of the Vietnam War. A disabled veteran, he worked on veterans and POW issues for decades.
Gordon is an accredited diplomat and is generally accepted as one of the top global intelligence specialists. He manages the world’s largest private intelligence organization and regularly consults with governments challenged by security issues.
Duff has traveled extensively, is published around the world, and is a regular guest on TV and radio in more than “several” countries. He is also a trained chef, wine enthusiast, avid motorcyclist, and gunsmith specializing in historical weapons and restoration. Business experience and interests are in energy and defense technology.
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