Tony Cartalucci interview by Kourosh Ziabaria, Tehran Times.

A U.S. journalist says the United States and its allies are taking serious steps to launch a military strike against Syria.

“We can expect to see the mechanisms at play in undermining, dividing, and destroying Syria next turned on Lebanon and Iran if and when critical mass can be reached to topple Syria’s government,” said Tony Cartalucci in a recent interview with the Tehran Times.

Q: You’ve written on unrest in Syria extensively. The opponents of the government of President Assad claim that his government has resorted to violence and killed many protesters and civilians, while the Damascus says that certain Western countries are providing the insurgents with weapons and money. Please comment over this.

A: The violence began from the very beginning of the so-called demonstrations. There were undoubtedly well-intentioned demonstrators in the streets. Unfortunately, many of the organizations that gathered them had very sinister intentions.

Acts of vandalism, arson, and assault were being reported by even Western news agencies by March of 2011. This, by necessity, would bring armed security forces onto the streets in any country — as was the case in Los Angeles during the 1992 riots. In LA, the protesters were more lightly armed, and the overwhelming presence of thousands of National Guard soldiers and Marines quelled the violence in days. Still government forces killed several people, and in total 53 would die in the violence.

The difference in Syria is that the unrest was designed to be sustained and increasingly violent. To introduce this increasing cycle of violence, third party groups began targeting unsuspecting protesters as well as security forces charged with minding the protesters. These “mystery gunmen,” usually firing from rooftops, were reported not only by official Syrian government reports, but also by protesters and bystanders. The goal was to radicalize protesters and justify increasing violence and its subsequent support by Western backers.

We saw the same thing happen in Bangkok, Thailand in 2010 where these “mystery gunmen” targeted both protesters and security forces from the rooftops in an attempt to spike the violence and increase the stakes. In Bangkok, as in Syria, deadly crossfire would ensue, giving opposition groups and their foreign sponsors the propaganda they needed to demonize the government, while attempting to justify an increasingly militant opposition.

Now, without a doubt, this violence has escalated to the point where combat operations are being carried out by organized foreign-backed militant groups. The U.S., Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey have all made outright admissions of supporting the funding, logistics, and arming of these militants. What is evident is that the West and the Persian Gulf States have also illegally entered Syria with “journalists” serving as embedded propagandists. What is neither admitted, nor overtly evident, but most certain, is that special operations from NATO and the Persian Gulf are on the ground inside of Syria along with agents of their respective intelligence agencies.

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