By Walid Shoebat

When it comes to U.S. Policy, we always forget that the most important factor in the unfolding events in the Middle East is GOD and He is in control. And this week, a revolution has taken place. The US has signaled that it is changing its policy toward Syrian President Bashar Assad.

It began with the Director of the CIA John Brennan who said on Friday that the collapse of the Assad regime could cause a more serious problem in Syria because it would pave the way for jihadist groups like ISIS to enter the power vacuum that would be created in Damascus. While many disagree with this new policy we believe that Keeping Bashar is the right thing to do.

The U.S. has changed its mind on Syria. But changing the mind has been historic signature for the U.S. in eventually adjusting itself to doing the right thing. The rule of thumb that when it comes to the United States, it has been appointed by the Almighty to stop all the expansionists who go out of line. The U.S. historically switched considering Russia an ally instead of enemy in order to thwart the Nazi expansion. And during the Iraq-Iran war, while the U.S. supported Iraq to thwart Iran’s Islamist expansion, it soon switched and Saddam became an enemy when he wanted to expand into Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

So as usual, now the U.S., while it needs Iran to thwart ISIS’s expansion, it is concerned of an Iranian expansion as well. The same policy will happen towards Turkey in the future as it begins its policy of expansion into Egypt and Libya by its support for the Muslim Brotherhood. The sooner that folks know that the U.S. is “the strongest fortresses” (Daniel 11:39) and “the most terrible of the nations” (Ezekiel 28:7-8) in warfare, that is, then the faster that they will understand the unfolding scenario. 

When it comes to Syria, the sign of the changing policy continued on Sunday when US Secretary of State John Kerry said that he was even prepared to include Assad in negotiations aimed at ending the war in Syria. This is the same Kerry who just at the beginning of the month said Assad must be removed from power even if military pressure was required for the purpose. Now it seems that for the administration, Assad is no longer the problem, he is part of the solution.  

No matter what policy the U.S. chooses, the balance of power in the Middle East causes major concern. Gulf Arab governments opposed Assad’s rule voiced alarm and dismay at the change in policy. France, a major US ally, said its position was unchanged and that Assad could not be part of a negotiated solution in Syria. The most common view on Syria is that a change in the US approach to Assad now would be a victory for Iran. We disagree. Fact is it was the support to oust Bashar and arming the Free Syrian Army is what caused the mayhem in which Iran invited itself to create a Syrian Hezbollah. Secondly, Bashar Al-Assad of Syria is a secularist and not an Islamic revolutionist, he is an old-school Ba’thist, which means he aspires for Arab nationalism. The rule of thumb when it comes to policy is to thwart whatever is revolutionary Islamist and whatever will weaken Bashar or Al-Sisi of Egypt will give strength to Islamist Turkey which has an agenda for a grand caliphate.

The media is out on a limb. For example, The Jerusalem Post says: “It didn’t have to be this way. At the beginning of the Syrian tragedy in 2011 Obama should have been firmer and more aggressive. If he would have threatened Assad with military force then, in the first months of the popular uprising against the regime, and imposed a no fly zone over the country and provided more serious military support to the opposition, then composed mainly of secular forces, Assad may have fallen.”   

Such narrow view ignores the big picture, that first of all, Turkey also wants a “no fly zone” in Syria and Turkey also wants Jerusalem liberated from all Jews. Does the Jerusalem Post ever wonder what will happen to them if and when a grand caliphate is established from Turkey?

Such media relies on shoddy evidence, the Jerusalem Post says: “Instead of taking this approach, Obama preferred to sit back and do almost nothing. When he woke and threatened Assad militarily after he used chemical weapons against civilians, Obama retreated at the last minute opting to support the Russian engineered diplomatic compromise. This compromise indeed led to the removal of Assad’s chemical weapons capability – no small achievement, and an important one for Israel- but it kept the Syrian president in power.”

Today it is ISIS that is using chemical weapons and in the recent past, the world was wrong when it accused another Ba’thist, Saddam Hussein to have weapons of mass destruction and today these still trumpet the same lies that Bashar used chemical weapons. Fact is, Bashar did not use chemical weapons:

The policy in the Middle East is to be understood simply that Brennan and Kerry’s remarks are expressions of a new reality that is unfolding in the Middle East. Old understandings are dissolving and new alliances are forming. This is a complex reality. Enemies like Iran and the US are finding themselves on the same side of the fence even if indirectly in the fight against ISIS in Iraq and Syria.

Israel for its part, the United States’ veteran ally in the region, finds itself in turns clashing with Hezbollah and Iran. But Hezbollah was never a Syrian arm, but Iranian and it was only in the beginning of 2013, that Hezbollah fighters have operated openly and in significant numbers across the border alongside their Syrian and Iraqi counterparts in which that both Iraq and Syria had no choice for their survival but to use Shiite Islamist forces to thwart the Sunni Islamist forces that was encouraged by western ignorance. Now that this new reality is in place, that had Syria and Iraq had no choice but to allow Iran to intervene in order to throw out ISIS, they would have been doomed.

The question all will fail to answer is that had Saddam remained in power in Iraq (Saddam is the same story of Bashar), would the world ever have complained about the creation of ISIS? Why then does the world make the same errors, state dictators are a much better choice than a regional Caliphate. The Nebuchadnezzar of Iraq was put there by the Almighty for a reason and so was the Sargon of Akkad in Syria, Bashar Al-Assad. So Long Live Bashar.