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dirty works — ye olde divide and conquer.....

Washington has dismantled its decades-long strategy of balancing competing regional powers in West Asia, opting instead to destabilize the region through its full-spectrum military, diplomatic, and intelligence backing of the Israeli occupation state. 

Where the post-9/11 years were defined by US-led regime change and nation-building, today's strategy is defined by state-breaking and governance erosion.

This transformation is most clearly reflected in Israel’s new audacity. Biden administration official Amos Hochstein declared Tel Aviv to be “the absolute, overwhelming, dominant military hegemon of the Middle East.” In the past few days alone, Israel has bombed Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and for the first time, the US-aligned Qatar.

A proxy hegemon armed by empire

This is a formulation that deliberately conceals the occupation state’s total reliance on western military, economic, and diplomatic infrastructure. A true regional hegemon projects autonomous power. Israel is instead an armed extension of western policy, dependent on Washington to maintain its existence, as evidenced in the 12-day waragainst Iran.

Arab states and Turkiye, fearing blowback from the west, remain unwilling to confront Tel Aviv, even as it fires US-made missiles from US-controlled airspace over Iraq and Syria, refueled mid-air by American tankers, and guided by US satellite targeting. 

During its war with Iran, the occupation state exhausted vast stockpiles of American interceptor missiles – munitions originally reserved for defending Taiwan from a potential Chinese assault.

Under US President Donald Trump's administration, as was the case during Hochstein's time in the Biden administration, Israel serves as an extension of western fragmentation policy in the region, doing the west's “dirty work” as German Chancellor Merz explicitly stated.

Even powerful Arab states are now viewed by Washington as expendable or obstructive; US envoy and close Trump confidant Tom Barrack admitted that strong Arab governance structures were considered a “threat to Israel.”

This reflects a conscious decision to prioritize the occupation state's freedom of action, which takes precedence over Arab sovereignty or stability. Persian Gulf and Levantine capitals are pressured to continue supplying much-needed fuel and weapons to Tel Aviv, even while issuing theatrical condemnations meant to placate domestic outrage.

Before, the US sought managed conflict and relative stability across the Persian Gulf and Levant. Now, it is openly pursuing the weakening, even disintegration, of Arab states in favor of Israel’s absolute primacy. 

The Doha strike: A new precedent

The Israeli airstrike on a Hamas delegation in Doha on 9 September marks a turning point. The delegation, engaged in ceasefire talks at the time, was struck on Qatari soil – a blatant violation of an American ally’s sovereignty. The Israeli strike targeted senior Hamas leader Khalil al-Hayya, among other officials, as they met to discuss the latest US proposal for a ceasefire in Gaza. Hayya’s son and four other lower-ranking Hamas members were killed – yet, Hayya and other senior officials survived. A Qatari security force member was also killed in the illegal attack. As a result, six were killed.

This brazen act, carried out during active negotiations, upended the very framework of US-managed diplomacy. Tel Aviv did not warn Doha. Although President Trump claimed he was “very unhappy” about the attack, Hebrew reports have said that the US was informed ahead of time and even approved the attack. A White House official told AFP, “We were informed in advance.” US officials, including Trump, later claimed to have given Qatar a “late warning.” A Qatari Foreign Ministry spokesman said Doha received the call from Washington as the bombs were going off. “I completely reject that the Americans informed us before the attack. Israel's action is a terrorist act,” denying claims of receiving any previous warnings of the attack. Despite Trump saying that he assured Doha that “such a thing will not happen again on their soil,” the Israeli Ambassador to the US, Yechiel Leiter, said that Tel Aviv could strike Qatar again to ensure the successful assassination of the Hamas leaders who survived. “If we didn’t get them this time, we’ll get them the next time,” he told Fox News.

The UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkiye, and European states joined the backlash. The Secretary-General of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), Jasem al-Budaiwi, also condemned the attack as a “despicable and cowardly act” and stressed that the council stands by Qatar. The UN denounced the strike as a flagrant violation of sovereignty.

The timing and location of the attack, a Hamas political leadership headquarters housed within Doha’s diplomatic quarter, West Bay Lagoon, not only tore apart all illusions of trusting diplomacy, but also laid bare Washington’s total subordination of Arab ally sovereignty to the military aims of Tel Aviv. Qatar is the only non-NATO military ally of the US, yet to what extent might Washington be willing to sacrifice its ‘allies’ for the sake of Israel?

A new strategy: Stability to fragmentation

Lebanon and Syria illustrate the final form of this strategy: semi-governed spaces stripped of meaningful sovereignty, bled by external and internal crises, and routinely subjected to Israeli bombardment. These states are coerced into endless concessions, all while Tel Aviv “mows the grass” to remind them who controls the sky.

Under the new US doctrine, the goal is not victory, but paralysis. The preferred outcome is perpetual disruption of state functions, governance, security, and diplomacy, not merely military domination. Washington has discarded the War on Terror blueprint, where the objective was to install compliant regimes. Now, the aim is to prevent governance itself from cohering in any state deemed hostile or even neutral to western interests.

Washington’s frustration over Iran’s growing deterrence capacity and alliance network also accelerated this shift. The Axis of Resistance constrained both US and Israeli maneuverability at a time when Washington hoped to pivot toward confronting China and Russia. That pivot never materialized; instead, the US doubled down on West Asia, but with a radically destructive playbook.

Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on 7 October 2023 exposed this shift. In response to Hamas's coordinated action, Washington no longer even pretended to favor political settlements. It flooded Tel Aviv with weapons, intelligence, and diplomatic immunity, encouraging not a negotiated outcome but maximal destruction of Gaza, and, by extension, the unraveling of Palestinian governance.

European powers, too, fell into line. France, despite public posturing around Palestinian statehood, expanded its arms exports to Israel at unprecedented levels. Rhetoric and reality now diverge completely.

Strategic encirclement, colonial expansion

Over decades, Iran’s encirclement strategy, arming movements around the occupation state, created a functional deterrence web. But western media and allied Arab states portrayed this as destabilizing, while framing Tel Aviv’s aggression as reactive. This narrative inversion worked to the occupation state’s advantage. Iran found itself fighting not only Israel but also local Arab proxies.

Despite these setbacks, Tehran’s core analysis remains correct: The western project in West Asia is colonial, expansionist, and hegemonic. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s open embrace of “Greater Israel,” once dismissed by western analysts as fringe rhetoric, now receives tacit approval in policy form. The old lies have been discarded; expansion is the plan.

Where once Washington claimed to build nations, now it breaks them to secure power. Stability is only tolerated when it serves western control. When it doesn’t, states will be shattered – as seen in Syria. 

The implications are sweeping. A global power now openly pursues fragmentation as a strategy, sacrificing allies, norms, and institutions to protect its client settler colony. West Asia is the testing ground, but the logic may extend far beyond it.

https://thecradle.co/articles/goodbye-war-on-terror-hello-war-on-arab-sovereignty

 

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951

 

calculus....

 

The Kurdish disarmament that backfired on Turkiye

Ankara's quiet agreement with the PKK was never going to hold – not with Israeli-backed Kurdish projects intensifying across Syria and Iraq

BY Ali Nassar

 

All Turkish–Kurdish understandings – those tied to the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS)-led authority in Syria, and which, only a month ago, appeared imminent – now lie in ruin.

While signs once pointed to a new form of field settlement between Ankara and the Kurds, indirectly brokered by Damascus, recent developments have made clear that the opposite is unfolding as complications increase, alliances shift, and agendas clash.

This collapse extends beyond the military–security negotiation track. It casts doubt on the entire regional calculus in northern Syria, where the interests of Turkiye, the US, and Israel collide. 

On the ground, the swift undoing of what seemed like near-final deals following jailed Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan's letter in late February ahead of Nowruz (Persian/Kurdish New Year), urging the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) to end its armed struggle, has exposed just how fragile that moment was.

Ocalan’s new strategy: From separatism to integration

“I do not believe in the power of weapons, but in the power of politics and social peace – I urge you to follow the same principle.” 

In his 9 July address to PKK cadres, Ocalan announced a shift in direction, offering a new vision to resolve what he called the movement's deepening internal crisis. His televised message marked a definitive rupture with the party's historic strategy of armed liberation and statehood, urging a transition to what he termed “peace and democratic society.”

In his letter, Ocalan encourages Turkiye’s Kurds to embrace “democratic politics” as a path to self-determination. He proposed forming a parliamentary committee to oversee voluntary disarmament within a legal framework, framed as a gesture of good faith toward the Turkish government.

At the heart of his appeal was a call for integration. “Peace and democratic society,” he said, require “a positive, integrationist outlook.” According to Ocalan, the PKK had now renounced the nation-state model and armed struggle that had lasted almost forty years and cost around 40,000 lives. 

He claimed this was not a defeat but a victory, and that parliamentary allies like the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Equality and Democracy Party (DEM) would carry forward the new strategy.

Yet even Ocalan warned that this “solution” remains ambiguous. He cautioned that, “to render the committee’s and parliament’s work meaningful and allay public concerns among Kurds, and to fulfill our commitments to the Turkish state, the disarmament initiative must be welcomed by the relevant [Turkish] parties.” 

He added that the creation of a disarmament mechanism will help facilitate the voluntary end of the Kurdish armed struggle and the transition to lawful democratic politics.

Turkish parliamentary speaker Numan Kurtulmus soon echoed the call, urging parties to nominate members to a 51-person committee aimed at building a “terror-free Turkiye.” The body would focus on constitutional and legal reforms that could enshrine Kurdish rights and possibly secure the release of imprisoned Kurdish leaders.

On 31 July, the committee was formally established with representation from all parliamentary blocs. Its first meeting, held in Ankara on 5 August, was convened to address legislative reforms in response to the PKK’s disarmament declaration. 

Kurtulmus, presiding over the session, argued that there was broad political consensus supporting the committee, claiming that this represented 98 percent of the parliament's will. He described the meeting as a step toward unity and fraternity and pledged that transparency would guide the committee’s work in safeguarding peace. 

Yet these reforms, which Ocalan insisted must be protected by law, are already encountering political fragmentation. Assistant professor of America Studies at the Social Sciences University of Ankara (ASBU), Barin Kayaoglu, has argued that Ankara’s disarmament initiative faces deep skepticism – not just from Kurdish factions but within Turkiye’s own divided political class. 

He also noted that “Ankara's growing impatience over the SDF's [Syrian Democratic Forces] integration with Damascus is closely linked to the ongoing efforts inside Turkiye, which is aiming to fully disarm the PKK.”

Turkiye's geopolitical dilemma 

The PKK’s armed separatist movement has destabilized Turkiye's internal geopolitics for nearly half a century. Its reach extended from the periphery to major cities, and even into the capital. The Kurdish challenge itself was born from the post-Ottoman construction of the modern Turkish state.

That is why the question now is not simply whether the PKK has truly renounced its struggle, but whether the so-called integration solution is even feasible. 

Symbolically, the PKK’s first step was the staged destruction of light weapons in the “Jasana cave” in Iraq’s Qandil Mountains, a gesture orchestrated not on Turkish soil, but in a neighboring state under the watch of Turkish intelligence. That in itself revealed the limits of the process.

Turkish officials quickly moved to frame Ocalan’s letter on their own terms. Two days after the Jasana event, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan addressed AKP leaders, triumphantly declaring: “Turkiye has won. Eighty‑six million citizens have won... We know what we are doing. Nobody needs to worry or ask questions. We are doing all this for Turkiye, for our future.”

He spoke of a new era aimed at creating a “terror-free Turkiye.” The Erdogan-led Justice and Development Party's (AKP) spokesperson Omer Celik echoed this, describing Ocalan’s decision to pursue integration, dissolve the PKK, and disarm as a “major step toward a terror-free Turkiye.” Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan issued similar statements.

Kurdish politicians also embraced the initiative, framing it as a moment of historic transformation, not just for Kurds in Turkiye but across West Asia. They called it a call to transition “from war to partnership, from division to pluralism, from oppression to democratic participation.” 

Geopolitical blowback: Syrian reality intrudes

The celebration did not last. One month later, the entire premise appears to be unraveling. Instead of boosting Ankara’s regional role, the new geopolitics has strengthened Kurdish separatist currents.

In Syria, where Turkiye helped dismantle the state, the US-Israeli axis has imposed limits on Ankara’s ability to resolve the status of the Kurdish-led SDF. 

Negotiations between the SDF and the Damascus-based transitional government, including a landmark 10 March agreement integrating SDF-controlled civil and military institutions into state structures, reveal a growing potential for a Kurdish political presence to be formalized within Syria’s new political order.

In July, US envoy and Ambassador to Turkiye Tom Barrack made clear that the SDF remains an offshoot of the PKK, stating, “SDF is YPG. YPG is a derivative of the PKK. … There’s no indication there’s going to be a free Kurdistan, … There’s Syria.”

Back in February, French President Emmanuel Macron implored the Al-Qaeda-rooted Syrian interim government to “fully integrate” the SDF into Syria’s political transition, calling them “precious allies.”

As Kurdish influence shrinks in Anatolia, it expands across the Levant, underwritten by the US, Israel, and France. The developments shaping Turkish–Kurdish relations are now being dictated by forces beyond Turkiye’s borders.

The Atlanticist trap

Ocalan referenced “recent regional developments” as the driving force behind his message. These arguably included Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, the 27 November 2024 ceasefire agreement between Lebanon and the occupation state, and the collapse of Syria’s prior government on 8 December – events that further fractured Syria’s internal cohesion.

Amid all this, Turkiye has remained sidelined. Its failure to counter the fragmentation of Syria is not the result of hesitation, but of deeper structural constraints. As a NATO member that hosts US nuclear bases, Ankara’s foreign policy is tethered to Atlanticist agendas – even when these run counter to its own national interests.

This is why the Turkish army, once willing to confront Damascus militarily, refrains from striking the US-backed Kurdish militias. Those militias are protected not by moral legitimacy, but by their utility to Washington.

It is possible that both Qandil and Ankara entered into their agreement under the illusion that the Axis of Resistance had collapsed and that the regional deterrence system opposing the US and Israel had dissolved.

https://thecradle.co/articles/the-kurdish-disarmament-that-backfired-on-turkiye

 

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.