US Arrows against the Fortress of Damascus?

After 16 months of hostility that eventually turned into failure, the United States turned to a plan that it saw as the great poisoned arrow, the decisive treatment that will resolve its failure in Syria. A plan that the U.S., in Hillary Clinton’s words, saw as a “catastrophe” that would destroy Syria and extend to the rest of the region. The plan was based on the following elements, as scrutinized by us:

The American plan intended to create a general environment of intimidation to prepare both Syrian and international public opinion for a particular kind of action in Damascus, one that would target and fell the Syrian head. This is how we interpret the unprecedented momentum of fabricated narratives, lying and the American portrayal of the situation in Syria as if it were very close – if not closer – to complete collapse, a complete collapse that will, they claim, trigger the “volcano of Damascus or the earthquake of Syria,” insofar as carrying out this action would lead those concerned with the defense of Syria to cognitive collapse and loss of hope in continuing the defensive confrontation.

Furthermore, the plan attempted to collectively strike the crisis-management team in order to create a vacuum at the top, which would lead to the collapse of all organized leadership, control and direction. It also meant to produce confusion in the field in order to obstruct the work of security and armed forces, to cause the army to become jagged and divided and to deprive the country of its active military arm. This is what would create an opening for the terrorists to spread and take over sensitive facilities and sites in the country, in the interior and on the borders.

This plan also hoped to carry out a comprehensive field operation through a lightning attack against Damascus in which thousands of militants would participate. These militants were to start off simultaneously in multiple locations and moving toward various neighborhoods and streets in an operation designed to terrorize and strike fear into civilians with the goal of bringing life in the city to a standstill as the city’s punishment for not getting involved in the U.S. hostility against Syria and to show that the state has lost control over the capital, which would “force the president to leave it,” as they claimed and hoped for, according to their plan.

The Americans also wanted to execute the plan of “the imaginary, dramatic fall of the regime” by accompanying their field operation with specific media action emphasizing both the “fall of the capital and the flight of the government” and the mass of citizens bursting forth in the streets in support of “accomplishing the revolution and opposing the regime.” To that end, models were prepared in Qatar that represent the squares, public buildings and government centers of Damascus. A television station using the the Syrian satellite station’s logo was also launched, to be used in announcing the supposed “success of the revolution” similar to what happened in Tripoli, where videos and pictures of Gaddafi’s command center were fabricated to show his fall three days before he actually fell. This was accompanied a clamp down on Syrian media. For this very reason, the al-Dounia station was erased from Arab satellites in order to silence it,and the hostile forces kidnapped Syrian broadcasters and media employees from the Syrian satellite station to force them to work for the fraudulent station pretending to be that satellite station in order to give credibility to the fraud.

In addition, the U.S. hoped to bring about a resolution from the Security Council that would clear the way for foreign military deployment, ostensibly to keep the risk of chemical weapons out of the region. The task of the foreign forces would be to complete the destruction of the Syrian state and the dissolution of its army, in the fashion of what was done in Iraq.

This is the “U.S. Poison Arrow” plan with which the United States intends to bring catastrophe down upon Syria, destroying it as it destroyed Libya and Iraq before that, and the region of Palestinian Liberation (that is, those countries comprising the front of perseverance and resistance formed in rejection of the Camp David “surrender treaty” and of which none but Syria remains) before that. Likewise, it tried to destroy the resistance in Lebanon and the state in Iran, but failed. So it came to Syria to execute episode three of its saga of hostility against the axis of resistance.

But just as U.S. calculations were wrong in Lebanon and Iran, it seems that the Syrian street is making a fool of the American dream, despite the fact that the plan has achieved some breakthroughs in execution.

With the first result of the plan’s execution, the stage has now been exposed to show the following scene: An environment of cognitive collapse has not been achieved. This is the result of various elements working together, the most important of which are the Syrian people’s consciousness and their high level of psychological immunity – especially in Damascus. Furthermore, exceptional communication efforts have been exerted by official and private Syrian media to compound the shaken trust in the U.S. media and its associates, along with the certainty that what is being broadcast by the hostile media is composed of dreams and hopes rather than events and facts.

In addition, the state’s ability to absorb the shock of the “group assassination of the principal leaders in the crisis-management team” has been exposed. Despite the fact that the fall of the great martyrs was an immense and sobering loss – the minister of defense and his deputy, the vice president’s aide and the national security chief – Syria’s doctrine-led state institutions lost no time in getting the situation under control and appointing alternates who demonstrated the same mettle as the martyrs themselves. This hindered the results and effects of the treacherous terrorist operation’s success despite its extreme gravity.

Also exposed was the Arab Syrian armed forces’ success in containing the attack executed by thousands of militants against more than nine neighborhoods in Damascus. In response, the army launched a methodical counter attack and a masterful confrontation, as required by the situation. This enabled it to annihilate the attack, to move on to purging the neighborhoods one after another and to generally keep the city under control of the state without giving the hostile plan an opportunity to take advantage of the effects of the terrorist crime in the way it wanted to. The sight of the terrorists’ corpses, Syrians and non-Syrians alike, was a clear message to the aggressor: “The attack failed and the hostile action has been broken,” despite the price paid.

As for the imaginary, media-driven toppling of the state, it failed to happen because the plan had been discovered and precautions taken before execution of the operation could start. The result of that discovery and of tactical errors was that the models, personalities and military equipment present in Qatar have remained in storage, unused, up to this moment.

However, all this remains the topic of the Security Council and its resolutions, for the United States confirmed once again that there is no going back on rejection of chapter seven and no going back on rejection of foreign military intervention in Syria. This has motivated the United States to threaten taking action outside the Security Council in order to continue the hostile assault on Syria.

Now, after this outcome — about which it can objectively be said that the poison arrows of the American plan have broken into fragments against the rocks of Damascus’s fortress — the question is raised about the subsequent course of events.

Here we can imagine the following turn of events:First, the U.S.’s will continue to reject any peaceful solution. The U.S. will work to prevent the success of Annan’s plan as well as the execution of Geneva’s proposed stabilizing measures. These efforts will last at least through the months leading up to the U.S. presidential elections.

Second, the U.S. will attempt to widen the confrontation in northern Syria in order to put pressure on the borders and increase the opportunities to recruit non-Syrian terrorists for combat after the massive losses that befell the militants.

Third, the U.S. will continue to insinuate and threaten to take action outside of the Security Council. This intimidation will likely proceed along one or more of the following tracks:

• a political-economic track fueled by escalating the pressures on Syria through sanctions, in addition to what has been imposed up to now, which has included freezing relations, recalling ambassadors and the like.

• a military-terrorist track characterized by an escalation operations and amassing troops, as well as by carrying out armed operations throughout all of Syria so as to provide opportunities to say that the regime has lost control on the ground.

• a security-intelligence track through the attempt to hunt down specific targets in Syria, as has happened already. The appointment of Bandar bin Sultan as director of Saudi intelligence has sent a clear message in this direction.

• a traditional military track, involving preparation of regular foreign military forces for intervention as required and according to the developments of the situation, although this possibility remains the least probable of all.

In contrast, we observe that the front defending Syria will continue realizing defensive accomplishments on every level, that it has prepared what is necessary for responding and that it is confident in its ability to defeat future plans — just as it has frustrated past plans. This is especially the case since the aggressor is pressed for time, despite all of the capabilities it possesses.