The Fallout of the US Strike

Unless some surprise development or miracle occurs, the U.S. and its traditional allies are insisting upon launching targeted missile strikes on Syria. These are under the name of “punitive strikes,” and their actual aim would be to weaken the regime and tip the power balance in favor of the armed organizations, at the head of which are the al-Nusra Front, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, and al-Qaida and its derivatives.

This is like a flashback from the past, in that the strike against and destruction of Iraq was carried out on the pretense of its supposed possession of weapons of mass destruction and use of chemical weapons against its own people, exactly what is being repeated now.

The missile strike is imminent, even though the accusation has yet to be proven; the three Western nations and Turkey will not await a decision from the U.N. Security Council authorizing them to act, nor will they wait for the U.N. inspectors’ assessment on who used poisonous gases.

If the strike does occur and has an impact, then what happens next will not be a bilateral matter involving only Syria and the U.S., but will become a wide-ranging international and regional issue. If striking Iraq weakened and marginalized the Arab nation, rendering it a wide-open stage to foreign influence, then a strike against Syria will have the same, if not a worse, effect.

Here we might wonder: How will Russia, Iran, Hezbollah, Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt react to this aggression? This is difficult to predict; however, the fallout of this strike will not stop at the Syrian border, but will violently shake the entire region.

Through this strike the U.S. will have ushered in a new age of terrorism; this will be a gain for al-Qaida and its followers hoping to reclaim their legitimacy and recruit more supporters via the pretext of punishing aggression on Muslim lands.

From an economic standpoint, Jordan will be negatively impacted by the fallout of the U.S. strikes. This is not only because Syria is an important trade partner of Jordan, but also a natural passageway to Lebanon, Turkey and Europe.

In addition to this, we will see a major jump in global oil prices: The price per barrel reached $115 at the very mention of threats. Observers expect prices to rise to $125 in the event of a limited airstrike, then to $150 if the range of the war extends.

It’s worth mentioning that the U.S. is the only nation that has used weapons of mass destruction, having dropped atomic bombs on Japanese cities and killing hundreds of thousands of civilians, just as it used chemical weapons during the Vietnam War. If Vietnam’s jungles were rained upon by the poisonous chemical material known as Agent Orange, then it was not only human beings who were contaminated, but the very trees themselves.