US AND UK-backed Islamists are on the run from their last stronghold in Idlib province in Syria.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported yesterday that the anti-Assad forces had pulled out of the town of Khan Shaykhun in the southern part of Idlib and a nearby area in neighbouring Hama Province.
The withdrawal came after Syrian army troops and their allied fighters entered Khan Shaykhun, which had been occupied by foreign-backed terrorists since 2014.
The SOHR added that ‘anti-Damascus militants’, who had stayed behind, gathered at a Turkish military position in the Hama town of Morek seeking protection. Morek is now effectively surrounded by Syrian government forces.
On Monday, a Turkish military convoy carrying ammunition crossed the border into Idlib, sparking condemnation from Damascus.
The Khan-Shaykhun-bound convoy, however, was stuck just north of the town amid Syrian government airstrikes on militant positions and advances on the battlefield.
‘The Syrian army in its own way sent a clear message to the Turkish regime by forcing convoys sent by Ankara to help the terrorists in Khan Shaykhun to come to a halt,’ said Syria’s al-Watan newspaper.
Meanwhile, the Iranian nation has every right to be proud of the way that its resistance to imperialism has exposed the weakness of the would-be US colossus. Iran’s Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), Ali Shamkhani, said yesterday: ‘Just walk the streets of Tehran and see how energetic our people are and you will realise that what the US has been trying to achieve has not materialised.’
In an interview with ABC News in Tehran on Monday, Iran’s security chief said: ‘The sanctions campaign is not for negotiation, it’s for making us surrender … as long as this approach is taken by the United States Iran will never, ever seek negotiations.’
Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif said: ‘66 years ago today, a coup instigated by the US and the UK overthrew the democratically-elected Government of Iran. This atrocity followed years of ‘maximum pressure’ on Iranians. ‘Our people put an end to such interference in 1979. It is time for some to deal with this reality’ he added.
However, the interference and arrogance of the US ruling class knows no bounds. It has just told the Greek government that if it allows the freed Iranian supertanker, Adrian Darya 1, to use Greek ports, then Greece will be regarded as consorting with terrorism and terrorists.
The US ruling class is skating on thin ice. The way that it is desperately seeking peace with the Taliban in Afghanistan proves yet again that it has huge feet of clay. Not just that – even US Treasury officials have warned Trump that the world capitalist economy is heading, from of his trade war, to a major crash that will dwarf the crash that began in 2008, when Lehman Brothers went bust and bank after bank followed.
Trump’s response is to demand that more fuel is added to the flames. He has demanded that the US central bank should consider cutting interest rates by one percentage point, and re-introduce ‘some quantitative easing’ stimulus measures.
This is the same quantitative easing that was used to hand banks trillions of free money to keep them afloat in the period after the 2008 crash – creating super-austerity for UK, EU and US workers.
The central banks have been ending quantitative easing, but now Trump is demanding that the floodgates be reopened. The economy is doing ‘tremendously well’, he claimed, calling the Federal Reserve and its chief Jerome Powell ‘clueless’ for not cutting rates sooner.
Trump marches on, while Russia and China purchase huge quantities of gold, desperately seeking a store of value in preparation for the storm that has only just begun.
In fact, the strategic task of the hour is for the workers of the US, the EU and the UK to unite with the insurgent masses of Iran, Syria and Palestine to bring down capitalism and complete the world socialist revolution that began in Russia in 1917!