The U.S. struck the Syrian government directly on Thursday in response to the most recent chemical weapons attack in Syria’s Idlib province. As Russian and American troops are now within “hand-grenade range” of each other, this strike should be taken seriously, and all questions surrounding America’s plan for regime change should be answered to the letter. It has been speculated that one of Trump’s current proposals was to explicitly attack Russian defense systems within Syria that the Syrian military has been using to date. This was the plan even in light of full knowledge that these strikes would likely kill Russian military personnel.

Any government that massacres over 200 civilians approximately two weeks prior to condemning a separate attack in a different location is completely insincere. Further, any government that supports a brutal onslaught against one of the poorest countries in the world – resulting in a humanitarian catastrophe – cannot realistically have genuine concerns over human rights abuses in other countries.

The Trump administration has backed or waged assaults that reportedly killed over 1,000 civilians in Iraq last month. Yemen was bombed more times by Trump in March than the whole of 2016 combined. A report conducted by the Syrian Network for Human Rights has also found that the U.S. killed more Syrians than both Russia and ISIS in the previous month, as well.

Despite the Trump administration’s complicity in these assaults, the most recent chemical weapons attacks in Syria — which, as the U.N. noted, needs “clear identification of responsibilities and accountability” – has apparently changed Trump’s position on Assad.

“I will tell you that attack on children yesterday had a big impact on me – big impact,” Trump said in the White House Rose Garden. “My attitude toward Syria and Assad has changed very much … You’re now talking about a whole different level.”

Trump-approved strikes killed an eight-year-old girl in a raid in Yemen, a raid deemed too risky to order by Barack Obama.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also expressed his disgust over the attacks in Syria. This is a man who bombs disabled people. Can we really trust these leaders to act out of humanitarian concerns given the multiple documented cases of human rights abuses they have committed themselves?

It is worth noting that these world leaders were quick to blame the Assad government for the attack, even before the U.N. or independent organization has confirmed the details surrounding it. The currently available data has come from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), which is run by one anti-Assad dissident in Coventry, England, and the notorious White Helmets, who have been discredited as a propaganda outfit countless times.

It could be the case that Assad is a reckless, genocidal maniac who thinks Russian military support will provide him with the cover to commit even the most hideous crimes imaginable (using chemical weapons that Western media reported he no longer possesses). However, Assad’s political survival —and his desire to not meet a fate similar to that of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya — relies upon him retaining the support of his people.

This isn’t a defense of the Assad regime, which has committed very serious crimes against humanity. However, as it stands, the U.S. has already lied on more than one occasion regarding Assad’s culpability in relation to previous chemical weapons attacks in Syria.

Assad and Putin are certainly not idiotic or reckless in the ordinary sense of the term (especially when compared to their American counterparts). They are strategists and tacticians who have outmaneuvered Washington on multiple occasions.

Who is the real target?

According to the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., Nikki Haley — the woman who just days ago stated that the U.S. would focus less on ousting Assad — Assad is a “war criminal” who is protected by Russia and Iran.

“Then, you know, you have to look at the Iranian influence and the fact that we’ve got to get that out. Syria is in such sad shape, but it doesn’t have to be that way. If you look back, so many things could have been done to prevent where we are today. And that’s what we need to focus on now.” Haley said, as reported by Fox News. [emphasis added]

Iran is Syria’s closest ally. The plan to take out Syria and Iran’s leadership was reportedly included in a memo of seven countries that were to be targeted for regime change following 9/11. According to WikiLeaks, the actual implementation of this proposal to take out Syria took hold in 2006, one year after Syria and Iran’s announcement that they had formed a mutual defense agreement.

With this in mind, any plan to topple the Syrian government was made with full knowledge that Iran would be drawn into the fight (it was) and continued with this knowledge for eleven years.

If Iran had bailed on its support for the Syrian government, then the Syrian government would have become an even easier stand-alone target, and Iran would have lost a vital ally in a very short space of time. The decision was, therefore, a win-win for the U.S. military establishment.

Why Iran?

Iran has been in the crosshairs for some time now. Anti-Media has reported extensively on the reasons for this infatuation with Iran.

Iran sits on the world’s second-largest oil and gas reserves. In 2011, Iran formed an agreement with Iraq and Syria to run a pipeline through Syria and into Europe, cutting out America’s allies from this pipeline deal completely. (The author of the Guardian article reporting on this deal was axed from the Guardian because of his report that Israel’s motives for bombing Gaza in 2014 were also fueled by its desire to control natural gas supplies). The fact that Russia has asserted itself as the rising military power in the region between the Caucasus and the wider Middle East entails that Iran, Iraq, and Syria cannot just implement this pipeline, but also export oil to European markets, all under the safety of the Russian military umbrella.

This is bad news for the United States. Sitting between America and its Cold War arch-rival is an Iranian-dominated bridge consisting of Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria, which all have Shia-dominated leadership. The U.S. and Saudi Arabia are also concerned that a Houthi-led government in Yemen can align itself directly with Tehran, placing an Iranian ally too close to home for the anti-Iran axis. The severity with which the Saudi-led coalition has devastated Yemen should indicate the extent to which the Saudis will refuse to tolerate a Shia-based movement taking control of Yemen.

Complicating matters, just days ago, Iran’s state-sponsored Press TV reported that Iran is “pressing ahead” with its plan to “ditch” the U.S. dollar. The Central Bank of Iran released a statement saying they would remove the U.S. dollar from its official statements, as well as in the foreign exchange basket. This move is actually in response to the mounting sanctions being imposed against Iran despite international consensus on the agreement regarding curbing Tehran’s nuclear program in 2015.

The fact that Iran continues to respond to America’s threats by attacking the U.S. dollar should highlight that currency is the Achilles heel of the world’s superpower. In 2000, after years of crippling sanctions that reportedly killed over 500,000 children, Saddam Hussein announced he would dump the U.S. dollar and sell oil in euros. This may, in turn, explain why France, the one permanent member of the Security Council that used the euro, was vehemently opposed to an invasion of Iraq. Once the U.S. invaded in 2003 and took full control of Iraq’s oil fields, they switched the sale of oil back to the U.S. dollar.

Two things about this move should strike readers as odd. First, to ditch the U.S. dollar in the first place and move to the euro took considerable effort and risk considering dumping the dollars one already has stockpiled would severely impact one’s wealth (the U.N. estimated this would cost Iraq $270 million). Second, Iraq was reportedly doing quite well under the euro up until the U.S. invasion, according to the Guardian.

Where are we headed?

The idea of the underlying motive for U.S. military incursions into the Middle East being motivated by currency was branded as no more than a conspiracy theory. This was the case until Hillary Clinton’s leaked emails confirmed that the rationale to take out Muammar Gaddafi in Libya was due to his plan to unite Africa under a single currency, backed by gold, which would be used to sell oil on the global markets. At no stage in this email correspondence were human rights considered to be a major factor in the decision to intervene in Libya.

Nuclear giants Russia and China have been moving off the dollar for years and have notably increased this desire to dismantle America’s hegemony over the global market in the last few days, as well. The Trump administration was set to restore ties with Russia – a move that would have undoubtedly had positive ramifications – but there were people behind the scenes who had other ideas altogether.

There can be no peace with Russia, Iran, Syria, and China because America’s survival as a global power depends on war. War is big business. It is also through war that the U.S. can continue to maintain a stranglehold over vital regions across the globe — and the failure to do so will result in the ultimate decline of the American empire.

As reports began to surface in the last two weeks that Russia may have started to abandon Iran in Syria, the truth is that Iran and Russia are strengthening their ties more than ever before. The Iranian president just took a unique visit to Russia to meet Vladimir Putin. Iran has also agreed to let Russia use its bases to conduct its military operations in Syria. Following the recent Syrian gas attack, Russia has stated quite openly that their military support for Assad will continue.

Israel is also running drills to prepare for their next war with Hezbollah, Iran’s proxy army, which currently embroiled in a fight against ISIS.

What we are witnessing right now is the roadmap to the third world war. It speaks volumes that America and its allies commit some of the vilest atrocities ever on record yet are quick to point the finger against those defiant states who may or may not have done the same.

It’s also worth noting that U.S. rhetoric has continually suggested there can be no political future for Assad whatsoever. The people who should be able to decide the fate of Assad’s political career should be the people of Syria, not a handful of jihadist groups who share ISIS’ core ideology and are backed by NATO countries. Has the U.S. ever presented a poll, survey, or other intelligence indicating that Assad has lost his popularity in Syria?

After the fall of Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, Gaza, Vietnam, and Korea – are we just supposed to take their word for it?