With the alleged brutal murder of American journalist James Wright Foley, a wave of anger and aggression across Western audiences has been generated. Upon that wave rides two objectives. One is to create plausible deniability for the West which created the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq (ISIS), the other is to create a further pretext to justify a resurgence of direct US military intervention across the region.

While the focus has been on ISIS in Iraq, there is still another war -linked directly to Iraq’s current conflict – being waged across the border in Syria. Syrian forces have continued making gains across the country, routing NATO-backed terrorist forces and restoring order in cities and towns that have been ravaged by war for years. ISIS strongholds in the eastern Syrian city of Raqqa, have until now long escaped the focus of Syrian forces occupied by more urgent campaigns around Hama, Homs, Damascus, Daraa, Idlib, and Aleppo. Now, the Syrian Army is shifting forces east.

While the West feigns an adversarial position regarding ISIS, it was the West itself that created it, specifically to confront the Iranian arc of influence stretching from Tehran, through Baghdad, Damascus and along the Mediterranean in Lebanon. The elimination of ISIS and other terrorist organizations fighting under or alongside its banner without first achieving regime change in Damascus would effectively mean defeat for the United States and its collaborators in the Middle East.

To intervene before the deathblow is delivered to NATO-backed terrorists in Syria and before the tide is turned against them in Iraq, the West may attempt to provoke, stage, or otherwise create a pretext to militarily intervene in Syria, and expand its operations in Iraq.

More Dead Journalists, Another Downed Airliner…

The alleged death of James Wright Foley has created significant outrage amongst public opinion. It has created the illusion of confrontation between ISIS and the United States, and has served to further vilify ISIS itself. The Western media is still struggling to maintain the illusion that ISIS stands apart from other terrorists operating in Syria, and with that narrative, the West is simultaneously bolstering ISIS in Syria under the guise of arming and aiding “moderates,” while it conducts token airstrikes on ISIS in Iraq.

At the end of the video production featuring Foley’s death, it was revealed that ISIS was also holding missing TIME reporter Steven Sotloff. He was last seen in Aleppo and is believed to have been held in the now besieged Syrian city of Raqqa. The Epoch Times reported in an article titled, “Steven Sotloff: Missing TIME Journalist Steven Joel Sotloff Has been Threatened by ISIS, Report Says,”stated:

According to The Wire, he went missing near Aleppo, Syria, on Aug. 4, and his family said they were aware of the situation but did not want to publicize the information. He was being held in Raqqa.

Another dead American reporter could perhaps tip the scales in terms of public support for a possible US military intervention in Syria at a critical juncture in the near future. Within the same report, an AP update indicated that (emphasis added):

Warnings from an international research group and the Federal Aviation Administration underscore the rising threat to commercial aircraft posed by hundreds of anti-aircraft weapons that are now in the arsenals of armed groups in Syria and could easily be diverted to extremist factions. Armed groups opposing the Assad regime in Syria have already amassed an estimated several hundred portable anti-aircraft missiles that are highly mobile, difficult to track and accurate enough to destroy low-flying passenger planes, according to a new report by Small Arms Survey, a respected Switzerland-based research organization that analyzes the global flow of weapons.

Of course, while AP attempts to continue differentiating between armed groups and “extremist factions,” the fact that “extremist faction” ISIS had captured Sotloff in Aleppo where these alleged “armed groups” are supposedly operating, indicates that it has been “extremists” fighting Damascus all along and that it is “extremists” who now possess a large number of anti-aircraft weapons, thanks to the US, Europe, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar.

Warnings that these weapons might be “diverted to extremist factions” when they have been in their hands for years, portends a possible gambit involving the downing of yet another civilian airliner to serve as a pretext to further advance the West’s agenda. The tragic MH17 disaster in Ukraine has long been buried and forgotten by the Western media after baseless accusations against Russia allowed the West to push forward further sanctions against Moscow and further military aid for the regime in Kiev.

The potential downing of a civilian aircraft in the Middle East – or anywhere in the world – attributed to “extremists” operating in Syria and Iraq would give the West a pretext to possibly intervene with direct military force in either country.

The West has proven that it will stop at nothing to advance its agenda in even the most incremental ways. The loss of human life is of no more of consequence to them and their hegemonic designs than the loss of a pawn is in a chess game. That their staged provocations still manipulate large segments of the population and still effectively manipulate public perception is precisely why these tragedies continue on in earnest. Exposing them and disarming global hegemons of this weapon is essential in preventing more tragedies like MH17 and the senseless death of Foley, and thousands of Syrians and Iraqis who have died like him, in the near future.

Tony Cartalucci, Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.