We are still at war with Syria

In theory, sanctions are a non-violent method of persuasion. That is not what is happening in Syria.
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US-led forces have blown up three oil tankers in Syria as the United States increases its pressure on Syria by thwarting the oil trade between the PKK/YPG and the Assad regime, according to local sources quoted by several media sources.

The strike was carried about by coalition planes, which hit three oil tankers, leaving four dead. The coalition has not yet made a statement about the attack. In the area controlled by Assad, oil consumption stands at around 136,000 bpd. Production, meanwhile, is only 24,000 barrels per day. This means that the regime must import significant volumes of crude oil at an estimated expense of more than $2 billion per year.

Bombing transport of needed supplies isn't sanctions. It's a siege.

n Syria, Arab residents of oil-rich Deir Ezzor area began protests in April against US-backed Kurdish forces that control the region to the East of the Euphrates. The protests disrupted the oil flows from nearby fields, most of which have been controlled by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces since the end of 2017.

The fuel and electricity shortages that are occurring now in Syria have soured previous supporters of Assad against his rule.

When the Assad forces were about to drive ISIS from Deir Ezzor, we pushed the Kurdish SDF to take this non-Kurdish region first. Why? Because of the oil.
And now the Arabs are being ruled by the Kurds, who don't like it.
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The use of sanctions really picked up around 2010, according to Elizabeth Rosenberg, a former Treasury Department official now at the Center for a New American Security. At that point, Barack Obama’s administration was putting its own pressure on Iran.

“This is a policy instrument of choice,” Rosenberg says. “It feels really muscular. We do not have an institutional culture of evaluating economic costs to ourselves, which makes people believe, I think mistakenly, that it is costless.” Back in 2014, my now-colleague Annie Lowrey reported for The New York Times that the U.S. had some 6,000 sanctions in place.

Now it has almost 2,000 more than that. The Obama administration had lifted hundreds of sanctions on Iranian people and entities after striking the nuclear deal with the Islamic Republic in 2015. Donald Trump’s administration, after getting out of the deal, reinstituted many sanctions and has steadily added more—imposing 700 on a single day last November. Iran is currently by far the largest state target of U.S. sanctions.

The administration is set to expand the financial pressure on Iran still further, having threatened to sanction anyone still importing Iranian oil after May 2.

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This is madness

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TheOtherMaven's picture

And very probably a war crime.

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There is no justice. There can be no peace.

@TheOtherMaven I would like some clarification about this. We (in the media) talk about US-led this and that, never "US". Is that how our government weasels out of being the bad guy committing international crimes?
That is always the media term.
This in no way calls out my man, gjohnsit.
What is the difference between "US led" and flat out "US", media?

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

snoopydawg's picture

so they can fight against Syria and Russia who are trying to take back Syrian territory. The terrorists have been killing lots of the civilians that are trapped inside Idlib and other cities after FUKUS--I gave them free passage out of the cities that they had been holed up in. So much for Trump's pledge to kill them and their family members. And Israel has been bombing the crap out of other Syrian territory and have killed some soldiers. Imagine if Russia was doing this to Ukraine or China to Japan.

Here's the link and I removed ISIS from the list.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

edg's picture

@snoopydawg

Just imagine how much wailing and gnashing of teeth there would be if Russia killed even 1 Ukrainian. But there's never a peep though Israel has killed many thousands of Syrians, Lebanese, and Palestinians.

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detroitmechworks's picture

But that might involve getting mud on those perfectly fashionable hiking boots of theirs.

/snark

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I do not pretend I know what I do not know.

skod's picture

apparently. No nukes (yet, anyway), but every nation in the world at war against two or three other nations.

We (along with Israel and the Saudis) are basically at war with everyone else on the planet. Let that soak in, in case you haven't already: we are the bad guys. And once we lose the middle-eastern fronts, I'm quite sure that the war will reach our sunny shores.

I feel very much as if I'm now living in the Berlin of Kander and Ebb's "Cabaret". Sure, it's turning to shit outside those doors, but *in here* even the orchestra is (6, 7, 8, shoulder roll, show hands,
strut!) Beautiful.

Faugh.

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