Sanctions, Diversions and Embargoes

The Syrian regime keeps insisting that Islamist forces, including al-Qaeda, and foreign influences are behind the ongoing protests that have kept the country in a state of violent stalemate for almost a year. Just incidentally, al-Qaeda has issued a video in which Ayman al-Zawahri, head of al-Qaeda, has called upon Muslims across the Arab world to support the Syrian rebels.

Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey were mentioned where al-Qaeda is inspiring assistance to the Syrian rebel army. Al-Zawahri names President Bashar al-Assad's regime as a "pernicious, cancerous regime."

All of a sudden that casts a new light on the volatile situation in Syria. Russia, Iran, Hezbollah and China have cast their lot with Syria. On the other side of the equation sit the United Nations, the United States, Europe, Turkey, the Arab League - and al-Qaeda. What distinguished company.

The Arab League has issued a plea to the United Nations, after President al-Assad turned down their latest attempted protocol to call a halt to the violence - for the UN to send in peacekeepers to Syria. They could then stand around and watch the slaughter ongoing, much as the Arab League observer mission did; a mission which, perversely, seemed to have the effect of accelerating the regime's vicious attacks on protesters.

A Syrian tank during clashes with army defectors in Homs province, January 2012.

Syrian security forces are attacking everywhere. They deploy outside mosques to fire on emerging worshippers. In the sense of an apprehended insurrection, slaughtering people as they exit mosques effectively restrains them from gathering in groups to denounce the violence and march in protest on the government forces that are butchering them.

It's debatable who represented the twin car bombs that hit security posts in Aleppo, killing 28 on Friday, but rebels claim this to have been the work of the regime. It was estimated that 235 people were wounded. State television took pains to broadcast the gruesome scene of mangled bodies resting in pools of blood amid the rubble of smashed buildings.

State television claimed that suicide bombers had attacked a police station, a food distribution centre and an intelligence base. Attributing the attack to "armed terrorist gangs". The rebels, aka 'armed terrorist gangs', pointed out that the areas that were hit were highly protected ones, making it unlikely that any but regime loyalists had access to them.

Iran, under its own sanctions and embargoes has sent delegations to Syria to assist it in bypassing the embargoes. Syria was selling 90% of its oil output to the EU; Iran is now buying that oil, in the process enriching Syria to the tune of $1-billion. Iran is a net importer of oil, despite its huge output of crude, exporting it for refining, and no longer able to sell to its largest buyer, the EU. A problem solved neatly to the benefit of both Syria and Iran.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his Syrian counterpart Bashar Assad

And the charade goes on, interminably. Moscow complacently insisting that Syria's opposition "bears full responsibility" for the violence. In the process, accusing the West of fomenting the armed conflict. This is beginning to resemble a proxy war between Russia/China, and the U.S./E.U.