The conflict in Syria primarily aims at the weakening of Iran

Peter Scholl-Latour in an interview with Deutschlandfunk radio station

Ex: http://www.currentconcerns.ch/

Who supports the insurgents, and with what interests?

It’s not about Syria, and that’s just the complete deception of the public opinion. It’s about Iran. Iran is portrayed as the great devil, as the great demon. Iran is known to be Shiite, has always been a historical enemy of Saudi Arabia and the Wahhabi sect prevailing there, which is one of the most intolerant branches of Islam. It’s about hastily weakening Iran – against whom in fact everything is directed – and above all about stopping Iran from building a continuous land bridge.

This is supposed to start in Iraq, which is predominantly Shiite and where al-Maliki, a Shia Prime Minister is currently governing. It then runs via Syria, ruled by the Alawites, who are said to be close to the Shiites. Either way, the country is not Sunni, but rather secular. Then, the land bridge goes on to the Shiite Hezbollah in Lebanon, which is the strongest force there. What one has not taken note of is the following: Hezbollah has defeated the Israelis in 2006. And to prevent this continuous bridge of Shiism, which is connected with Iran, Syria is now to be smashed.

Mr Scholl-Latour, what developments do you expect, should Assad’s opponents prevail?

[...] If Syria was relying on itself, the insurgency would have ended long ago. But they want to overthrow Syria from outside. What will come next – well, a look at Libya is very revealing. In Libya there is a civil war going on that has broken out with estimated 60,000 to 70,000 deaths. Of which no one is even speaking, nobody speaks of Libya any longer and of the chaos that arose there. And not even of the fact that there are various Islamist groups, e.g. the Senussi sect, and so on, and that the separation of Cyreneika is now imminent. There is a civil war going on. And if today we are talking about 7000 deaths in Syria, reported by the so-called activists, which may be true – we can not judge that. This is terrible enough. But when the civil war breaks out, which is fueled by all sides, namely from Turkey, from the Anbar province in Iraq, from Jordan, from parts of Lebanon and first and foremost from America, you have to say, in that case a civil war will break out with 70 000 deaths.

^{Source: Original at www.dradio.de on 03/09/2012
The extract was linguistically revised.
(Translation Current Concerns)}