The ongoing threat to his freedom hasn’t kept Assange from continuing
his work revealing the dirty secrets of world governments. His latest
revelations come in an interview with RT in support of his new book, “The WikiLeaks Files,” published late last month.
The United States and its allies in the Middle East, including Turkey and Israel,
have been frequently accused of contributing to the ongoing
destabilization of Syria in the wake of the uprising and subsequent
civil war which began in 2011. But according to cables from the
WikiLeaks archive, discussed in the Syria chapter of Assange’s book,
plans to deliberately destabilize the region go back at least five years
further.
“In that chapter is a cable
from US Ambassador William Roebuck, who was stationed in Damascus, which
apparently discusses a plan for the overthrow of the Assad government
in Syria,” RT reported.
In his appearance on the RT program “Going Underground,” Assange elaborated on the cable’s contents:
“… That plan was to use a
number of different factors to create paranoia within the Syrian
government; to push it to overreact, to make it fear there’s a coup …”
Assange continued, explaining that the U.S. government sought to make
the Syrian government appear weak by causing Assad to overreact to the
threat of Islamic extremists crossing into his country.
The cable also details plans to foster sectarian strife in the region
and make Iran appear like a larger threat to Assad than it really was,
Assange continued:
“In particular, to take
rumors that are known to be false … or exaggerations and promote them –
that Iran is trying to convert poor Sunnis, and to work with Saudi and
Egypt to foster that perception in order to make it harder for Iran to
have influence, and also harder for the government to have influence in
the population.”
WikiLeaks cables reveal that these plans came from the Israeli
government, and show that the U.S. government intended to work with
Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar and Egypt to encourage the breakdown of the
Assad regime as a way of also weakening Iran and Hezbollah.
