[Updated] U.S. To Suspend Diplomacy With Russia, Prepares 'Military Options', Russia Accuses U.S. Of Threatening Support For Nuclear Attack

With the information that has been reported in various news outlets (non-U.S. of course), war seems imminent. It's hard to recall a time in which rhetoric has been this inflamed between Russia and the U.S. This whole thing needs to stop and stop soon, or we will find ourselves in a growing war which would include Iran, Turkey, Hezbollah and possibly spreading into Jordan and Lebanon. The rate at which things are deteriorating is beyond alarming. 

US To Suspend Syria Diplomacy With Russia, Prepares "Military Options"

In the most dramatic diplomatic escalation involving the Syrian conflict in the past years, yesterday John Kerry issued an ultimatum to Russia, in which he warned his colleague Lavrov to stop bombing Aleppo or else the US would suspend all cooperation and diplomacy with Russia. 

24 hours later, this appears to be precisely what is about to take place, leading to an even greater geopolitical shock in Syria. According to Retuers, the United States is expected to tell Russia on Thursday it is suspending their diplomatic engagement on Syria following the Russian-backed Syrian government's intense attacks on Aleppo, U.S. officials said on condition of anonymity.

Why now and what happens next? According to US officials, the Obama administration is now considering tougher responses to the Russian-backed Syrian government assault on Aleppo, including military options. 

According to Reuters, the new discussions were being held at "staff level," and have yet to produce any recommendations to President Barack Obama, who has resisted ordering military action against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the country's multi-sided civil war. 

"The president has asked all of the agencies to put forward options, some familiar, some new, that we are very actively reviewing," Blinken said. "When we are able to work through these in the days ahead we'll have an opportunity to come back and talk about them in detail."

However, now that diplomacy with Russia is set to end, this will give the greenlight for Obama to send in US troops in Syria, with Putin certain to respond appropriately, in what will be the biggest military escalation in the Syrian proxy war in its five and a half year history.






State Dept. Threatens Terror Attacks in Russia if Moscow Keeps Fighting ISIS (Video)

[This video is worth watching]



In extraordinary comments that have gone virtually unnoticed by the media, U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby threatened Moscow with terror attacks in Russian cities and even shoot downs of Russian jets if Vladimir Putin continued his fight against ISIS in Syria.

“Extremist groups will continue to exploit the vacuums that are there in Syria to expand their operations, which could include attacks against Russian interests, perhaps even Russian cities. Russia will continue to send troops home in body bags, and will continue to lose resources, perhaps even aircraft,” Kirby told reporters at Wednesday’s press briefing, adding that if the war in Syria continues “more Russian lives will be lost, more Russian aircraft will be shot down.”

While the comments will obviously be presented by the media as Kirby claiming that these will be the consequences of Moscow’s involvement in Syria, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova took the remarks as a thinly veiled threat.

“And those [acts of terrorism] will be perpetrated by ‘moderate’ [Syrian opposition groups]?” Zakharova asked in a Facebook post. “Just the ones that Washington has been unable to separate from Al-Nusra for as long as six months?”

“Don’t you think that such ventriloquism about ‘body bags,’ ‘terrorist attacks in Russian cities’ and ‘loss of aircraft,’ sounds more like a ‘get ’em’ command, rather than a diplomatic comment?” she added.

Is Kirby actually threatening to use the same “moderate” jihadists that the Obama administration has funded and armed to kill Russian troops, down Russian planes and slaughter Russian citizens in their own country?

As documented in the video below, tensions in Syria have heated up significantly after Washington bombed Syrian soldiers who were fighting against ISIS, an incident the U.S. claimed was an “accident”.

The Obama administration then claimed that Russia had attacked a UN aid convoy, although the exact circumstances of what happened remain murky.

A Jabhat al-Nusra unit commander also recently revealed that the group, which is an Al-Qaeda offshoot, was given American-made TOW missiles and other weapons “directly” from the U.S. and its allies.

“The Americans are on our side,” he stated.

Russia accuses US of threatening support for nuclear attack

 The Russian Foreign Ministry is accusing the Pentagon of making a veiled threat to back its allies in an attack on Russia with nuclear weapons.

U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter on Monday accused Russia of "nuclear saber-rattling" and argued that even though the Cold War is long over, nuclear weapons are still needed to deter Russia and other potential aggressors from thinking they could get away with a nuclear attack.

Moscow responded Thursday by saying that Carter's statement amounted to the U.S. threatening to use its nuclear weapons in support of an aggression against Russia waged by its allies. It added that Russia will have to take retaliatory measures to protect its security.

Washington has Just Declared War on Russia

At this stage, Washington is completely incapable of discussing any serious political settlement in Syria, since it regards any peace process in this war-torn country as the harbinger of Moscow’s, Beijing’s and Tehran’s continuous presence in the region and the moving forward of several energy routes that will gives these states influence and wealth in the region well into the future, all of which means there will be no place for the West’s “avid defenders of democracy” at the table.

That is why the United States objected so vigorously to the release of the Russian-American cease-fire agreement details to the public and kept the discussion of the agreement as far away from the UN as it possibly could, out of fear there could be a UN resolution adopted that would make it mandatory to comply with.

That is also why, while keeping in mind its master-plan, Washington has used Syrian territory to start the largest indirect war in modern history to pursue its consequential transformation in a direct armed confrontation with Russia. A total of 80 states are fighting both directly and indirectly in Syria. It is no accident that on May 23, 2003, instead of gathering Iraqi forces into a single large unit, the US occupation administration disbanded the Iraqi army, creating pre-conditions for the rise of ISIS. In January 2012, in the midst of the Syrian civil war, the CIA created a “branch” of Al Qaeda in Syria – the notorious Jabhat al-Nusra. It’s no secret that the militants of this terrorist group at different points of time were treated in hospitals in Turkey and Israel – both faithful satellite-states of Washington. These steps were followed with the approval of the Turkish military’s invasion of Syria, which was launched on August 20.

To create preconditions for an open armed conflict with Russia, Washington has launched a massive propaganda campaign, aimed at discrediting Moscow at every juncture. It’s enough to remember the so-called “doping scandal” and the “revelations” that Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko made about the alleged presence of more than 30,000 Russian soldiers and hundreds of tanks in eastern Ukraine. And no matter how ridiculous and unfounded such allegations may be, Washington would still repeat them, as if it had no means to track a couple hundreds tanks anywhere on the face of the Earth and then provide irrefutable evidence of it to the public. Moreover, we hear repeated accusations about Moscow’s alleged involvement in the downing of the Malaysian Boeing MH-17 over Donbass and many others. And the list goes on. Looking at all these steps, one can’t help but remember the genius of Nazi propaganda – Joseph Goebbels – who swayed public perception with the continuous repetition of transparent lies up to and including the day of the Nazi invasion of Russia.

Russian MoD: We’re ready for Syria dialogue with US, but threats against our military unacceptable

The statement came in response to comments made by US State Department spokesperson John Kirby at a press briefing on Wednesday. Kirby said that if the war in Syria continues, “more Russian lives will be lost, more Russian aircraft will be shot down”as “extremist groups will continue to exploit the vacuums that are there in Syria to expand their operations, which could include attacks against Russian interests, perhaps even Russian cities.” 

Speaking on Thursday, Russian Ministry of Defense spokesman Major-General Igor Konashenkov said: “Once again we declare that we are fully prepared to continue the dialogue with the American side and carry on with the joint actions to combat terrorists in Syria.”

“However, even the slightest hints of a threat to our soldiers and Russian citizens must be excluded from this dialogue. The matter of safety of Russian citizens, wherever they may be, is not up for bargaining. It is our main and unconditional priority,” the spokesman stressed.