The fall of Damascus
The Syrian crisis began quietly in 2009, amid diplomatic handshakes and smiles, when John Kerry met President Assad, who had succeeded his father as Syria's leader, in Damascus. Kerry intended to formalize Washington's ultimatum to the Arab Republic of Syria: Assad was to abandon his traditional Russian allies, the Palestinians, the Iran of the Ayatollahs and then the Hezbollah military political movement that was Tehran's arm in Lebanon and start a new policy favourable to the United States, Europe, Turkey and Israel. In return, he would have remained in power and retained his prestige and grip on the nation, presented to the world by the big Western media as a wise and enlightened president. Otherwise Syria would have been destroyed and partitioned, as had already been predicted and indeed happened with Gaddafi's Libya.
