Trump’s Vengeance: Dozens of Strikes in Syria as the Epstein Files Threaten
ISIS, al-Nusra, and al-Qaeda: Made in the USA.
As the Epstein files continue to plague Donald Trump, the president has turned to a recycled adversary to divert attention away from his possible involvement with underage girls and a decade and a half relationship with documented Mossad operative Jeffrey Epstein.
In response to an ambush that left two Iowa National Guard troops and a civilian interpreter dead “in a very dangerous part of Syria” illegally occupied by the United States, Trump promised there would be “very serious retaliation” against the Islamic State.
On December 19, Trump followed up on his promise to “eliminate” ISIS in Syria (in 2019, during his first term, he claimed to have defeated “100 percent” of the ISIS caliphate in Syria). According to a US official, “a large-scale” strike hit 70 targets in areas across central Syria. The attack coincided with the release of another tranche of heavily redacted Epstein files. According to The Telegraph,
US Central Command (CENTCOM) said the United States “struck more than 70 targets at multiple locations across central Syria with fighter jets, attack helicopters and artillery… The Jordanian Armed Forces also supported with fighter aircraft.”
“This is not the beginning of a war,” declared Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, “it is a declaration of vengeance. The United States of America, under President Trump’s leadership, will never hesitate and never relent to defend our people.”
The latest illegal attack inside Syria is a continuation of military operations designed to further divide and balkanize the fractured country following the removal of Bashar al-Assad and replaced by Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa, aka Abu Mohammad al-Julani, the former emir of al-Nusra Front and Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham. In 2012, the US designated al-Nusra a foreign terrorist organization and, the following year, it was confirmed to be the Syrian affiliate of al-Qaeda. Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, is a spin-off from al-Nusra and al-Qaeda.
Timber Sycamore
ISIS, al-Nusra, and al-Qaeda were “made-in-the-USA, an instrument of terror designed to divide and conquer the oil-rich Middle East and to counter Iran’s growing influence in the region,” writes Garikai Chengu, an African historian. “The fact that the United States has a long and torrid history of backing terrorist groups will surprise only those who watch the news and ignore history.”
In November, Susan Miller, a former CIA Tel Aviv station chief, admitted during an interview with journalist Afshin Rattansi, the US works with Mossad and Shin Bet in Israel. Miller also said al-Qaeda and the CIA shared a relationship in Iraq and Syria. The collaboration occurred under Timber Sycamore, a covert CIA program initiated in 2012. The program supplied weapons and training to Syrian opposition groups, including al-Nusra and others affiliated with al-Qaeda.
https://mf.b37mrtl.ru/files/2025.11/6922adfd85f5402219428c77.mp4?download=1
During a campaign speech in 2016, Trump said “Obama is the founder of ISIS… and the co-founder is crooked Hillary Clinton.” He repeated the accusation during an interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt. Trump was only partly right. The United States and its CIA have manufactured and encouraged Islamic extremism to one degree or another since the presidency of Jimmy Carter.
Pipelines, Engineered Salafism, and the Moonscape of Syria
The genesis of what became the Islamic State began years before Obama took office. According to the WikiLeaks “Carter Cables,” a release of 531,525 diplomatic cables, in 1979 the CIA, in collaboration with Saudi Arabia, created what would later become ISIS. On November 28, 2016, Jullian Assange wrote for WikiLeaks:
If any year could be said to be the “year zero” of our modern era, 1979 is it. In the Middle East, the Iranian revolution, the Saudi Islamic uprising and the Egypt-Israel Camp David Accords led not only to the present regional power dynamic but decisively changed the relationship between oil, militant Islam and the world.
In 2009, Assad declined a Qatari proposal to direct Doha’s natural gas reserves to Europe through a $10 billion, 1,500-kilometer-long Qatar–Türkiye pipeline. The project would traverse Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, and Türkiye. The idea was for a connection to the strategic Nabucco pipeline, a consortium project that subsequently failed. Both pipelines were designed to prevent European access to Russian energy.
Sunni monarchs in the Gulf were outraged by a Russian approved “Islamic pipeline” routed through Iran. The Syrian and Russian proposal and outright rejection of the Qatari plan convinced the US, Israeli, and Saudi intelligence to overthrow the Assad government with an engineered domestic rebellion. Al-Qaeda in Iraq and the Islamic State were used for this purpose, writes Kit Klarenberg. In addition to Jahbat al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham, other Salafist jihadi groups were involved in the fighting, including Syrian Islamic Front, Saqour al-Sham, and others.
Double Training “Moderate” Sunni Islamists
“What is unfolding in Syria is an armed insurrection supported covertly by foreign powers including the US, Turkey and Israel,” Prof Michel Chossudovsky wrote in 2011. “Armed insurgents belonging to Islamist organizations have crossed the border from Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan. The US State Department has confirmed that it is supporting the insurgency.”
In 2014, according to The Washington Post’s David Ignatius, President Obama settled on the double training of “moderate insurgents” in camps in Qatar and Jordan. “The CIA has been involved in the training of insurgents since 2012, initially through an operations center in Turkey and later in a base in Jordan.”
The result was sustained warfare “that transformed a bustling, five thousand-year old civilization into a desolate Falluja-like moonscape overflowing with homicidal fanatics that were recruited, groomed and deployed by the various allied intelligence agencies.”
In 2022, the United Nations Human Rights Office estimated that 306,887 civilians, approximately 1.5% of the total pre-war population, were killed between March 2011 and March 2021. 27,126 of the estimated killed were children. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, believed to be funded by the European Union, claims to have documented 614,000 persons killed since the beginning of the intelligence operation to overthrow the Syrian government in March, 2011.
Merry Christmas: Trump Bombs Villages in Nigeria
On the day after Christmas, Trump took his Epstein diversion operation to the African nation of Nigeria. In November, the president said his War Department would respond to reported murders of Christians by a mercurial Boko Haram, and other groups described as ISIS affiliates. Nigeria, with Africa’s largest population, produces more oil than any other country on the continent (1.71 million barrels per day). It is also rich in minerals, including gold, coal, iron ore, limestone, bauxite, bitumen, copper ore, and lithium.
Like Syria, Nigeria has endured numerous CIA operations over the years, most notably the 1976 coup that assassinated Murtala Mohammed and put Olusegun Obasanjo in power. Mohammed made the mistake of turning down a state visit by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger that same year.
The current President of Nigeria, Bola Ahmed Adekunle Tinubu, is reportedly an active CIA asset. This revelation emerged during a hearing in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, where the CIA, FBI, and DEA filed a memorandum opposing a civil lawsuit seeking summary judgment and redactions in a Freedom of Information disclosure case concerning President Tinubu’s drug trafficking investigation records.
“In the filing, the CIA effectively confirmed that Nigeria’s sitting president is an active CIA asset,” writes investigative journalist David Hundeyin. “I think there is nothing more to be said about the direct role that the US government plays in ensuring that Africa is constantly destabilized and afflicted with terrible leaders who create poverty and devastation.”
In 2012, The Nigerian Tribune reported Boko Harm’s funding was traced to the United Kingdom and Saudi Arabia, specifically from the Al-Muntada Trust Fund. In 2005, The Center for Security Policy stated “Al-Muntada has, incidentally, been particularly active in promoting Wahhabi-style Islamism in Nigeria… Al-Muntada… pays for Nigerian clerics to be ‘brainwashed’ in Saudi universities and imposed on Nigerian Muslims through its well-funded network of mosques and schools.” In 2019, the High Court of Nigeria ruled Al-Muntada did not have links to terrorism.
In addition to Saudi support, Boko Haram received indirect assistance from NATO via Libya’s al-Qaeda mercenaries. Admiral James Stavridis, the Supreme Allied Commander of NATO in Europe, said as much, according to The Telegraph. The newspaper reported the “admission came as the American, Qatari and British Governments indicated that they were considering arming rebel groups.” The Libyan National Council, a Benghazi-based group that represented “rebel forces” in Libya, appointed a CIA collaborator, Khalifa Hifter, a former colonel in the Libyan army, to lead its military operations.
In 2015, Gen. David Rodriguez, head of AFRICOM, said a “huge” international effort was required to “turn the tide” against Boko Haram. He made the remark after Nigeria cancelled training by US advisors. “Rodriguez said he felt the international community was amply aware of Nigeria’s crisis and was taking steps to fight the terrorist threat,” Defense One reported.
The Russia and China Challenge
Nigeria’s “terrorist threat” comes in second when compared to the “threat” of Russian and Chinese influence in resource-rich Africa. On September 17, 2024, General Michael Langley, the current Commander of AFRICOM, provided
a candid assessment of the challenges facing African countries amidst growing external pressures from the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China… Langley emphasized that Africa is increasingly at the center of global power competition, with both Russia and China asserting their influence in ways that often undermine the rules-based international order.
Marine Corps Gen. Thomas Waldhauser, also a former AFRICOM commander, and his replacement, Stephen Townsend, a retired four-star US Army general, said in public testimony before Congress in 2019 that the presence of Russia and China in Africa is a threat to US military operations against Boko Haram.
Evidence to the contrary reveals the threat has less to do with Boko Haram than it does with the “New Scramble for Africa”
Instead, the threat is economic. Nick Turse writes:
Trade between China and Africa has risen from $765 million to more than $170 billion in the last 40 years, and 39 of 54 African nations have now signed on to Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative – a trillion-dollar plan to link infrastructure and trade via a vast new network of roads, rail lines, ports, and pipelines across Eurasia, the Middle East, and Africa. Russia’s trade with Africa increased from $5.7 billion in 2009 to $17.4 billion in 2017, and the country has been aggressively promoting nuclear infrastructure and technology partnerships as well as oil and gas investments there.
Both China and Russia maintained strong ties with Syria prior to the engineered fall of Bashar Assad. In addition to the establishment of a strategic partnership in 2023, the previous year Syria joined China’s Belt and Road Initiative. It announced opposition to color revolutions and the Arab Spring, projects organized in part by the National Endowment for Democracy, described as a “second CIA,” and associated NGOs.
Boko Haram, the Islamic State, al-Qaeda, Ansar Dine, and other Salafist groups, primarily funded by Saudi Arabia, provide a pretext for further US intervention in the African Sahel to counter Chinese and Russian influence. In Syria, Russia has ports at Tartus and Latakia. Prior to Assad’s ouster, there was a plan to run Russian pipelines through Syria to the Mediterranean. Syria and Russia also signed gas exploration contracts.
In 2023, Assad visited China. The two countries signed agreements and announced a “strategic partnership.” During a conference for Chinese and Syrian enterprises in 2017, the vice chairman of the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade emphasized economic cooperation. The Chinese are also interested in the Syrian Mediterranean sea ports of Tartus and Latakia. Beijing plans for China Harbour Engineering Company Ltd to upgrade the deep seaport of Tripoli, Lebanon.
The trade, infrastructure projects, security guarantees, and political influence of China and Russia are considered an existential threat to the global economic “rules-based order.” In Syria and Nigeria, a manufactured adversary—groomed by the CIA, Pakistani intelligence, Saudi money, and Sunni Wahhabi theology—has provided the United States with a pretext to intervene and counter the presence of a true adversary: the emergence of a multipolar world, the collapse of the petrodollar and post-Bretton Woods system, and the rejection of corporate dominated neoliberalism and the policies of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and associated globalist institutions