Israel has deep intelligence ties with Daesh: Analyst

Press TV has interviewed Scott Rickard, a former American intelligence linguist, in Orlando, to discuss a footage released by British media, showing Israeli soldiers treating a wounded Takfiri terrorist in the occupied Golan Heights.  

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: As we have just mentioned, this is not the first time footage has emerged showing that Israeli officials or Israeli troops giving medical treatment to foreign-backed Takfiri insurgents that are wreaking havoc in Syria but now that more in depth reports are coming out, what do you make of it?

Rickard: Well, sadly this is a long-standing relationship that Israel has with any dissidents in the region against the Syrian government. This has actually been going on for decades behind the Muslim Brotherhood - that was around 20, 30 years ago - and certainly the support coming out of Jordan in Israel for these Takfiri Daesh, ISIS type of organizations.

These organizations have been tied to the smuggling and the arms dealing individuals in both Israel and Jordan and now also Turkey unfortunately and you have a huge organization of Israelis that are supported from an intelligence background and also from a logistics background. And what I have seen specifically myself is when you have individuals like say Steven Sotloff, who was posing as a journalist in Syria and was allegedly beheaded by Jihadi John, this individual was trained in the IDC Herzliya, which is basically the Quantico or training for the intelligence community in Israel. He was actually working within Syria as an Israeli agent posing as basically a journalist.

So the ties that go into Israel are far beyond the medical coverage and it goes way deep into the intelligence and logistics.

Press TV: So now later this month we are also going to have the talks on Syria as far as hammering out a political solution goes. For as long as we have Turkey or even Israel supporting these foreign-backed Takfiri terrorists, will there be peace in Syria?

Rickard: Well unfortunately not. Many of the Turkish intelligence and even the Turkish individuals, certainly as many people that are running the country, still remember the Sykes-Picot Act that was secretly held by the French and the British.

So part of the infrastructure within Turkey wants to see their borders go back down to Mosul and certainly does not want to have the trouble from the Kurdish regional government in Iraq or the PKK or YPG which is now actually aligning with the Americans and the Russians fighting for those resources at this point.

So it is quite strange to see that you have a Turkish government that is basically in NATO, that is really affecting and participating alongside NATO unfortunately, and making a huge effort to destroy Syria alongside [Persian] Gulf states, Israeli and Jordanian type of allies. So it is unfortunate that this is happening and no, I do not think that Turkey is a good example of any type of war stopping in the area because they certainly want to continue to try to destroy Syria and take the northern part of Iraq.

Press TV: So what about the air campaign that the West is launching against Daesh, like now we have Britain and France also joining, so this is all a farce in your opinion? 

Rickard: Absolutely. In fact this is saving face because the Russians are making such great progress in Syria and what you see is they are taking out targets that will basically benefit Syria once the territory is regained by the Syrian military and the Syrian government. The British went in and bombed the oil fields unnecessarily because the Russians had already taken out all of the tankers that were capable of moving the oil and they exposed clearly the Turkish are involved in selling of stolen oil by ISIS through Turkey.

So I think what we see here is that people are being caught red-handed and they are trying to save face and in saving face unfortunately what they are doing is they are destroying resources that the Syrian government could use to rebuild and basically put them on the track to providing for their people and this is what the West has done, is they are trying to make the people of Syria suffer so they will turn against their leadership and thankfully the people of Syria understand the truth.  

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