Attack On Sovereignty

Those concerned about “The New World Order” speak as if the United States is coming under the control of an outside conspiratorial force. In fact, it is the US that is the New World Order. That is what the American unipolar world, about which China, Russia, and Iran complain, is all about.

Washington has demonstrated that it has no respect for its own laws and Constitution, much less any respect for international law and the law and sovereignty of other countries. All that counts is Washington’s will as the pursuit of hegemony moves Washington closer to becoming a world dictator. 

The examples are so numerous someone should compile them into a book. During the Reagan administration the long established bank secrecy laws of Switzerland had to bend to Washington’s will. The Clinton administration attacked Serbia, murdered civilians and sent Serbia’s president to be tried as a war criminal for defending his country. The US government engages in widespread spying on Europeans’ emails and telephone calls that is unrelated to terrorism. Julian Assange is confined to the Ecuadoran embassy in London, because Washington won’t permit the British government to honor his grant of political asylum. Washington refuses to comply with a writ of habeas corpus from a British count to turn over Yunus Rahmatullah whose detention a British Court of Appeals has ruled to be unlawful. Washington imposes sanctions on other countries and enforces them by cutting sovereign nations that do not comply out of the international payments system. 

Last week the Obama regime warned the British government that it was a violation of US interests for the UK to pull out of the European Union or reduce its ties to the EU in any way.

In other words, the sovereignty of Great Britain is not a choice to be made by the British government or people. The decision is made by Washington in keeping with Washington’s interest. 

The British are so accustomed to being Washington’s colony that deputy prime minister Nick Clegg and a group of UK business executives quickly lined up with Washington. 

This leaves Great Britain in a quandary. The British economy, once a manufacturing powerhouse, has been reduced to the City of London, Britain’s equivalent to Wall Street. London, like New York, is a world financial center of which there are none in Europe. Without its financial status, there wouldn’t be much left of the UK.

It is because of the City’s financial importance that the UK, alone of the EU member states, kept the British pound as its currency and did not join the euro. Because the UK has its own currency and central bank, the UK was spared the sovereign debt crisis that has plagued other EU member states. The Bank of England, like the Federal Reserve in the US, was able to bail out its own banks, whereas other EU states sharing a common currency could not create money, and the European Central Bank is prohibited by its charter (at Germany’s insistence) from bailing out member states.

The quandary for the UK is that the solution to the sovereign debt crisis toward which the EU is moving is to strip the member governments of their fiscal sovereignty. For the individual countries, the spending, taxing and, thereby, deficit or surplus positions of the member countries’ budgets will be set by EU central authority. This would mean the end of national sovereignty for European countries.

For Britain to remain an EU member while retaining its own currency and central bank would mean special status for Great Britain. The UK would be the only member of the EU that remained a sovereign country. What are the chances that the UK will be permitted such exceptional status? Is this acceptable to Germany and France?

If the British are to fold themselves into Europe, they will have to give up their currency, central bank, their law, and their economic status as a world financial center and accept governance by the EU bureaucracy. The British will have to give up being somebody and become nobody. 

It would, however, free the UK from being Washington’s puppet unless the EU itself is Washington’s puppet. 

According to reports, sometime this year Scotland, a constituent part of the UK, is to vote on leaving the UK and becoming an independent country. How ironic that as the UK debates its dismemberment the country itself faces being merged into a multi-national state.

Bilderberg Bangs War Drums; Pushes Obama to Bomb Iran

By James P. Tucker Jr.

Bilderberg luminary Dennis Ross celebrated Christmas by banging his war drums in a campaign to prod President Barack Obama into killing Palestinians and Iranians on behalf of Israel. Americans would, again, spill most of the blood and would finance the military operation. Israel will pay a share of thecosts with your tax dollars.

In a Bilderberg-staged interview with The Washington Post published on December 23, Ross, who was an advisor to President Obama, made the case for invading Iran in 2013. Ross embraced the earlier warhawking by Senators John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.).

After seven years of war talk but no gunfire, 2013 will “finally bring a break in the Iranian standoff—by means of a military confrontation, the appearance of an Iranian bomb or a diplomatic deal of some kind,” Jackson Diehl wrote of his interview with Ross. “And interestingly, one of the people making that case is Obama’s first-term advisor on Iran, Dennis Ross, who has worked on the Middle East in five administrations.”

Ross said three factors point to war on Iran: “an approaching Iranian ‘breakout’ capacity; Obama’s stated determination to prevent it; and the slow emergence of an economic and political climate in Iran that could prompt Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to change course.”

In a series of meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Obama said publicly, “It is unacceptable for Iran to have a nuclear weapon.” Ross added, “If by the end of 2013 diplomacy hasn’t worked, the prospects for the use of force becomes quite high.”

Iran signed on to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and passes inspections each year. Israel is known to have a huge nuclear weapons stockpile dating back decades but refuses to sign the NPT and is never inspected.

CIA officer John Kiriakou imprisoned to protect 9/11 cover-up

Former CIA Case Officer John C. Kiriakou is facing 30 months in the federal pen. According to the New York Times, Kiriakou’s crime was passing the identity of an undercover CIA officer to a journalist.

But a quick peek behind the scenes reveals the real reason Kiriakou is being crucified: He revealed information about CIA officials involved in torturing innocent 9/11 patsy Khalid Sheik Mohammed (KSM) into endorsing a pre-scripted false confession.

Kiriakou is being railroaded to send a message to the intelligence community: Don’t mess with 9/11 torture, the framing of patsies, and the forced confessions!

As VT readers know, the intelligence community leaks “classified” information like a proverbial sieve. (As it should – almost all “classified” information ought to be made public.) Of the tens of thousands of leaks that occur each year, only a tiny fraction are ever punished, legally or extra-legally.

So when a former CIA Case Officer is sent to prison for a relatively innocuous leak, we must ask why was this  guy singled out?

Kiriakou’s “leak” was about as innocuous as it gets. Scott Shane, a New York Times journalist working on CIA torture stories, asked for names of those who knew something about the waterboarding of KSM and Abu Zubaydah, the mentally retarded “al-Qaeda kingpin” who was tortured into naming KSM.

Kiriakou, like all honest intelligence community folks, was presumably dismayed that those who tortured the false confessions out of KSM later destroyed all of the tapes and notes detailing the torture sessions, and then lied through their teeth about what had happened.

So he gave Shane the business card of Deuce Martinez, a former undercover CIA agent who was involved in the frame-up of al-Qaeda’s Retard-in-Chief Abu Zubaydah and innocent 9/11 patsy KSM.

Scott Shane

Shane is baffled by the government’s contention that mentioning Martinez’s name constituted a security breach:

Mr. Martinez, an analyst by training, was retired and had never served under cover; that is, he had never posed as a diplomat or a businessman while overseas. He had placed his home address, his personal e-mail address, his job as an intelligence officer and other personal details on a public Web site for the use of students at his alma mater. Abu Zubaydah had been captured six years earlier, Mr. Mohammed five years earlier; their stories were far from secret.

The government claims that despite Martinez’s CIA role being public knowledge, Kiriakou’s “crime” was revealing that Martinez had been involved in the Abu Zubayda and KSM frame-ups.

THAT was classified. Anyone who helps the American public understand what really happened during the torture sessions that elicited false confessions from Abu Zubaydah and KSM is a threat to National Security.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed – Before his Capture

Kiriakou apparently also gave another journalist another name of a CIA officer involved in the “let’s frame Abu Zubaydah and KSM” torture sessions.

So the government railroaded Kiriakou to send a message: Open your mouth about the torture sessions that framed the innocent 9/11 patsies, offer any names or information that could lead to the truth coming out, and you’ll be sent up the river.

This information is still extremely sensitive. The ludicrous “19 hijackers” story breathlessly recounted in the9/11 Commission Report is sourced almost entirely to non-verifiable, anonymous second-hand accounts of what KSM allegedly said while he was being subjected to long-term, excruciating torture.

The Commissioners were offered no access to KSM, nor were they given any recordings or transcripts of the torture sessions and alleged confessions. The entire 9/11 Commission Report, pre-written in outline form by 9/11-scriptwriter suspect Philip Zelikow before the Commission had even convened, is supposedly based on these anonymous, second-hand reports of what KSM said under long-term torture.

The most likely explanation: Zelikow wrote the 9/11 script, and KSM was tortured into reciting lines written by Zelikow – lines that support the fantasy “19 hijackers” narrative.

As I recently explained to 9/11 cover-up criminal Daniel Pipes on Press TV, the upshot of all this is that the US has become a dictatorship. Anyone who threatens to undermine the foundation of that dictatorship, by exposing 9/11 in a way that could stand up in court, will be made an example of.

The Syria Endgame: Strategic Stage in the Pentagon’s Covert War on Iran

Since the kindling of the conflict inside Syria in 2011, it was recognized, by friend and foe alike, that the events in that country were tied to a game plan that ultimately targets Iran, Syria’s number one ally. [1] De-linking Syria from Iran and unhinging the Resistance Bloc that Damascus and Tehran have formed has been one of the objectives of the foreign-supported anti-government militias inside Syria. Such a schism between Damascus and Tehran would change the Middle East’s strategic balance in favour of the US and Israel.
If  this cannot be accomplished, however, then crippling Syria to effectively prevent it from providing Iran any form of diplomatic, political, economic, and military support in the face of common threats has been a primary objective. Preventing any continued cooperation between the two republics has been a strategic goal. This includes preventing the Iran-Iraq-Syria energy terminal from being built and ending the military pact between the two partners.

All Options are Aimed at Neutralizing Syria

Regime change in Damascus is not the only or main way for the US and its allies to prevent Syria from standing with Iran. Destabilizing Syria and neutralizing it as a failed and divided state is the key. Sectarian fighting is not a haphazard outcome of the instability in Syria, but an assisted project that the US and its allies have steadily fomented with a clear intent to balkanize the Syrian Arab Republic. Regionally, Israel above all other states has a major stake in securing this outcome. The Israelis actually have several publicly available documents, including the Yinon Plan, which outline that the destruction of Syria into a series of smaller sectarian states is one of their strategic objectives. So do American military planners.

Like Iraq next door, Syria does not need to be formally divided. For all intents and purposes, the country can be divided like Lebanon was alongside various fiefdoms and stretches of territory controlled by different groups during the Lebanese Civil War. The goal is to disqualify Syria as an external player.

Since 2006 and the Israeli defeat in Lebanon in that year there was renewed focus on the strategic alliance between Iran and Syria. Both countries have been very resilient in the face of US designs in their region. Together both have been key players for influencing events in the Middle East, from the Eastern Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf. Their strategic alliance has undoubtedly played an important role in shaping the geo-political landscape in the Middle East. Although critics of Damascus say it has done very little in regard to substantial action against the Israelis, the Syrians have been the partners within this alliance that have carried the greatest weight in regards to facing Israel; it has been through Syria that Hezbollah and the Palestinians have been provided havens, logistics, and their initial strategic depth against Israel.

From the beginning the foreign-supported external opposition leaders made their foreign policy clear, which can strongly be argued was a reflection of the interests they served. The anti-government forces and their leaders even declared that they will realign Syria against Iran; in doing so they used sectarian language about returning to their “natural orbit with the Sunni Arabs.” This is a move that is clearly in favour of the US and Israel alike. Breaking the axis between Damascus and Tehran has also been a major goal of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and the Arab petro-sheikhdoms since the 1980s as part of a design to isolate Iran during the Iraq-Iran War. [2] Moreover, the sectarian language being used is part of a construct; it is not a reflection of reality, but a reflection of Orientalist conjecture and desires that falsely stipulate that Muslims who perceive themselves as being Shia or Sunni are inherently at odds with one another as enemies.

Among the prostrating Syrian opposition leaders who would execute the strategic goals of the US has been Burhan Ghalioun, the former president of the Istanbul-based and foreign-sponsored Syrian National Council, who told the Wall Street Journal in 2011 that Damascus would end its strategic alliance with Iran and end its support for Hezbollah and the Palestinians as soon as anti-government forces took over Syria. [3] These foreign-sponsored opposition figures have also served to validate, in one way or another, the broader narratives that claim Sunnis and Shiites hate one another. In synchronization the mainstream media in the countries working for regime change in Damascus, such as the US and France, have consistently advertized that the regime in Syria is an Alawite regime that is allied to Iran, because the Alawites are an offshoot of Shiism. This too is untrue, because Syria and Iran do not share a common ideology; both countries are aligned, because of a common threat and shared political and strategic objectives. Nor is Syria run by an Alawite regime; the government’s composure reflects Syrian society’s ethnic and religious diversity.

Israel’s Stake in Syria

Syria is all about Iran for Israel. As if Tel Aviv has nothing to do whatsoever with the events inside Syria, Israeli commentators and analysts are now publicly insisting that Israel needs to deal with Iran by intervening inside Syria. Israel’s involvement in Syria, alongside the US and NATO, crystallized in 2012. It was clear that Israel was working in a conglomerate comprised of the US, Britain, France, Turkey, NATO, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, Lebanon’s minority March 14 Alliance, and the NATO-supported usurpers that have taken over and wrecked the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya.  

Although it should be read with caution, it is worth noting the release of the hacked correspondence of Strategic Forecast Incorporated’s Reva Bhalla to her boss, George Friedman, about a December 2011 meeting in the Pentagon between herself (representing Stratfor), US, French, and British officials about Syria. [4] The Stratfor correspondence claimed that the US and its allies had sent in their military special forces to destabilize Syria in 2011 and that there actually were not many Syrian anti-government forces on the ground or, as Bhalla writes, “there isn’t much of a Free Syrian Army to train.” [5] The Daily Star, which is owned by Lebanon’s Hariri family which has been involved in the regime change operations against Syria, soon after reported that thirteen undercover French officers were caught by the Syrians conducting operations inside Homs. [6] Instead of a categorical no to the information about the captured French officers, the French Foreign Ministry’s response to the public was that it could not confirm anything, which can be analyzed as an omission of guilt. [7]

Days earlier, Hezbollah’s Al-Manar station revealed that Israeli-made weapons and supplies, ranging from grenades and night binoculars to communication devices, were captured alongside Qatari agents inside the insurgent stronghold of Baba Amr in Homs towards the end of April and start of March. [8] An unnamed US official would later confirm in July 2012 that the Mossad was working alongside the CIA in Syria. [9] Just a month earlier, in June, the Israeli government began publicly demanding that a military intervention be launched into Syria, presumably by the US and the conglomerate of governments working with Israel to destabilize Syria. [10]

The Israeli media has even begun to casually report that Israeli citizens, albeit one has been identified as an Israeli Arab (meaning a Palestinian with Israeli citizenship), have entered Syria to fight against the Syrian Army. [11] Normally any Israelis, specifically those that are non-Jewish Arabs, which enter Lebanon or/and Syria are condemned or prosecuted by Israeli authorities and Israeli news reports focus on this aspect of the story. Yet, it has not been so in this case. It should also be mentioned that the Palestinian opponents of Israel living inside Syria are also being targeted, just as the Palestinians living in Iraq were targeted after the US and UK invaded in 2003.

Syria and the Objective of Making Iran Stand Alone

The journalist Rafael D. Frankel wrote a revealing article for the Washington Quarterly that illustrates what US policymakers and their partners think about in Syria. In his article Frankel argued that because of the so-called Arab Spring that an attack on Iran by the US and Israel would no longer trigger a coordinated regional response from Iran and its allies. [12] Frankel argued that because of the events inside Syria an opportunity has been created for the US and Israel to attack Iran without igniting a regional war that would involve Syria, Hezbollah, and Hamas. [13]

Frankel’s line of thinking was not lost on circles in either NATO or Israel. In reality his line of thinking springs forth from the views and plans of these very circles. As a psychological enforcement of their ideas, his text actually found its way to NATO Headquarters in Brussels in 2012 for reading material. While the latter, Israel, released its own intelligence report about the subject.

According to the Israeli newspaper Maariv, the intelligence report by Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has concluded that Syria and Hezbollah will no longer be able to open a second front against Israel should it go to war with Iran. [14] During the Israeli report’s release, one senior Israeli official was quoted as saying “Iran’s ability to harm Israel in response to an attack on our part declined dramatically.”[15]

Many news wires, papers, and writers with hostile positions towards both Syria and Iran, such asThe Daily Telegraph, immediately replicated the Israeli report’s findings about Iran and its regional allies. Two of the first people to reproduce the findings of the Israel report, Robert Tait (writing from the Gaza Strip) and Damien McElroy (who was expelled from Libya in 2011 by that country’s authorities during the war with NATO), summarize how significant the findings of the report are by effectively outlining how Iran’s key allies in the Levant have all been neutralized. [16]

The Israeli report has triumphantly declared that Syria has turned within and is too busy to join ranks with its strategic ally Iran against Tel Aviv in a future war. [17] The ramifications of the Syrian crisis have also placed Iran’s Lebanese allies, particularly Hezbollah, in an unsteady position where their supply lines are under threat and they have been politically damaged through their support of Damascus. If anyone in Lebanon should side with Iran in a future war the Israelis have said that they will invade through massive military operations on the ground. [18]

The new Egyptian government’s role in aiding US objectives under President Morsi also becomes clear with what the Israeli report says about his supportive role: “The foreign ministry report also predicted that Egypt would stop Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist movement, from helping Iran by launching rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip.” [19] This adds credence to the view that Morsi was allowed by the US and Israel to broker a peace between the Gaza Strip and Tel Aviv, which would prevent the Palestinians there from standing with Iran during a war. In other words the Egyptian truce was setup to bind the hands of Hamas. The recent announcements about moves by Morsi’s government to engage Hezbollah politically can also be scrutinized as an extension of the same strategy applied in Gaza, but in this case for unbinding Iran from its Lebanese allies. [20]

There is also clamouring for steps to be taken to de-link Hezbollah, and by extension Iran, from its Christian allies in Lebanon. The German Marshall Fund showcased a text essentially saying that the Lebanese Christians that are allies to Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran need to be presented with an alternative political narrative to replace the one where they believe that Iran will ultimately run the Middle East as a great power. [21] This too is tied to further eroding Iran’s alliance system.

Mission Accomplished?

The conflict in Syria is not merely an Israeli affair. The slow bleeding of Syria has other interested parties that want to smash the country and its society into pieces. The US is foremost among these interested parties, followed by the Arab dictators of the petro-sheikhdoms. NATO has also always been covertly involved.

NATO’s involvement in Syria is part of the US strategy of using the military alliance to dominate the Middle East. This is why it was decided to establish a component of the missile shield in Turkey. This is also the reason that Patriot missiles are being deployed to the Turkish border with Syria. The Istanbul Cooperation Initiative (ICI) and NATO’s Mediterranean Dialogue are components of these plans too. Additionally, Turkey has ended its veto against the further integration of Israel into NATO. [22]

NATO has been reorienting itself towards asymmetrical warfare and greater emphasis is now being put on intelligence operations. NATO strategists have increasingly been studying the Kurds, Iraq, Hezbollah, Syria, Iran, and the Palestinians. In the scenario of an all-out war, NATO has been preparing itself for overt military roles in both Syria and Iran.

Iraq is being destabilized further too. While Iran’s allies in Damascus have been weighed down, its allies in Baghdad have not. After Syria, the same conglomerate of countries working against Damascus will turn their attention to Iraq. They have already started working to galvanize Iraq further on the basis of its sectarian and political fault lines. Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia are playing prominent roles in this objective. What is becoming manifest is that the differences between Shiite Muslims and Sunni Muslims that Washington has cultivated since the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq in 2003 are now been augmented by Kurdish sectarianism.

It appears that many in the Israeli political establishment now believe that they have succeeded in breaking the Resistance Bloc. Whether they are correct or incorrect is a matter of debate. Syria still stands; the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (which was by far the most active Palestinian group fighting Israel from Gaza in 2012) and other Palestinians will side with Iran even if Hamas will have its hands tied by Egypt; there are still Tehran’s allies in Iraq; and Syria is not the only supply line for Iran to arm its ally Hezbollah. What is also very clear is that the siege against Syria is a front in the covert multi-dimensional war against Iran. This alone should make people reconsider the statements of US officials and their allies about having concerns for the Syrian people merely on the basis of humanitarianism and democracy.

Bilderberg Group Dominates Bloomberg Billionaires Index

Bilderberg Group, an organisation founded in 1954 by the global elite has once again dominated the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

So what is the Bilderberg Group? The Bilderberg Group is a secretive organisation who meets on a yearly basis to discuss political and economic issues that pertain to theGlobalist Agenda. Many of the members of the Bilderberg Group are derived from both Government and Private organisations.

All Bilderberg Group meetings are held in secret, with no official record of who attends, the agenda and what deals have been agreed.

Records of Bilderberg Group participant lists are usually smuggled out from within the organisation by insiders and / or are published in their ‘official’ website (Many names are missing from their official list of attendees).

Ever since the Bilderberg Group was founded, very few records of the organisations agenda have ever been publicized. In fact, since 1954, there has been a media blackout on Bilderberg Group reporting.

Only recently have Activists been successful in forcing the main-stream media to report on Bilderberg Group meetings. 

The following tables reveal official Bilderberg Group members who have been listed on theBloomberg Billionaires Index.

Rank	Name	Estimated Net Worth	Bilderberg Group Attendance (Year)
2	Bill Gates	$63.4 Billion	2010
4	Warren Buffett	$49.8 Billion	2009
8	Larry Ellison	$40.7 Billion	1999
9	Bernard Arnault	$29.8 Billion	1992
20	Jeff Bezos	$24.1 Billion	2011
26	George Soros	$21.6 Billion	1999

So why should we be worried about the Bilderberg Group? THE primary concern with the activities of the Bilderberg Group is not the fact that the global elite are meeting with heads of states and government officials (That’s never going to end), it’s the fact that they meet in secret, behind closed doors without any record of what was discussed and or agreed.

Why did John Kerry (Appointed by President Obama as the next Secretary of State), Mark Carney (Newly appointed Governor of the Bank of England), Henry Kissinger, John Micklethwait (Editor-in-Chief, The Economist) and Robert Zoellick (President, The World Bank Group) have to meet in secret in 2012 (Chantilly, Virginia, USA)?

What were they talking about? What was their agenda? What promises were made (why and to whom were they made)?

If you have never heard of the Bilderberg Group, the following resources are available:

• http://www.theglobalistreport.com/bilderberg-group-facts/
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilderberg_Group
• http://www.theglobalistreport.com/bilderberg-group-main-stream-media/
• http://www.bilderbergmeetings.org/index.php
• http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-true-story-of-the-bilderberg-group-and-what-they-may-be-planning-now/13808

Between 1954 and 2009, coverage of the Bilderberg Group was virtually non-existent. Considering the power and influence that Bilderberg Group members have at their disposal, who knows precisely how the Bilderberg Group has influenced the world we live in.

Iran arms all surface, sub-surface units with electronic warfare systems: Cmdr.

Senior Iranian commander Rear Admiral Amir Rastegari says all the surface and sub-surface units of Iran’s Navy are equipped with electronic warfare systems.

“The Navy of the Islamic Republic of Iran has equipped all of its surface and sub-surface units with these systems (electronic warfare systems),” the spokesman for Iran's ongoing Velayat 91 naval drill said on Monday. 

Rastegari added that the maneuvers involved conducting operations to detect enemy signals, including communication systems and radar signals, analyzing and processing them and tracking down the emission source of the signals.

Iran’s Navy launched six-day naval maneuvers on December 28 in order to display the country’s capabilities in defending its maritime borders. 

The specialized maritime maneuver covers an area from “east of the Strait of Hormuz in the Sea of Oman and north of the Indian Ocean as far as the 18th parallel north,” according to Iran’s Navy Commander Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari. 

The Iranian Navy successfully test-fired the latest version of the indigenous surface-to-air missile Ra’d (Thunder) and launched its indigenous short-range cruise missile dubbed Nasr (Victory) on the fourth day of the major military exercises. 

Over the past few years, Iran has held several military drills to enhance the defensive capabilities of its armed forces and to test modern military tactics and equipment. 

The Islamic Republic has repeatedly assured other nations, especially its neighbors, that its military might poses no threat to other countries, stating that its defense doctrine is based on deterrence. 

Russia sends more warships to Syria: Reports

Russia has reportedly sent a warship carrying a marines unit to Syria’s Mediterranean port of Tartus, where Moscow has a naval base.

Citing military sources, Russian media reported on Sunday that the Novocherkassk landing ship left the port of Novorossiisk in the Black Sea and is due to arrive at Tartus in the early days of January.

Two other warships, the Azov and Nikolai Filchenkov, have also reportedly been dispatched to Syria from Russian naval bases since Friday.

Reports say Moscow is preparing a plan to evacuate Russian nationals living and working in Syria in case the situation in the country worsens.

Two weeks ago, Russia’s Defense Ministry announced that a fleet of Russian warships had been sent from the Baltic port of Baltiysk to the Mediterranean Sea near the Syrian waters.

It said the flotilla includes the frigate Yaroslav Mudry, the landing ships Kaliningrad and Alexander Shabalin, as well as two other vessels.

Russia, a key ally of Syria, has a small naval maintenance facility at Tartus port.