NB: An ISIS leader has become a friend of Britain and the non-violent activist group Palestine Action has been declared a terrorist group. Such are the geopolitics of the British Labour Party
By Kit Klarenberg / The Cradle
On 19 July, the Mail on Sunday revealed that Inter-Mediate, a shadowy firm founded by Jonathan Powell, now National Security advisor to British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, brokered the re-establishment of diplomatic relations between Damascus and London.
This included a heavily publicized meeting between UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy and Syria’s self-appointed President Ahmad al-Sharaa, two weeks earlier. The outlet also exposed how the British state-funded Inter-Mediate operates a dedicated office in Syria’s Presidential Palace.
Britain’s opposition Conservative party has demanded a formal inquiry into Powell’s use of Inter-Mediate “to run back channels to terrorist groups” and the conflict of interest created by his unelected role.
As Starmer’s national security advisor – described as wielding “more influence over foreign policy than anyone in government after the prime minister himself” – Powell operates entirely outside parliamentary accountability. A Whitehall source told the Mail on Sunday:
“These are essentially outsourced spies and spooks undertaking ‘back channel’ discussions with political leaders and armed groups to reach negotiated settlements.”
Terrorists to technocrats
Inter-Mediate’s central role in assisting former Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) leader Sharaa’s rise to power in Damascus was first revealed in May by Independent Arabia. This followed disclosures from former US ambassador to Syria Robert Ford (2011 – 2014), that in 2023 a British “non-governmental organization” sought his personal assistance in transforming HTS – in particular Sharaa, who went by the nom de guerre Abu Mohammad Julani when he was an ISIS chief – from “terrorists” into politicians. While Ford did not name Inter-Mediate, Independent Arabia did – and mainstream media ignored it entirely.
Now that Inter-Mediate’s embedment with Damascus’s post-Bashar al-Assad government has been confirmed, western media has belatedly begun describing Syria’s new rulers as comprised of barbarous extremists linked to Al-Qaeda and ISIS.
Yet few are willing to interrogate the far graver implications of a British intelligence-linked firm enjoying intimate access to Syria’s seat of power – and the extraordinary leverage that affords London over the HTS-led administration and its leadership.
Compounding this is the deeply suspicious timing: Powell assumed his advisory role just days before HTS violently seized Damascus. Starmer immediately declared that Assad’s ouster heralded “a more active role” for Britain in West Asia and dispatched top diplomats to meet with HTS officials. The media acknowledged these summits were completely illegal, as HTS was a proscribed terror group under British law. Since taking office, Sharaa has announced Syria’s once-independent economy is fully open for western exploitation, ordered massacres of Alawites and other religious minorities, while seeking to normalize relations with Israel.
Despite the occupation state routinely executing highly destructive airstrikes against government and military infrastructure since former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s fall, HTS appears undeterred. We are thus left to ponder whether the Al-Qaeda-rooted government’s brutal internal repression, and concerted inaction over Tel Aviv’s military bombardments and incursions into its territory, are ultimately directed by MI6.
‘Deny responsibility’
Inter-Mediate’s website offers few clues to its real agenda. It lists a cadre of former western diplomats and military officials as staff and board members, and vaguely claims to facilitate “backchannels with hard-to-reach conflict actors” where “direct negotiations are impossible or inadvisable.” It boasts of creating space for political solutions “in some of the world’s most intractable conflicts.”
Syria was quite some “intractable conflict” – not least because Assad’s “popular” and sovereign government steadfastly refused to relinquish power to mass-murdering CIA and MI6-backed foreign elements that invaded the country in 2011.
Leaked emails of former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton indicate Inter-Mediate was active in Damascus from the first stages of the foreign-fomented “crisis.” In March 2012, Clinton’s senior aide Jake Sullivan contacted her, announcing Powell had “launched a new NGO that has already initiated some very interesting work below the radar.”
An attached email from Powell noted Inter-Mediate had “[set] up secret channels between insurgents and governments” in several countries, was preparing to start work in Burma, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen, and sought to pitch its services to senior US State Department officials.
He added his firm “work[ed] closely” with the British Foreign Office, National Security Council, and MI6. At this time, it was well-understood in Washington that Syrian “insurgents” were affiliated with Al-Qaeda, among other ultra-extremist entities.
The evidence suggests Inter-Mediate’s relationship with the forces that became HTS dates back over a decade, and that London’s project to replace Assad with a compliant Al-Qaeda-linked regime has been in motion ever since. Its operational office inside Syria’s palace is not a recent development, but the culmination of years of quiet penetration. Nor is Inter-Mediate the only British intelligence cutout embedded in West Asia’s corridors of power.
As The Cradle has previously documented, Lebanon’s security and intelligence apparatus is heavily penetrated by the British, to the extent that Foreign Office contractor Torchlight maintains a dedicated office within Beirut’s Military Intelligence Directorate.
Leaked documents related to this infiltration noted London’s presence was a highly effective means of “rapidly developing relationships of trust” with the agency’s high-ranking staff, and ensuring they were “unlikely to say ‘no’” to further involvement of British personnel and technology in the Directorate’s sensitive operations.
Other leaked files related to the Westminster Foundation for Democracy (WFD), a British clone of the US CIA front the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), reveal the organization maintains offices in Lebanon’s parliament building.
An official review of WFD’s activities explicitly states its “central rationale” is to conduct “controversial” projects overseas that London “could not or would not wish to undertake directly,” therefore limiting “damage to official government-to-government relationships,” while “avoiding the danger” of “British government presence [being] interpreted as foreign interference.”
“[WFD’s] arm’s length relationship … provides the [Foreign Office] with the best safeguard … the less the [Foreign Office] seeks to exercise control the more it can deny responsibility … The Foundation provides a necessary and valuable instrument over and above those which the [Foreign Office] can provide for itself.”
Powell’s warpath
The Mail on Sunday’s editorial accompanying the Inter-Mediate exposé highlights another key concern: the outsized power wielded by former UK prime minister Tony Blair-era figures in Starmer’s government. Powell is not alone – Peter Mandelson, now the UK’s ambassador to Washington, is another. The editorial bluntly states that these Blairites “are the real forces in British diplomacy,” while Lammy plays “an effectively ceremonial role,” executing policies scripted by Powell and others behind the scenes.
While the pair were said to maintain “formidable private networks they are able to mobilize” to influence British government action and policy, “some within Downing Street” were reportedly “growing increasingly wary about the influence of these smooth Blairites.” As one official put it, “at what point does ‘experience’ and ‘guidance’ become ‘control’?”
That question also applies to Inter-Mediate’s relationship with the new Syrian government. Is Powell, via his company and government position, finally realizing Blair’s long-standing dream of reshaping West Asia in Britain’s image? The former prime minister’s Institute for Global Change has openly called for regime change in Iran and boasts of nurturing anti-government networks across the region.
Powell’s history is instructive. In September 2002, he pressed the UK’s Joint Intelligence Committee to exaggerate Iraq’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction (WMD) to justify the illegal Anglo-American invasion six months later.
He believed it a “bit of a problem” that the assessment did not conclude Iraq posed an urgent, imminent military threat, insisting its wording be changed to ensure maximum impact on media reporting, and public perceptions. A recent profile of Powell suggests he remains committed to Blair’s mission:
“The historical record shows [Powell] had doubts about Iraq’s WMDs, but thought Saddam Hussein had to go ‘because he was a ruthless dictator suppressing his people’. This was, as Blair named it, ‘liberal interventionism’, which called for the west to ‘get actively involved in other people’s conflicts’ … [Powell] has the same instincts today. After Iraq, and Afghanistan, he still wants to save the world.”
If Starmer’s unelected security chief is indeed scripting foreign policy through Inter-Mediate, then Britain is no longer merely meddling in West Asia but is also governing it by proxy. And if Powell’s loyal Al-Qaeda client in Damascus is the new face of “liberal interventionism,” it is clear the colonial playbook has not just returned – it never left.
Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist and MintPress News contributor exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions. His work has previously appeared in The Cradle, Declassified UK, and Grayzone. Follow him on Twitter @KitKlarenberg.
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Why Iran can’t Stand up for the al-Assad Government and Russia isn’t Offering Air Support
Femicides: 2000 Turkish women killed by men since Erdogan left Womens Rights Convention
Nabil Salih: An Iraqi in the capital of the US Empire / Tom Engelhardt: A Nation Unmade by War
After the truth-shower 