WarSclerotic

Hezbollah sends more fighters to Syria after rebels issue ultimatum – Alarabiya.net English | Front Page.

Supporters of Hezbollah and relatives of Hezbollah members attend the funeral of a Hezbollah fighter who died in the Syrian conflict in Ouzai in Beirut May 26, 2013. (Reuters)

Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah appears to be shrugging off a 24-hour ultimatum set on Tuesday by a Free Syrian Army (FSA) official to end the group’s involvement in the Syrian conflict.

Syrian elite forces and extra fighters from Hezbollah have been sent to reinforce government troops battling rebels in the strategic border town of Qusayr, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Wednesday.

Government fighter jets early Wednesday bombed rebel zones of the town as regime forces readied to launch a major assault, according to the watchdog.

Hezbollah fighters and crack troops of Syria’s elite Republican Guards had been sent to reinforce government ranks, Observatory chief Rami Abdul Rahman told AFP news agency.

The latest violence comes after Brigadier General Salim Idris, the current chief of Staff of the Supreme Military Council of the FSA, said: “If the attacks of Hezbollah [on] Syrian territory do not stop within 24 hours, we will take all measures to hunt Hezbollah, even in hell.”

“I will no longer be bound by any commitments I made if a decision to stop the attacks… is not taken and implemented,” he added.

He said “everyone” should “excuse FSA” for retaliating as “we are being subjected to genocide conducted by Hezbollah.”

Like Hezbollah’s militiamen, the Republican Guards have been trained in urban guerrilla warfare, he said.

“The preparations indicate that they are gearing for a major offensive” on neighborhoods in the north and west of the town still under rebel control, Abdul Rahman said.

A source close to Hezbollah has said 80 percent of Qusayr is now under government control, but the Free Syrian Army has frequently denied this claim to Al Arabiya.

“Despite the intense bombardment, the rebels are resisting fiercely,” Abdul Rahman said.

He added that Sunni militiamen from Lebanon had joined the battle on the side of the rebels.

“The fighting is becoming more and more sectarian (Shiite versus Sunni) in character,” he added.

Syria’s regime is dominated by the minority Alawite community, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, while the majority of the population are Sunnis.

Control of Qusayr is essential for the rebels as it is their principal transit point for weapons and fighters from across the border in Lebanon.

It is also strategic for the regime because it is located on the road linking Damascus with the coast, its rear base.

“If Qusayr falls into the hands of the regime, it will be a hard blow for the rebels because routes used to bring in their arms from Lebanon will be closed,” said the head of the Britain-based Observatory.

“If Qusayr was not strategic the rebels would not be fighting to the death and the regime and Hezbollah would not have brought in their heavyweights,” Abdul Rahman added.

“The fall of Qusayr would also be a blow to the morale of the rebels” who for more than two years have been fighting to topple President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

Iran-backed Hezbollah, a close ally of Assad, sent almost 1,700 fighters to Qusayr more than a week ago to support the regime’s assault on the rebel stronghold, according to AFP.

Initially Hezbollah said it wanted only to defend 13 Syrian villages along the border where Lebanese Shiites live, and the Sayyeda Zeinab shrine near Damascus, which is revered by Shiites around the world.

However, its fighters later encircled Qusayr as regime troops prepared for the launch of a withering assault on the town that is home to 25,000 people.

Stopping Iran’s Bomb | National Review Online.

The fallout from military action would be terrible — a nuclear-armed Iran would be worse.

Israel and U.S. generals draw up theoretical scenario for attack on Iran – Diplomacy & Defense – Israel News | Haaretz Daily Newspaper.

Article co-written by retired generals James Cartwright and Amos Yadlin states that it would be preferable for the U.S., rather than Israel, to carry out an attack on Iran.

By Amos Harel | May.29, 2013 | 1:11 PM | 7

An aerial photograph showing Iran’s uranium conversion facility just outside the city of Isfahan. Photo by AP

A theoretical scenario for a military assault on nuclear sites in Iran by the end of this year was published on Wednesday by two former senior officers from Israel and the United States. The officers state that the international community must first exhaust non-military efforts to pressure Iran and conclude that, if an attack is necessary, it is preferable to come from America rather than Israel.

“Given the spectrum of other available options, military force should only be employed against the program as a last resort,” write retired four-star American general James Cartwright, recently the deputy chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Maj. Gen. (res.) Amos Yadlin, former head of the Israel Defense Forces Military Intelligence and Israel Air Force chief of staff. “Yet the military option must still be credible, and ready to use if necessary. This case study is intended solely to stimulate and inform further discussion on the potential repercussions of different strike options.”

The case study was published simultaneously on the website of the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University, of which Yadlin is the director, and the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

The report lays out the following hypothetical scenario: “The prime minister of Israel has just received a phone call from the White House relaying the findings of a recent U.S. intelligence assessment: international sanctions and negotiations with Iran have yet to persuade the regime to halt its nuclear drive. Tehran previously rejected a generous U.S. offer that would have allowed it to enrich uranium in exchange for strong nuclear safeguards, and the program continues to advance unabated. After agreeing to convene in Washing¬ton in one week to discuss strategy going forward, the prime minister and president each call a meeting with their national security advisers.

“The [American] president’s team acknowledges that the United States is war weary, debt laden, and politically gridlocked. With U.S. forces having just withdrawn from Iraq and on a path to end combat operations in Afghanistan by late 2014, many hope that the attendant diversion of resources will spring the country from its financial woes and accelerate its economic recovery.

“Nevertheless, the president, the prime minister, and their advisers reaffirm that a nuclear Iran is an unacceptable threat to U.S. and Israeli national security, with the president reiterating his strong and repeated 2012 commitment to prevention. Each leader then reviews the red lines that the regime has already crossed since 2004 regarding enrichment of nuclear material, as well as the UN Security Council resolutions it has violated in its pursuit of nuclear weapons. They also consider the fact that five rounds of diplomatic negotiations (in Geneva, Istanbul, Baghdad, Moscow, and Kazakhstan) have failed.

“In light of these concerns, both leaders agree that the time has come to ready their contingency options for a military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities. But if such action does indeed become necessary, they ask, which country should launch the attack—the United States or Israel?”

According to Cartwright and Yadlin, “The U.S. military’s superior capabilities- including B-2 stealth bombers, air refueling craft, advanced drones, and 30,000-pound massive ordnance penetrators – are more likely to severely damage Iranian targets. Yet the United States has no operational experience in strikes against such facilities, unlike Israel, which successfully conducted similar opera¬tions against the Osiraq nuclear reactor near Baghdad in 1981 and, according to foreign reports, against a Syrian reactor in 2007.”

They add that any Israeli action would require its planes to cross the airspace of at least one other country (Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq or Syria). In contrast, an American attack could be conducted directly from American military bases or from American aircraft carriers stationed in the Persian Gulf or elsewhere.

In the event that the countries pursue military action, Cartwright and Yadlin recommend an American surgical strike on Iranian nuclear sites, but not a full aerial campaign against Iran’s entire military forces. The two also object to a broad approach with ground forces because, they reason, a limited attack will enable Iran to respond in a limited manner and not drag the entire region into war.

According to Cartwright and Yadlin, an Israeli attack on Iran would provoke greater criticism from the Arab world than an American attack, but they also think that the strength of an expected Arab reaction should not be exaggerated. They acknowledge that Sunni public opinion is far from supportive of Iran because of the latter’s support of the Assad regime in the murderous Syrian civil war.

The authors do present a few reasons in favor of an Israeli attack. They point out that Israel’s moral basis for bombing Iran’s nuclear sites, as the country directly threatened with destruction, is stronger than America’s. They also mention that the United States is not interested in another war with an Islamic country after its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Israel Hayom | Iran’s presidential candidates clash over nuclear approach.

Israel Hayom | Syrian rebels warn Hezbollah: Leave or we will hunt you to hell.

Israel Hayom | Divide and conquer.

Israel Hayom | Deepening diplomatic crisis between Israel, Russia over arms to Assad.

Israeli forebodings over widening Russian-Hizballah-Iraqi intervention in Syria.

Russian Syrian military drill

Forebodings were voiced Wednesday, May 29, by senior Israeli military officers in the face of the widening military intervention in the Syria civil war by Russia, Iran, Hizballah and latterly Iraq too. They have made Syria’s civil war the platform for a Russian contest against the West and a ladder up which Iran and its proxy Hizballah are climbing to top Middle East regional power spot.
Russia, Iran and Hizballah are winning the contest by default against an unresisting US-led West and a hesitant Israel.
A senior IDF officer acknowledged on Wednesday, May 29, that Israel’s government and military leaders are at a loss on how to proceed. They have yet to recover from the calamitous miscalculation that Bashar Assad’s days were numbered to which they clung stubbornly for almost eighteen months.

Even today, some spokesmen refer to a “disintegrating Syria,” thereby losing sight of the major strategic and military changes overtaking the country that are entirely to Israel’s detriment as well as eroding its options against a nuclear Iran.
At a time that the US and Israel should be using their heaviest military guns to slow Iran’s race for a nuclear bomb, Tehran with Moscow’s backing has brought its military assets up close to Israel’s borders in Syria and Lebanon and openly threatens to use them.

Unlike Syria and Iran, Israel can’t count on military intervention against an aggressor by supportive big powers.  According to debkafile‘s Washington sources, no part of the Obama administration, including its military and intelligence arms, favors military action in Syria.
Even the direct evidence of chemical warfare already afoot in Syria is unavailing.

In Addis Ababa, US Secretary of State John Kerry repeated the administration’s mantra Wednesday by denying “concrete evidence” of the use of chemical weapons in Syria.
The Secretary and the rest of NATO were deaf to the vivid testimony brought to Le Monde Wednesday by two reporters, who risked their necks by spending two months concealed in the Jobar district of Damascus. They discovered Russia or Iran had developed a chemical weapon that does not explode. The release of its poisonous gases sounds like popping the top off a can of soda and has “no odor, no smoke, not even a whistle to indicate the release of a toxic gas.”
So what does happen?

The Le Monde reporters provided a graphic first-hand description.

“The men cough violently. Their eyes burn, their pupils shrink, their vision blurs. Soon they experience difficulty breathing, sometimes in the extreme; they begin to vomit or lose consciousness. The fighters worst affected need to be evacuated before they suffocate.”
Wednesday morning, the Israeli Home Front rehearsed an attack on a Jerusalem suburb by a chemical-tipped missile.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who watched, said the exercise is designed to protect Israeli civilians “from the threats pilling up around us.” Israel’s home front is the best protected in the world but also the most threatened, he said: “We must make sure that defense is in place before an attack.
Tuesday, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon voiced his certainty that the Syrian President would not use chemical weapons against Israel or treat Israelis the way he treats his own people. There is no indication that anyone in the region intends to challenge us any time soon with unconventional weapons, said the defense minister.

debkafile’s military sources find Ya’alon’s comment delusory. They don’t see why Assad would treat Israelis differently from his own people – especially since the IDF has presented him with no real deterrent. After all, none of Israel’s three air strikes in January and May stopped the flow of Hizballah fighters into Syria. And meanwhile, Syrian and Hizballah leaders are declaring loud and clear that a war front against Israel is already operating from the Syrian Golan and Lebanon.
The question is who in Israel is listening. And what is being done to make sure that Assad will be prevented from using chemical weapons against Israeli military and civilian targets at a time of his convenience.
The spate of events in the last 48 hours is troubling – to say the least.
Monday, US Senator John McCain was reported to have paid a secret visit to Syria. What did this “visit” consist of? debkafile reports: The senator entered Syria from Turkey through the Kilis corridor which is the main supply route for the rebels in Aleppo, one of the few still under their control. McCain penetrated some 300 meters into Syria, had his picture taken, and left.

A US publication reported Wednesday that President Barack Obama had ordered the Pentagon to draw up plans to establish no-fly zones over Syria against Syrian warplanes. The Pentagon thereupon issued a denial: “There are no new American operational plans,” said the spokesman.

Moscow’s response was ready in place even before the report was published.
Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said the S-300 anti-air missiles that Russia was supplying the Assad regime were a “stabilizing factor” that could dissuade “some hotheads” from entering the conflict.

In the grades Moscow handed out for foreign interventionists: The US and Israel and their leaders were “hotheads” while Moscow,  the calm, rational stabilizer.
In that capacity, debkafile‘s military and intelligence sources reveal that a huge Russian cargo plane landed in Latakia airport Wednesday with 60 tons of “humanitarian aid for Syria.”
The nature of this cargo was not disclosed, but the last thing it must have been was “humanitarian” given the massive military aid Moscow is extending Assad’s army.
Moscow also knocked on the head the timorous decision by European Union foreign ministers Tuesday to lift the arms embargo for Syrian rebels, which they carefully combined with a decision not to send them weapons.

In sum, the US is not doing anything to help the rebels, Europe is not sending arms, the rebels’ Persian Gulf patrons have bowed to pressure from Washington and slashed their weapons aid, while Israel declares it wants no part of the Syrian civil war – even after it assumed the calamitous proportions of a world power contest with Israel’s arch foes gaining the upper hand.
So who is feeding the flames of the Syrian conflict with a generous supply of military hardware? Who but Russia, the self-styled “stabilizing factor”

The Free Syrian Army’s Supreme Commander Gen. Salem Idris made a desperate show of bravado Wednesday, by threatening to strike Hizballah strongholds in Lebanon if Hassan Nasrallah does not pull his brigades out of Syria within 24 hours.

Hizballah knows perfectly well that Gen. Salem is starved of weapons, just he knows that the US, Europe or Israel will not interfere with the stream of fighting strength he is pumping into Syria.
At worst, a few rockets will hit Hizballah centers in Beirut and the Beqaa Valley. Early Tuesday morning, the rebels tried to ambush Hizballah forces near the eastern town of Arsal. Their operation went badly wrong and mistakenly killed three Lebanese soldiers manning an army checkpoint.
The senior Israeli officer interviewed by debkafile put all these forebodings into words when he said: “A military and strategic catastrophe for the West and Israel is in full flight in Syria, and no one in Washington or Jerusalem is lifting a finger. Israel’s government and military heads never imagined that the Syrian war would take this turn. But we had better wake up at this eleventh hour – before it is too late.”

Former head of MI5 calls for people to spy on neighbours following murder of soldier Lee Rigby | Mail Online.

( Rumblings of recognition beginning to emerge in the UK.  Hope it’s not too late for them. – JW )

• Dame Stella Rimington said members of the public have to be the Government’s ‘eyes and ears’
• 78-year-old, who spoke at the Hay Festival, was MI5’s first female director

By Emily Davies

PUBLISHED: 01:02 GMT, 28 May 2013 | UPDATED: 07:47 GMT, 28 May 2013

Former head of MI5 Dame Stella Rimington has called for British people to inform security services if they suspect their neighbours maybe extremists

Dame Stella, who supports the Government’s controversial ‘snoopers’ charter’, said people need to be more alert because it is impossible for security services to spot every threat.

She called for a wartime vigilance and for people to be the Government’s ‘eyes and ears’ following the killing of Lee Rigby.

The 78-year-old, who was MI5’s first female Director General, said: ‘The community has the responsibility to act as the eyes and ears, as they did during the war … where there were all these posters up saying the walls have ears and the enemy is everywhere.

‘There have often been indications in the community, whether it’s Muslim or anywhere else, that people are becoming extremists and spouting hate phrases.’

Dame Stella said security services had to prioritise the most dangerous threats because ‘thousands’ of people were being radicalised in Britain.

She said further terror attacks on the UK were inevitable unless the country became a ‘police state’.

Her comments, made at the Hay Festival, were prompted following the killing of 25-year-old soldier Lee Rigby by alleged Islamist fanatics Michael Adebolajo, 28, and Michael Adebowale, 22, in Woolwich last Wednesday.

Radicalised: Michael Adebolajo brandishing bloodied knives after the murder of Lee Rigby last week

Arrested: In 2010 Michael Adebolajo, second from right, was among nine suspected members of the Al-Shabaab movement captured by Kenyan police

Dame Stella said the Woolwich killing was classified as a ‘terrorist attack’ because of the ideology behind the attack.

It has now emerged that Adebolajo made a second attempt to travel to Somalia to join extremist groups after failing in 2010.

The killing has raised questions about MI5 after it also emerged the two suspects were known to them.

Adebolajo was detained in Kenya in 2010 after trying to join a terrorist group.

An investigation by parliamentary intelligence is being carried out to determine whether there were intelligence failings.

Russia: Missile deal protects Syria from invasion – Israel News, Ynetnews.

Russian deputy FM says S-300 will deter foreign intervention in the country; ‘Will help restrain ‘hot heads,” he says, warns against lift of arms embargo

Associated Press

Russia reserves the right to provide Syria with state-of-the art air defense missiles, seeing it as a key deterrent against foreign intervention in the country, a top Russian official said Tuesday.

Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov wouldn’t say whether Russia has shipped any of the long-range S-300 air defense missile systems, but added that Moscow isn’t going to abandon the deal despite strong Western and Israeli criticism.

“We understand the concerns and signals sent to us from different capitals, we realize that many of our partners are concerned about the issue,” Ryabkov said, adding that “we have no reason to revise our stance.”

“We believe that such steps to a large extent help restrain some `hot heads’ considering a scenario to give an international dimension to this conflict,” he said.

Russia has been the key ally of the Syrian regime, protecting it from the United Nations sanctions and providing it with weapons despite the civil war there that has claimed over 70,000 lives.

Moscow, however, so far has refrained from providing Damascus with the S-300s, a powerful weapon that has a range of up to 200 kilometers (125 miles) and the capability to track down and strike multiple targets simultaneously. The weapon would mean a quantum leap in Syria’s air defense capability,

including against neighboring countries that oppose Assad’s regime.

Ryabkov’s statement comes a day after European Union’s decision to lift an arms embargo to Syrian opposition. He criticized the EU decision, saying it would help “fuel” the conflict and defended the S-300 deal, saying the air defense weapons can’t be used in the civil war against the opposition, which doesn’t have aircraft.