WarSclerotic

US and Abu Dhabi aid Gen. Haftar’s bid to stabilize Libyan rule by ousting Islamists, DEBKAfile, May 19, 2014

(Instability in Libya? That’s shocking, but what difference does it make now? — DM)

Gen. Khalifa Haftar’s assaults on the Libyan parliament in Tripoli Sunday and Islamist strongholds in Benghazi last week, at the head of a group of former Libyan soldiers and assorted militias, has won a certain amount of backing from the US and United Arab Emirates, in the hope that his campaign will finally bring stable rule to the chaos-ridden country.

Gen. Khalifa Haftar

Gen. Khalifa Haftar’s assaults on the Libyan parliament in Tripoli Sunday and Islamist strongholds in Benghazi last week, at the head of a group of former Libyan soldiers and assorted militias, has won a certain amount of backing from the US and United Arab Emirates, in the hope that his campaign will finally bring stable rule to the chaos-ridden country.

Three prime ministers have come and gone since Qaddafi’s one-man rule was toppled in 2011. Hafter has made his objective clear, blaming the havoc on extremist Islamists “who have held the country to ransom.” DEBKAfile’s military and intelligence sources report that, while unidentified American entities are supplying the Hafter force with funds and intelligence, sources in Abu Dhabi are providing them with weapons, or the price of their purchase on Libya’s flourishing arms market. These two outsiders seemingly collaborate.

How far the Obama administration and UAE Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed Zayed Al Nahyan actually support Hafter’s cause is hard to pin down. It will most likely depend on how successful he is in his bid to start carving out the shape of stable government rid of Islamist extremists in the northern Libyan region between the two key towns of Tripoli and Benghazi.

The most dangerous Islamist militia in his sights is Ansar al-Sharia and its leader Abu Khattala, whom US intelligence recently concluded carried out the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012 and murdered Ambassador Christ Stevens and three of his CIA staffers.

(Exclusive details of the Obama administration’s plan to capture Abu Khattala alive or dead were first revealed in the last DEBKA Weekly 635 on May 16.)

Khalifa Hafter’s campaign to remove the Islamist militias which hold Libya in their grip may or may not be directly linked to the US plan against Ansar al-Sharia and its leader. But it will in any case be useful, in as far as it evicts this and other extremist brigades from their strongholds at the heart of ruling institutions in Libya’s main cities.

In their attack Friday, Hafter loyalist forces, firing Grad surface rockets, truck-mounted antiaircraft guns and mortars, inflicted heavy casualties on the Islamist forces controlling Benghazi.

Sunday, with the fighting still raging in Benghazi, another Hafter force struck 650 km to the east, to overrun parliament in Tripoli, which he accused of being strangled by extremist Islamist entities

In Tripoli, Hafter’s forces gained important support from the large Al-Saiqa force, made up of former commandos and paratroops of the Libyan army, and the al-Qaaqaa Brigade, formed by Western Libyan soldiers who defected from the army.

They put the lawmakers to flight and replaced them with a 60-member constituent’s assembly.

Whatever he calls it, Hafter is therefore leading a military revolt in Libya. His spokesman Sunday denied that the operation was a coup and insisted the force was “fighting by the people’s choice.”

Ministers and high officials of Libya’s government, which stopped functioning altogether after the last prime minister fled last year, refused Monday to recognize the new ruling body and called on Islamist militias in Tripoli to go to war on their new would-be masters.

DEBKAfile’s military and intelligence sources are reserving judgment on the chances of Gen. Hafter and his allies succeeding in their campaign, or how long they can count on US and Gulf support. The situation will remain uncertain so long as Libya’s most powerful militias sit on the fence until they decide which side it is worth their while to join.

Libya’s political landscape is dominated by 17 large, well-armed militias, most of them tribal or regional units that broke away from the army after Qaddafi’s ouster.  But there is also a swarm of small armed groups, which control fiefdoms in urban districts and small hamlets. Their loyalties are hazy.

The strongest armed group of them all is the Misrata Brigade, which rules the port of that name in northern Libya west of Tripoli. This brigade is a coalition of 200 small militias; it commands 40,000 fighters, 800 tanks, a self-propelled artillery unit and 2,000 armored vehicles.

Misrata has not so far intervened in the fighting in Benghazi and Tripoli.

FBI Confronts Reality of War on Terror, Commentary Magazine, Max Boot, May 19, 2014

(Better late than never, but it would be even better were President Obama to acknowledge it and act accordingly. — DM)

Comey has learned that al-Qaeda’s affiliates and fellow travelers – in such countries as Libya, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Sudan, and Nigeria – are more threatening than ever, not just to local citizens (such as the girls kidnapped by Boko Haram) but to American interests and even the American homeland. He tells the Times: “I didn’t have anywhere near the appreciation I got after I came into this job just how virulent those affiliates had become. There are both many more than I appreciated, and they are stronger than I appreciated.”

Michael Schmidt of the New York Times has a fascinating article on the new FBI director, James Comey, who came into office expecting to downsize the agency’s focus on terrorism. After all, hasn’t President Obama himself repeatedly said that al-Qaeda is “decimated” and on the “path to defeat”? Not so fast.

With access to top-secret intelligence, Comey has learned that al-Qaeda’s affiliates and fellow travelers–in such countries as Libya, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Sudan, and Nigeria–are more threatening than ever, not just to local citizens (such as the girls kidnapped by Boko Haram) but to American interests and even the American homeland. He tells the Times: “I didn’t have anywhere near the appreciation I got after I came into this job just how virulent those affiliates had become. There are both many more than I appreciated, and they are stronger than I appreciated.”

Thus Comey has elected to continue making counter-terrorism the bureau’s primary responsibility. That sounds like a wise choice and it is also a brave one because it undermines the president’s attempts to make all wars–including the one on terrorism–go away. Even the very term “Global War on Terror” has been banished from the administration’s lexicon.

Reality, alas, is not cooperating. The “tide of war” is actually cresting, not receding, and in some measure (although not entirely) because Obama has chosen to pull back from the Middle East. His attempt to follow a less interventionist (though, to be sure, not isolationist) path is not reducing anti-American antagonism. It is instead giving al-Qaeda and its affiliates–not to mention the Iranian Quds Force and its affiliates–more room to operate.

It would be nice if the president, who is presumably reading the same intelligence as Comey (and even getting access to information that the FBI director doesn’t see), had a similar awakening and reversed the drastic drawdown in U.S. defense spending which puts at risk our military readiness. That, alas, seems unlikely to happen because the president is so locked into his own narrative that he is ending wars, not starting them.

U.S.-Armed Syrian Rebel Group Seeks ‘All Syrian Land Occupied by Israel’ Washington Free Beacon,  Adam Kredo, May 19, 2014

Militant rebel group with advanced U.S. missiles calls Israel occupier, seeking “the return of all Syrian land occupied by Israel,” a stance that could potentially complicate U.S. military support to the armed rebel group.

Syrian rebel training session / AP

One of the militant Syrian rebel groups provided access to advanced U.S. missiles said that it is seeking “the return of all Syrian land occupied by Israel,” a stance that could potentially complicate U.S. military support to the armed rebel group.

The leader of an official rebel group sanctioned by the Syrian Military Council and in possession of sophisticated U.S. arms expressed his opinion in an interview published over the weekend by the Syrian news organization Tahrir Souri.

Ahmad Al-Sa’oud, who heads the rebel unit Division 13, was asked by the interviewer to explain “your stance, as an armed opposition group, on Israel.”

“We are for the return of all Syrian land occupied by Israel,” Al-Sa’oud responded.

Al-Sa’oud’s 13th Division was among the first armed Syrian opposition groups to receive U.S.-made TOW anti-tank missiles from the Obama administration, which is said to have carefully vetted each of those rebel factions receiving American-made arms.

Al-Sa’oud’s stance on Israel’s presence in the Golan Heights—territory annexed from Syria during 1967’s Six Day War—caused concern among terrorism experts, who have long warned that U.S. arms could fall into the hands of radical militant groups that joined the years-long fight to depose President Bashar al-Assad.

“This is precisely the problem we’ve faced in arming the Syrian opposition,” said terrorism analyst Patrick Poole. “Despite repeated promises that we would only arm ‘vetted rebels’ there’s no confidence that anyone in the U.S. government has any idea who they’re dealing with or what their agenda might be.”

The Obama administration has been hesitant to provide a large quantity of arms to Syrian opposition fighters due to the wide diversity of those fighting against Assad and evidence that extremist Muslim groups have joined the fight, making it difficult for Western officials to differentiate between moderate rebels and those tied to al Qaeda and other terror organizations.

“Undoubtedly there is someone at the State Department that has vouched for Ahmad Al-Sa’oud and declared him ‘vetted’ for giving him TOW missiles and other heavy weaponry, completely unaware that he would like to retake the Golan Heights from Israel—our closest ally in the region—and would use weapons we provided to do it,” Poole said.

These concerns have been bolstered by recent report that Islamist fighters in Syria recently used the U.S. TOW missiles during a fight in the town of Aleppo.

The Islamic Front was reported to have been fighting alongside Jabhat al-Nusra, an al Qaeda-tied group designated as a terror organization by the U.S. government.

Asked how the 13th Division obtained the U.S. arms and the criteria used to vet it, Al-Sa’oud said that the unit’s legitimacy was bestowed by “the Syrian people.”

The intermediary, and who has bestowed their trust upon us, are the Syrian people,” Sa’oud was quoted as saying. “The Syrian people who trust that we will face these weapons at the tyrannical Assad regime.”

The U.S. missiles were provided to rebel groups via an intermediary known as the Friends of Syria, a coalition of Western nations and Arab states seeking to bolster the opposition’s fight to depose Assad.

The rebel groups reportedly must return the empty missile shells and have promised not to resell the arms, according to the Washington Post.

Al-Sa’oud confirmed in the interview that the U.S. missiles had been provided to it by the Friends of Syria, which also provided training on how to use the advanced weaponry.

Al-Sa’oud said he expects to receive more shipments of U.S. arms because, “day after day, we are increasing our legitimacy and credibility on the ground.”

Factions like the 13th Division also are exploring the possibility of sending some of the U.S. TOW missiles to other rebel factions fighting in Ghouta, thesite of deadly chemical gas attacks.

“Right now, we have no way to deliver these missiles to the Eastern Ghouta,” Al-Soud was quoted as saying. “When a path opens up, we will absolutely lend our support to the rebels there.”

Persian film shows nuke war with Israel, Times of Israel, Yifa Yaakov, May 19, 2014

(Oh well, Iranians will be Iranians. What might “world opinion” say were Israel to create and post a comparable video? — DM)

Video titled ‘Point of No Return’ and peppered with Islamic themes shows Iran ‘emptying’ Haifa, Tel Aviv of population.

A frame from an Iranian animated film showing Israeli planes poised to attack Iran with nuclear weapons. (screen capture, YouTube)

A Persian-language animated film released earlier this year shows an Iranian invasion of Tel Aviv, the word “Holocaust” being trampled, and a nuclear attack.

The film, called “The Rachel Corrie Message 2: The Point of No Return” purports to show an Iranian reprisal for a failed Israeli nuclear attack on Iran.

The approximately four explosive-laden-minute long clip depicts Israelis surrendering en masse to invading Iranian troops and Israel’s airport being renamed as “Martyr Rachel Corrie Airport.”

Corrie was an American pro-Palestinian activist killed by an Israeli bulldozer in Gaza in 2003.

The film, released on YouTube in February and which reportedly first appeared on Iranian hard-line websites, was made by an animation company named Fatimah al-Zahra, a likely reference to the daughter of Islam’s prophet Muhammad and an important figure in Shi’ite Islam.

The movie opens with shots depicting Iranian fighter planes over Israeli cities.

A caption in Persian then reads, “Iran will act on its promises on the nuclear issue.”

The action largely takes place in the sky, with a niqab-clad Iranian girl looking up from a field, where an Iranian tank lies abandoned, to observe Iranian planes racing to intercept Israel Air Force jets.

In the background, a female Iranian news presenter announces that Israel has shot several nuclear missiles at Iran during the course of the war, but all have been intercepted by defense systems built by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps-controlled Khatam al-Anbia engineering firm, named after the prophet Muhammad.

Though the Iranian defense systems try to intercept the Israeli invasion, eventually a nuclear bomb explodes in the desert, presumably in Iranian territory.

Undeterred by Western entreaties to “show self-restraint,” Iranian forces advance on Israel in retaliation for the nuclear attack.

The Iranian attack is visualized both literally and symbolically in the film, with the symbolic rendition showing a man in a cloak — possibly a cleric who symbolizes Iran and the “resistance” movement, which includes Hezbollah — stepping on a piece of a downed Israeli plane bearing the word “Holocaust” and a Star of David.

The plane also bears the word “Palmachim,” the location of the IAF airbase from which anti-ballistic Arrow missiles are launched.

The film then shows Iranian planes and air defense systems attacking Israeli jets, and Iranian tanks rolling through smoke-filled Israeli streets. About two minutes into the film, the news presenter announces that units of the “Armored Corps of Islam” — presumably a joint Iranian-Lebanese Shi’ite force — have started advancing toward the al-Aqsa Mosque, with Haifa and Tel Aviv “practically emptied of their population.”

The words “victory” and “resistance” flash on the screen in Persian as the news presenter announces that over 2,500 “Zionist soldiers” have surrendered to the force.

The film, one of several animations depicting wars with Israel or the US to appear in recent years on Iranian websites, implicitly criticizes the West for failing to honor its commitments towards Iran, suggesting that Iran cannot be held accountable for acting against Israel independently.

Iranian defense systems poised to defend the country against Israeli warplanes carrying nuclear missiles. (screen capture, YouTube)

IDF, US Rehearse for Iran Missile Attack – Defense/Security – News – Arutz Sheva.

Israel’s Iron Dome in action

Flash 90

The IDF and the US military cooperated Sunday in a large drill simulating a multi-front missile attack on Israel by Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Iran, Channel 2 reported Sunday.

During the exercise, about 1,000 American soldiers stationed in Israel joined more than 4,000 Israelis, to practice the protection of the State of Israel in a series of scenarios that simulate the firing of rockets and missiles from several arenas simultaneously: Gaza , Lebanon, Syria and Iran.

The exercise reportedly tested various scenarios, including one in which the U.S. sent Patriot missiles to Israel and some Aegis-type ships, which carry rockets and other defense systems against ballistic missiles, meant to assist Israel in protecting its population and territory.

The drill also rehearsed particularly complex scenarios in which missiles and rockets are fired in large quantities from many different arenas. Israel is rehearsing the use of its Arrow missiles, as well as Patriots, the Iron Dome and Magic Wand systems – the last of which is still in development. At the same time as the exercise in Israel, hundreds of American troops are practicing a similar exercise in Jordan

The exercise began shortly after the arrival of U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel in Israel.