Archive for February 28, 2018

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Satellite image said to show new Iranian military base in Syria

February 28, 2018


A picture of the alleged Iranian base in Syria. The white hangars can be seen at the bottom center. (Google Maps) {Google? – LS}

Source Link: Satellite image said to show new Iranian military base in Syria

By Times of Israel Staff February 28, 2018

{This won’t end well. – LS}

Hangars seen in picture, reportedly housing missiles, similar to building at site identified as Revolutionary Guards base and allegedly struck by Israel last year.

Satellite images of an area near Damascus appear to show an Iranian military base which could house missiles capable of hitting Israel, according to a report early Wednesday.

A picture of the reported base, in an area known as Jabal al-Sharqi some eight kilometers (5 miles) northwest of the Syrian capital, shows two recently constructed buildings which are similar to those seen at another base in Syria thought to have been used as a base for Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps troops, according to Fox News, citing information from Israel-based geospatial analysis outfit ImageSat.

On Wednesday morning, Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman downplayed the report, telling Israel Radio there was “nothing new here.”

“Don’t take every report in the media, even from a respected outlet like Fox, as an absolute thing,” the defense minister said.

“We have the full picture of what’s going,” he added.

The buildings were identified in the report as possible hangars housing short- and medium-range missiles.

Their shape and size, 30 meters by 20 meters, is identical to a building at a site also identified as an Iranian base, reportedly targeted by an Israeli strike in December.

However, an ImageSat report on that site, at al-Kiswah some 13 kilometers (8 miles) south of the Syrian capital of Damascus, identified that building in November, before it was struck, not as a missile silo but rather as a probable mosque or dining room.

A BBC report on the same base also indicated analysts did not believe it was designed for storing missiles or other large arms, but rather for housing soldiers and vehicles.

On Wednesday, though, ImageSat revised its understanding of the al-Kiswah building targeted in December, identifying it too as a possible missile silo. No reason was provided for the altered assessment.

An earthen berm is also visible around the Jabal al-Sharqi site, indicating a likely military use.

Israel has been warning for years that Iran is seeking to entrench itself militarily in Syria, including establishing missile bases. According to Israeli political and military assessments, Tehran, which has shored up Syrian President Bashar Assad in the Syrian civil war, has been working to create air and naval bases in Syria, from which it can arm the Lebanon-based terror organization Hezbollah and other Shiite groups, as well as carry out attacks of its own against the Jewish state.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned on February 18 that Israel could strike the Islamic Republic directly and cautioned Tehran not to “test Israel’s resolve.”

“Israel will not allow Iran’s regime to put a noose of terror around our neck,” he added. “We will act without hesitation to defend ourselves. And we will act if necessary not just against Iran’s proxies that are attacking us, but against Iran itself.”

A report earlier this month alleged that Iran is operating 10 military bases in Syria and is training militias loyal to Assad’s regime for a possible battle with Israel, with two key facilities located near the Golan Heights border.

On Tuesday, the head of US Central Command Joseph Votel warned Iran was increasing the quality and quantity of missiles it was supplying to groups in Syria and Lebanon.

“Iran is generating instability across the region, and the Iranian Threat Network continues to increase in strength, enhancing its capacity to threaten US and partner nation interests,” he said.

Returning from a trip to Israel Tuesday, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham told reporters that Iran was “testing” US President Donald Trump in Syria and in Lebanon, where Israeli officials fear Iran is helping the terror group Hezbollah build precision-guided rockets for us against the Jewish State.

“They are testing Trump,” Graham said, according to Bloomberg News. “They are testing the international community.”

Graham also predicted there would soon be war in southern Lebanon, over the missiles.

“They’ve told us in no uncertain terms that if this threat continues — they keep making rockets that can hit the airport and do a lot of damage to the state of Israel — they are going to have to go in,” Graham said.

Categories: Iranian expansion, Iranian military sites, Iranian missiles
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The Tragedy of Syria: All Red Lines Have Been Crossed

February 28, 2018

by Julie Lenarz | 02.27.18 12:23 pm via The Tower

Source Link:
The Tragedy of Syria: All Red Lines Have Been Crossed

{The butcher is still hard at work. – LS}

What’s happening in Ghouta is a war crime. A blood orgy orchestrated by Bashar al-Assad, a modern-day Caligula figure, and his criminal patrons in Iran and Russia.

More than 500 men, women and children have been killed since last week in the eastern enclave, where activists over the weekend reported a suspected poison gas attack.

According to 60 Minutes this past Sunday night, the Assad regime has used internationally banned chemical agents nearly 200 times throughout the civil war. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), the world’s leading chemical weapons watchdog, opened an investigation on Sunday into attacks in Ghouta to determine whether banned munitions had been used.

The unspeakable suffering we are witnessing in Ghouta is the result of a conscious strategy of besiegement, systematic blocking of humanitarian aid, and the illegal destruction of civilian infrastructure – hospitals, schools and kindergartens have all been bombed into the ground.

If this story sounds familiar, that is because we have heard it all before. We have seen it in the ruins of Aleppo, on the killing fields of Cambodia, the poisoned ghost towns in Iraqi Kurdistan, the sieges of Sarajevo and Srebrenica, and the desert death camps of Darfur.

“Never again,” the shell-shocked international community pledged — again, and again – and again — in the wake of these atrocities. And yet the same horrors are now being inflicted on the people of Ghouta and we are reacting with much the same impotence.

The United Nations Security Council (UNSC), corrupted by the malign agendas of Russia and China with no regard for human suffering, has long been reduced to issuing empty mantras ranging from being “concerned” to “very concerned” and, lately, “gravely concerned.”

But their condemnation of crimes committed against innocent civilians does not feed the children on the streets of Ghouta. It does not keep warm the families that must now sleep in the rubble of their homes, or help pull the injured from under the ruins of the city.

Look closely, if you spent the last decade pontificating about US imperialism in the Middle East, sharing uncritically the absurd spectacle of conspiracy theories brought to you by Russia Today, Iranian Press TV and other state controlled outlets with hostile agendas.

Syria is a place where more people died than in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya combined – it’s a lawless Wild Wild West of international affairs where the Assads, Khameneins, Putins and Erdogans of this world kill at their pleasure.

The UNSC called for the 30-day truce in all of Syria on Saturday to allow aid deliveries and medical evacuations in the war-torn regions. But Iran and the Syrian regime continued attacks on Damascus suburbs held by “terrorists” the Iranian military chief of staff said on Sunday.

Everyone is now a terrorist. Every hospital bombed a secret weapons storage. Every school destroyed a recruitment center. Every use of poisonous gas a false flag operation by the rebels.

The industrial-scale killing machinery in Syria is the unhappy consequence of American isolationism and non-intervention, with the result that, eight years down the line, the murderous dictator is neither dead nor imprisoned, but still gassing his own people.

The Assad regime has recaptured large swathes of Syrian territory. The mullahs have turned the country into a permanent Iranian military base. And Russia is dictating the way things are going.

America isn’t perfect. Far from it. But it’s still an unrivaled beacon of light in the darkness of international relations that do not offer a more just and moral superpower to fill its place.

Eight years into the civil war, Syria has turned into the greatest humanitarian catastrophe of our time. It is too late for the people of Ghouta. They will follow the restless souls of Rwanda, Bosnia, and Kurdistan in a long line of victims abandoned by the international community. All red lines have been crossed. 

 

Categories: Iran and Assad, Putin and Assad
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