WarSclerotic

Source: Hizbullah’s Nasrallah Tries to Limit the Damage

• The Hizbullah leader has reappeared in the media to repair the damage done to the image of his organization.
• Hassan Nasrallah is trying to “construct” a new policy of deterrence to cover up Israel’s revelation of the organization’s invasion tunnels.

On January 26, 2019, the leader of Hizbullah, Hassan Nasrallah, reappeared in the media after an absence of three months in an exclusive interview with his journalist-follower Ghassan bin Jiddo on the Al Mayadeen channel, which identifies with Hizbullah.

Hassan Nasrallah’s interview after months of silence (Arab press)

The Hizbullah leader’s media appearance was part of the organization’s psychological warfare in response to the huge defeat it sustained when the IDF discovered tunnels infiltrating into Israel during Operation Northern Shield at the end of 2018. Hizbullah’s standing was also hurt by rumors circulating in the Arab world that Nasrallah’s health condition is precarious.

During the long TV interview, Nasrallah sought to disprove the rumors about his poor health. He laughed, joked, and admitted that he lost weight, but his health situation is excellent, and all of the reports about his illness were false.

Nasrallah’s Motives

Operation Northern Shield and reports that Hassan Nasrallah was seriously ill pushed him into a corner, and he was compelled to make a public appearance and provide his supporters with explanations. He also used the broad public platform to transmit messages to Israel and the Arab world.

Nasrallah’s messages in his interview with the Al Mayadeen channel can be summarized as follows:

1. Hizbullah’s next war against Israel will be very cruel, and Israel will pay a heavy price. All of Israel’s territory will be the next battlefield, and Hizbullah’s missiles and rockets will reach every city in Israel, including Tel Aviv.
2. Syria is expected to change its policy regarding Israeli raids within its territory at any moment. The policy of restraint by the “resistance axis” has come to an end, and Syria will attack Tel Aviv.
3. Hizbullah has a sufficient quantity of accurate missiles at its disposal, which can strike quality civilian and military targets in Israel, including airports, power stations, ammonia tanks in Haifa, and the atomic reactor in Dimona.
4. In the next war, Hizbullah intends to invade the Galilee. This is part of the organization’s strategy, and the discovery of the invasion tunnels by Israel has not changed anything.
5. President Trump’s “deal of the century” has been frozen because Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who was supposed to market the plan, is currently facing a crisis over the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in October 2018.
6. The withdrawal of U.S. forces from Syria has led to the Arab states coming toward Syria, and they are trying to return it to the Arab League.

The Hizbullah leader was compelled to return to the media stage due to the vacuum that was created, as no other leader has appeared in his place, and due to important developments on Lebanon’s border with Israel.

One of the Israeli-drilled holes that intersected the Hizbullah tunnel tens of meters below the surface.

The discovery of the tunnels infiltrating into Israel’s territory struck an operational and morale blow to Hizbullah. The tunnels were crucial to a surprise plan that Hizbullah had worked on for years before the IDF exposed it. In the interview, Nasrallah tries to minimize the importance of the discovery of the tunnels by the IDF and to convince his viewers that the plan to conquer the Galilee is still relevant, but it is clear that he has lost the important element of surprise.

Through the interview on the Al Mayadeen channel, the Hizbullah leader is attempting to “construct” a new policy of deterrence toward Israel. Reports on the interview with him appeared several days earlier in the media to create high viewer ratings and media support for his statements.

There were no surprises in Nasrallah’s interview about his state of health or the tunnels. His reactions were what had been expected on both fronts.

Nasrallah does not intend to escalate the security situation with Israel from inside Lebanese territory. He hinted that if Israel attacks his men inside Syrian territory, “Hizbullah will react in accordance with the circumstances.”

Apparently, Hizbullah is preparing a new front, which Iran intends to open against Israel from inside Syria, via the Golan Heights. This is where the danger of a conflict between Israel and Hizbullah lies. Israel does not intend to take any action against the organization inside Lebanon, but it will not sit quietly if Hizbullah dares to attack Israeli targets on the Golan Heights.

Source: Rouhani: Iran facing ‘greatest pressure,’ economic sanctions in 40 years | The Times of Israel

Iranian leader vows to ‘endure’ crisis blamed on US, says 2015 nuclear accord was ‘highest political pride in recent centuries’

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani speaks in Tehran, Iran, January 10, 2019 (Iranian Presidency Office via AP)

Iran currently is confronting “the greatest pressure and economic sanctions of the past 40 years,” the Islamic Republic’s President Hassan Rouhani said Wednesday, addressing crippling sanctions renewed by Washington last year.

In comments published on his official website, Rouhani stressed that “our problems are mainly due to pressure by the US and its followers, and the government and the Islamic system should not be blamed.”

He vowed that the nation would “endure” outside strong-arming efforts. “The US administration will definitely fail in its latest move against the Iranian nation,” he said. “Nobody can harm us as long as we follow the Supreme Leader.”

Rouhani spoke at a ceremony honoring the Islamic Republic’s first supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, as the country prepares to mark 40 years since the February 1979 Islamic revolution.

In May of last year US President Donald Trump decided to abandon the 2015 nuclear deal and reimpose sanctions on Tehran. The move touched off a record drop in Iran’s currency, prompted an exodus of foreign firms, plunged the nation into a recession and renewed its economic isolation.

US President Donald Trump speaks about the partial government shutdown, immigration and border security in the Diplomatic Reception Room of the White House on January 19, 2019. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Trump called the accord “the worst deal ever” and said it had given the US nothing. The administration bashed the agreement for its sunset clauses that allow certain restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program to expire, its failure to prevent Iranian ballistic missile testing and its continued support of regional terror groups.

Rouhani on Wednesday said “Iran’s highest political pride in [recent] decades and centuries was Iran’s powerful talks with the six major powers, and the victories that were handed over to Iran in various areas in the talks. It will never be lost.”

He asserted that the international community was on Tehran’s side, saying “the entire world is condemning the US conspiracies against the Iranian nation and support Iran in this regard.”

The European Union has condemned Washington’s renewal of sanctions and is working on a legal entity through which businesses could trade with Iran and avoid US sanctions.

However, there have been some indications that European powers are also gravitating toward the US position. Iran’s recent work on launching satellites into space has faced criticism from the West as a possible effort to advance its missile program, since the rockets used in the two programs depend on very similar technology.

The EU has commended Iran for sticking to its commitments under the nuclear deal, but has growing concerns about Tehran’s ballistic missile program, as well as its human rights record, its interference in Middle East conflicts and recent attempted attacks against opposition groups in Europe.

Illustrative: A group of protesters chant slogans at the old grand bazaar in Tehran, Iran, June 25, 2018. (Iranian Labor News Agency via AP)

Earlier this month French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said Paris was ready to impose new sanctions on Tehran if talks on its missile program and its regional influence fail to make progress.

Iran’s economic crisis has led to sporadic protests against the government in the past year.

The protests have seen unusual scenes of demonstrators chanting against continued Iranian spending of billions of dollars on regional proxy wars and support for terrorist groups, which many say has meant less investment in the struggling economy at home.

In recent years, Iran has provided financial aid to Palestinian terror groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Yemen’s Houthi rebels, and Shiite militias in Iraq. Since the start of the Syrian civil war in 2011, Tehran has poured a reported $6 billion into propping up president Bashar Assad’s government.

Rouhani has blamed the spontaneous demonstrations on “foreign media propaganda,” and has accused the US of waging “an economic war” against Tehran.

Source: US Mideast envoy denounces Palestinian support for Venezuela’s Maduro – Israel Hayom

Source: Russian deputy FM reiterates commitment to Israel’s security – Israel Hayom

Source: The fight against Iran must not stop – Israel Hayom

Moshik Kovarsky

Moshik Kovarsky is a high-tech entrepreneur and is active in the field of entrepreneurial education.

Source: Netanyahu holds talks with Russian officials on Syria ‘friction’ | The Times of Israel

Putin envoys in Jerusalem reiterate Moscow’s ‘commitment to the maintenance of Israel’s national security,’ Prime Minister’s Office says

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (right) holds talks centering on Iran and Syria with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s special envoy for Syrian affairs, Alexander Lavrentiev (center) and Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Vershinin (left) at his office in Jerusalem, January 29, 2019. (Amos Ben-Gershom/GPO)

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held talks Tuesday with Russian officials, seeking to avoid “friction” amid an Israeli campaign of air strikes aimed at keeping Iran from entrenching itself militarily in Syria.

Russian special envoy for Syrian affairs Alexander Lavrentiev and Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Vershinin met Netanyahu and top Israeli defense officials at the his office in Jerusalem, the Prime Minister’s Office said.

“Among the issues discussed were Iran and the situation in Syria, and strengthening the security coordination mechanism between the militaries in order to prevent friction,” the PMO stated. “The Russian representatives reiterated Russia’s commitment to the maintenance of Israel’s national security.”

Netanyahu was joined by National Security Adviser Meir Ben-Shabbat and Maj.-Gen. Aharon Haliva who heads the IDF’s Operations Directorate.

A member of the Russian military police and Syrian government forces patrol near the village al-Hamidia in the Syrian Golan Heights on August 14, 2018. (AFP/Andrey Borodulin)

The two Russian officials arrived in Israel on Monday and first met with Foreign Ministry officials.

Israel has carried out hundreds of air strikes in Syria in the past few years against Iranian and Hezbollah targets, and the Jewish state and Russia have set up a “de-confliction” hotline aimed at avoiding accidental clashes.

That mechanism was stretched when a Russian military aircraft was mistakenly shot down by Syrian air defenses after an Israeli raid in September.

Fifteen Russian soldiers were killed and the Russian army accused Israeli pilots of using Moscow’s plane as cover to evade Syrian gunfire, which Israel denied.

As part of its response, Russia announced new security measures to protect its military in Syria, including supplying Syria with an S-300 air defense system and jamming the radars of nearby warplanes.

Netanyahu has told Russian President Putin that Israel is determined to prevent Iran from entrenching militarily in Syria, according to his office.

Both Russia and the Islamic republic, Israel’s arch-enemy, are allies of Syrian President Bashar Assad and have helped his forces inflict numerous defeats on rebels and jihadists.

A former head of the Israeli Air Force on Monday said that only Russia, and not Israeli military might, can fully remove Iran from Syria.

“There is no military action that is going to get Iran out of Syria. Only a diplomatic effort can get Iran out of Syria, and this diplomatic effort has just one address. It’s called Russia,” said Maj. Gen. (res.) Amir Eshel.

Source: US intel chief: Iran will likely strike back if Israel keeps attacking in Syria | The Times of Israel

In report to Congress, US director of national intelligence warns Islamic Republic undeterred from establishing ‘network’ of Shiite militias in Syria

Trails left by the Iron Dome air defense system intercepting a Syrian projectile over Mount Hermon in the Golan Heights, on January 20, 2019. (Israel Defense Forces)

The top US intelligence official warned Tuesday that Iran was likely to attack Israel if the Jewish state continued to bomb the Islamic Republic’s military forces in Syria, despite Tehran not desiring a direct confrontation in the immediate future.

“We assess that Iran seeks to avoid a major armed conflict with Israel. However, Israeli strikes that result in Iranian casualties increase the likelihood of Iranian conventional retaliation against Israel,” Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence, told the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

Coats was presenting the views of the US Intelligence Community — made up of 16 American intelligence services — to the congressional committee as part of the annual Worldwide Threat Assessment.

This analysis by US intelligence services echoed similar concerns voiced within Israel about the increasing likelihood of an Iranian response to the Israel Defense Forces’ regular strikes in Syria.

Dan Coats, right, at a Senate Select Committee on Intelligence hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, January 29, 2019. (SAUL LOEB / AFP)

President Reuven Rivlin, speaking at a conference in Tel Aviv on Monday, also warned that Iran was likely to “intensify its responses” to Israeli strikes against its forces in Syria.

Satellite images released by the IDF of what it says are Iranian facilities inside a Syrian army base near Damascus, which were destroyed in an Israeli airstrike on January 21, 2019. (Israel Defense Forces)

Israel has repeatedly warned that it will not tolerate Iran’s efforts to establish a permanent military presence in Syria, fearing it will serve as another front from which the Islamic Republic can threaten the Jewish state.

In order to prevent Iranian entrenchment in Syria, the IDF has conducted hundreds of strikes against Tehran’s forces in the country, Israeli officials have said.

According to the assessments of the US intelligence services, these air raids, however, have not deterred Iran.

“Iran continues to pursue permanent military bases and economic deals in Syria and probably wants to maintain a network of Shia foreign fighters there despite Israeli attacks on Iranian positions in Syria,” Coats said.

In general, the Israeli strikes have focused on destroying Iranian infrastructure in Syria — bases, vehicles and weapons — and not personnel, former IDF chief Gadi Eisenkot said in an interview shortly before the end of his tenure.

In the assessment, the US director of national intelligence said if Israeli strikes kill more Iranian troops — as reportedly occurred earlier this month — the Islamic Republic is more likely to retaliate forcefully.

A photo provided by the pro-regime Syrian Central Military Media, shows anti-aircraft fire rise into the sky as Israeli missiles hit air defense positions and other military bases around Damascus, Syria, on May 10, 2018, after the Israeli military says Iranian forces launched a rocket barrage against Israeli bases on the Golan Heights, in the most serious military confrontation between the two bitter enemies to date. (Syrian Central Military Media, via AP)

Coats cited as evidence the Iranian attack on the Golan Heights in May 2018, one month after a deadly Israeli strike on the T-4 air base in Syria, which the IDF maintained was being used by Iran, that killed at least seven Iranian soldiers.

In recent months, senior Israeli officials have begun claiming near victory over Iran in Syria, saying that the IDF raids have prevented Iran from establishing a 100,000-member fighting force that it had planned to form along Syria’s border with Israel.

The American assessment presented by Coats on Tuesday appeared to contradict this Israeli view, warning that Iran was not giving up its efforts to establish a permanent military presence in Syria.

Also on Tuesday, CIA chief Gina Haspel told the Senate Intelligence Committee that Iran was still abiding by the terms of the 2015 nuclear deal despite the US pullout from the multinational agreement.

“At the moment technically they are in compliance” with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Haspel told the Senate Intelligence Committee.

“I think the most recent information is the Iranians are considering taking steps that would lessen their adherence to JCPOA as they seek to pressure the European to come through with the investment and trade benefits that Iran hoped to gain from the deal,” she said.

Gina Haspel, director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) testifies on Worldwide Threats during a Senate Select Committee on Intelligence hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, January 29, 2019. (SAUL LOEB / AFP)

Israel and the US have been pushing Europe to impose new sanctions on the Islamic Republic and to strictly enforce the ones already in place on Iran for other non-nuclear nefarious activities.

But, as a number of European companies have pulled out under pressure from US sanctions, those countries have backed an EU effort to set up a special payment system in an attempt to continue trade and business ties with Iran.

AFP contributed to this report.

A cure for cancer? Israeli scientists say they think they found one

“We believe we will offer in a year’s time a complete cure for cancer.”

A small team of Israeli scientists think they might have found the first complete cure for cancer.

“We believe we will offer in a year’s time a complete cure for cancer,” said Dan Aridor, of a new treatment being developed by his company, Accelerated Evolution Biotechnologies Ltd. (AEBi), which was founded in 2000 in the ITEK incubator in the Weizmann Science Park. AEBi developed the SoAP platform, which provides functional leads to very difficult targets.

“Our cancer cure will be effective from day one, will last a duration of a few weeks and will have no or minimal side-effects at a much lower cost than most other treatments on the market,” Aridor said. “Our solution will be both generic and personal.”

Dr. Ilan Moran (Courtesy)

It sounds fantastical, especially considering that an estimated 18.1 million new cancer cases are diagnosed worldwide each year, according to reports by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. Further, every sixth death in the world is due to cancer, making it the second leading cause of death (second only to cardiovascular disease).

Aridor, chairman of the board of AEBi and CEO Dr. Ilan Morad, say their treatment, which they call MuTaTo (multi-target toxin) is essentially on the scale of a cancer antibiotic – a disruption technology of the highest order.

The potentially game-changing anti-cancer drug is based on SoAP technology, which belongs to the phage display group of technologies. It involves the introduction of DNA coding for a protein, such as an antibody, into a bacteriophage – a virus that infects bacteria. That protein is then displayed on the surface of the phage. Researchers can use these protein-displaying phages to screen for interactions with other proteins, DNA sequences and small molecules.

In 2018, a team of scientists won the Nobel Prize for their work on phage display in the directed evolution of new proteins – in particular, for the production of antibody therapeutics.

AEBi is doing something similar but with peptides, compounds of two or more amino acids linked in a chain. According to Morad, peptides have several advantages over antibodies, including that they are smaller, cheaper, and easier to produce and regulate.

When the company first started, Morad said, “We were doing what everyone else was doing, trying to discover individual novel peptides for specific cancers.” But shortly thereafter, Morad and his colleague, Dr. Hanan Itzhaki, decided they wanted to do something bigger.

To get started, Morad said they had to identify why other cancer-killing drugs and treatments don’t work or eventually fail. Then, they found a way to counter that effect.

For starters, most anti-cancer drugs attack a specific target on or in the cancer cell, he explained. Inhibiting the target usually affects a physiological pathway that promotes cancer. Mutations in the targets – or downstream in their physiological pathways – could make the targets not relevant to the cancer nature of the cell, and hence the drug attacking it is rendered ineffective.

In contrast, MuTaTo is using a combination of several cancer-targeting peptides for each cancer cell at the same time, combined with a strong peptide toxin that would kill cancer cells specifically. By using at least three targeting peptides on the same structure with a strong toxin, Morad said, “we made sure that the treatment will not be affected by mutations; cancer cells can mutate in such a way that targeted receptors are dropped by the cancer.”

“The probability of having multiple mutations that would modify all targeted receptors simultaneously decreases dramatically with the number of targets used,” Morad continued. “Instead of attacking receptors one at a time, we attack receptors three at a time – not even cancer can mutate three receptors at the same time.”

Furthermore, many cancer cells activate detoxification mechanisms when in stress from drugs. The cells pump out the drugs or modify them to be non-functional. But Morad said detoxification takes time. When the toxin is strong, it has a high probability of killing the cancer cell before detoxification occurs, which is what he is banking on.

Many cytotoxic anticancer treatments aim at fast-growing cells. But cancer stem cells are not fast growing, and they can escape these treatments. Then, when the treatment is over, they can generate cancer again.

“If it does not completely annihilate the cancer, the remaining cells can start to get mutations again, and then the cancer comes back, but this time it is drug resistant,” Morad said.

He explained that because cancer cells are born out of mutations that occur in cancer stem cells, most of the overexpressed proteins which are targeted on the cancer cell exist in the cancer stem cells. MuTaTo’s multiple-target attack ensures that they will be destroyed as well.

Finally, some cancer tumors erect shields which create access problems to large molecules, such as antibodies. MuTaTo acts like an octopus or a piece of spaghetti and can sneak into places where other large molecules cannot reach. Morad said the peptide parts of MuTaTo are very small (12 amino acids long) and lack a rigid structure.

“This should make the whole molecule non-immunogenic in most cases and would enable repeated administration of the drug,” he said.

Morad said their discovery could also reduce the sickening side-effects of most cancer treatments, which stem from drug treatments interacting with the wrong or additional targets, or the correct targets but on non-cancerous cells. He said MuTaTo’s having a combination of several highly specific cancer-targeting peptides on one scaffold for each type of cancer cell would increase the specificity to the cancer cell due to the avidity effect. In addition, in most cases, the non-cancer cells that have a protein in common with the cancer cells do not overexpress it.

“This makes a great difference between the two kinds of cells and should decrease the side effects dramatically,” Morad said.

He equated the concept of MuTaTo to the triple drug cocktail that has helped change AIDS from being an automatic death sentence to a chronic – but often manageable – disease.

Today, AIDS patients take protease inhibitors in combination with two other drugs called reverse transcriptase inhibitors. The drug combination disrupts HIV at different stages in its replication, restrains an enzyme crucial to an early stage of HIV duplication and holds back another enzyme that functions near the end of the HIV replication process.

“We used to give AIDS patients several drugs, but we would administer them one at a time,” Morad explained. “During the course of treatment, the virus mutated, and the AIDS started attacking again. Only when patients started using a cocktail, were they able to stop the disease.”

Now, he said, people with AIDS are HIV carriers, but they are not sick anymore.

The MuTaTo cancer treatment will eventually be personalized. Each patient will provide a piece of his biopsy to the lab, which would then analyze it to know which receptors are overexpressed. The individual would then be administered exactly the molecule cocktail needed to cure his disease.
However, unlike in the case of AIDS, where patients must take the cocktail throughout their lives, in the case of MuTaTo, the cells would be killed, and the patient could likely stop treatment after only a few weeks.

The company is now writing patents on specific peptides, which will be a large bank of targeting toxin peptides wholly owned and hard to break, said Aridor.

Morad said that so far, the company has concluded its first exploratory mice experiment, which inhibited human cancer cell growth and had no effect at all on healthy mice cells, in addition to several in-vitro trials. AEBi is on the cusp of beginning a round of clinical trials which could be completed within a few years and would make the treatment available in specific cases.
Aridor added: “Our results are consistent and repeatable.”

H/T PG