WarSclerotic

Iran’s foreign minister said Sunday that Jerusalem is “looking for war” and that the behavior of Israel and the United States was increasing the prospects of a conflict.

“Certainly, some people are looking for war… Israel,” Mohammad Javad Zarif told participants at the Munich Security Conference, according to the Reuters news agency.

Zarif said that Israel was violating international law by carrying out bombing raids in Syria, and called on European powers and the US to hold Israel to account for its actions.

“The risk [of war] is great. The risk will be even greater if you continue to turn a blind eye to severe violations of international law.

“Israeli behavior is putting international law on the shelf, US behavior is putting international law on the shelf,” he said.

The Iranian regime views Israel and the US as its political and spiritual arch-enemies, and its leaders regularly vow to destroy the Jewish state.

Israel in recent years has carried out hundreds of airstrikes in Syria against targets linked to Iran, which alongside its proxies and Russia is fighting on behalf of the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Until recently, Israel typically refrained from commenting on its military activities against Iran in Syria, neither confirming nor denying strikes.

An explosion, reportedly during Israeli airstrikes near Damascus, Syria, on January 21, 2019. (screen capture: YouTube)

Over the past two months, however, that policy of ambiguity has been largely abandoned by Israeli military and political officials, who have begun more openly discussing the Israel Defense Forces’ operations in Syria.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has come under fire for breaking Israel’s ambiguity policy regarding attacks in Syria, with critics accusing him of putting Israel’s security at risk to gain points among voters.

Zarif also said Iran remains committed to the 2015 nuclear agreement that the US unilaterally pulled out of last year, but accused Britain, France and Germany of not doing enough to ensure that Tehran sees economic benefits in sticking to the agreement.

Zarif slammed the US for its focus on Iran.

“We have long been the target of an unhealthy fixation, let’s say obsession” from the US, he said.

US Vice President Mike Pence, in a speech before the conference on Saturday, “arrogantly demanded that Europe must join the United States in undermining its own security and breaking its obligations,” Zarif charged.

The accord offers Iran sanctions relief for limiting its nuclear program, and the International Atomic Energy Agency has said that Tehran is sticking to the agreement.

But the US argues that the deal just postpones the time when Iran might be able to build a nuclear bomb. At the conference, Pence pushed for Europeans to end their involvement in the nuclear deal, calling Iran “the leading state sponsor of terrorism in the world.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaking with reporters at Ben Gurion Airport before his departure to a conference in Poland, February 11, 2019. (Raphael Ahren/Times of Israel)

“The time has come for our European partners to stop undermining US sanctions against this murderous revolutionary regime,” Pence said in his speech. “The time has come for our European partners to stand with us and with the Iranian people, our allies and friends in the region. The time has come for our European partners to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal.”

Zarif’s words regarding the increasing likelihood of all-out military conflict with Israel comes days after Netanyahu spoke of a joint interest in “war” in the context of the struggle against the Islamic Republic.

In a Hebrew-language video message recorded before he headed last Wednesday to the opening of a Middle East conference in Warsaw, the prime minister hailed the fact that an Israeli leader was about to sit down with senior officials from “leading Arab countries” in order to “advance the common interest of war against Iran.”

An official translation of the statement, provided by the Government Press Office, translated Hebrew phrase milhama b’Iran as “war with Iran,” when it was not clear that Netanyahu had meant literal military action.

The prime minister’s social media accounts published the statement, leading numerous people, including Zarif, to point out its ostensible belligerency.

On Saturday, Zarif rejected an accusation by Pence in his speech that Iran “openly advocates another Holocaust.”

US Vice President Mike Pence kneels beside his wife Karen, right, at a freight car once used to transport Jews, during their visit to the former Nazi death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau in Oswiecim, Poland, Friday, February 15, 2019. (AP Photo/Michael Sohn)

The foreign minister told the German daily Der Spiegel that the accusation was “laughable,” according to a translation by Reuters.

“Iran has always supported the Jews. We are just against Zionists,” he insisted, adding, “The Holocaust was a disaster.”

In his speech Saturday, Pence noted that “Ayatollah Khamenei himself has said, ‘It is the mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran to erase Israel from the map.”

He said: “Yesterday, my wife Karen and I paid our solemn respects to the martyrs of the Holocaust in our very first visit to Auschwitz. One lesson of that dark chapter of human history is that when authoritarian regimes breathe out vile anti-Semitic hatreds and threats of violence, we must take them at their word. The Iranian regime openly advocates another Holocaust.”

Raphael Ahren and agencies contributed to this report.

TEHRAN — Iran on Sunday launched a new, locally-built submarine capable of firing cruise missiles, state TV said, in the country’s latest show of military might at a time of heightened tensions with the US.

The launch ceremony, led by President Hassan Rouhani, took place in the southern port city of Bandar Abbas.

“Today, the Islamic Republic of Iran is fully self-reliant on land, air and sea,” Rouhani said. “Our defensive power is meant to defend our interests and we have never sought to attack any country.”

Named the Fateh (Farsi for “Conqueror”), the new submarine is Iran’s first in the semi-heavy category, the Fars news agency said, and it fills a gap between the light Ghadir class and the heavy, Russian-made Kilo class submarines that the country possesses.

Fars said the near 600-ton underwater vessel is equipped with torpedoes and naval mines, in addition to cruise missiles, and can operate more than 200 meters below sea level for up to 35 days.

The US withdrew from a 2015 multilateral nuclear deal with Iran in May 2018 and re-imposed biting unilateral sanctions later last year.

Ten days ago, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards unveiled a new ballistic missile with a range of 1,000 kilometers (620 miles), the elite unit’s official media agency Sepah News, said.

The surface-to-surface missile — called Dezful — is an upgrade on the older Zolfaghar model that had a range of 700 kilometers, aerospace commander Brigadier General Amirali Hajizadeh said.

Rouhani said at the launch that “pressure by enemies, the (Iran-Iraq) war and sanctions” were incentives for Tehran to be self-reliant in its defense industry.

“Maybe we would not have this motivation to industrialize our defense sector,” he said, if Iran could just buy the weaponry it needed.

Iran’s top military brass and cabinet ministers attended the ceremony.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah on Saturday dismissed last week’s Middle East conference in Warsaw as “weak and stale,” and warned that Arab leaders moving toward normalization with Israel were only “a tool” in Israel’s hands.

In a speech marking the terror group’s annual remembrance day for “martyrs,” Nasrallah said the summit in Poland, which focused strongly on Iran’s belligerence in the region, aimed to “rally against Iran and the resistance movements in the region… The enemies are trying to rally the world to conspire against the resistance after their wars failed to eradicate it.”

He said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was “speaking from the heart” when he talked at the conference of seeking “war with Iran,” a statement that has been characterized as a mistranslation of Netanyahu’s original Hebrew comments.

But Nasrallah asserted that “today Iran is a strong state and stronger than anyone who targets it with war.”

Nasrallah said the Warsaw summit had “brought out into the open Israel’s relations with the Gulf states.

“We knew about normalization between Israel and Oman and the United Arab Emirates, but at the summit we also clearly saw normalization with the Saudis,” he said.

The Hezbollah chief attacked Yemen’s foreign minister for sitting besideNetanyahu at the summit, saying it “revealed that… the Yemen war is an Israeli-American war carried out by Saudi Arabia and the UAE.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu greets Omani Foreign Minister Yusuf bin Alawi bin Abdullah at the sidelines of a regional conference on the Middle East in Warsaw, February 13, 2018. (Amos Ben Gershom/GPO)

Saudi Arabia has been leading the years-long fight against the Iran-backed rebels in Yemen. Many thousands of civilians are believed to have been killed in the war.

“Those who attack the people in Yemen, who control Bahrain that acts against Iran, who sit beside Israel at the Warsaw conference and normalize relations with Israel — they are all tools in the hands of this [Israeli and American] plan,” Nasrallah said.

He claimed the summit was also intended to “eliminate the Palestinian cause,” noting it “missed any reference to Palestine, even though Israel is the head of terror” in the region.

Nasrallah also referred to recent claims by some Israeli officials that the Israeli Ground Forces are not prepared for war with the terror group in the north, saying Israelis “don’t believe in their army.”

The issue of the Israel Defense Forces’ readiness for conflict has made headlines in recent months, particularly in light of the Defense Ministry ombudsman’s ongoing public clash with military leaders over his claims — refuted by both military and Knesset officials — that the army is woefully unprepared for war.

Israeli army Merkava tanks take positions on the Golan Heights, on January 20, 2019. (Jalaa Marey/AFP)

“They don’t believe in their army,” the Hezbollah chief said. “They know our fighters can enter the Galilee, but they’re not sure their Ground Forces can enter our land.”

Nasrallah recently boasted in another speech of his organization’s plans for invading northern Israel.

“Senior officials in the Israeli army say it is not ready, particularly the Ground Forces. The officers don’t believe in it, the soldiers don’t believe in it and neither does the government. These are not my words, but the words of by Israeli army leaders.”

He added: “It wasn’t like that in the past. Residents of southern Lebanon are not afraid, but residents of the Galilee are very fearful. That is what deterrence looks like. This is a new state of things.”

On Tuesday, a number of signs mocking the IDF were placed on the Lebanese border, apparently by Hezbollah. “If you don’t trust your Ground Forces, who were beaten in Lebanon, you need to send them to your search-and-rescue forces. You’ll need them,” the signs read, in stilted Hebrew. The signs also featured photographs of Israeli soldiers crying and a tank on fire.

Netanyahu said last month military forces were ready to deliver a “crushing attack” to the nation’s enemies.

Nasrallah also mocked Israeli leaders’ threats against his organization.

“Sometimes Israelis say in their speeches, ‘If Nasrallah knew how much we knew about him, he wouldn’t sleep at night.’ If your information is correct and you know everything about us, about all that we have, it only gives us more confidence, because or deterrence will become even stronger.”

He claimed that the organization now had 40 “hubs,” each of which had more power than Lebanon’s entire “resistance” had possessed in the year 2000.

On Friday the IDF said that over the past week troops conducted a massive drill to train for combat operations in topographical conditions similar to those in Lebanon.

The exercise was the largest one carried out by the 401st Brigade of the Armored Corps in recent years, according to Channel 12 news. The soldiers carried out drills in coordination with the Israeli Air Force, as well as the engineering and intelligence corps.

The brigade’s commander, Col. Dudu Sonago, said Hezbollah fighters have gained extensive experience and have developed more sophisticated battle techniques after fighting in neighboring Syria’s civil war, at the same time as deepening entrenchment above and below ground in Syria.

“They are no longer a guerrilla organization, but a real army,” he said.

Nasrallah also denied US assertions that it has cells in Venezuela. The Latin American nation has plunged deeper into political chaos following the US demand that President Nicolas Maduro steps down a month into his second term.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said last week that “Hezbollah has active cells” in Venezuela and “Iranians are impacting the people of Venezuela and throughout South America.”

But Nasrallah said Venezuela “does not need” Hezbollah, though his group was in “solidarity with the political leadership and state of Venezuela against the American aggression.”

AP contributed to this report.

US President Donald Trump demanded Sunday that European countries “take back” their citizens who fought with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and put them on trial.

“The United States is asking Britain, France, Germany and other European allies to take back over 800 ISIS fighters that we captured in Syria and put them on trial,” Trump tweeted.

He then reiterated his claim that “The Caliphate is ready to fall.”

Trump warned that if EU countries did not repatriate the terrorists “we will be forced to release them.”

“The US does not want to watch as these ISIS fighters permeate Europe, which is where they are expected to go,” Trump said.

The president then repeated his complaint that EU countries were not paying their fair share of defense costs and claimed again that IS had been defeated.

“We do so much, and spend so much – Time for others to step up and do the job that they are so capable of doing. We are pulling back after 100% Caliphate victory!” he said.

At its height, between 27,000 and 31,000 may have traveled to Syria and Iraq to join the Islamic State group, according to an analysis by the Soufan Group. Of those, about 6,000 were from Europe, with most from France, Germany and Britain.

Earlier this month, the top general overseeing US military actions in the Middle East, US Army General Joseph Votel, said that Trump did not consult him ahead of deciding to pull American troops from Syria and told senators that despite Trump’s claims, IS has not yet been defeated.

Trump is in an ongoing feud with the US intelligence community, which has warned that IS can quickly rebuild into a cohesive force in any vacuum left in the war-torn country.

Jihadist fighters defending the last dreg of the Islamic State group’s “caliphate” Saturday were holed up in half a square kilometer of a village in eastern Syria.

Trump had announced that the fall of the IS proto-state would be declared Saturday, but a Syrian commander said his US-backed forces slowed down their advance to protect civilians.

The jihadists declared a “caliphate” in large parts of Syria and neighboring Iraq in 2014, but have since lost all but a tiny patch of territory in eastern Syria near the Iraqi border.

A fighter with the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces sits atop a US-supplied military vehicle during an operation to expel Islamic State group (IS) jihadists from the Baghouz area in the eastern Syrian province of Deir Ezzor on February 14, 2019. (Delil Souleiman/AFP)

“IS is besieged in a neighborhood that is estimated to be 700 meters long and 700 meters wide,” said Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) commander Jia Furat.

“Baghouz is within our firing range but we are moving cautiously considering there are civilians still trapped there as human shields,” said Furat, the overall commander for the operation.

“In a very short time, not longer than a few days, we will officially announce the end of IS’s existence,” he told reporters at a nearby SDF base.

American defense officials are increasingly fearful that the jihadists are simply biding their time until the Americans leave the battlefield as planned.

A Defense Department watchdog report released February 4 warned that if measures weren’t taken following a US troop pullout from Syria, “it is very likely that ISIS will have the opportunity to set conditions for future resurgence and territorial control.”

The US Army’s Central Command said that the Islamic State group is “regenerating key functions and capabilities more quickly in Iraq than in Syria,” but unless there is sustained counterterrorism pressure, IS militants “could likely resurge in Syria within six to twelve months and regain limited territory” in the Middle Euphrates River Valley.

The Syrian regime and government-backed militias have carried out over 300 chemical attacks in the war-torn country, according to a report published Sunday.

The research, published by the Global Public Policy Institute, shows there were at least 336 chemical attacks over the course of the civil war in Syria, with 98 percent of them carried out by President Bashar Assad’s regime. The remaining 2% of attacks could be attributed to the Islamic State terrorist group.

At least 89% of the chemical attacks were carried out by the Syrian government using improvised chlorine munitions delivered by modified barrel or lob bombs.

According to the report, the regime has targeted civilian population areas with its chemical attacks, rather than the frontline military positions of the rebels. The study said that showed that the use of chemical weapons is part of a strategy of collective punishment for opposition-held areas and the fear of attack is a major contributing factor to the country’s displaced persons crisis.

This photo provided Tuesday, April 4, 2017 by the Syrian anti-government activist group Edlib Media Center, shows victims of a suspected chemical attack, in the town of Khan Sheikhoun, northern Idlib province, Syria. (Edlib Media Center, via AP)

Approximately 90% of the confirmed attacks occurred after the August 2013 sarin attack on the rebel-held suburbs of Damascus the crossed what then-president Barack Obama had previously called a “red line,” saying it demanded a military response against Assad’s government.

Obama instead struck a deal in which Assad was supposed to destroy his stockpiles of chemicals; however, according to the GPPI report, many subsequent attacks utilized chlorine.

At the time of the reported destruction of the stockpiles, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons expressed concerns about omissions and discrepancies in Syria’s declaration.

US President Donald Trump has blamed Syria’s instability on his predecessor refraining to attack Assad after he used chemical weapons on his own people.

Medical workers treating toddlers following an alleged poison gas attack in the opposition-held town of Douma, in Eastern Ghouta, near Damascus, Syria, April. 8, 2018 (Syrian Civil Defense White Helmets via AP)

“You can’t make a threat and then do nothing. So Syria was lost long ago,” Trump said in January when expanding on his decision to pull all American troops out of Syria. US soldiers had been leading the coalition against Islamic State, while also helping to thwart a permanent Iranian infrastructure in the war-torn country.

Last September, prior to the announcement of the troop drawdown, the US warned the Syrian regime that further use of chemical weapons against civilians will be met with “a much stronger response” from Washington, in the wake of a report Assad had authorized his forces to use chlorine gas in their assault on the last significant rebel stronghold in the country.

US President Barack Obama addresses the nation in a live televised speech from the East Room of the White House in Washington, Tuesday, September 10, 2013 (photo credit: AP/Evan Vucci, Pool)

Sunday’s GPPI report calls on the United States and international community to intervene by directly targeting any apparatus that would allow the use of chemical weapons, saying “the Syrian helicopter fleet, which has played a critical role in the delivery of conventional and chemical barrel bombs, should be a primary target.”

The Trump administration ordered a strike on a Syrian airbase in April 2017 in response to a deadly chemical weapons attack in Idlib that left at least 86 people dead, including 27 children, and which allegedly employed the nerve agent sarin.

Then in April 2018 the US, France and Britain launched a joint attack on Syrian facilities after a chemical strike on the city of Douman was reported to have killed at least 70 people. US officials said precision strikes hit a scientific research center near Damascus, a storage facility and command post also near the capital and a chemical weapons storage facility near Homs.

Agencies contributed to this report.