WarSclerotic

Spain suspends sales of military arms to Israel over Gaza operation
Ynetnews Published: 08.05.14, 18:35

The cluster f8ck continues… – LS

Spain has resolved to momentarily ban sales of military arms to Israel due to the conflict in Gaza, government sources stated last week, according to Spanish newspaper, El Pais.

On Thursday, Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel García-Margallo stated in Congress that the amount of Gaza civilian deaths as a result of the bombings in the Strip were “heart-rending,” and while he recognized Israel’s right to defend its citizens, he also asserted that the IDF should take proportionate action “under respect for protection that civilians deserve, which is no less than a manifestation of international humanitarian rights,” reported El Pais.

Over the past year, Israel’s purchases of Spanish weaponry cost €4.9 million ($6.5 million), about one percent of the country’s total defense exports. Previously, the sales ban has also been put on Egypt, Ukraine and Venezuela, according to the report.

The Spanish government said it will review this suspension at their upcoming meeting in September.

The Independent reported that the UK was also evaluating their sale of £8 billion ($13.5 billion) in military equipment to Israel.

Hamas chief declares victory over Israel
Roi Kais Latest Update: 08.05.14, 20:58 / Israel News

Seriously folks…who did not see this coming.-LS

Political bureau leader Ismail Haniyeh says military resistance, strength of Palestinians will lead to lifting of blockade during Cairo talks.
“We won,” said Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in his first statement since the ceasefire on Tuesday.

“The military victory by the resistance, and the legendary strength of our people will lead us to a lifting of the blockage on the Gaza Strip,” said the former prime minister of Hamas in the Strip in a formal statement released on the terror organization’s media outlets.

The Hamas chief said that Palestinian unity helped reach the agreement in Egypt. “A unified people stood behind our delegation in Cairo. We complied with all the diplomatic procedures and contacted our brothers in Qatar and Turkey and, now, in Egypt in order to end the aggression.”

Haniyeh stressed that “what the enemy could not achieve on the physical battlefield it will not achieve in the diplomatic battlefield.

The leader of Hamas’ political bureau said: “I am confident that our Egyptian and Arab brothers all want to help lift the blockage permanently. We support the unified Palestinian delegation in order to produce the most appropriate diplomatic solution and to bring about a resolution that would reflect both the immeasurable sacrifices of our people and the work of the resistance. The delegation stuck to our demands.”

He added that with the start of the ceasefire “the image of destruction seen by the world is the proof to the extent of the IDF’s defeat and its failure in fighting the brave resistance.”

The Hamas political leader said the organization “will be loyal to our people who were hurt by the brutal aggression. The blood spilled by the deceased and the injured is the leadership’s responsibility, we will not abandon them.”

Meanwhile, senior Hamas officials began leaving their underground bunkers. Khalil al-Haya, in his first TV appearance in Gaza, said: “We are leaving for the negotiations in Cairo to lift the blockage once and for all. Our finger remains on the trigger.”

Al-Haya and Imad al-Alami from Hamas and Khaled al-Batsh from Islamic Jihad all left Gaza for Cairo. They received guarantees they would not be hurt on the way to talks, similar to the guarantee received by Ahmed Jabari during the negotiations for the release of captured IDF soldier Gilad Shalit.

‘Hand of God sent missile into sea’
by Joe Kovacs August 8, 2014

When everything seems a mess and there are no clear answers, we must turn to faith. Some may find this article hard to believe, but I choose to believe. It’s the only way.-LS

Iron Dome operator: ‘I witnessed this miracle with my own eyes’

More claims of divine intervention are being reported in the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, with an operator of Israel’s Iron Dome missile-defense system saying he personally witnessed “the hand of God” diverting an incoming rocket out of harm’s way.

Israel Today translated a report from a Hebrew-language news site, which noted the Iron Dome battery failed three times to intercept an incoming rocket headed toward Tel Aviv last week.

The commander recalled: “A missile was fired from Gaza. Iron Dome precisely calculated [its trajectory]. We know where these missiles are going to land down to a radius of 200 meters. This particular missile was going to hit either the Azrieli Towers, the Kirya (Israel’s equivalent of the Pentagon) or [a central Tel Aviv railway station]. Hundreds could have died.

“We fired the first [interceptor]. It missed. Second [interceptor]. It missed. This is very rare. I was in shock. At this point we had just four seconds until the missile lands. We had already notified emergency services to converge on the target location and had warned of a mass-casualty incident.

“Suddenly, Iron Dome (which calculates wind speeds, among other things) shows a major wind coming from the east, a strong wind that … sends the missile into the sea. We were all stunned. I stood up and shouted, ‘There is a God!’

“I witnessed this miracle with my own eyes. It was not told or reported to me. I saw the hand of God send that missile into the sea.”

The commander’s account is reminiscent of a recent newspaper headline which trumpeted the possibility of supernatural protection.

“Their God changes the path of our rockets in mid-air, said a terrorist,” was the headline in the July 18 edition of the Jewish Telegraph.

It was a partial quote from Barbara Ordman, who lives in Ma’ale Adumim on the West Bank.

Her exact quotation was: “As one of the terrorists from Gaza was reported to say when asked why they couldn’t aim their rockets more effectively: “We do aim them, but their God changes their path in mid-air.”

She opened her piece by noting: “In October 1956, [Israeli Prime Minister] David Ben Gurion was interviewed by CBS. He stated: ‘In Israel, in order to be a realist, you must believe in miracles.’”

Ordman also noted religious texts, specifically the Jerusalem Talmud, teaches Israelis not to depend on miracles for survival.

“It argues that we must not desist from our obligations and must not wait for miraculous intervention from the Supernatural,” she wrote.

Meanwhile, the Times of Israel reported a senior officer in Israel’s army said divine miracles protected his soldiers during fighting in the Gaza Strip.

Givati Brigade commander Col. Ofer Winter told the weekly publication Mishpacha that he “witnessed a miraculous occurrence, the likes of which he had never seen before during his military career.”

Winter indicated a predawn raid intended to use darkness as cover was delayed, forcing the soldiers to move toward their objective as sunrise was approaching.

With the troops in danger of being exposed at daybreak, Winter explained how heavy fog quickly descended to shroud their movements until their mission was accomplished.

“Suddenly a cloud protected us,” he said, referring to clouds the Bible says guided the ancient Israelites as they wandered in the desert. “Clouds of glory.”

Winter said only when the soldiers were in a secure position, the fog finally lifted.

“It really was a fulfillment of the verse ‘For the Lord your God is the one who goes with you to give you victory,’” he said, quoting Deuteronomy 20:4.

The Times of Israel notes Winter made headlines over an official letter he sent to battalion and company commanders July 9, telling his subordinates that “history has chosen us to spearhead the fighting (against) the terrorist ‘Gazan’ enemy which abuses, blasphemes and curses the God of Israel’s (defense) forces.”

The dispatch came under fire from some, since it portrayed the Operation Protective Edge as a religious war against non-Jews. The Israeli government’s stated aim is to stop rocket attacks at Israel and destroy a network of tunnels dug under the border from Gaza used to launch terror attacks inside Israeli territory.

In his interview with Mishpacha, Winter defended his message, saying everyone finds God when in combat.

“Anyone who attacked me for the letter apparently has only seen weapons in pictures, was never in combat, and doesn’t know what fighting spirit is,” he said, revealing that before going into action his custom was to recite the blessing with which the ancient Israelite priests would bless the army before it went to war.

“When a person is in a life-threatening situation he connects with his deepest internal truths, and when that happens, even the biggest atheist meets God,” he said, claiming soldiers see so many miracles, “it is hard not to believe [in God].”

U.S. General Is Reportedly Killed by an Afghan Soldier
By MATTHEW ROSENBERG and HARIS KAKAR August 5, 2014

Though I’d mention it since everyone seems to be in a trusting mood. – LS

KABUL, Afghanistan — A United States Army major general was killed on Tuesday by an Afghan soldier, shot at close range at a military training academy on the outskirts of Kabul, officials of the American-led coalition said Tuesday. The officer was the highest-ranking member of the American military to die in hostilities in the Afghanistan war.

The coalition officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity and would not release the name of the major general, said an unspecified number of other service members of the American-led coalition and Afghan soldiers, including a senior Afghan commander, also were shot. Their conditions were not immediately known.

Other details of the shooting were sketchy, and the coalition, in an official statement, would only confirm that one of its service members had been killed in what it described as “an incident” at the Marshall Fahim National Defense University in Kabul. The coalition declined to specify any further details, saying it was still working to notify the family of the deceased.

An Afghanistan National Army soldier at a gate of Camp Qargha after the shooting on Tuesday. Credit Massoud Hossaini/Associated Press

Tensions at the military academy ran high in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, which took place around noon, and foreign troops appeared to be on edge, fearful of another attack.

Massoud Hossaini, a photographer for The Associated Press, said that he arrived at the camp’s gate ahead of other journalists, and just as coalition armored vehicles were pulling out of the compound. A coalition soldier manning the roof-mounted gun on one of the vehicles shouted for Mr. Hossaini to “get away,” and then fired an apparent warning shot.

“I don’t know what he fired. It was fired near our car,” he said, adding that he left the scene straight away.

The Afghan Defense Ministry said in a statement that a “few people were wounded” in the shooting, and that they had been immediately evacuated to a hospital. It described the attacker as “wearing Afghan National Army uniform,” which has long been a standard description offered after Afghan troops attack their foreign counterparts.

Other Afghan and coalition officials said they believed the shooter was an Afghan soldier. The coalition, in its brief statement, said the incident had involved “local Afghan and ISAF troops,” using the initials for the International Security Assistance Force, the formal name of the NATO-led coalition.

Sher Alam, an Afghan soldier guarding the entrance to the academy, located at Camp Qargha, said that senior Afghan and coalition officers had been meeting there on Tuesday, and that reports from inside the camp indicated that a number of the foreign officers were shot in the attack. He said that soon after the shooting, coalition helicopters landed inside the academy to evacuate the victims.

Tuesday’s shooting was the first so-called insider attack in Afghanistan in months. Such attacks, in which Afghan troops open fire on unsuspecting coalition forces, at one point posed a serious challenge to the war effort, sowing distrust and threatening to upend the American-led training mission that is vital to the long-term strategy for keeping the Taliban at bay.

Though the number of attacks has dropped sharply since 2012, when dozens occurred, they remain a persistent threat for coalition troops serving alongside Afghan forces.

Afghan and American commanders have said that they believe most of the insider attacks that have taken place were the work of ordinary soldiers who had grown alienated and angry over the continued presence of foreign troops here, and not carried out by Taliban fighters planted in Afghan units.

The Taliban, which often takes credit for insider attacks, had no immediate comment on Tuesday. Zabiullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the insurgents, said he was still trying to collect information about the incident.

But, he added, the Taliban had many people inside the camp, and that one of their loyalists could have been responsible for the attack.

Ahmad Shakib and Jawad Sukhanyar in Kabul contributed reporting.

Take the Survey by Clicking Here
By Louisiana Steve Date 8-5-2014

Let us know what you think. How they arranged this cease fire is beyond me. Must have been a lot of ‘arm twisting’. – LS

Please click on the above link. Vote and see the results.

U.K. reviewing arms exports to Israel over Gaza conflict
Barak Ravid and Reuters Aug. 4, 2014 4:56 PM

The cluster f8ck begins. At least it’s not the USA, but with Obama and his executive order pen, anything is possible. – LS

Move similar to partial arms embargo undertaken by U.K. following Cast Lead, first reported in Haaretz; Gov’t-approved U.K. contracts – which include body armor, drone components, and missile parts – are worth over $13 billion.

The U.K. is reviewing all arms export licences to Israel in response to the conflict with Hamas in Gaza, a British government spokeswoman said on Monday. The move is similar to that taken by the British government after Operation Cast Lead in 2009, and which was first published in Haaretz.

Israel launched an offensive against Hamas almost four weeks ago following a surge in cross-border rocket salvoes. Gaza officials say 1,797 Palestinians, most of them civilians, have been killed, while Israel has lost 64 soldiers in combat and three civilians to Palestinian shelling.

“We are currently reviewing all export licenses to Israel to confirm that we think they are appropriate,” a spokeswoman for Prime Minister David Cameron told reporters. The decision to conduct the review was taken last week, she said.

According to a report by a British parliamentary committee last month, outstanding government-approved contracts for export of dual use or military goods to Israel are worth more than 7.8 billion pounds ($13.12 billion). These include contracts to supply body armor, drone components, and missile parts.

“Clearly the current situation has changed compared to when some licenses will have been granted, and we’re reviewing those existing licenses against the current situation but no decisions have been taken beyond going back again and reviewing,” the spokeswoman said. Britain’s opposition Labour party has accused Cameron of not condemning Israel’s behavior forcefully enough, a charge he rejects.

In July 2009, eight months after the conclusion of Cast Lead, the British government informed Israel that it was canceling five security export licenses and would not supply replacement parts and other equipment for Sa’ar 4.5 gunships because they participated in Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip earlier this year.

The embargo followed a government review of all British defense exports to Israel, which was announced three months ago. In total, the telegram said, Britain reviewed 182 licenses for arms exports to Israel, including 35 for exports to the Israel Navy. But it ultimately decided to cancel only five licenses, all relating to the Sa’ar 4.5 ships. The licenses in question apparently cover spare parts for the ship’s guns.

Redeployment serves Israel well
Maj. Gen. (ret.) Yaakov Amidror Monday August 4, 2014

Not sure I agree, but I’m just an armchair general and have not children being sent into harm’s way. I would, however, rename the article, ‘Digging in for a Long Protracted War’ or ‘How I Learned to Love the Rules of Engagement’ – LS

Israel has pulled back a large number of troops from inside the Gaza Strip. Once the remaining few tunnels are destroyed, the Israel Defense Forces will only leave a residual force along the border. The order of battle will shrink to the level that preceded the ground operation.

The troops will assume a better defensive posture that would not require any direct engagement with the Gaza Strip’s urban environment. They will essentially control the area in between the tunnels’ entry point inside Gaza Strip and the border fence on its perimeter.

The Diplomatic-Security Cabinet had a very clear objective when it authorized the ground offensive: destroying the tunnel network. The troops were told to limit their activity to those areas where the Israel-bound tunnels originated and their immediate surroundings.

With the tunnels taken care of, and without any new intelligence coming up, it was determined that the mission was accomplished. Keeping the troops inside any longer would have been disadvantageous. But now, having settled on a new tactical approach, Israel must decide about the next phase of Operation Protective Edge.

The conscripted army has shouldered most of the war effort, with the reserves serving in a supportive role. The younger troops will be the ones who go into Gaza in the event of a wide-scale ground invasion. Thus, to better prepare for such a contingency, it made sense to withdraw the troops and let them rest, resupply and recharge. Israeli troops would have to be at the top of their game if they were to endure a protracted campaign.

It is not just about seizing key parts of the Gaza Strip. The IDF would do that rather quickly. The problem is that the IDF would have to then begin demilitarizing the Gaza Strip by seizing weapon systems and arm-production facilities, as well as crackdown on terrorists. That would take months.

The IDF now has troops deployed along the entire border. This way they can tackle all the tunnels simultaneously and quickly. But this is not the best posture if one is to launch a large offensive. The IDF would be well served if it were to withdraw even further and position the troops in a battle-ready posture. It makes no sense to stretch them thin by deploying them along the entire length of the border.

When it comes to prosecuting the next phase of the operation, there are alternatives to a total occupation of the Gaza Strip, although that option should not be taken off the table, and it should be executable within days or hours.

Israel can afford to hold off on an occupation because Hamas has not been able to inflict significant damage on the homefront — thanks to the Iron Dome aerial defense system — and the threat the organization poses will likely diminish as it runs out of rockets (I believe it currently has between half and a quarter of what it had when the fighting began). Such a course of action would also let Israel gather more intelligence on Hamas.

The IDF would have fewer casualties by disengaging the enemy (especially if the troops remain vigilant and scrupulously follow the necessary procedures). Even as it prepares for a ground invasion, the IDF must continue targeting Hamas with precision-guided munitions and pinpointed attacks.

Israel has much more staying power because it has been able to maintain its strength, unlike Hamas, which cannot resupply and make up for the various shortfalls. That is why the pullout has won across-the board support. Israelis see eye to eye on this tactical move, be they proponents of an all-out campaign to conquer Gaza because this is the only way to solve the problem, or advocates of a new arrangement with Hamas, knowing full well that it will most likely collapse in a few years. Widening the scope of the operation without pulling out first would have turned out to be a colossal error. It is a good thing this was averted.

Israel must provide Gazans with humanitarian relief because their situation is grave and will only worsen, primarily because Hamas has launched rockets from civilian sites, resulting in many Gazans being hurt after Israel targeted rocket launching sites, command posts, manufacturing facilities and arms depots.

The number of fatalities in Gaza will likely reach 2,000 because there are some dead Hamas fighters who are unaccounted for. Some 10,000 Gazans will have been injured by the end of the conflict, and the number of internally displaced persons, who will have nothing but rubble to return to, will be much higher than that.

This terrible tragedy is of Hamas’ own making. That said, Israel must not ignore it.

Hamas and Its Media Allies Summed Up in One Picture
By Dave Blount August 4, 2014

This illustrates the Hamas strategy:

I have two beautiful grandchildren this age and cannot even imagine doing this sort of thing to them or any other defenseless child. What we are dealing with here is pure evil. Sick bastards.-LS

Of course this strategy would be useless if the liberal media were not on their side. But they know that when these kids get maimed, the media will squeeze every last drop of blood out them on behalf of their shared cause, the eradication of Western Civilization.

It’s no wonder Muslims and the liberals who run the media make such good allies, despite their superficial differences. They have the same moral stature.

Horrifyingly, the strategy may be working. The malevolent vileness of Hamas, spun into sanctimonious victimhood by the liberal media, is winning public opinion to the side of the bad guys:

A demonstration drew thousands to the White House and the streets of downtown Washington on Saturday afternoon as participants from across the country called for an end to the continued violence between Israel and Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

“Free, free Palestine, killing children is a crime,” the crowd chanted, several holding Palestinian flags, cardboard boxes decorated as coffins and posters with graphic images of the wounded.

Protester Beyhand Trock, 59, of Bethesda, is married to a Jew. Yet she proclaimed:

“People have to leave their racism at the door. Palestinians have the right to exist as humans and not under occupation.”

Israel must let Muslims kill them for being Jewish because doing anything to stop the thousands of rockets that have rained down on the civilian population would be racist.

Pro-Israel demonstrators were there too — but not for long:

Dan Merica, associate producer for CNN Politics has sent out a series of photos and reports on social media about Israel supporters being evacuated in police vans from in front of the White House after being surrounded by menacing Hamas supporters.

Pure evil is on the rise. If we don’t stop it, it will prevail.

Iran’s elite Guards fighting in Iraq to push back Islamic State
Reuters
By By Babak Dehghanpisheh
14 hours ago

For now, ISIS seems a small blessing for Israel by pitting Sunni against Shite. Soon they will be knocking on Iran’s door and it will be interesting to see how they respond to a real threat on THEIR homeland. Iran has invested billions in long range warfare. Handling a threat at their border is a different story. Let’s see how they like it. – LS

BEIRUT (Reuters) – In early July, hundreds of mourners gathered for the funeral of Kamal Shirkhani in Lavasan, a small town northeast of the Iranian capital Tehran. The crowd carried the coffin past posters which showed Shirkhani in the green uniform of the elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and identified him as a colonel.

Shirkhani did not die in a battle inside Iran. He was killed nearly a hundred miles away from the Iranian border in a mortar attack by the militants of the Islamic State “while carrying out his mission to defend” a revered Shiite shrine in the city of Samarra, according to a report on Basij Press, a news site affiliated with the Basij militia which is overseen by the Revolutionary Guards.

Shirkhani’s death deep inside Iraq shows that Iran has committed boots on the ground to defend Iraqi territory.

At least two other members of the Guards have also been killed in Iraq since mid-June, a clear sign that Shi’ite power Iran has ramped up its military presence in Iraq to counter the threat of Sunni fighters from the Islamic State, an al Qaeda offshoot that seized much of northern Iraq since June.

Iraqi security forces largely dissolved in the path of the Islamic State’s advance on Baghdad, proving that the Shi’ite-led government could hardly defend itself.

In late June, a spokesman for the militant group, formerly known as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, announced that it was shortening its name to the Islamic State and would rule its territory as a Sunni Muslim caliphate overseen by its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

The Islamic State considers Shi’ites to be heretics deserving of death, and made a point of filming its fighters gunning down Shi’ite prisoners as it advanced. Iranian and Iraqi Shi’ites see it as an existential threat.

Iran, with deep ties both to the Iraqi government and to a number of Iraqi Shiite militias, stepped in to stop it.

Senior Iranian officials have denied that any Revolutionary Guard fighters or commanders are inside Iraq. But there’s no doubt that prominent politicians and clerics in Iran have been rattled by the rapid gains of the Islamic State and the threat it poses, not only to the Iraqi government but to Iran itself.

Iranian president Hassan Rouhani pledged his government’s support to help counter the threat posed by the Islamic State if the Iraqi government requested it.

In late June, a senior Iranian cleric, Ayatollah Nasser Makarem Shirazi, said in a statement that waging jihad to defend all of Iraq, particularly holy shrines that are visited each year by millions of Shi’ite pilgrims, is “obligatory,” according to a report from the semi-official Fars News agency.

Samarra, a city on the Tigris north of Baghdad where Colonel Shirkhani was killed, is site of the first of those major Shi’ite shrines to land in the path of the Sunni fighters’ advance. Iraqi government forces and Shi’ite militia swiftly mobilized and have so far succeeded in defending it. The deaths of Shirkhani and two others is proof that Iranians were part of that successful response.

“When the Islamic State reached Shi’ite areas in Iraq, the Revolutionary Guards had forces there who fought them,” said Mohsen Sazegara, a founding member of the Revolutionary Guards who is now a U.S.-based dissident. “A number of them were killed.”

Qassem Soleimani, the head of the external operations branch of the Guards known as the Quds Force, recently traveled to Baghdad, according to reports from a number of Iranian news sites. An Iraqi parliamentarian posted a picture on the Internet of himself with Soleimani in Iraq in mid-June.

Regional experts believe the Revolutionary Guards have increased the supply of weapons and funds to proxy militant groups inside Iraq in recent weeks.

OPPONENTS BLAME TEHRAN

Critics of Iraq’s Shi’ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki blame him for excluding Sunnis from government in Baghdad, inflaming sectarian tension and allowing hardliners like the Islamic State to cultivate support among Iraq’s Sunni community.

The Islamic State’s rise was partly Iran’s fault for doing too little to rein in the sectarian impulses of its ally Maliki, said Reza Marashi, a former Iran desk officer at the U.S. State Department who is now the director of research for the National Iranian American Council. “Iran overplayed its hand. They overreached,” he said. “By seeking to advance its interests with its Iraqi allies at the expense of other foreign and domestic players, look at what’s happened: the Maliki government helped give rise to ISIS.” Throughout the U.S. occupation of Iraq, which ended in 2011, Washington accused Tehran of funding, arming and training Shi’ite militant proxy groups behind some of the deadliest attacks against U.S. troops and revenge killings of Sunnis. Those militia groups have re-emerged in recent months to join the fight against Sunni fighters.

A high-level Iraqi security official who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak to the media said Iran had now mobilized up to 20,000 Iraqi militiamen from groups it funded and trained.

The fighters are spread south from Samarra to Baghdad and down into the farming communities south of the capital, the official added.

Several thousand Iraqi fighters were also brought back from Syria where they were helping defend the government of president Bashar al-Assad, the same official said. Some have now joined units of security forces from the Iraqi Ministry of Interior and Ministry of Defence. Some of the groups were deployed since the spring with the blessing of Maliki, and put under a military chain of command, as the Iraqi security forces first struggled fighting in western Iraq and in Baghdad’s rural hinterlands.

In addition, there are dozens of members of Lebanon’s Shi’ite militia Hezbollah in Iraq, sources familiar with the group say. Hezbollah militants have been fighting in Syria to support Assad for more than two years. Their presence in Iraq now is a sign of the broader regional dimensions of the conflict which has pitted Shi’ite Muslims against Sunnis.

Unlike the fighters in Syria, the Hezbollah militants in Iraq are battle-hardened veterans leading and supervising operations, sources familiar with the group say. One Hezbollah commander, a veteran of the 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel named Ibrahim al Haj, was killed near Mosul recently.

The presence of the Iranian Guards in Iraq also comes after months of committed military support from the Quds Force in Syria. Senior Iranian officials had denied Guard personnel were there until websites linked to the Guards and Basij began publishing pictures and posting video of the funerals of Iranian fighters killed in Syria.

Still, it was more than a year after the beginning of the Syrian conflict before reports of the first Guardsman killed there began to circulate on the web. In comparison, the three Guardsmen killed in Iraq since mid-June appear to indicate that the Guards have leapt more quickly into the fight in Iraq.

Aside from Shirkhani, the funeral for a second Guardsman killed in Samarra, Shojaat Alamdari Mourjani, was held in the southern city of Shiraz on July 4th. Mourjani, a pilot, “reached martyrdom while defending the shrine in Samarra,” according to a report from the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA).

The IRNA report does not give any further details whether Mourjani was killed in ground combat or while flying a combat mission. Pictures published by the Fars News agency show posters pasted on Mourjani’s casket with him wearing the uniform of the Revolutionary Guards and identifying him as a colonel.

Only a couple of days before Mourjani’s funeral, the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies published a report that Iran had delivered a handful of SU-25 ground attack aircraft to Iraq. The report notes that the only SU-25 aircraft owned by Iran are operated by the IRGC and that, “these aircraft were likely delivered to Iraq by Iranian pilots” but it is unclear who would be operating the aircraft once in Iraq.

The death of a third Guardsman, Ali Reza Moshajari, was reported by the Hengam News site in mid-June. The report, citing a Lebanese news source, included pictures of Moshajari in Revolutionary Guard uniform and noted that he had been killed in Kerbala while defending holy sites there, southwest of Baghdad.

Unlike in Samarra, there has not been sustained fighting around mainly Shi’ite Kerbala, although there have been occasional attacks in the area. The report, which also included a photo of Moshajari’s bloodied face framed by a white burial shroud, does not present any more details of the circumstances of Moshajari’s death. His funeral was attended by prominent Guardsmen, including Hussein Allah Karam, a former Guard commander who helped found a radical militant group, according to Hengam News.

Unlike in Syria, where Iran has staunchly defended Assad, a member of the Shi’ite offshoot Alawite sect fighting mainly Sunni opponents, Washington and other Western capitals hope Tehran will use its leverage in Iraq to help push for a more inclusive government in Baghdad to help defuse the crisis.

“The Iranians have seemingly calculated that they cannot preserve their interests in Syria without Bashar Assad, They have not made those same calculations about Maliki,” Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran analyst with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, wrote in an email.

“But the question is whether there exists a unifying alternative to Maliki, an Iraqi politician who’s both a steadfast Iranian ally and still palatable to Iraqi Sunnis and Kurds.”

(Reporting by Babak Dehghanpisheh; Additional reportin by Mariam Karouny in Beirut and Ned Parker in Baghdad; Editing by Peter Graff)

Israel spied on Kerry’s calls during 2013 peace talks, magazine reports
Published August 03, 2014·
FoxNews.com

How about 2014?-LS

Israel’s intelligence service intercepted Secretary of State John Kerry’s phone calls during 2013 Middle East peace negotiations, according to the German publication Spiegel.

Intelligence agents from another country also could have overheard Kerry’s conversations as he tried to help reach a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, several sources reportedly told the publication.

The reported allegations are being made during a difficult time between the United States and Israel, with Kerry being accused of favoring Hamas in recent negotiations to end a 27-day conflict between Israel and the Palestinian-backed Islamic terror group.

In addition, Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly was upset with the White House recently for trying to force a temporary cease-fire between the sides.

And on Sunday, the State Department issued a statement critical of an Israel missile attack in the Hamas-occupied Gaza strip that apparently struck a humanitarian facility sheltering 3,000 people displaced from the conflict.

Agency spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the United States was “appalled” by the attack Sunday, which purportedly killing 10 Palestinian civilians.

“We once again stress that Israel must do more to meet its own standards and avoid civilian casualties,” she said.

The agency did not respond to a request to verify the alleged eavesdropping on Kerry.

Kerry reportedly used encrypted and non-secured phone lines during the talks. And the signals were intercepted when being transmitted unencrypted via satellite, the publication reports.