Archive for the ‘Iran in Yemen’ category

Saudi air chief killed in Yemeni rebel Scud attack on Khamis Mushayt air base

June 12, 2015

Saudi air chief killed in Yemeni rebel Scud attack on Khamis Mushayt air base, DEBKAfile, June 12, 2015

General_Mohammed_bin_Ahmed_Al-Shaalan_AF-commander_10.6.15Saudi Air Force Commander Lt. Gen. Muhammad bin Ahmed Al-Shaalan slain by Yemeni Scud

The Saudi Air Force Commander Lt. Gen. Muhammad bin Ahmed Al-Shaalan was killed in a Scud missile cross-border attack by Yemeni Houthi rebels on the big King Khalid Air Base at Khamis Mushayt in the southwestern Asir region of Saudi Arabia, DEBKAfile reports. The attack took place on June 6, but his death was concealed under a blanket of secrecy until Wednesday, June 10.

The largest Saudi air base, it is from there that the kingdom has for last two and a half months waged its air campaign to end the Yemeni insurgency. Saudi and coalition air strikes, directed against the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, their allies from the Yemeni army and from local tribes, have killed an estimated 2,000 people, some of them civilians, including women and children.

DEBKAfile’s military sources in the Gulf remarked that even the tardy official disclosure of Gen. Al-Shaalan’s death Wednesday left more questions than answers. The terse three-line announcement said: “The Commander of Saudi Royal Air Forces Lieutenant General Mohammed bin Ahmed Al-Shaalan died Wednesday during a working trip outside the kingdom from a heart attack.”

No information was provided about the nature of his putative “working trip,” its destination and purpose – or even the date of his funeral.

Our military sources report that the Houthis’ Scud attack caught the Saudis unawares. The only reaction from the air base came from the American teams operating Patriot counter-missile batteries. They tried to shoot down the incoming missiles and managed to intercept only two or three out of a barrage of 15.

The US has deployed Patriots at Khamis Mushayt to shield the special operations units and drones fighting Al Qaeda in Arabia (AQIP). But since the start of the Yemen civil war, American drones have been feeding the Saudi Air Force with intelligence about Houthi targets and movements.

The Yemen assault on the Saudi air base represented a major escalation in the Yemeni war, with effect on the complex US relationship with Iran in the context of the Yemen conflict.

DEBKAfile’s military sources assert that the Houthi Scud crews undoubtedly received precise data from Iranian intelligence about the whereabouts of Gen. Al-Shalaan and his top staff on the day of their attack. With this information, they were able to time their attack for 3 am before dawn and target the base’s living quarters and aircraft hangars.

Tehran most likely put the Houthis up to the Scud attack, both to damage the base from which air strikes are launched against them and as payback for the intelligence US drones are providing for those strikes.

Riyadh concealed the circumstances of the air chief’s death to avoid affecting the morale of Saudi combatants taking part in the Yemen war. The Obama administration also had in interest in drawing a discreet veil over the incident so as not to jeopardize the nuclear negotiations with Iran as they enter the final lap before the June 30 deadline.

Directive 11: Obama’s Secret Islamist Plan

June 8, 2015

Directive 11: Obama’s Secret Islamist Plan, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, June 8, 2015

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What little we know about the resulting classified 18-page report is that it used euphemisms to call for aiding Islamist takeovers in parts of the Middle East. Four countries were targeted. Of those four, we only know for certain that Egypt and Yemen were on the list. But we do know for certain the outcome.

Obama’s insistence that human rights be made a core national security interest paved the way for political and military interventions on behalf of Islamists. Obama had never been interested in human rights; his record of pandering to the world’s worst genocide plotters and perpetrators from Iran to Turkey to Sudan made that clear. When he said “human rights”, Obama really meant “Islamist power.”

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Behind the rise of ISIS, the Libyan Civil War, the unrest in Egypt, Yemen and across the region may be a single classified document.

That document is Presidential Study Directive 11.

You can download Presidential Study Directive 10 on “Preventing Mass Atrocities” from the White House website, but as of yet no one has been able to properly pry number 11 out of Obama Inc.

Presidential Study Directive 10, in which Obama asked for non-military options for stopping genocide, proved to be a miserable failure. The Atrocities Prevention Board’s only use was as a fig leaf for a policy that had caused the atrocities. And the cause of those atrocities is buried inside Directive 11.

With Obama’s typical use of technicalities to avoid transparency, Directive 11 was used to guide policy in the Middle East without being officially submitted. It is possible that it will never be submitted. And yet the Directive 11 group was described as “just finishing its work” when the Arab Spring began.

That is certainly one way of looking at it.

Directive 11 brought together activists and operatives at multiple agencies to come up with a “tailored” approach for regime change in each country. The goal was to “manage” the political transitions. It tossed aside American national security interests by insisting that Islamist regimes would be equally committed to fighting terrorism and cooperating with Israel. Its greatest gymnastic feat may have been arguing that the best way to achieve political stability in the region was through regime change.

What little we know about the resulting classified 18-page report is that it used euphemisms to call for aiding Islamist takeovers in parts of the Middle East. Four countries were targeted. Of those four, we only know for certain that Egypt and Yemen were on the list. But we do know for certain the outcome.

Egypt fell to the Muslim Brotherhood, which collaborated with Al Qaeda, Hamas and Iran, before being undone by a counterrevolution. Yemen is currently controlled by Iran’s Houthi terrorists and Al Qaeda.

According to a New York Times story, Obama’s Directive 11 agenda appeared to resemble Che or Castro as he “pressed his advisers to study popular uprisings in Latin America, Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia to determine which ones worked and which did not.”

The story also noted that he “is drawn to Indonesia, where he spent several years as a child, which ousted its longtime leader, Suharto, in 1998.”

The coup against Mubarak with its coordination of liberals, Islamists and the military did strongly resemble what happened in Indonesia. The most ominous similarity may be that the Muslim mobs in Indonesia targeted the Chinese, many of whom are Christians, while the Muslim mobs in Egypt targeted Coptic Christians.

Both were talented groups that were disproportionately successful because they lacked the traditional Islamic hostility to education, integrity and achievement. Islamist demagogues had succeeded in associating them with the regime and promoted attacks on them as part of the anti-regime protests.

Chinese stores were looted and thousands of Chinese women were raped by rampaging Muslims. Just as in Egypt, the protesters and their media allies spread the claim that these atrocities committed by Muslim protesters were the work of the regime’s secret police. That remains the official story today.

Suharto’s fall paved the way for the rise of the Prosperous Justice Party, which was founded a few months after his resignation and has become one of the largest parties in the Indonesian parliament. PJP was set up by the Muslim Brotherhood’s local arm in Indonesia.

His successor, Bacharuddin Jusuf Habibie, was more explicitly Islamist than Suharto and his Association of Muslim Intellectuals (ICMI) conducted a campaign against Christians, Hindus and Buddhists. It helped purge non-Muslims from government while Islamizing the government and Indonesia’s key institutions.

Habibie had been the Chairman of ICMI and ICMI’s Islamists played a key role in moving Suharto out and moving him in. It was obvious why Obama would have considered the Islamization of Indonesia and the purge of Christians under the guise of democratic political change to be a fine example for Egypt.

While we don’t know the full contents of Directive 11 and unless a new administration decides to open the vaults of the old regime, we may never know. But we do know a good deal about the results.

In its own way, PSD-10 tells us something about PSD-11.

Obama’s insistence that human rights be made a core national security interest paved the way for political and military interventions on behalf of Islamists. Obama had never been interested in human rights; his record of pandering to the world’s worst genocide plotters and perpetrators from Iran to Turkey to Sudan made that clear. When he said “human rights”, Obama really meant “Islamist power”.

That was why Obama refused to intervene when the Muslim Brotherhood conducted real genocide in Sudan, but did interfere in Libya on behalf of the Brotherhood using a phony claim of genocide.

Positioning Samantha Power in the Office of Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights at the National Security Council was part of the process that made over the NSC from national security to servicing a progressive wish list of Islamist terrorist groups that were to be transformed into national governments.

Power, along with Gayle Smith and Dennis Ross, led the Directive 11 project.

Secret proceedings were used to spawn regime change infrastructure. Some of these tools had official names, such as “The Office of The Special Coordinator For Middle East Transitions” which currently reports directly to former ambassador Anne Patterson who told Coptic Christians not to protest against Morsi. After being driven out of the country by angry mobs over her support for the Muslim Brotherhood tyranny, she was promoted to Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs.

“The Office” is still focused on “outreach to emergent political, economic and social forces in Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya” even though counterrevolutions have pushed out Islamists in Egypt and Tunisia, while Libya is in the middle of a bloody civil war in which an alliance of the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda controls the nation’s capital.

But even as Morsi’s abuses of power were driving outraged Egyptians into the streets, Gayle Smith, one of the three leaders of Directive 11, reached out to the “International Union of Muslim Scholars”, a Muslim Brotherhood group that supported terrorism against American soldiers in Iraq and which was now looking for American support for its Islamist terrorist brigades in the Syrian Civil War.

The men and women responsible for Directive 11 were making it clear that they had learned nothing.

Directive 11 ended up giving us the Islamic State through its Arab Spring. PSD-11’s twisted claim that regional stability could only be achieved through Islamist regime change tore apart the region and turned it into a playground for terrorists. ISIS is simply the biggest and toughest of the terror groups that were able to thrive in the environment of violent civil wars created by Obama’s Directive 11.

During the Arab Spring protests, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit had told Hillary Clinton that his government could not hand over power to the Muslim Brotherhood. “My daughter gets to go out at night. And, God damn it, I’m not going to turn this country over to people who will turn back the clock on her rights.”

But that was exactly what Hillary Clinton and Obama were after. And they got it. Countless women were raped in Egypt. Beyond Egypt, Hillary and Obama’s policy saw Yazidi women actually sold into slavery.

Directive 11 codified the left’s dirty alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood into our foreign policy. Its support for Islamist takeovers paved the way for riots and civil wars culminating in the violence that birthed ISIS and covered the region in blood.

And it remains secret to this day.

Shoshana Bryen: The Kurds: A Guide for U.S. Policymakers

June 7, 2015

Shoshana Bryen: The Kurds: A Guide for U.S. Policymakerssecurefreedom via You Tube, June 5, 2015

Shoshana Bryen, Senior Director, Jewish Policy Center; Former Senior Director for Security Policy, Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA):

 

Two major Mid East escalations: Yemeni rebels fire Scuds at Saudi air base. ISIS warns Syrian rebels

June 6, 2015

Two major Mid East escalations: Yemeni rebels fire Scuds at Saudi air base. ISIS warns Syrian rebels, DEBKAfile, June 6, 2015

us_patriot_missiles_saudi_arabia_6.6.15US Patriots stationed in Saudi Arabia

Saudi military sources reported Saturday, June 6, that Patriot air defense batteries had intercepted Scud missiles fired by Yemen Houthi rebels against the kingdom’s largest air base at Khamis al-Mushait in the south west. It is from there that Saudi jets take off to strike the Yemeni rebels. DEBKAfile’s military sources report that the Patriot anti-missile systems, which were activated for the first time, were manned by American teams. This was the first direct US military intervention on the Saudi side of the Yemen conflict.

It was also the first time that Houthi rebels or their allies had fired Scud missile into the oil kingdom. Our sources add that the launch was supervised by Hizballah officers. They were transferred by Tehran to Yemen to ratchet up the conflict – although US, Saudi, Yemeni government and Houthi representatives meeting secretly in Muscat Friday agreed to attend a peace conference in Geneva this month.

Nonetheless, through Friday night and Saturday morning, Houthi forces and allied military units kept on battering at Saudi army and National Guard defense lines, in an effort to break through and seize territory in the kingdom’s southern provinces. The insurgents were evidently grabbing for strategic assets to strengthen their hand at the peace conference.

Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is also juggling his chips on the deteriorating Syrian warfront. In the coming hours, he is widely expected to announce the activation of the mutual defense pact signed between Iran and Syria in 2006, under which each signatory is committed to send military troops if necessary to defend its partner.

Thursday, June 4, Khamenei fired sharp verbal arrows at the Obama administration: “The United States tolerates extremist groups in Syria and Iraq and even helps them in secret,” he charged.

Our military sources add that although various Mid East publications, especially in Lebanon, are reporting that Iran has already sent units in numbers ranging from 7.000 to 15,000 troops to Syria, none have so far landed, except for the Shiite militias brought over at an earlier stage of the Syrian conflict. The expected Khamenei announcement may change this situation.

ISIS was not waiting. Saturday morning, the group issued a warning to the Syrian rebel forces fighting in the south – the Deraa sector of southern Syria near the meeting point of the Jordanian and Israeli borders and the Quneitra sector opposite the Israeli Golan. They were ordered to break off contact with the US Central Command Forward Jordan-CF-J which is located north of Amman, and the IDF operations command center in northern Israel. Any Syrian rebels remaining in contact with the two command centers would be treated as infidels and liable to the extreme penalty of beheading, the group warned.

The impression of ominous events brewing in the regime was rounded off Friday night by an unusual announcement by the Israeli army spokesman that Iron Dome anti-missile batteries had been deployed around towns and other locations in the south, although no reference was made to any fresh rocket attacks expected from the Gaza Strip. DEBKAfile adds: The first batteries were arrayed Thursday night, June 4, at vulnerable points in southern Israel – from the southernmost Port of Eilat on the Gulf of Aqaba to the western Port of Ashdod on the Mediterranean.

Why the Snub? Saudis Know Obama’s Replaced Them With Iran

May 11, 2015

Why the Snub? Saudis Know Obama’s Replaced Them With Iran, Commentary Magazine, May 11, 2015

Will Obama get the message and change course? That’s even less likely than him embracing Netanyahu. An administration that came into office determined to create more daylight between itself and Israel has now embarked on a policy designed to alienate all of America’s traditional allies in order to appease a vicious Islamist foe. Anyone who thinks this will turn out well simply isn’t paying attention to the same events that have left the Saudis and other U.S. allies thinking they are more or less being left on their own.

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If the Obama administration thought it’s half-hearted efforts to make up with Saudi Arabia and other Arab states outraged by its Iran policies, it’s got another thing coming. On Sunday, the Saudis told the White House that King Salman would not be attending meetings there or at Camp David this week. Later, Bahrain said its King Hamad would skip the same meeting. The snubs are as pointed as President Obama’s recent signals that he has no intention of meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu anytime soon. But while the president has little interest in patching things up with America’s sole democratic ally in the Middle East, he was quite interested in making nice with the Saudi monarch. But the Saudis and Bahrain, like the Israelis, are deeply concerned by the U.S. effort to create a new détente with Iran. It’s not just that Salman apparently has better things to do than to schmooze with Obama. The president may have thought he could essentially replace the Saudis with Iran as the lynchpin of a new Middle East strategic vision without paying a price. But the Saudis understandably want no part of this. The result will be a region made even more dangerous by the Arabs, as well as the Israelis, coming to the realization that they can’t rely on Washington.

The conceit of Obama’s strategy rests on more than a weak deal that he hopes will be enough to postpone the question of an Iranian bomb even as it essentially anoints Tehran as a threshold nuclear power. Rather it is predicated on the notion that once Iran is allowed to, in the president’s phrase, “get right with the world” and reintegrated into the global economy, it can be counted on to keep peace in a region from which Obama wants to withdraw.

That’s why the administration has tacitly allied itself with Iran in the struggle against ISIS in Iraq and, bowed to Tehran’s desire to leave its ally Bashar Assad in power in Syria even as they sought to restrain the Islamist regime’s Houthi friends in their effort to take over Yemen. But given Iran’s desire for regional hegemony, it’s reliance on terrorist allies like Hezbollah and Hamas as well as Assad’s criminal regime, the notion that it is a force for stability is as much a delusion as the idea that it is giving up its quest for nuclear weapons.

Just as important, the Obama foreign policy team was convinced that it could afford to ignore the Saudis’ concerns about their intended entente with Iran with as much impunity as it did those of Israel. As one expert quoted in the New York Times said, the Saudis have no alternative to the U.S. as a superpower ally. But it has not failed to escape their attention that “there’s a growing perception at the White House that the U.S. and Saudi Arabia are friends but not allies, while the U.S. and Iran are allies but not friends.”

Under the circumstances, the Saudis are now prepared to show the president the extent of their disdain. But it may not stop at that.

The Saudis, like the Israelis, know that America’s promises about both the nuclear deal and the future of the region are not worth much. The Iranians have been granted two paths to a bomb by the United States. One is by cheating via the easily evaded restrictions in the nuclear pact with little fear of sanctions being snapped back. The other is by patiently waiting for it to expire while continuing their nuclear research with little interference from a West that will be far more interested in trade than anything else.

That leaves the Saudis thinking they may need to procure their own nuclear option and to flex their muscles, as they have been doing in Yemen. It also sets up the region for what may be an ongoing series of confrontations between Iranian allies and the Saudis and their friends, a recipe for disaster.

Will Obama get the message and change course? That’s even less likely than him embracing Netanyahu. An administration that came into office determined to create more daylight between itself and Israel has now embarked on a policy designed to alienate all of America’s traditional allies in order to appease a vicious Islamist foe. Anyone who thinks this will turn out well simply isn’t paying attention to the same events that have left the Saudis and other U.S. allies thinking they are more or less being left on their own.

Hizballah terror attack on Golan stokes face-off between Israel and the Syrian-Hizballah alliance

April 27, 2015

Hizballah terror attack on Golan stokes face-off between Israel and the Syrian-Hizballah alliance, DEBKAfile, April 27, 2015

Israel over SyriaAlleged Israeli air strikes over Syria

Last week, the Obama administration managed to hold back the clash threatening to blow up opposite Yemen by the US, Saudi and Egyptian navies against an Iran convoy. Washington is likely to lean hard on Israel and Tehran to make sure that the current sparring does not run out of control and explode into a military showdown.

If this happened, Tehran would likely refuse to sign the nuclear deal which is nearing conclusion with the world powers led by the US.

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According to Arab media, Israeli executed its third strike against Syrian and Hizballah targets in the Qalamoun area on the Syrian Lebanese border Sunday night, April 26 – shortly after Hizballah attempted to plant an explosive device near an Israeli Golan military post.

But then, Monday morning, anonymous Israeli sources improbably attributed this air strike to possible Syrian opposition action by the Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front.

Hizballah was meanwhile identified as responsible for the thwarted bomb attack on the Israeli Sheita military post guarding the northern Golan border with Syria. “Four terrorists placed an explosive on a fence near Majdel Shams. The air force thwarted the attack, killing all four,” a military spokesman said.
On the face of it, Israel’s purported third air strike over Syrian territory in five days, this time targeting the Wadi a-Sheikh and Al Abasiya regions of the Qalamoun mountains, was in retaliation for the thwarted Hizballah attack on the Golan.

However, DEBKAfile’s military sources give the exchange of blows a different slant: It is more likely to be the onset of a systematic Israeli campaign to wipe out Syrian-Hizballah military bases repositioned on the mountain range as depots and launching-pads for firing long-range missiles into Israel from Syrian territory.

A clue to this objective was offered Sunday night by Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon in a firm statement that Israel would not permit Iran to arm Hizballah with advanced weapons. He did not explicitly admit to the air strikes of last Wednesday and Saturday,which were reported by Arab TV stations to have hit surface-to-surface missile depots on Qalamoun. But he nearly gave the game away. He accused Iran of trying to arm Hizballah with advanced weapons by every possible route. “We will not allow the delivery of sophisticated weapons to terrorist groups, Hizballah in particular… or allow Hizballah to establish a terror infrastructure on our borders with Israel,” the minister said, adding: “We know how to lay hands on anyone who threatens Israeli citizens, along our borders or even far from them.”

In a previous report, DEBKAfile disclosed that Syrian and Hizballah forces were on the point of conducting an offensive, under Iranian Revolutionary Guards officers, to flush Syrian rebels out of their last remaining pockets on the mountain slopes in order to clear the Syrian-Lebanese highway link for troop and arms convoys between the two countries.

We also reported that Hizballah had already relocated substantial military manpower and missile stocks from northern Lebanon to an enclave it now controlled on the Syrian Qalamoun mountains.

The anonymous sources’ attribution of Sunday night’s air strike to the Nusra Front sounded more like a lame cover story than a serious supposition. The Syrian opposition has never managed to use air power against the armies of Assad and Hizballah. Nusra did capture a few fighter-bombers from the enemy, but never acquired the technical infrastructure, ordnance or trained pilots to fly them.

This improbable theory would in any case contradict the warning message Israel was clearly addressing to Damascus and Hizballah that any violations of Israel’s red lines on their part would be met with action to knock over their military set-up on their shared border, section by section – even at the risk of a showdown with Iran in the Syrian arena.

Israel’s destruction of the Qalamoun war machine would have four far-reaching ramifications:

1. It would impair the Syrian army’s capabilities and strike at the heart of the Assad regime.

2. It would give a strong leg up to the Syrian opposition, especially Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front, which is emerging as the strongest and most effective paramilitary force in the Syrian opposition camp.

3. It would curtail the transformation of the Qalamoun Mts. into Hizballah’s most important forward base of attack against Israel.

It is hard to see Tehran standing by if the sparring escalates further and Israel continues to punch away at the Islamic Republic’s two most valuable strategic assets. Direct action by Iran would not be its style. Tehran would rather put the Syrian army and Hizballah up to stepping up its campaign of terror against Israel, possibly by expanding the arena across two borders into Lebanon and Israel itself.

Last week, the Obama administration managed to hold back the clash threatening to blow up opposite Yemen by the US, Saudi and Egyptian navies against an Iran convoy. Washington is likely to lean hard on Israel and Tehran to make sure that the current sparring does not run out of control and explode into a military showdown.

If this happened, Tehran would likely refuse to sign the nuclear deal which is nearing conclusion with the world powers led by the US.

China Warns Of Rising Nuclear Threat From North Korea – Lou Dobbs

April 24, 2015

China Warns Of Rising Nuclear Threat From North Korea – Lou Dobbs, Fox News via You Tube, April 23, 2015

(The first four minutes is about the mess in Yemen and the last four minutes is about the North Korean nuclear threat. — DM)

 

Empowering Iran

April 24, 2015

Empowering Iran, Weekly Standard, Lee Smith, May 4, 2015 (print date)

Obama’s foreign policy legacy will be to have tied America’s fortunes to an imperial and nuclear Iran governed by an ambitious and ruthless anti-American regime.

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Last week, the Obama administration urged Saudi Arabia to halt its air campaign against the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels who have wrested control of the Yemeni capital Sanaa. The White House’s professed concern was that Riyadh’s Operation Decisive Storm was killing too many civilians. Unfortunately, that’s hardly surprising since Iranian proxies, like Hezbollah and Hamas, typically stash their missiles and rockets in civilian areas. Presumably, the Houthis have read from the same playbook. The effect of the administration’s diplomatic efforts, then, was to protect Iranian arms in Yemen. And this, in turn, the administration no doubt believes, protects Obama’s nuclear agreement with Iran.

Houthi rallyHouthis rally against Saudi Arabia, April 1. Newscom

In public, Obama is eager to show that the United States still stands by its traditional allies, like Riyadh. But behind the scenes, it’s clear that the White House’s real priority is partnering with Iran. Sure, the White House dispatched an aircraft carrier to the Arabian Sea, but this was not to stop Iran from shipping arms to the Houthis. As Obama himself explained, America’s blue-water Navy was present to ensure freedom of navigation in the Persian Gulf. The notion that the White House really intended to interdict Iranian arms shipments beggars belief. For more than four years Obama has done nothing to stop Bashar al-Assad from killing nearly a quarter of a million people in Syria, lest he endanger his nuclear agreement with Iran. With a deal so close, Obama is certainly not going to risk what he sees as the capstone of his foreign policy legacy by disarming Iranian allies in Yemen.

The problem is that by protecting his nuclear agreement with Iran, the president has protected and empowered the Islamic Republic. Tehran may boast of controlling four Arab capitals, but the reality is that its regional position is a house of cards. Pull out one of those Arab capitals, or the nuclear program, and Iran’s burgeoning empire quickly collapses. It’s Obama who is propping it up.

It’s interesting to imagine how these last six years might have gone for the Islamic Republic had the White House not been so determined to have a nuclear deal. Perhaps the Tehran regime would have been toppled when the Green Movement took to the streets in June 2009 to protest a fraudulent election if the American government had decided to back the opposition early, openly, and resourcefully. Perhaps another administration would at least have seen that uprising as an opportunity to gain leverage over the Iranian regime. Not Obama. He wanted a nuclear deal with the existing regime.

Another White House might have backed the Syrian rebels in order to bring down Assad. Indeed, a good portion of Obama’s cabinet counseled as much. To topple Tehran’s key Arab ally would have been the biggest strategic setback to Iran in 20 years, said Gen. James Mattis. Obama chose to leave Assad alone, and even ignored his own red line against the use of chemical weapons. Instead of the airstrikes he threatened on Syrian regime targets, Obama made a deal to ostensibly remove the chemical weapons that Assad is still employing.

As Assad’s position became weaker, Hezbollah entered the Syrian war to prop him up. The Iranian-backed militia was stretched thin between Syria and Lebanon, but the Obama administration helped the terrorist organization cover its flank by sharing intelligence to keep Sunni car bombs out of Hezbollah strongholds in Beirut. Another administration might have understood this as an opportunity to weaken Iran’s position in Damascus and Beirut, but not Obama. He had his eyes on the prize.

In sum, over the last six years, almost all of Iran’s advances in the region, including its move into Iraq to fill the vacuum in Baghdad after the American withdrawal from that country, has taken place with either the overt or tacit assistance of Obama. The White House brags about it. Israel might have attacked Iranian nuclear facilities, as one administration official told the press, but we deterred Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from striking. If the Iranians strut with confidence these days, that’s because they understand who has their back.

The nuclear deal, as the president has explained, means that within a little more than a decade, Iran’s breakout time will be down to zero—which is a nice way of saying the clerical regime will have the bomb. The likely result is that the agreement will ensure Iran’s regional position long after Obama’s presidency is around to safeguard it. It will strengthen the hand of the hardliners. It is not Rouhani or Zarif or other so-called moderates who hold the nuclear file, but Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guard Corps. And in the future, American policymakers will have a vital interest in ensuring there are no internal regime fights over who controls the bomb.

In other words, Obama’s foreign policy legacy will be to have tied America’s fortunes to an imperial and nuclear Iran governed by an ambitious and ruthless anti-American regime.

Fleet of Iranian ships heading to Yemen turns around after being tracked by US warships

April 23, 2015

Fleet of Iranian ships heading to Yemen turns around after being tracked by US warships, Fox News, April 23, 2015

(But see Iranian Warships Arrive in Yemen Port. ?????????????? — DM)

A nine-ship Iranian convoy believed to be laden with weapons bound for rebels in Yemen turned around Thursday after being followed by U.S. warships stationed in the area to prevent arms shipments, multiple sources in the Pentagon told Fox News.

The sources said the nine-ship convoy is south of Salalah, Oman, and now headed northeast in the Arabian Sea in the direction of home. The ships, which include seven freighters and two frigates, had sailed southwest along the coast of Yemen heading in the direction of Aden and the entrance to the Red Sea. They appeared to drop anchor in the north Arabian Sea, after the USS Theodore Roosevelt, the USS Normandy and a half-dozen other American ships arrived in the Arabian Sea on Monday, and U.S. officials said that they could intercept the convoy.

The USS Theodore Roosevelt, a 100,000-ton nuclear-powered aircraft carrier known as the “Big Stick” and her escort, the USS Normandy, a guided missile cruiser, have been shadowing the convoy for the past few days, the sources said.

Fighter jets taking off from the carrier have been relaying the convoy’s location to the U.S. Navy’s higher command since the start of the week.

The Iranian Navy ships are characterized as “smaller than destroyers,” a Pentagon official with knowledge of the convoy said Tuesday. Asked what type of weapons the freighters are carrying, one Pentagon official said, “they are bigger than small arms.”

The reversal was welcomed by Pentagon officials, but they expressed caution saying, “this isn’t over yet,” and insisted Roosevelt will maintain observation on the convoy.

Iran backs the Houthi rebels, who chased the Yemeni president from Sanaa and are fighting for control of the Gulf nation. Warships from Saudi Arabia and Egypt, who back Yemeni President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, are positioned to the southwest of the convoy, forming a blockade of the Gulf of Aden and the port city of Aden.

Western governments and Sunni Arab countries say the Houthis get their arms from Iran. Tehran and the rebels deny that, although Iran has provided political and humanitarian support to the Shiite group.

The U.S. also has been providing logistical and intelligence support to the Saudi-led coalition launching airstrikes against the Houthis. That air campaign is now in its fourth week, and the U.S. also has begun refueling coalition aircraft involved in the conflict.

The campaign meant to halt the rebel power grab and help return to office Hadi, a close U.S. ally who fled Yemen.

The defiant Shiite rebels pressed their offensive in the country’s south on Thursday, apparently ignoring an overture from Saudi Arabia earlier this week, while the kingdom’s warplanes continued to target their positions, officials said.

The rebels’ prized goal — the port city of Aden — remained an elusive one, in part thanks to the Saudi-led airstrikes.

Meanwhile, Pakistan’s top leaders, including Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and army chief Gen. Raheel Sharif, arrived Thursday in Saudi Arabia to push for negotiations in the Yemen conflict. The two are to meet with King Salman to discuss the crisis, according to Pakisitan’s Foreign Office spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam.

Both predominantly Sunni majority countries, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are close allies, and Islamabad has supported the Saudi-led coalition, though it declined to send troops, warplanes and warships to join it.

The kingdom and Gulf Arab allies launched the airstrikes March 26, trying to crush the Houthis and allied military units loyal to ousted President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

The Saudis believe the rebels are tools for Iran to take control of Yemen.

Loud explosions shook the cities of Taiz and Ibb in western Yemen on Thursday, as well as Aden when coalition warplanes bombed the rebels and their allies, witnesses said.

Residents also said the Houthis and Saleh’s forces were attacking the city of Dhale, one of the southern gateways to Aden, with random shelling.

All Yemeni officials and witnesses spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media or feared for their safety amid the fighting.

Iranian Warships Arrive in Yemen Port

April 23, 2015

Iranian Warships Arrive in Yemen Port, The Jewish PressHana Levi Julian, April 23, 2015

YemenKSA.jpgSaudi Arabia airstrikes were aimed at Iranian-backed Houthi rebels who seized positions in neighboring Yemen. Iran is believed to be arming the rebels. Photo Credit: KSA

Iranian warships arrived Thursday in the southern Yemen port of Aden despite the presence of several U.S. warships in the area as well. It is believed the Iranian vessels are carrying weapons to re-arm the Shiite Houthi rebels who have seized control over the port city and the nation’s capital, Sa’ana.

Saudi Arabian Ambassador to the United States, Adel al-Jubeir, said Wednesday that his nation’s air force had achieved its objectives and has concluded its bombing campaign.

“We destroyed the air force, we destroyed their ballistic missiles as far as we know; we destroyed their command and control; we destroyed much, if not most of their heavy equipment and we made it very difficult for them to move from a strategic perspective,” al-Jubeir said. He added that Saudi forces had “eliminated the threat they posed to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia” but . said that in the long run, there is “no military solution” to the conflict.

According to the World Health Organization, 1,080 people have been killed in the past month in Yemen, and 4,352 others have been wounded.

Coalition warplanes picked up where Saudi Arabian air force pilots left off and continued on Thursday to pound Houthi rebels in southern Yemen. The international forces targeted rebel positions in Aden and the central city of Taiz, according to Voice of America.

A severe humanitarian crisis has been created in the war-torn region, according to VOA, but the Shi’ite rebels still remain. Yemen President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi has fled for his life to Saudi Arabia.

Although Iran claimed that it welcomes an end to “killing innocent and defenseless civilians” and seeks a political resolution to the conflict, its warships laden with arms for the rebels– as usual – tell a different story.