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Four parties caused Syria’s genocidal calamity. Should Israel get involved?

September 6, 2015

Four parties caused Syria’s genocidal calamity. Should Israel get involved? DEBKAfile, September 6, 2015

migrants_along_railways_5.9.15Refugees flooding into Europe

Chapter by chapter, a long list of the guilty parties must bear responsibility for the Syrian catastrophe hacking the ruined country into bleeding parts.

1.  The first culprit is undoubtedly its insensate president Bashar Assad and his close family, who have had no qualms about spilling the blood of some 300,000 men, women, children and old people – some estimate as many as half a million – and making some 11 people homeless, to keep himself in power. No one has ever counted the number of people maimed and crippled by the war, but they are conservatively estimated at one million.

These figures add up to genocide or serial mass murder, which has been allowed to go into its fifth year.

2.  Iran warrants second billing for this mass crime.

Tehran has laid out the stupendous sum of some $40 billion to keep the mass marderer Assad in power with total disregard for his methods of survival. The motives behind the ayatollahs’ military and political boost are well recorded. Worth mentioning here is that Tehran not only pressed its Lebanese proxy, the Shiite Hizballah group, into service alongside Assad’s army, but sent its its own generals to orchestrate the war, led by the Al Qods Brigades chief Qassem Soleimeni.

We can reveal here that 22 Iranian generals have died fighting for the Assad cause.

3. The third place belongs to the United States and President Barack Obama. His refusal to put American boots on the ground may have been the correct decision for the US, but it had four direct consequences:

a)  The slaughter of the Syrian people continued unchecked. Even after President Obama declared that chemical warfare was a red line, he backed down at the last minute against intervening and ordered the US fleet to draw back from the Syrian coast.

To this day, Assad continues to use chemical weapons to poison his enemies.

b)  Obama and his Secretary of State John Kerry let Iran use its military backing for Assad as a high card in the negotiations for a nuclear accord. Instead of making it a condition for a deal against the lifting of sanctions, Washington allowed Tehran to come away from the table with US non-intervention in Syria as one of its concessions for buying Iran’s assent to the Vienna deal.

Tehran, in a word, won Washington’s tacit approval for propping up the atrocious Syrian ruler.

c)  The rest of the world, including the United Nations and the European Union, followed the Obama administration’s lead and stood aside as at least 11 million Syrians became homeless refugees.

The lifeless body of a three-year old Syrian child washed up from the sea has figured in the Western media as a symbol of the tragic fate of Syria’s refugees. However, his tragedy came after the hair-raising atrocities endured by millions of those refugees for nearly five years.

Many families were forced to sell their daughters as sex slaves to buy food, their young sons to pedophile predators. The slave markets were centered on the Persian Gulf. Young Alan Kurdi died aged three. Many thousands of Syrian refugee children still live in appalling circumstances. No humanitarian organization has started an outcry or a campaign to rescue them.

d)  US refusal to intervene in the most savage humanitarian tragedy the world has seen for many decades opened the door to the belligerent branch of al Qaeda, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, to march into the vacuum. The videotaped records of beheadings, the massacre of the Iraqi Yazdi people, the enslavement of its women and the burning alive of “apostates,” followed in quick succession.

The strongest nation in the world fought back with an ineffective trickle of air strikes on ISIS targets, allowing the group to go forward to conquer terrain and gain in strength.

4.  Russia bears a heavy weight of guilt – and Israel would do well to watch its cynical conduct and draw the right conclusions. Like the ayatollahs, President Vladimir Putin led the second world power to total commitment for keeping Bashar Assad in power. Among other motivations, Putin pursued this policy to settle a score with Obama for the overthrow of Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi.

With one world power on the sidelines and a second jumping in with two feet, the Syrian imbroglio was bound to have devastating historical repercussions.

Throughout the Syrian conflict, Israel refrained from interfering, with only one exception: It supported Syrian rebel groups holding a strip of southern Syria, as a buffer against Iranian, Hizballah and Syrian army encroachment on its northern borders.

More than a thousand injured Syrians were treated and their lives saved in Israeli hospitals after receiving first aid at a field hospital on the Israeli-Syria border.

The esteemed Israeli historian Prof. Shlomo Avinery said Sunday, Sept 6, that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu did the right thing in steadfastly keeping Israel out of the Syrian conflict. He very much doubted that Syrian refugees would seek asylum in a country they regard as the Zionist enemy.

Israel’s opposition leader Isaac Herzog nonetheless urged the government to take in a limited number of Syrian asylum seekers from among those flooding into Europe, and not to forget that “we are Jews.”

 One wonders why he never had a word to say about US dereliction when Assad committed his atrocities across Israel’s border.

Herzog’s favorite advice to Netanyahu is to go to Washington right now, beard President Obama in the Oval Office and hammer out an agreed policy on Iran.

Netanyahu referred to the Syrian refugee crisis at the weekly cabinet meeting Sunday: “While Israel is not indifferent to the human tragedy of refugees from Syria and Africa, it is a small country that cannot throw its doors open to them,” he said.

“We have conscientiously treated thousands of wounded from the fighting in Syria, and we have helped them rebuild their lives,” the prime minister recalled. “But Israel is a very small country, with neither demographic nor geographic depth, and therefore we must control our borders.”

Regarding a visit to Washington, the prime minister has a problem: Just as President Obama has not invited any Syrian refugees to come to America, he has not issued Netanyahu with an invitation to come to DC, whether to discuss the Iranian or the Syrian questions.

Categories: Assad, Asylum seekers, Defense of Israel, Europe, Foreign policy, Germany, Human rights, Immigration, Iran - Syria war, Iran scam, Iranian proxies, Islamic supremacy, Islamism, Israel, Netanyahu, Obama, Obama's America, Obama's legacy, P5+1, Russia - Syrian war, Syria war
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U.S. and West Victimize Christians Fleeing ISIS

September 6, 2015

U.S. and West Victimize Christians Fleeing ISIS, Gatestone Institute, Raymond Ibrahim, September 6, 2015

  • Western nations are not merely ignoring Muslim persecution of Christians in the Middle East, they are actively supporting it by sponsoring “moderate” rebels who in reality are as “radical” and anti-Western as the Islamic State.
  • “Why the federal government has failed to take steps to expedite such reunification in cases where family and religious leaders are willing to vouch for and help those seeking asylum here… remains an unfathomable mystery.” —East County Magazine, San Diego.
  • Such “unfathomable mysteries” are reminiscent of the U.S. State Department’s habit of inviting Muslim representatives but denying visas to Christian representatives. Since the start of 2015, 4,205 Muslims have been admitted into the U.S. from Iraq, but only 727 Christians. For every Christian granted asylum, the U.S. grants asylum to five or six Muslims — even though Christians, as persecuted “infidel” minorities, are in much greater need of sanctuary.
  • “Most European governments, especially those that are Christian explicitly or implicitly, are failing in their duty to look after their fellow Christians in their hour of need.” — Lord Weidenfeld.
  • When persecuted Christian minorities manage to flee the Islamic State and come to the West for asylum, they are imprisoned again. All the while, Muslims — in the Mideast and in the West — are being empowered and welcomed in the West with open arms.

Not only does the West facilitate the persecution of Christians in the Middle East, but in the West as well.

According to a recent NPR report, the U.S. supported “moderate” coalition fighting both Bashar Assad and the Islamic State in Syria “has extremists in its own ranks who have mistreated Christians and forced them out of their homes” — just as the Islamic State (IS) has done.

Christian minorities forced out of their homes who manage to reach Western nations — including the United States — sometimes encounter more trouble.

Despite having family members to sponsor them, a group of 20 Christians who fled the Islamic State in Iraq have been imprisoned indefinitely, some since February, at the Otay Detention Facility in San Diego, even though they have local family members and Christian leaders who vouch for them (a primary way that the majority of detained foreign nationals are released is to the supervision of American citizens who vouch for them).

Activists say that the men and women in detention have been held for too long, including by the U.S. government’s own standards. Some have been imprisoned for over seven months with no hearing date for release even set.

“They are being held without a real reason…. They’ve escaped hell. Let’s allow them to reunite with their families,” said Mark Arabo, a spokesman for the Chaldean community in San Diego.

The detainees include a woman who had escaped the clutches of IS, and who had pleaded to see her sickly mother. Her mother died before she could see her. “She had been begging to be let out to see her dying mother,” said a priest familiar with the case.

Discussing the ongoing plight of these Iraqi Christians, San Diego’s East County Magazine concluded: “Why the federal government has failed to take steps to expedite such reunification in cases where family and religious leaders are willing to vouch for and help those seeking asylum here, then, remains an unfathomable mystery.”

Such “unfathomable mysteries” are reminiscent of the U.S. State Department’s habit of inviting Muslim representatives but denying visas to Christian representatives. Since the start of 2015, 4,205 Muslims have been admitted into the U.S. from Iraq, but only 727 Christians. For every one Christian the U.S. grants asylum, it grants asylum to five or six Muslims — even though Christians, as persecuted “infidel” minorities, are in much greater need of sanctuary, not to mention more assimilating to American culture than Muslims.

Faith McDonnell, of the Institute on Religion & Democracy, said regarding the detainment of Iraqi Christians in San Diego:

This follows the disturbing pattern that we have seen from the State Department of ignoring the particular targeting of Christians by ISIS while giving preferential treatment for asylum to other groups with expedited processing — like Somalis, Iraqis, and Syrians, some of whom could very well be members of jihadist movements.

The same is happening in the United Kingdom. Church leaders accuse David Cameron of “turning his back” on Christians facing genocide in Syria and Iraq by failing to grant them refuge in the UK — even though thousands of Muslims have been allowed entry.

Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, signed a petition calling on the UK government to “welcome Christian refugees and give them priority as asylum seekers,” emphasizing that “Syrian and Iraqi Christians are being butchered, tortured and enslaved.”

Similarly, Lord Weidenfeld, 95, who fled Nazi-occupied Austria in 1938 with the help of British Quakers, said:

Why is it that the Poles and the Czechs are taking in Christian families and yet the British government stands idly by?

This mood of indifference is reminiscent of the worst phases of appeasement, and may have catastrophic consequences. Europe must awake and the Conservative British Government should be leading from the front.

Most European governments, especially those that are Christian explicitly or implicitly, are failing in their duty to look after their fellow Christians in their hour of need.

This is not necessarily true of east European nations. Along with countries like Poland and Czechoslovakia, Slovakia recently went so far as to say it will only accept Christians when it takes in Syrian refugees under an EU relocation scheme. The Slavic nation argues that “Muslims would not be accepted because they would not feel at home,” including because there are no mosques in Slovakia.

Meanwhile, many of those Christians who are granted asylum in Western countries arrive there only to be further persecuted by Muslim asylum seekers — indicating, once again, who does and who does not really need asylum; who does and who does not assimilate in Western culture.

Most recently in Sweden, two small families of Christian asylum seekers from Syria were recently harassed and abused by approximately 80 Muslim asylum seekers, also from Syria.

The Christians and Muslims — described by one Swedish newspaper as “fundamentalist Islamists” — resided in the same asylum house. Among other humiliations, the Muslims ordered the Christians not to wear their crosses around their necks and not to use the communal areas when in use by Muslims.

1224Asylum seekers in the Swedish city of Kalmar, where Christian refugees were forced to move out of public housing after being harassed and threatened by Muslims.

After continuous harassment and threats, these Christian refugees, who had managed to escape the Islamic State, left the Swedish asylum house “fearing for their own safety.” A spokesman for the government migration agency responsible for the center they had been staying in said:

“They dared not stay. The atmosphere became too intimidating. And they got no help… They chose themselves to organize new address and moved away without our participation because they felt a discomfort.”

Western nations are not merely ignoring Muslim persecution of Christians in the Middle East, they are actively supporting it by sponsoring “moderate” rebels who in reality are as “radical” and anti-Western as the Islamic State. And when these persecuted Christian minorities manage to flee the Islamic State and come to the West for asylum, they are imprisoned again. All the while, Muslims — in the Mideast and in the West — are being empowered and welcomed in the West with open arms.

Categories: Asylum seekers, Christians, Europe, Foreign policy, Human rights, Immigration, Islamic State, Islamic supremacy, Islamic war on Christians, Islamism, Multiculturalism, Obama's America, Syria war
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Palestinians: Turning Refugee Camps into Weapons Warehouses

September 1, 2015

Palestinians: Turning Refugee Camps into Weapons Warehouses, The Gatestone Institute, Khaled Abu Toameh, September 1, 2015

  • Most of the Palestinian camps in Lebanon and Syria have long served as large weapons warehouses controlled by various militias belonging to different groups. This has been happening while the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), which is formally in charge of the refugee camps, continues to look the other way.
  • The 120,000 Palestinians living in Ain al-Hilweh are “unfortunate” because they are not being targeted by Israel. Otherwise, there would have been an international outcry and the UN Security Council would have held an emergency session to condemn Israel and call for an immediate cessation of hostilities. Instead, Ain al-Hilweh may soon fall into the hands of Al-Qaeda and Islamic State terrorists.
  • The Syrian Army has also been dropping barrel bombs on the camp almost on a weekly basis. But because Israel cannot be blamed, Palestinians killing Palestinians is not something that the international media and community are interested in.
  • Instead of admitting their responsibility for turning the camps into military bases, Palestinian leaders often prefer to blame others, preferably Israel, for the plight of their people.

Palestinians are once again paying a heavy price for allowing terror groups and armed gangs to operate freely inside their communities. But this is not happening in a refugee camp in the West Bank or the Gaza Strip. Rather, it is taking place in Lebanon, one of three Arab countries that host hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.

This explains why the international media and human rights organizations have shown little interest in what is happening inside the largest Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, Ain al-Hilweh.

For the past two weeks, dozens of Palestinian families from Ain al-Hilweh have fled their homes after fierce clashes that erupted between Fatah militiamen and terrorists belonging to a radical Islamist gang affiliated with Al-Qaeda and Islamic State.

The UN Security Council has clearly not heard of the fighting in Ain al-Hilweh. That is why it has not even issued a statement expressing “concern” over the plight of the Palestinians in the camp.

The international media, for its part, has thus far shown little interest in the story. Why? The answer, as usual, is simple: No Israeli involvement.

The 120,000 Palestinians living in n Ain al-Hilweh are “unfortunate” because they are not being targeted by Israel. Otherwise, there would have been an international outcry and the UN Security Council would have held an emergency session to condemn Israel and call for an immediate cessation of hostilities.

But, because Israel cannot be blamed, Palestinians killing Palestinians is not something that the international media and community are interested in.

The clashes in Ain al-Hilweh have so far resulted in the killing of four Fatah militiamen. At least 35 people were wounded in the fighting, which has been described as the worst in years. According to eyewitnesses, the rival parties have used various types of weapons to attack each other, including rocket-propelled grenades.

The four dead men have been identified as Fadi Khdeir, Ala Othman, Rabi Mashour and Hussein al-Saleh.

1233Smoke from explosions rises from Ain al-Hilweh refugee camp in Lebanon, Aug. 25, 2015. (Image source: Arab Tomorrow video screenshot)

The latest round of fighting in Ain al-Hilweh began after Islamist terrorists tried unsuccessfully to assassinate Abu Ashraf al-Armoushi, a senior Fatah security commander. Earlier, the terrorists managed to kill another top Fatah official, Talal al-Urduni.

Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon have always been considered “extraterritorial” zones, managed exclusively by various armed groups. The Lebanese police and army have no role in maintaining law and order inside the camps. As in most similar situations, where armed clashes have erupted inside refugee camps, all that is left for the Lebanese Army to do is monitor the situation from a distance.

In 2007, however, the Lebanese Army was forced to intervene to stop armed clashes at another refugee camp, Nahr al-Bared. Dozens of people, many of them soldiers, were killed in the fighting, which also resulted in the near destruction of the camp. Nearly 30,000 Palestinians were displaced, and Nahr al-Bared remains a closed military zone.

Residents of Ain al-Hilweh are worried that they will meet the same fate as Yarmouk refugee camp in Syria. Yarmouk was once home to some 200,000 Palestinians. Today, the number of the residents has dropped to 12,000. Hundreds of Yarmouk residents have been killed and injured in fierce fighting between rival militias during the past four years. The Syrian Army has also been dropping barrel bombs on the camp almost on a weekly basis.

Yarmouk, Nahr al-Bared and Ain al-Hilweh continue to pay an extremely heavy price for agreeing to turn their camps into military bases. Most of the Palestinian camps in Lebanon and Syria have long served as large weapons warehouses controlled by various militias belonging to different groups. This has been happening while the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), which is formally in charge of the refugee camps, continues to look the other way.

As the fighting in Ain al-Hilweh shows, the Palestinians have once again fallen victim to what many of them describe as the “chaos of weapons.” It is this type of anarchy that allowed Hamas to expel the Palestinian Authority from the Gaza Strip in 2007. Refugee camps in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are also full of weapons and gunmen belonging to various groups, including Fatah and Hamas.

Maher al-Shawish, a Palestinian writer and political analyst from Lebanon, says that Ain al-Hilweh is now facing a serious humanitarian crisis due to the ongoing fighting. “If you see the destruction inside the camp, you will realize that it is facing a real catastrophe that needs to be stopped immediately,” al-Shawish said. “The clashes are disgraceful for the Palestinian cause.”

But instead of admitting their responsibility for turning the camps into military bases, Palestinian leaders often prefer to blame others, preferably Israel, for the plight of their people.

Ain al-Hilweh may soon fall into the hands of Al-Qaeda and Islamic State terrorists. Yet instead of facing this threat and calling on the international community to assist in foiling the terrorists’ plan, Gen. Subhi Abu Arab, a top Fatah security commander in Lebanon, chose to hold Israel responsible. Needless to say, Israel has nothing to do with the latest round of fighting in Ain al-Hilweh or the “chaos of weapons” inside Palestinian refugee camps.

Still, Palestinian officials such as Gen. Abu Arab never miss an opportunity to lay the blame at Israel’s door. They also continue to lie to their people by claiming that Israel is behind Islamic State. Referring to the clashes in Ain al-Hilweh, Gen. Abu Arab had no problem explaining that, “This is a Zionist scheme to eliminate the right of return, displace the Palestinians and stir trouble inside the camp by using a fifth column.”

As long as Palestinian and Arab leaders continue to believe conspiracy theories and refuse to wake up to the reality of the dangerous situation inside the refugee camps, the Palestinians of Ain al-Hilweh, like those of Yarmouk, sadly will face a bleak future.

Categories: Human rights, Lebanon, Palestinians, Syria, Syria war, UNRWA
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Resolving the Syrian war is not the silver bullet for stopping ISIS

August 29, 2015

Resolving the Syrian war is not the silver bullet for stopping ISIS, DEBKAfile, August 29, 2015

(Please see also, Pentagon Not Targeting Islamic State Training Camps. — DM)

jISIS_mobile_defense_of_SVBIED_8.15ISIS “mobile defense SVBIED” in action in Iraq

President Obama may likewise offer King Salman all sorts of assistance for standing up to ISIS, but he will find no buyers in Riyadh for his failed policy of reliance on Saudi Arabia’s rival, Iran, for liquidating the Islamist threat looming against the oil kingdom from neighboring Iraq.  Neither is US aid much use for stemming the tide of pro-ISIS radicalism spreading among young Saudi men.

As matters stand today, therefore, the Islamic State faces no tangible threat – even if Iran does go ahead and achieve a nuclear bomb.

**************************

The war to stop the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) has entered a dark tunnel. And with it the bottomless conflicts in Syria, Yemen, Libya and Iraq. The search for a ray of light moves next week from Moscow to Washington, when Saudi King Salman Bin Abdulaziz makes his first visit as monarch for talks with President Barack Obama.

The three worried Arab rulers received in the Kremlin Tuesday, Aug. 25, by President Vladimir Putin could only talk in circles: Egyptian President Abdel-Fatteh El-Sisi,is  embattled on three fronts, Sinai, his border with Libya and Cairo; Jordan’s King Abdullah II – is wedged between two wars; and UAE Crown Prince Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, has sent his army to fight the Yemen insurgency alongside Saudi Arabia.

For them, resolving the Syrian conflict looked like the silver bullet, the key to ending all their troubles. But whichever Russian or Iranian plans and ideas they considered for a way forward, they were all forced to come back to the same impasse. Even Putin and Obama can’t get around or ignore two solid facts:

1. In the year since the US built an international coalition for fighting ISIS, the brutal Islamists have not been cut down; they have instead been empowered to seize more turf outside their Iraqi and Syrian conquests, such big oil fields in Libya, an ascending threat to Egypt and big plans for Lebanon.

2. A major letdown has followed on the high hopes reposed in Iran. The nuclear deal negotiated with the six world powers – and the elevated regional status conferred on Iran – hinged closely on US expectations that Tehran would put up effective military resources for tackling ISIS.

But the Revolutionary Guards, the popular Syrian and Iraqi forces the Guards established,and  the Afghan and Pakistani Shiite militias they imported – none have proved a match for ISIS and jihadi tactics.

In Syria, ISIS stands fast, unthreatened in the terrain, towns and oil fields they have captured, in the past year – excepting only on fringe fronts, where they have been forced back by local Kurdish rebel fighters.

Hizballah is a big part of the disappointment. It was supposed to serve as a bulwark against ISIS invading eastern Lebanon from Syria. Instead, these Lebanese Shiite fighters, allies of Assad’s army, are bogged down in a bitter battle for the strategic Syrian town of Zabadani, after failing to breach Syrian rebel defenses in forays from the south, the north or the center.

The door is therefore open for the Islamist State to march into Hizballah’s strongholds in the Lebanese Beqaa valley and head north to the port of Tripoli for a foothold on the Mediterranean.

Whether Bashar Assad stays or goes, which might have made a difference at an early stage of the Syrian insurgency, is irrelevant now that his army and allied forces are in dire straits.

In Iraq, the forces fighting ISIS are equally stumped. The jihadis are in control of a deadly string of  strategic towns, Ramadi, Faluja, the refinery city of Baiji, Mosul, and most of the western province of Anbar, including Haditha which commands a key stretch of the Euphrates River.

Here, too, the Islamist terrorist army’s lines remain intact, unbroken either by the undercover Jordanian Special Forces campaign 200 km inside Anbar, albeit backed by US and Israeli military and intelligence assistance; by the “popular mobilization committees” set up by the Iranian general Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy of the Al Qods chief Qassem Soleimani, or less still by US-trained Iraqi army units.

This week, the impasse spurred two combatants into chilling escalations:

— Iran began shipping its solid propellant missile, Zelzal-3B (meaning “earthquake”), across the border into Iraq, in the hope that this powerful projectile, with a range of 250km , would give the Revolutionary Guards their doomsday weapon for tipping the scales against ISIS.

— The Islamists, for their part, embraced a new tactic, known in the west as “SVBIED mobile defense.” Scores of armed vehicles are packed tight with hundreds of tons of explosives and loosed against military convoys on the move and static enemy positions and bases.

This tactic quickly proved itself by killing the 10th Iraqi Division’s chief, deputy and its command staff, as well as the deputy chief of Iraqi forces in Anbar.

In Moscow last week, Putin offered his three Middle East guests Russian nuclear reactors, arms, joint pacts for fighting terror and assorted ideas for the future of Bashar Assad. But he too had no practical proposals for bringing the Islamic State down.

President Obama may likewise offer King Salman all sorts of assistance for standing up to ISIS, but he will find no buyers in Riyadh for his failed policy of reliance on Saudi Arabia’s rival, Iran, for liquidating the Islamist threat looming against the oil kingdom from neighboring Iraq.  Neither is US aid much use for stemming the tide of pro-ISIS radicalism spreading among young Saudi men.

As matters stand today, therefore, the Islamic State faces no tangible threat – even if Iran does go ahead and achieve a nuclear bomb.

Categories: Assad, Egypt, Foreign policy, Hezbollah, Iran, Iran - Syria war, Iranian proxies, Iraq war, Islamic State, Libya, Middle East, Obama's legacy, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Siani, Sunni states, Syria war
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Six Russian MiG-31 interceptor aircraft land in Damascus to rescue Assad regime

August 19, 2015

Six Russian MiG-31 interceptor aircraft land in Damascus to rescue Assad regime, DEBKAfile, August 18, 2015

Mig-31-fighter_18.8.15Russian MiG-31 interceptors

Six Russian MiG-31 Foxhound interceptor aircraft from Moscow landed Tuesday, Aug. 18, at the Mezze Airbase situated in Damascus international airport, DEBKAfile’s military and intelligence sources disclose. They were followed shortly after by giant An-124 Condor transports, which delivered 1,000 Kornet-9M133 third-generation anti-tank guided missiles.

The Russian airlift of advanced weapons for Bashar Assad’s army will last for several days. It betokens Moscow’s intention to keep up its support for the Syrian ruler and counter – by military means if necessary – any secret Iranian diplomatic machinations for terminating the Syria war and with it the Assad regime – such as have been reported in the past week in Western and Arab capitals, especially in the Gulf.

Our sources report that the decision to send the Syrian ruler advanced aircraft and missiles could only have come from the top, i.e. President Vladimir Putin. It took direct aim at the latest moves made by the US, Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia for ending the Syrian war. Every formula they came up with entailed Assad’s exit, either in stages or at once.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov made it crystal clear to visiting Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Al-Jubair on Aug. 11 that Moscow would not stand still for any changes in Assad’s position in Damascus. The Migs and Antonovs which landed in Damascus Tuesday were meant not only as a buttress for the Syrian ruler’s regime but as a rescue operation.

The message for Washington and Ankara was that Moscow would oppose any US and Turkish plans to establish a no-fly zone over Syria, or intervene directly in the Syrian conflict.

The Russians sent exactly six MiG interceptors to match the six F-16 fighters the US deployed at the Turkish Incerlik air base on Aug. 9.

So if President Barack Obama decides to deploy more American planes at the Turkish base, he may expect Putin to reciprocate with the same number for Damascus.

Categories: Assad, Foreign policy, Iran, Putin, Russia, Syria war
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The day after the deal

August 9, 2015

The day after the deal, Israel Hayom, Prof. Eyal Zisser, August 9, 2015

(Please see also, Russia and US woo Saudis to help save Assad – albeit putting Israel and Jordan in danger from S. Syria.– DM)

[Soleimani] wanted Russia and Iran to agree on the division of the Middle East in a way that would serve their clients in the region (among them, Assad) and check their joint enemies (the Islamic State). After figuring that out, they probably moved on to the next topic: how to marginalize America in the region. As a means to both ends, Russia will continue to serve as Assad’s protector (despite his many crimes), all the while providing Iran with international backing. But above all it will send arms to Iran, to the Syrian regime, and if needed, to Hezbollah.

***********************

Over the weekend it transpired that Maj. Gen. Ghasem Soleimani, the commander of Iran’s Quds Force, had visited Moscow two weeks ago and met with President Vladimir Putin. The Quds Force, in case you forgot, is in charge of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ clandestine operations (including terrorism). The Quds Force is responsible for providing aid to Hezbollah and Hamas as well as to Syrian President Bashar Assad and the Houthi rebels in Yemen. In light of his direct involvement in terrorism, the international community imposed sanctions on Soleimani, including travel restrictions.

Only last week, at a hearing on Capitol Hill, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry vowed that the U.S. will make sure the sanctions on Soleimani would stay in effect and that the Obama administration would counter Iran’s efforts to destabilize the Middle East. But no one takes Kerry seriously anymore. While Kerry continues to engage Iran’s unimportant Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, the real wheeling and dealing is actually in Moscow.

Soleimani did not go to Moscow because he had tickets to the Bolshoi. Rather, he arrived because he wanted to discuss “the day after the nuclear deal” with Putin. Namely, he wanted Russia and Iran to agree on the division of the Middle East in a way that would serve their clients in the region (among them, Assad) and check their joint enemies (the Islamic State). After figuring that out, they probably moved on to the next topic: how to marginalize America in the region. As a means to both ends, Russia will continue to serve as Assad’s protector (despite his many crimes), all the while providing Iran with international backing. But above all it will send arms to Iran, to the Syrian regime, and if needed, to Hezbollah.

The Russians, unlike the Iranians, don’t consider Israel to be an enemy state. But as a famous Russian official once said: “When you chop wood, chips fly.” Israel has become the latest chip — the collateral damage. Soleimani’s visit is just the tip of iceberg. It shed light on the not-so-secret deals that are being negotiated in the wake of the “Vienna nuclear agreement.” Europe, as usual, is focused on profit and its corporate executives are already traveling in droves to Tehran to ink deals. There are also political deals Iran wants to secure, which are as important for Tehran. Their price, however, will be measured in blood rather than in euros or dollars.

No one in the Middle East, it seems, is keen on parsing each and every provision in the nuclear deal. Nor is there an attempt to see whether, in the grand scheme of things, it is will have been a worthwhile endeavor some 10 or 15 years from now, when its key elements expire. In this region, what counts is the way this agreement is perceived here and now — and what really matters to people is the way it is portrayed in the media. Under that criteria, Iran is the victor and America is the vanquished, because it caved to Iran. The deal, according to how the media has portrayed it, is a crushing political blow to Israel and the moderate Arab states, led by Saudi Arabia.

This knockout victory will likely produce a new Iranian-American partnership. At the very least, the two nations will mend fences. This will alienate many of Washington’s clients, who will have to look elsewhere for a more reliable ally. Egypt and the Saudis have already realized this and turned to Russia for aid and arms, figuring it would be more trustworthy than the “staff of this broken reed” (Isaiah 36:6).

Saudi Arabia is reportedly sending feelers to see if there is a deal to be had with Russia and Iran. Under the terms of the proposed deal, Saudi Arabia would withhold aid to the Syrian rebels if Iran ends its rogue presence in the state. Such a deal would secure Assad a victory over the insurgents, or a least ensure his regime survives.

The ongoing developments have caused panic, but not over the rising clout of Iran and Russia. The White House, it seems, is fretting over the possibility that Congress may vote against the Iran deal and further tarnish Obama’s image.

Categories: Arab nations, Assad, Diplomacy, Foreign policy, Gulf states, Hezbollah, Imperialism, Iran scam, Iranian proxies, Islamic State, Israel, Jordan, Middle East, Obama, Obama's America, Obama's legacy, P5+1, Putin, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Soleimani, Syria war
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Russia and US woo Saudis to help save Assad – albeit putting Israel and Jordan in danger from S. Syria

August 9, 2015

Russia and US woo Saudis to help save Assad – albeit putting Israel and Jordan in danger from S. Syria, DEBKAfile, August 9, 2015

Lavrov_Kerry_and_al-Jubeir-_Doha_3.8.15Lavrov, Kerry, Al-Jubeir at Doha

[N]either Israel nor Jordan has been co-opted to this big power initiative, as though they are not concerned. However, both have a big stake in Saudi Arabia’s next decisions. If Riyadh is won over by US-Russian blandishments and goes back on its decision to boycott Assad, the Saudi-Israeli-Jordanian effort to support Syrian rebel control of southern Syria will fall apart. This will open up both countries to new perils on their  northern borders.

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Building on the nuclear accord signed in Vienna last month, the Obama administration has been in close communion with Moscow and Tehran on regional moves to save the Assad regime, as the key to their next regional policies, including a united front against the Islamic State.. Saudi Arabia and its Gulf partners are being assiduously wooed to join the new alignment being set up for this purpose. The live wire in getting them all together is Omani Foreign Minister Khalid bin Mohamed Al-Attiyah, the secret broker who brought Iran and the United States to the negotiating table for a nuclear accord. This was first reported in the last DEBKA Weekly.

Wednesday, Aug. 7, Obama threw out his first hint on this development: “The window has opened a crack for us to get a political resolution in Syria, partly because both Russia and Iran, I think, recognize that the trend lines are not good for Assad,” he said. “Neither of those patrons are particularly sentimental; they don’t seem concerned about the humanitarian disaster that’s been wrought by Assad and this conflict over the last several years, but they are concerned about the potential collapse of the Syrian state. And that means, I think, the prospect of more serious discussions than we’ve had in the past.”

The US president then affirmed more strongly in a CNN interview Sunday, Aug. 9:  “Is there the possibility that having begun conversations around this narrow issue [the nuclear accord with Iran] that you start getting some broader discussions about Syria, for example, and the ability of all the parties involved to try to arrive at a political transition that keeps the country intact and does not further fuel the growth of ISIL and other terrorist organizations? I think that’s possible,” Obama said. “But I don’t think it happens immediately.”

The administration and its prospective partners are united by the will to destroy ISIS – in its Syrian stronghold, for starters – but are divided on much else, DEBKA file reports. And so the process is moving forward in careful steps.

Their initial focus is on Syria, the bloody battleground which in less than five years has left at least 300,000 dead and more than 10 million people homeless.

The plan the group started out with in the last ten days was a swap as simple as it was ruthless: Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates would slow their assistance to Syrian rebel groups, against whom President Bashar Assad’s army and allies would hold their fire; Iran, for its part, was to start withdrawing its support from the Yemeni Houthis insurgents.

The informal truce in Syria would be the stage for the Assad regime and rebel groups to start discussing a new government with room for opposition parties. The Islamists of the Islamic State and Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front would not be invited.

In Yemen, Tehran would cut back on the arms and intelligence which have enabled the Houthi insurgents to stand up to the combined forces of Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Egypt. The pro-Western Yemeni President Abd Rabo Mansour Hadi would be restored to his palace in Sanaa and invite the insurgent leader, Abdu Malik Al-Houthi, to discuss his partnership in a new government.

This deal was tantamount to a joint US-Russian guarantee of Bashar Assad survival in power in return for a Tehran-Riyadh compact for Hadi’s reinstatement in Sanaa.

These arrangements were debated back and forth in exchanges, some semi-secret, among the leading actors for most of July. The visit to Riyadh of the Syrian intelligence chief Maj. Gen. Ali Mamlouk was set up by Moscow as a major push forward.

The plan was for the entire enterprise to be brought out in the open and sealed in Doha, Qatar, Tuesday, Aug. 3 at a conference attended by US Secretary of State John Kerry, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Al-Jubeir and other top Gulf diplomats.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif was not there. But he put a strong oar into the proceedings by calling in at Muscat, Oman the day before the conference and subsequently on Friday Aug. 7. Assad also kept his hand in by sending his foreign minister Walid Moallem to Tehran and Muscat last week.

But then, at Doha, just as the package was ready to unveil, the Saudi foreign minister pulled away and blew it up with two provisions: a) Riyadh would not countenance Bashar Assad being allowed to stay in office, and: b) Saudi Arabia would not do business with any representative of the Assad regime.

This put a large spoke in the main wheel of the initiative and also scuttled some of the secondary plans depending on it.

But by then, a lot was happening in the Yemeni and Syrian war arenas:

1. Saudi and UAE armored forces had landed in Aden and were closing in on the Yemeni capital, Sanaa. The Houthi rebels, trained and armed by Iran, were forced to retreat without negotiations on their future role in government.

2. Syrian rebel leaders, sensing the approaching betrayal, sent a secret delegation to Tehran to discuss terms for opening negotiations with Assad. They too were left at sea about the deals in play among Washington, Moscow, Tehran and Riyadh over their future.

Saturday, Aug.8, the Russians, egged on by the Americans, set about winning Riyadh into the fold, Foreign Minister Al-Jubeir was invited to pay a visit to Moscow Tuesday, Aug. 11, for talks about the Syrian conflict and the war on the Islamic State.

Refusing to accept that the new initiative had been grounded in Doha, Moscow presented the visit as continuing the ongoing dialogue on the issues raised at that encounter.

DEBKAfile’s military and intelligence sources note that neither Israel nor Jordan has been co-opted to this big power initiative, as though they are not concerned. However, both have a big stake in Saudi Arabia’s next decisions. If Riyadh is won over by US-Russian blandishments and goes back on its decision to boycott Assad, the Saudi-Israeli-Jordanian effort to support Syrian rebel control of southern Syria will fall apart. This will open up both countries to new perils on their  northern borders.

Categories: Arab nations, Assad, Diplomacy, Foreign policy, Houthi, Insurgents, Iran scam, Iranian proxies, Islamic State, Israel, Jordan, Kerry, Obama, P5+1, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Syria war, Yemen
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Obama gives ISIS ally veto power over US air strikes on ISIS

August 3, 2015

Obama gives ISIS ally veto power over US air strikes on ISIS, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, August 3, 2015

turkey-2erdoganwhitehouse

The war against the JayVee team that has captured large chunks of Syria, Iraq and Libya is going really well. Secretary of State John Kerry and White House Minister of Information Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf assure us that the un-Islamic terrorist group whose name must not be mentioned will shortly be crushed.

Meanwhile Obama keeps trying to negotiate with the Taliban, the other group of misogynistic mass-murdering Islamists he had vowed to defeat back in his first term.

The administration is celebrating a coup in finally getting Turkey to get on board and allow the US to use an air force base for air strikes on ISIS. But as Commander Dyer points out, there’s a slight problem.

1.  The Obama administration refuses to define a territorial or operational objective.

2.  U.S. forces aren’t sure whom they’ll be allowed to shoot at.

Well it’s not like we need to know what we’re fighting for or how we’re going to fight. The important thing is that Obama got a crazy Islamist dictator who built himself a billion dollar palace while terrorizing his people to agree to let the US use an air force base.

As long as he gets to decide who we bomb.

The US Air Force could use the Incirlik air force base in Turkey but had to allow Turkish oversight of the targets it would strike in Syria and Iraq from Incirlik.

That is a slight tiny problem because the Turkish regime loves terrorists almost as much as Iran and has a history of secret ties to ISIS.

According to the Guardian on 25 July, a U.S.-led raid on an ISIS compound in May 2015 unearthed a treasure trove of documentation on this connection.  Turkish middlemen have been funding ISIS for months, to the tune of millions of dollars, by buying oil from the guerrillas – implicitly with the knowledge and support of the Turkish government.

The Jerusalem Post reported one Islamic State member said Turkey, a member of NATO, provided funds for the terrorist group.

“Turkey paved the way for us. Had Turkey not shown such understanding for us, the Islamic State would not be in its current place. It [Turkey] showed us affection. Large [numbers] of our mujahedeen received medical treatment in Turkey,” said the man, who was not identified.

The topic of Turkey’s involvement with ISIS remains controversial and has led to a conflict between Turkish law enforcement, which tried to expose government weapons shipments, and the Erdogan regime.

Even Joe Biden said it not long ago, before being forced to apologize.

So Obama has given an ally of ISIS oversight of US air strikes against ISIS. And it gets even more schizophrenic because the US is now involved with the PKK, a Kurdish Marxist liberation group, which Turkey is bombing.

So yes, the war will be won any day. Meanwhile Pakistan will be hosting peace talks with the Taliban. You know, the country which was pretending to be our ally while harboring Osama bin Laden.

Don’t worry. I’m sure the Caliph of ISIS probably isn’t living in a mansion in downtown Istanbul. Yet.

Categories: Air strikes, Department of Defense, Erdogan, Foreign policy, Iraq war, Islamic State, Obama, Syria war, U.S. Military
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Hizballah presses elite Radwan Force for conquering Galilee into saving stalled Zabadani battle

August 1, 2015

Hizballah presses elite Radwan Force for conquering Galilee into saving stalled Zabadani battle, DEBKAfile, August 1,2015

New_ninja_uniforms_of_Hezbollahs_elite_forcesNew “ninja” uniforms for Hizballah’s Radwan Force

Hizballah’s elite Radwan Force was originally designed to push in from Lebanon and conquer the Israeli Galilee. DEBKAfile’s exclusive military sources report that on Thursday, July 30 Hassan Nasralla saw he had no option but to press this high-value contingent into service, to extricate the combined Hizballah-Syrian armies from their month-long failure to recapture the key town of Zabadani – or even breach the defenses set up by the Al-Qaeda affiliated rebel Nusra Front.

This standoff with heavy casualties over the key town, which commands the main Damascus-Beirut highway, has become a symbolic make-or-break duel between the Iran-backed Shiite Hizballah and Al Qaeda’s Sunni Nusra Front. Nasrallah loses it at the cost of his organization’s credibility as a formidable fighting force.

Defeat would make western Damascus and eastern Lebanon more vulnerable to attack. And for Iran’s Lebanese proxy, it would leave an embarrassing question hanging in the air: If Hizballah under Iranian command combined with Syrian troops and backed by heavy artillery fire and air strikes can’t win a relatively small battle against no more than 1,200 rebel fighters across a nine-km square battleground, how much are its leaders’ boasts worth when they claim unbeatable prowess for winning major battles, including a war on Israel?

To save face in this landmark showdown, Hizballah decided to press into battle its most prestigious unit, named for Al-Hajj Radwan, the nom de guerre of Hizballah’s renowned military chief Imad Mughniye, whom Israel took out in February 2008.

Eight months ago, the Radwan Force lost its senior commanders. An Israeli air strike on Jan. 18 targeted a group of high Iranian and Hizballah officers on a visit to Quneitra on the Syrian Golan. They were surveying the terrain before relocating this elite unit to confront IDF positions on the Israeli Golan border. Iranian Gen. Ali Reza al-Tabatabai and the Hizballah district commander Jihad Mughniye (son of Imad) lost their lives in the Israeli raid and the plan was provisionally set aside.

If the Radwan Force manages to haul Hizballah out of its impasse in Zabadani, it may next be assigned to take up battle positions on the Golan.

But for now, its mission in the battle for Zabadani has three dimensions:

1.  To disarm the enemy by commando raids, a tactic to be borrowed from the rebels defending the town. On the night of July 24, the rebels preemptively struck Hizballah and Syrian army positions around the town and captured some of them. The decision to deploy Radwan appears to have come in response to that painful setback.

2.  To pull off a quick battlefield success at Zabadani, in view of intelligence reports that the Nusra Front and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in northern Syria were preparing together to open a second front in Lebanon, in order to relieve the rebel force pinned down in Zabadani.

The two groups plan to cross into Lebanon and start attacking pro-Hizballah Shiite populations in the Beqaa Valley and the North. They propose to cut through the Bequaa Valley and head up to the important northern Lebanese city of Tripoli on the Mediterranean coast.

3.  Syrian President Bashar Asad is under extreme pressure for a battlefield success after admitting in a public speech last week to the loss of strategic territory to rebel forces and shrinking military manpower. He has earmarked a Zabadani victory – both as a turning-point for his flagging fortunes and for holding back the constant draining of his army by desertions and defections.

Our military sources reveal that, after Assad leaned hard on the Lebanese government and army to round up Syrian troops who went AWOL, Lebanese security forces went into action. They are picking up Syrian army deserters and putting them on buses driving in armored convoys into Syria. It doesn’t take much imagination to conjure up the fate of these unwilling returnees.

Categories: Al Qaeda, Assad, Defense of Israel, Golan, Hezbollah, IDF, Iran scam, Iranian proxies, Israel, Lebanon, Middle East, Nasrallah, Nursa Front, P5+1, Syria, Syria war
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ISIS wipes out the Syrian army’s main strategic arsenal, flattens heart of Al Safira complex

July 29, 2015

ISIS wipes out the Syrian army’s main strategic arsenal, flattens heart of Al Safira complex, DEBKAfile, July 29, 2015

barrel_bombsSyrian “barrel bombs” dropped on targets

As the US and Turkey got started on a new air campaign against the Islamic State in Syria, the jhadis pulled off their most devastating attack yet on the Syrian army’s biggest arsenal. They subjected the giant Al-Safira military complex north of Aleppo to a steady blitz of an estimated 50 Grad missiles from Monday night to Tuesday, July 28.

DEBKAfile’s military sources report that Facility No.790, a large depot of the Syrian army’s strategic weapons, including chemicals, was set on fire and flattened.

Al Safira was important and big enough to be guarded by 1,800 members of the Syrian Air Force’s elite intelligence unit (not part of the air force) which comes under the direct command of President Bashar Assad.

Wednesday morning, flames continued to burn over the facility and explosions still shook buildings far away.

Some sources attributed the attack to Turkish Air Force bombers. In fact, it was the Islamic State which kept the complex under steady Grad missile fire, that was precise enough to raise suspicions of an inside leak betraying the exact locations of key targets, including subterranean structures, workshops for manufacture and repairs and large stockpiles of weapons.

Our sources list the items and sections of the Al-Safira military complex which ISIS demolished:

  • The Syrian army’s strategic stock of Scud D surface missiles.
  • Parts of the Syrian army’s chemical weapons production plant and stocks.
  • The production line for “barrel bombs” newly set up by Iranian engineers, which had become the most frequently used Syrian air force’s weapon against rebel forces.
  • A big helicopter pad where the Syrian choppers would load up on barrel bombs and distribute them among air bases across the country.
  • The storage facilities in a part of the base known as the “Suleiman area” which housed chemical artillery shells.
  • Many Iranian engineers and technicians were known to be present at Al Safira at the time of the attack. No information is available on casualties.

Our military sources say that never in the course of the four years plus of the Syrian conflict has the Assad regime’s army suffered a loss on this scale of its essential stock of hardware. It will undoubtedly affect its combat effectiveness and especially its fire power.

Categories: Islamic State, Syria war
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