Assad | WarSclerotic | Page 10

Posted tagged ‘Assad’

No, the Islamic State Will Not Be Defeated — and if It Is, We Still Lose

November 25, 2015

No, the Islamic State Will Not Be Defeated — and if It Is, We Still Lose, Breitbart, Ben Shapiro, November 24, 2015

GettyImages-497044984-640x480

Barack Obama has now created an unwinnable war.

While all of the 2016 candidates declare their strategies for victory against ISIS, President Obama’s leading from behind has now entered the Middle East and the West into a free-for-all that cannot end any way but poorly.

The best way to understand the situation in Syria is to look at the situation and motivation of the various players. All of them have varying agendas; all of them have different preferred outcomes. Few of them are on anything approaching the same page. And Barack Obama’s failure of leadership means that there is no global power around which to center.

ISIS. ISIS has gained tremendous strength since Barack Obama’s entry to power and pullout from Iraq. They currently control northern Syria, bordering Turkey, as well as large portions of northern Iraq. Their goal: to consolidate their territorial stranglehold, and to demonstrate to their followers that they, and not other competing terrorist groups like Al Qaeda, represent the new Islamic wave. They have little interest in toppling Syrian dictator Bashar Assad for the moment. They do serve as a regional counterweight to the increasingly powerful Iranians – increasingly powerful because of President Obama’s big nuclear deal, as well as his complete abdication of responsibility in Iraq.

Iran. Iran wants to maximize its regional power. The rise of ISIS has allowed it to masquerade as a benevolent force in Iraq and Syria, even as it supports Assad’s now-routine use of chemical weapons against his adversaries, including the remnants of the Free Syrian Army (FSA). Iran has already expanded its horizons beyond Iraq and Syria and Lebanon; now it wants to make moves into heretofore non-friendly regions like Afghanistan. Their goal in Syria: keep Bashar Assad in power. Their goal in Iraq: pushing ISIS out of any resource-rich territories, but not finishing ISIS off, because that would then get rid of the global villain against which they fight.

Assad. The growth of ISIS has allowed Assad to play the wronged victim. While the FSA could provide a possible replacement for him, ISIS can’t credibly do so on the international stage. Assad knows that, and thus has little interest in completely ousting them. His main interest is in continuing to devastate the remaining FSA while pretending to fight ISIS.

Egypt/Saudi Arabia/Jordan. As you can see, ISIS, Iran, and Assad all have one shared interest: the continued existence of ISIS. The same is not true with regard to Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan, all of whom fear the rise of radical Sunni terrorist groups in their home countries. They are stuck between a rock and a hard place, however, because openly destroying ISIS on behalf of Alaouite Assad, they embolden the Shia, their enemies. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan would all join an anti-ISIS coalition in the same way they did against Saddam Hussein in 1991, but just like Hussein in 1991, they won’t do it if there are no Sunni alternatives available. Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan are the top three sources of foreign fighters for ISIS.

Turkey. The Turks have several goals: to stop the Syrian exodus across their borders, to prevent the rise of the Iranians, and to stop the rise of the Kurds. None of these goals involves the destruction of ISIS. Turkey is Sunni; so is ISIS. ISIS provides a regional counterweight against Iran, so long as it remains viable. It also keeps the Kurds occupied in northern Iraq, preventing any threat of Kurdish consolidation across the Iraq-Turkey border. They will accept Syrian refugees so long as those other two goals remain primary – and they’ll certainly do it if they can ship a hefty portion of those refugees into Europe and off their hands.

Russia. Russia wants to consolidate its power in the Middle East. It has done so by wooing all the players to fight against one another. Russia’s involvement in the Middle East now looks a good deal like American involvement circa the Iran-Iraq War: they’re playing both sides. Russia is building nuclear reactors in Egypt, Jordan, Turkey and Iran. They’re Bashar Assad’s air force against both the FSA and ISIS. Russia’s Vladimir Putin doesn’t have a problem with destroying ISIS so long as doing so achieves his other goal: putting everyone else in his debt. He has a secondary goal he thought he could chiefly pursue in Eastern Europe, and attempted with Ukraine: he wants to split apart the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which he rightly sees as a counterbalance to check Russian aggression. Thanks to today’s Turkish attack on a Russian plane, and thanks to the West’s hands-off policy with regard to the conflict, Putin could theoretically use his war against ISIS as cover to bombard Turkish military targets, daring the West to get involved against him. Were he to do so, he’d set the precedent that NATO is no longer functional. Two birds, one war.

Israel. Israel’s position is the same it has always been: Israel is surrounded by radical Islamic enemies on every side. Whether Iranian-backed Hezbollah or Sunni Hamas and ISIS, Israel is the focus of hate for all of these groups. Ironically, the rise of Iran has unified Israel with its neighbors in Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. All three of those countries, however, can’t stand firmly against ISIS.

All of which means that the only country capable of filling the vacuum would be the United States. Just as in 1991, a major Sunni power is on the move against American interests – but unlike in 1991, no viable option existed for leaving the current regime in power. And the US’ insistence upon the help of ground allies is far too vague. Who should those allies be, occupying ISIS-free ISISland?

The Kurds have no interest in a Syrian incursion. Turkish troops movements into ISIS-land will prompt Iranian intervention. Iranian intervention into ISIS-land would prompt higher levels of support for Sunni resistance. ISIS-land without ISIS is like Iraq without Saddam Hussein: in the absence of solidifying force, chaos breaks out. From that chaos, the most organized force takes power. Russia hopes that should it destroy ISIS, Assad will simply retain power; that may be the simplest solution, although it certainly will not end the war within the country. There are no good answers.

Barack Obama’s dithering for years led to this. Had he lent his support in any strong way to one side, a solution might be possible. Now, it’s not.

Categories: Assad, Egypt, Foreign policy, Iran, Iraq, Islamic State, Israel, Jordan, Kurds, Middle East, Obama - Middle East, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Shiite, Sunni, Syria, Turkey
Tags: Assad, Egypt, Foreign Policy, Iran, Iraq, Islamic State, Israel, Jordan, Kurds, Middle East, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Shiite, Sunni, Syria, Turkey

Comments: 3 Comments

The high price the world could pay for Obama’s Syria, Iraq policy

November 9, 2015

The high price the world could pay for Obama’s Syria, Iraq policy, Center for Security Policy, Fred Fleitz, November 9, 2015

1896925188

As I’ve discussed on Fox News.com before, President Obama’s Syria/Iraq policy is not a policy. It is a non-policy to do as little as possible about the chaos in these countries so he can hand this mess to the next president.

The Obama administration has announced two major policy shifts in two years to deal with the Iraq/Syria crisis and the threat from ISIS. Neither exhibited the decisive leadership that the world expects from the United States. Both were reactive and piecemeal moves to counter multiple humiliations of America.

This has created a growing global perception of American weakness and indecisiveness that will embolden America’s enemies for the remainder of the Obama presidency and possibly beyond.

The first policy shift, announced in a speech by President Obama on September 10, 2014 in response to a series of ISIS beheadings, was supposed to “degrade and ultimately defeat” ISIS. The president said this effort would include “a systematic campaign of airstrikes” in Iraq and Syria, training and equipping of moderate Syrian rebels, increased support to the Iraqi army and stepped up humanitarian assistance.

The failure of the September 2014 policy shift was obvious soon after it began. Pinprick airstrikes in Syria did not stop ISIS from making gains on the ground. In Iraq, ISIS took the city of Ramadi last May despite being outnumbered 10-1 by the Iraqi army. The Iraqi army and the Iraqi Kurds clamored for more arms while the Obama administration sat on its hands.

Obama’s 2014 policy shift suffered a spectacular collapse this fall when a failed $500 million program to train and equip moderate Syrian rebels was cancelled and Russia intervened in Syria and began conducting airstrikes against anti-Assad rebels, many backed by the United States. Iran also stepped up its presence in Syria by sending troops who are fighting to prop up the Assad government.

This rapid collapse of President Obama’s Syria/Iraq policy over the last few weeks has caused serious damage to American credibility. Russian President Putin mocked and ignored President Obama as he sent Russian forces into Syria. An intelligence sharing agreement was signed between Russia, Syria, Iraq and Iran. Iraqi lawmakers even called on Russia to conduct airstrikes against ISIS positions in their country.

The Obama administration responded to these setbacks with a new policy shift that looks even worse than the last one.

The president is sending “fewer than 50” special operations troops to help advise an alliance of Syrian Arab rebels. Given the lack of a clear policy and confusing rules of engagement, such a small deployment will be scoffed at by America’s adversaries and may be at risk of being captured. On Monday, President Obama made the preposterous claim that this deployment is consistent with his pledge of “no boots on the ground” in Syria and Iraq because these troops will not be on the front lines fighting ISIS.

The New York Times reported on November 2 the Syrian Arab rebel alliance that U.S. special operations troops are supposed to be advising doesn’t yet exist and is dominated by Syrian Kurds who mostly want to carve out their own state and have little interest in fighting to take back Arab territory from ISIS. Moreover, American military support of the Syrian Kurds worries Turkey because of their close ties with the PKK, a Kurdish terrorist group in Turkey.

The U.S. dropped 50 tons of weapons for the Arab alliance in late September. Although U.S. officials initially said Syrian Arabs and not Syrian Kurds were the recipients of the airdrop, according to the New York Times, Syrian Kurdish fighters had to retrieve these weapons because the Arab units for which they were intended did not have the logistical capability to move them.

The Obama administration’s latest Iraq/Syria policy shift includes a renewed call for Assad to leave office and a new round of Syrian peace talks.

New U.S. demands that Assad step down make little sense due to increased Russian and Iranian support.

The first round of U.S.-brokered Syrian peace talks were held last week in Vienna. 17 nations participated, including, for the first time, Iran. The talks produced a vague communique endorsing a future cease-fire, a transitional government, a new constitution and elections in which Syrians would select a new government. However, it seems unlikely the Assad regime – which was excluded from the talks – or its Russian and Iranian backers will ever support free and fair elections.

Russia and Iran rejected a timeline proposed by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry at the peace talks under which Assad would step down in four to six months and national elections would be held in 18 months. This puts a cease-fire out of reach since most Syrian rebels will not agree to a peace process that leaves Assad in power.

The Syria talks were overshadowed by the unwise decision by the Obama administration to include Iran because its presence legitimized its interference in Syria and Iraq. This also made the talks tumultuous due to open feuding between Iranian and Saudi officials. More talks are scheduled but Iranian officials have said they may not participate due to their differences with the Saudis.

So far, Mr. Obama has not agreed to Pentagon recommendations to back Iraqi forces with Apache helicopters or to allow U.S. military advisers to serve on the front lines with Iraqi forces. These proposals are still reportedly under consideration. Meanwhile, Republican congressmen continue to demand the Obama administration directly arm the Iraqi Kurds who are struggling to battle ISIS with inadequate and obsolete weapons.

America’s friends and allies know President Obama is pursuing a Syria/Iraq non-policy to run out the clock. They know Mr. Obama’s initiatives are not serious policies but minor gestures that allow the president to be seen as doing something now while also enabling him to claim after he leaves office that he did not put U.S. boots on the ground in Iraq and Syria nor did he get America into another war.

Alliances in the Middle East are already shifting because of President Obama’s Syria/Iraq non-policy. Russia is filling a power vacuum in the region and is building a new alliance with Iraq, Iran and Syria. Russia has improved its relations with Egypt and Israel. Although the Saudis are working with the Obama administration to arm moderate Syrian rebel fighters, Riyadh is frustrated that the U.S. is considering compromise solutions which could leave Assad in power. Saudi Arabia also reportedly is considering providing surface-to-air missiles to the Syrian rebels, a move the U.S. opposes since these missiles could fall into the hands of ISIS.

America’s enemies are certain to try to exploit the run-out-the-clock foreign policy that President Obama apparently plans to pursue for the remainder of his term in office. This could mean a surge in global provocations, terrorism and violence from North Korea to the South China Sea to Afghanistan and to the Middle East due to the disappearance of American leadership over the next 15 months.

Remember that the weakness and incompetence of President Clinton’s foreign policy emboldened Al Qaeda to step up terrorist attacks against U.S troops and led Osama bin Laden to believe that the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks would drive the United States from the Middle East. With Barack Obama dithering away America’s global credibility, a catastrophic terrorist attack like 9/11 could happen again.

Categories: Assad, Foreign policy, Iraq war, Obama - Middle East, Obama and Iraq, Obama and Syria, Obama and US military, Obama's foreign failures, Russia - Syrian war
Tags: Assad, Foreign Policy, Iraq war, Obama and Iraq, Obama and Syria, Obama and US military, Obama's foreign failures, Russia - Syrian war

Comments: Be the first to comment

The New Cold War: The Russia-Shia Alliance VS the Islamic State

November 1, 2015

The New Cold War: The Russia-Shia Alliance VS the Islamic State, Counter Jihad Report, Brian Fairchild, October 31, 2015

(An excellent summary and analysis of the consequences of the Obama Middle East vacuum. — DM)

rtx1sy30_iran_russia_un_092015-e1443810243164

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin (2nd R) meets with Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani (2nd L) on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, September 28, 2015. REUTERS/Mikhail Klimentyev.

Just one month ago, the US was the only major military player in the Middle East, but that has all changed. Russia’s aggressive and well-planned military campaign in Syria has tilted the balance of power in the region away from the US and toward Russia and its new Shia-dominated quadrilateral alliance. As a result, the US plan to effect regime change in Syria is now impossible, but more importantly, US influence in Iraq is steadily diminishing, and thus, the number of options available to American military commanders to degrade the Islamic State are also diminishing.

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

The New Cold War:

In late-September 2015 Russia and Iran launched a clandestine strategic military campaign to support Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. Russia’s bold move took the West by surprise and changed the balance of power in the Middle East in Russia’s favor. It will go down in history as the milestone depicting Russia’s first aggressive military action outside of its own sphere of influence since the fall of the Soviet Union, and, when viewed from a global strategic perspective, will be remembered as the first clear sign that a New Cold War had erupted between the US and Russia.

Russia’s Middle Eastern campaign is formed around the new “quadrilateral alliance”, which has divided the region into two sectarian blocs: the Russian-led Shia Muslim alliance, which forms a powerful “Shia Crescent” stretching from Iraq, through Iran and Syria, to Lebanon, and the Sunni Arab bloc led by Saudi Arabia with minimal backing by the United States.

Thus far, Russia’s campaign has been executed seamlessly. Upon entering Syria clandestinely, Russian forces immediately deployed sophisticated surface to air missile defense batteries as well as top-of the-line jet fighters to protect Russian and Syrian forces from the US coalition. Once air defenses were in place, Moscow began a barrage of airstrikes targeting anti-Assad rebels in order to re-establish and consolidate Assad’s power. The airstrikes were subsequently integrated with ground operations carried-out by Syrian military units, Iranian Quds forces, Shia militia from Syria and Iraq, and Hezbollah fighters. There are also credible news reports that Cuban Special Forces have joined the fray for the first time since Cuba’s proxy wars in Angola and central Africa in the 1970’s on behalf of the Soviet Union.

The Russia-Shia Alliance and its Effect on Iraq, Jordan, and the Kurds:

Iraq:

In tandem with its military campaign, Russia launched a diplomatic campaign that has been just as effective. Iraq is the geographical base for US coalition operations against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, but American influence in Iraq has steadily diminished over the past year.

In early October 2015, Iraq secretly established a new Russia-Iran-Syria-Iraq intelligence center in the middle of Baghdad that surprised and angered American military commanders. Worse, after Russia’s increasingly effective Syrian air campaign, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi called for Russia to begin unilateral airstrikes against the Islamic State in Iraq. The Pentagon became so alarmed by the possibility that Russia might get a strategic foothold in Iraq that on October 21, 2015, it dispatched Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joseph Dunford to Baghdad to deliver an ultimatum to the Iraqi leadership. Dunford told the Iraqi Prime Minister and Defense Minister that Iraq had to choose between cooperating with Russia or the US. Upon his departure from Baghdad, General Dunford told the media that he received assurances that Iraq would not seek Russian assistance, but just three days later, Iraq officially authorized Russian airstrikes in-country.

Jordan:

On that same day, another of America’s most dependable allies, the Kingdom of Jordan, announced its agreement to create a new Russian-Jordanian military coordination center to target the Islamic State and that this center would go well beyond just a formal information exchange. According to Jordan’s Ambassador to Russia:

“This time, we are talking about a specific form of cooperation — a center for military coordination between two countries. Now we will cooperate on a higher level. It will not be just in a format of information exchange: we see a necessity ‘to be on the ground’ as Jordan has a border with Syria”

The Kurds:

Moscow is attempting to undermine US relations with the Kurds. Since the rise of the Islamic State, the US has sought to provide anti-Islamic State military support to the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) in northern Iraq via the Iraqi central government, but the Iraqi government has no desire to see the KRG gain additional power in the north so this mission has been largely ineffective. The US has had a measure of success providing limited support to the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), but has balked at providing full support because any support whatsoever angers Turkey due to contacts between the YPG and the Kurdish Worker’s Party (PKK), a separatist organization, that seeks to overthrow the Turkish government. On October 29, 2015, Turkish president Erdogan demonstrated this anger when he vehemently criticized US support for the YPG and stated that Turkey would attack the YPG on the Iraqi side of the border if it attempts to create a separatist Kurdish administrative zone. Because Turkey is a NATO ally, Turkish threats cause the US significant political and diplomatic problems, but they will not deter Putin from moving to organize and utilize Kurdish forces in pursuit of his goals; in early October, he went out of his way to show disdain for Turkey and NATO by allowing his Syrian-based jets to illegally invade Turkish airspace.

No Kurdish group is happy with the current situation of getting limited support from the United States to fight the Islamic State, but all of them have expressed interest in cooperating with Russia. Significantly, Sergey Ivanov, the head of the Kremlin administration, specifically urged cooperation between the Syrian Kurdish militia and the US-backed YPG.

The Russia-Shia Alliance and the Islamic State:

The Shia composition of the quadrilateral alliance is extremely significant because it plays directly into the Islamic State narrative. The Islamic State and the majority of the world’s Muslims are Sunni, but in the heart of the Middle East, the Shia governments of Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon, with Russian support, dominate, and these countries surround the Islamic State’s new “caliphate” on three sides. Understanding this strategic disadvantage, the Islamic State knows that it must muster as much international Sunni support as possible to survive, so it carries-out a relentless policy to polarize the international Sunni population against the Shia.

The chance to remove Bashar al-Assad, who represents the Shia Alawite sect, was the primary reason the Islamic State moved to Syria from Iraq, and removing al-Assad from power served as its initial rallying cry to the global Sunni community. It was this rallying cry that created the dangerous “foreign fighter” phenomenon that subsequently brought more than 30,000 radical Sunni Muslims from around the world to the new caliphate.

The Islamic State repeatedly emphasizes in its official publications and statements its contention that Shia Muslims are not true Muslims and must be eradicated, and, in these communications, it refers to Shia Muslims as “Rafidah” (rejecters). But of all the Shias in the world, the Islamic State has a particular hatred for the Shia Iranians, who are Persian rather than Arab, and who ruled Islam during the ancient Safavid (Persian) empire, which the Islamic State regards as religiously illegitimate. It therefore refers to Iranians as the “Safavid Rafidah”.

Moreover, the Islamic State accuses the US and Russia of being modern day “crusaders” who have joined forces with the Iranians to destroy Sunni Islam, a contention made clear on March 12, 2015, when its spokesman Abu Mohamed al-Adnani stated:

The Safavid Rāfidah (Shia Iranians) today have entered a new stage in their war against the Sunnis. They have begun to believe that it is within their power to take areas of the Sunnis and control them completely. They no longer want a single Muslim from the Sunnis living in the empire they desire…O Sunnis…if the Islamic State is broken…then there will be no Mecca for you thereafter nor Medina…Sunnis! The Crusader-Safavid (Christian-Iranian) alliance is clear today. Here is Iran with its Great Satan America dividing the regions and roles amongst each other in the war against Islam and the Sunnis…We warned you before and continue to warn you that the war is a Crusader-Safavid was against Islam, and war against the Sunnis…”

The Shia Alliance and the Saudis:

Saudi Arabia considers itself to be the leader of the world’s Sunni population and the custodian of Islam’s two most holy places: the mosques of Mecca and Medina where the prophet Muhammad received Allah’s revelations. Because Iran is the Kingdom’s religious and regional nemesis the Islamic State’s anti-Shia narrative resonates greatly among many Saudis who are increasingly alarmed at Iran’s growing military influence and power. In a letter signed by 53 Saudi Islamic scholars in early October 2015, the clerics lashed out at Iran, Syria and Russia and echoed the main points made by the Islamic State:

“The holy warriors of Syria are defending the whole Islamic nation. Trust them and support them … because if they are defeated, God forbid, it will be the turn of one Sunni country after another”

Saudi King Salman was willing to allow this unofficial letter to be published because it permitted the Saudi government an indirect manner to issue a warning to Iran, but as the Russian-Iran alliance continued to make military gains throughout October, the Kingdom’s anxiety was such that it decided to allow its Foreign Minister to issue the following direct warning to Iran:

“We wish that Iran would change its policies and stop meddling in the affairs of other countries in the region, in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen…We will make sure that we confront Iran’s actions and shall use all our political, economic and military powers to defend our territory and people…”

Conclusion:

The New Cold War:

Just one month ago, the US was the only major military player in the Middle East, but that has all changed. Russia’s aggressive and well-planned military campaign in Syria has tilted the balance of power in the region away from the US and toward Russia and its new Shia-dominated quadrilateral alliance. As a result, the US plan to effect regime change in Syria is now impossible, but more importantly, US influence in Iraq is steadily diminishing, and thus, the number of options available to American military commanders to degrade the Islamic State are also diminishing.

Five days after Iraq rejected General Dunford’s ultimatum and authorized Russian airstrikes in Iraq, Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter ignored this fact in his testimony before the Senate’s Armed Forces Committee when he stated that the United States plans to increase the number of airstrikes in Iraq as well as direct action raids by US special operations forces in Iraq.

Unfortunately, such an increase in US military actions require Iraqi permission, and for the second time in a week, Iraq rejected the United States. On October 28, 2015, Prime Minister al-Abadi’s spokesman told the media that Iraq has no intention of allowing increased American participation because:

“This is an Iraqi affair and the government did not ask the U.S. Department of Defense to be involved in direct operations…”

If Iraq enforces this restriction, and limits the US to only training and arming Iraqi forces while allowing Russia to conduct aggressive operations in-country, the situation could become untenable for the United States, further reducing America’s ability to degrade the Islamic State.

The Islamic State:

Once Russia consolidates Assad rule in Syria, Putin will undoubtedly use the new Russia-Shia alliance to move against the Islamic State. Because the alliance dominates the geographical terrain on three sides of the “caliphate” and has demonstrated a willingness to engage in unified military air and ground operations, it is likely that Russian airpower and Shia ground forces will succeed in dismantling many Islamic State elements in Syria and Iraq.

Such success by the Russia-Shia alliance, especially if it forces the evacuation of the capital of the Islamic State’s “caliphate” in Raqqa, Syria, will further polarize and enrage radical Sunnis and likely increase the number of foreign fighters from Europe and the Middle East. It will also likely result in more domestic lone jihad attacks in the US and Russia, a call the Islamic State has already made in its October 13, 2015statement:

“…the Islamic State is stronger today than yesterday, while at the same time America is getting weaker and weaker…America today is not just weakened, it has become powerless, forced to ally with Russia and Iran…Islamic youth everywhere, ignite jihad against the Russians and the Americans in their crusaders’ war against Muslims.”

If the Islamic State experiences set-backs and defeats in Syria and Iraq such defeats would likely motivate it to launch mass casualty attacks in the United States and Europe in order to prove to its followers that it remains relevant. Mass casualty attacks in tandem with increased lone jihad attacks would make an already bad domestic security situation, grave.

On October 23, 2015, FBI Director Comey revealed that the FBI is pursuing approximately 900 active cases against Islamic State extremists in the United States and that this number continues to expand. Comey added that should the number of cases continue to increase, it won’t be long before the FBI lacks the adequate resources to “keep up”. Europe, too, faces grave security challenges. A few days after Comey’s revelations, the head of MI5, Britain’s domestic intelligence service, stated that the terror threat in the United Kingdom from the Islamic State and al Qaeda is the highest he has “ever seen”.

Categories: Assad, Obama - Middle East, Putin, Russia - Middle East
Tags: Assad, Putin, Russia - Middle East

Comments: Be the first to comment

Putin has no long term strategy, says administration w/no long term strategy

October 31, 2015

Putin has no long term strategy, says administration w/no long term strategy, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, October 31, 2015

hqdefault

This is an administration that believes you win wars with word games

Obama claimed that Putin is acting in Syria out of weakness and is being all reactive. Then he reacted by shipping weapons to Sunni rebels, a move he had originally rejected, and sending American soldiers into combat as boots on the ground.

Now DNI James Clapper is claiming that Putin is being impulsive and has no long term strategy. This comes from an administration that changed its mind several times about intervening in the Syrian Civil War and keeps saying it still doesn’t have a plan for defeating ISIS.

Clapper said Putin was “very impulsive and opportunistic” as he increased Russian support for close ally President Bashar al-Assad in Syria’s roiling civil war.

“I personally question whether he has some long-term strategy or whether he is being very opportunistic on a day-to-day basis,” Clapper told CNN’s Jim Sciutto. “And I think his intervention into Syria is another manifestation of that.”

Being “opportunistic” is actually how real life battles are fought. You have a strategy, but you seize advantages based on the evolving situation on the ground.

So far Putin’s long term strategy has been to expand Russian influence in the region. It’s working really well. Russia is back to being the regional alternative to the US. It’s securing strategic territories and its allies are expanding their sphere of influence.

On top of that, Putin managed to avert US air strikes on Assad with his fake WMD deal. Then he helped Iran secure its nuclear weapons program with the Iran deal. (I’ll grant that he had a lot of help from Obama and Kerry there.) Now he’s angling to get Obama on board a peace deal that keeps Assad in power and ends US support for the rebellion. Considering this administration’s foreign policy track record, he’ll probably get his way. While the administration clown car taunts him as weak and opportunistic and reactive and impulsive.

In the Cold War, the Soviets trash talked while the US got things done. Under Obama, the US talks trash and Russia gets things done. But this is an administration that believes you win wars with word games.

How is that working out for them?

Categories: Assad, Combat troops, Foreign policy, Iran - Middle East, Iranian proxies, Iraq war, Islamic State, Obama - Middle East, Obama's legacy, Putin, Russia - Middle East, U.S. Military
Tags: Assad, Combat troops, Foreign Policy, Iran - Middle East, Iranian proxies, Iraq war, Islamic State, Obama's legacy, Putin, Russia - Middle East, U.S. military

Comments: 1 Comment

World powers agree to more talks on Syria crisis

October 31, 2015

World powers agree to more talks on Syria crisis, Al Jazeera, October 31, 2015

(But please see, Iran-US Talks Limited to Nuclear Issue: MPs — DM)

Friday’s talks included an Iranian delegation for the first time.

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

Major powers meeting in Vienna for talks on Syria have found enough “common ground” to meet for a new round of talks in two weeks, even as the conflict enters a new phase with the deployment of US special forces in the country.

President Barack Obama has ordered the deployment of fewer than 50 commandos to help coalition forces coordinate with local troops, Josh Earnest, the White House spokesperson, said on Friday.

The troop announcement came as diplomats in the Austrian capital representing 17 countries and the EU agreed to launch a broad new peace attempt to gradually end Syria’s long civil war – a declaration that avoided any decision on when President Bashar al-Assad might leave.

A Syrian member of parliament said the decision is an aggression because it does not involve the government’s agreement.

Sharif Shehadeh told AP news agency on Saturday that the troops will have no effect on the ground, but Washington wants to say that it is present in Syria.

It is not clear how many rebel groups would agree to a plan that does not result in Assad’s immediate departure.

Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, said on Friday a US decision to deploy special forces in Syria would make cooperation between the armed forces of the two countries more important.

“I am sure that neither the United States nor Russia want [the conflict] to become a so-called proxy war,” Lavrov said after the talks in Vienna.

“But it is obvious for me that the situation makes the task of cooperation between the militaries more relevant.”

Friday’s talks included an Iranian delegation for the first time.

Representatives from Britain, Egypt, France, Germany, Italy, Lebanon, the EU and other Arab states also attended.

The participation by Russia and Iran in the attempt could mark a new and promising phase in the diplomacy since those countries have staunchly backed Assad.

‘Tough conversations’

Any ceasefire agreement that may come as a result of the peace effort would not include the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group, which controls large parts of northern Syria and has its capital there.

“There were tough conversations today,” John Kerry, US secretary of state, said on Friday. “This is the beginning of a new diplomatic process.”

Kerry acknowledged that those present have major differences regarding the Assad government.

“But we cannot allow the differences to get in the way of diplomacy to end the killing.”

Federica Mogherini, the European Union foreign policy chief, said there is “hope” for a political process to advance, saying that those involved in the talks “found common ground” for further discussion.

“It was a very long and very substantial meeting. This was not an easy one, but for sure a historical one,” she said while praising “those who took difficult decisions” in joining the talks.

Lavrov said those present in the meeting spent a “long time” pushing for an inclusive Syrian-led peace process.

Among the points agreed upon during the talks was that ISIL cannot be allowed to reign in Syria, he said.

In a rare hint of diplomatic progress, Iran indicated it would back a six-month political transition period in Syria followed by elections to decide Assad’s fate, although his opponents rejected the proposal as a trick to keep him in power.

In addition to Assad’s fate, on which delegates said no breakthrough had been expected, sticking points have long included the question of which rebel groups should be considered “terrorists” and who should be involved in the political process.

Al Jazeera’s Mohammed Jamjoom, reporting from Vienna on Friday, said that there was a “mood of optimism” following the talks.

“There is a sense of hopefulness, which has been absent in these talks for quite a long time now,” he said.

The talks came as Syrian government air strikes continued in rebel-held territories, killing at least 61 people and wounding over 100 others in the Damascus suburb of Douma on Friday.

A further 80 people were killed in government and Russian air strikes in Aleppo province.

Categories: Assad, Foreign policy, Hezbollah, Iran - Syria war, Iranian proxies, Middle East, Obama - Middle East, Russia - Syrian war, U.S. Military
Tags: Assad, Foreign Policy, Hezbollah, Iran - Syria war, Iranian proxies, Middle East, Russia - Syrian war, U.S. military

Comments: Be the first to comment

Russia overrides Middle East cyber waves

October 26, 2015

Russia overrides Middle East cyber waves, DEBKAfile, October 26, 2015

Latakia_Habaniya480

Aloft over Syria, the IL-20 can supply Russian forces and commanders with a complete, detailed picture of the situation on the ground. Its close proximity to Israel, moreover, enables this wonder plane to scoop up a wealth of data from across the border – not just on IDF military movements on the Golan, but also to eavesdrop on electronic activity and conversations in Jerusalem, Military Staff Headquarters in Tel Aviv, Air Force bases in southern Israel and even the nuclear complex in Dimona in the Negev.

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

The distance as the crow flies between Russia’s Syrian air base Al-Hmeineem near Latakia and its Iraqi host facility at Al Taqaddum Air base is 824 km (445 nautical miles). From the Latakia base to Israel, the distance is just 288 km or 155 nautical miles, a hop and a skip in aerial terms. Syria’s ruler Bashar Assad first let Moscow in with the use of a base where 30 fighter and bombing jets are now parked. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi followed suit Saturday, Oct. 24 by granting the Russian Air force the use of a facility 74 km from Baghdad.

Their presence in the two bases draws a strong arc of Russian aerial control at the heart of Middle East. By boosting its two extremities with state-of-the-art electronic warfare systems, Moscow has imposed a new reality whereby it will soon be almost impossible for any air or ground force, American or Israeli, to go into military action above or inside Syria or Iraq without prior coordination with the Russians.

The bricks of Russian domination are now almost all in place.

In the last week of September, two Ilyushin-20 (IL-20 Coot) super-surveillance planes stole into Syrian airspace, to provide a major upgrade for the Russian air fleet of Sukhoi-30 fighter jets, cargo planes and attack helicopters gathering for combat in Syria.

This was first revealed by DEBKA Weekly’s military and intelligence sources on Oct. 2.

The IL-20s, the Russian Air Force’s top-line intelligence-gathering aircraft, brought over from the Baltic Sea, have exceptional features as an intelligence platform. Their four turboprop engines enable it to stay airborne for over 12 hours, using its thermal and infrared sensors, antennas, still and video cameras, and side-looking airborne (SLAR) radar to collect a wide range of data from long distances, day or night, in almost any kind of weather.

The Coot-20 collates the data gathered and transmits it to intelligence or operational command centers in Moscow or its Latakia air base by powerful jam-resistant communications systems, satellites and other methods.

Aloft over Syria, the IL-20 can supply Russian forces and commanders with a complete, detailed picture of the situation on the ground. Its close proximity to Israel, moreover, enables this wonder plane to scoop up a wealth of data from across the border – not just on IDF military movements on the Golan, but also to eavesdrop on electronic activity and conversations in Jerusalem, Military Staff Headquarters in Tel Aviv, Air Force bases in southern Israel and even the nuclear complex in Dimona in the Negev.

DEBKAfile’s military sources add that an Il-20 Coot has been sighted in the last few days at the Iraqi Al Taqaddum Air base near Baghdad.

Then, on Oct. 4, our sources reveal, another Russian super-weapon was brought to Syria by Russian cargo ships: Nine MT-LB armored personnel carriers fitted with the Borisoglebsk 2 electronic warfare systems, which are among the most sophisticated of their kind in the world.

These APCs were secretly driven aboard tank carriers to Nabi Yunis, which is the highest peak of the Alawite Mountains along the coastal plain of northwest Syria, and stands 1,562 meters (5,125 feet) above sea level. To render the highly complicated Borisoglebsk 2 device system impermeable to attack, our electronic warfare experts describe it as fitted into the interior and walls of the nine APCS, along with receivers that can pick up transmissions on a wide range of frequencies on the electromagnetic spectrum.

From their mountain aerie, its antennas and powerful transmitters are designed to intercept and jam almost any radio signal carried by the electromagnetic waves in military or civilian use.

Russian strategists posted this top-of-the-line system in Syria to enable the Russian air force to operate unhindered in Middle Eastern skies and, just as importantly, to neutralize US-led coalition special forces operating deep within Syrian territory, and block or disrupt the operations of rebel groups and Islamic State forces.

The Borisoglebsk 2 system has only just started rolling off top secret Russian assembly lines. It took five years to plan and manufacture the system, which went into service for the first time at the beginning of this year on the Ukraine battlefield.

From its vantage point in Syria, the Russian electronic warfare system could seriously impair the performance of Israeli intelligence and communication networks arrayed across the Golan and along the northern border in the upper and western Galilee. It could run interference against the IDF’s use of unmanned aerial vehicles (unless they were autonomous), the field operations of Israeli Special Operations forces and air and naval networks, which depend on communications networks in their defense of the country’s northern borders.

Categories: Assad, Foreign policy, Israel, Obama - Middle East, Russia - Israel, Russia - Middle East, Russia - Syrian war, U.S. airstrikes
Tags: Assad, Foreign Policy, Israel, Russia - Israel, Russia - Middle East, Russia - Syrian war, U.S. airstrikes

Comments: 1 Comment

I got Syria so wrong

October 15, 2015

I got Syria so wrong, Politico, Frederic Hof, October 15, 2015

Fully complicit in the Assad regime’s impressive portfolio of war crimes and crimes against humanity, Iran relies on its client to secure its overland reach into Lebanon. And Russia works to sustain Assad as a rebuke to Washington. All the while, the eastern part of Syria is run by the self-styled Islamic State, or ISIL, itself a criminal enterprise. For the most part, the two titans of crime — the Assad regime and the Islamic State — have been able to live and let live, concentrating their hideous repertoires of violence on civilians and on armed rebels offering a nationalistic alternative to both. The result is widespread and profound hopelessness. Many Syrians are giving up on their beloved Syria. They are voting with their feet.

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

I spent early 2011 trying to ease tensions between Syria and its neighbors. I never predicted the brutality that would come from inside.

Now and then I am asked if I had predicted, way back in March 2011 when violence in Syria began, that within a few years a quarter-million people would be dead, half the population homeless and hundreds of thousands of defenseless civilians terrorized, traumatized, tortured and starved. The companion question, more often than not, is if I had forecast the failure of the West to offer any protection at all to Syrian civilians subjected to a systematic campaign of mass homicide. Having first been exposed to Syria as a teenage exchange student, I was expected by questioners to know something about the place. And as a State Department officer, I was assumed to know something about my government.

But no. It took me the better part of eighteen months to comprehend fully the scope of an unfolding humanitarian and political catastrophe. By September 2012, when I resigned my State Department post as adviser on Syrian political transition to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, I knew that Syria was plunging into an uncharted abyss — a humanitarian abomination of the first order. And I knew that the White House had little appetite for protecting civilians (beyond writing checks for refugee relief) and little interest in even devising a strategy to implement President Barack Obama’s stated desire that Syrian President Bashar Assad step aside. But at the beginning, nothing drawn from my many years of involvement in Syria inspired accurate prophesy.

That Russia’s recent military intervention in Syria has shocked the Obama administration is itself no surprise. For nearly two years, Washington had chased Moscow diplomatically in the belief that the Kremlin’s soothing words about supporting political transition in Syria were truthful. That which was obvious to many — Russia’s desire to perpetuate Assad in office — is now jarringly clear to the administration. That training and equipping anti-Assad rebels to fight anyone but Assad has been dropped like a bad habit by an administration warned not to proceed along these lines is hardly a bolt from the blue.But the White House is not alone in failing to accurately forecast the severity of the Syrian disaster.

The major reason for my lack of foresight: It didn’t have to turn out this way, and I remain mildly surprised that it did. It is not that Syrians were without grievances concerning the way they were being governed. Widespread unemployment, underemployment and opportunity deficits were already prompting those with means among the best and brightest to leave the country. Although the regime’s corruption, incompetence and brutal intolerance of dissent were hardly state secrets, Assad was not universally associated by Syrians with the system’s worst aspects: “If only the president knew” was a phrase one heard often. Some Syria watchers believed that the Arab Spring would visit the country in the form of political cyclone. I did not. I did not think it inevitable that Assad — a computer-savvy individual who knew mass murder could not remain hidden from view in the 21st century — would react to peaceful protest as violently as he did, with no accompanying political outreach. And as Syria began to descend into the hell to which Assad was leading it, I did not realize that the White House would see the problem as essentially a communications challenge: getting Obama on “the right side of history” in terms of his public pronouncements. What the United States would do to try to influence Syria’s direction never enjoyed the same policy priority as what the United States would say.

Back in early 2011, it seemed possible not only to avoid violent upheaval in Syria but to alter the country’s strategic orientation in a way that would counter Iran’s penetration of the Arab world and erase Tehran’s land link to its murderous Hezbollah militia in Lebanon. Much of my State Department time during the two years preceding Syria’s undoing was thus spent shuttling back and forth between Damascus and Jerusalem, trying to build a foundation for a treaty of peace that would separate Syria from Iran and Hezbollah on the issue of Israel.

There was a degree of idealism in my quest, born in the brain of an American teenager many years before. But there was another personal element as well. Long before Hezbollah murdered Mr. Lebanon — Prime Minister Rafik Hariri — in 2005, it had brutally and pathologically tortured to death a friend of mine serving as an unarmed United Nations observer, Marine Lt. Col. Rich Higgins. Peace between Israel and Syria would require Damascus to cut all military ties to Hezbollah. It would require Syria to stop facilitating Iran’s support to Hezbollah. It would set the stage for a Lebanon-Israel peace that would further marginalize Lebanon’s murder incorporated. Peace for its own sake is good. But the prospect of beating Hezbollah and its Iranian master was inspiring. This prospect, more than anything else, motivated the mediation I undertook as a deputy to Special Envoy George Mitchell in the State Department.

Assad, told me in late February 2011 that he would sever all anti-Israel relationships with Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas and abstain from all behavior posing threats to the State of Israel, provided all land lost by Syria to Israel in the 1967 war — all of it — was returned. My conversation with him was detailed in terms of the relationships to be broken and the behavior to be changed. He did not equivocate. He said he had told the Iranians that the recovery of lost territory — the Golan Heights and pieces of the Jordan River Valley — was a matter of paramount Syrian national interest. He knew the price that would have to be paid to retrieve the real estate. He implied that Iran was OK with it. He said very directly he would pay the price in return for a treaty recovering everything.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was interested. He was not at all eager to return real estate to Syria, but he found the idea of prying Syria out of Iran’s grip fascinating. And the negative implications for Hezbollah of Lebanon following Syria’s peace accord with Israel were not lost on him in the least. Although there were still details to define about the meaning of “all” in the context of the real estate to be returned, Netanyahu, too, knew the price that would ultimately have to be paid to achieve what he wanted.

But by mid-April 2011 the emerging deal that had looked promising a month earlier was off the table. By firing on peaceful demonstrators protesting police brutality in the southern Syrian city of Deraa, gunmen of the Syrian security services shredded any claim Assad had to governing legitimately. Indeed, Assad himself — as president of the Syrian Arab Republic and commander in chief of the armed forces — was fully responsible for the shoot-to-kill atrocities. Even so, he told Barbara Walters in a December 2011 ABC TV interview, “They are not my forces, they are military forces belong[ing] to the government . . . I don’t own them, I am the president. I don’t own the country, so they are not my forces.”

Before the shooting began the United States and Israel were willing to assume Assad had sufficient standing within Syria to sign a peace treaty and — with American-Israeli safeguards in place — make good on his security commitments before taking title to demilitarized territories. But when he decided to try to shoot his way out of a challenge that he and his first lady could have resolved personally, peacefully and honorably, it was clear he could no longer speak for Syria on matters of war and peace.

Some of my U.S. government colleagues from bygone days tell me we dodged a bullet: that an uprising against the Assad regime’s arrogance, cluelessness and corruption in the middle of treaty implementation would have caused real trouble. Others believe we were too slow: that a treaty signing in early 2011 could have kept the gale force winds of the Arab Spring from unhinging Syria. I don’t know. I don’t know if Assad or Netanyahu would, in the end, have done a deal. What I do know is that I felt good about where things were in mid-March 2011. What I also know is that by mid-April hope of a treaty was gone, probably never to return in my lifetime.

Assad’s decision to apply lethal violence to something that could have been resolved peacefully was the essence of betrayal. He betrayed his country so thoroughly as to destroy it. Four years on, he reigns in Damascus as a satrap of Iran and a dependent of Moscow. In the end, he solidified Israel’s grip on land lost in 1967 by his defense minister father.

Fully complicit in the Assad regime’s impressive portfolio of war crimes and crimes against humanity, Iran relies on its client to secure its overland reach into Lebanon. And Russia works to sustain Assad as a rebuke to Washington. All the while, the eastern part of Syria is run by the self-styled Islamic State, or ISIL, itself a criminal enterprise. For the most part, the two titans of crime — the Assad regime and the Islamic State — have been able to live and let live, concentrating their hideous repertoires of violence on civilians and on armed rebels offering a nationalistic alternative to both. The result is widespread and profound hopelessness. Many Syrians are giving up on their beloved Syria. They are voting with their feet.

There is no end in sight to this vicious bloodletting. Iran and Russia could stop the gratuitous mass murder but opt not to do so. Moscow now facilitates it with military intervention. The United States could stop it or slow it down significantly without invading and occupying Syria — indeed, without stretching the parameters of military science. But it has adamantly refused to do so. Meanwhile, the minions of the Islamic State loot and destroy the world heritage site of Palmyra while subjecting much of eastern Syria to their own brand of violent rule and internal terror.

Both sides of this debased criminal-terrorist coin need to be addressed urgently. Assad’s barrel bombing of Deraa in the south — where peaceful protests against regime brutality first attracted international notice in March 2011 — along with his bombing of Aleppo and Idlib in the north must be stopped cold. These horrific devices kill the innocent and recruit for the Islamic State: precisely as they are intended to do. Means exist far short of invasion and occupation to make it difficult for Assad regime helicopters to deliver their deadly cargoes. What is required is a clear statement of intent by Obama, one communicated to the Department of Defense, so that options can be produced for presidential decision and execution.

With regard to ISIL, a professional ground combat component provided by regional powers is desperately needed to work with coalition aircraft to sweep this abomination from Syria and permit a governmental alternative to the Assad regime to take root inside Syria. With central and eastern Syria free of both the regime and ISIL, an all-Syrian national stabilization force can be built. Western desires for a negotiated end to the Syrian crisis would be based, under these circumstances, on more than a wish and a hope.

The United States should neither seek nor shy away from confrontation with Russian forces in Syria. Moscow will not like it if its client’s ability to perform mass murder is impeded. Russia will not be pleased if ISIL, its false pretext for military intervention in Syria, is swept from the table. Ideally, Russia will not elect to escort regime aircraft on their mass homicide missions. And it would be difficult for even Russian President Vladimir Putin to articulate outrage if ISIL is crushed militarily. But if Russia seeks out armed confrontation with the United States in Syria, it would be a mistake for Washington to back down. People like Putin will push until they hit steel. And he will not stop in Syria.

Having failed miserably as a prophet in 2011 does not deter me from predicting the following: Obama will bequeath to his successor a problem of gargantuan dimensions if he does not change policy course now. Left to the joint ministrations of Assad and the Islamic State, Syria will continue to hemorrhage terrified, hungry and hurt human beings in all directions while terrorists from around the globe feast on the carcass of an utterly ruined state. Western Europe now reaps a whirlwind of desperate and displaced humanity it thought would be limited to Syria’s immediate neighborhood.

My failure to predict the extent of Syria’s fall was, in large measure, a failure to understand the home team. In August 2011, Barack Obama said Assad should step aside. Believing the president’s words guaranteed decisive follow-up, I told a congressional committee in December 2011 that the regime was a dead man walking. When the president issued his red-line warning, I fearlessly predicted (as a newly private citizen) that crossing the line would bring the Assad regime a debilitating body blow. I still do not understand how such a gap between word and deed could have been permitted. It is an error that transcends Syria.

I want the president to change course, but I fear that Syrians — Syrians who want a civilized republic in which citizenship and consent of the governed dominate — are on their own. I’ve been so wrong so many times. One more time would be great. It would mean saving thousands of innocent lives. It would mean real support for courageous Syrian civil society activists who represent the essence of a revolution against brutality, corruption, sectarianism and unaccountability. It would mean the reclamation of American honor. It would mean preserving my near-perfect record of getting things wrong. It would be a godsend.

Categories: Assad, Foreign policy, Golan, Hezbollah, Iran - Syria war, Israel, Netanyahu, Obama and Syria, Putin, Russia - Syrian war
Tags: Assad, Foreign Policy, Golan, Hezbollah, Iran - Syria war, Israel, Netanyahu, Obama and Syria, Putin, Russia - Syrian war

Comments: Be the first to comment

Russia and Iran Moving to Corner the Mideast Oil Supply

October 15, 2015

Russia and Iran Moving to Corner the Mideast Oil Supply, American Thinker, Steve Chambers, October 15, 2015

It looks like Vladimir Putin and the ayatollahs are preparing to corner the world’s oil supply – literally.

Last May I wrote on this site that Iran was in the process of surrounding the Saudi/Wahhabi oil reserves, along with those of the other Sunni Gulf petro-states. I added that, “Iran’s strategy to strangle Saudi/Wahhabi oil production also dovetails with Putin’s interests. As the ruler of the second largest exporter of oil, he would be delighted to see the Kingdom’s production eliminated or severely curtailed and global prices soar to unseen levels. No wonder he is so overtly supporting Iran.”

We’ve now seen Putin take a major, menacing step in support of the Iranians by introducing combat forces into Syria. Many analysts argue that he’s doing this both to protect his own naval base at Tartus and as some sort of favor to the Iranians. Are those really sufficient inducement for him to spend scarce resources and risk Russian lives, or does he have bigger ambitions in mind? Given the parlous state of Russia’s economy, thanks in very large part to the recent halving of oil prices, he must relish the opportunity now presented to him, in an axis with Iran, to drive those prices back to prior levels.

The Iranians, for their part, must welcome this opportunity as well, for two huge reasons: first, when sanctions are finally lifted, thanks to their friend in the White House, Iran’s oil production will only aggravate the current global excess oil supply, reducing their cash flow (although they will still repatriate the $150 billion released by the nuclear deal). They and the Russians must both be desperate to find a way to prevent further oil price declines. And second, Iran’s mortal sectarian enemies and rivals for leadership of all of Islam are the Saudi/Wahhabi clan, so the prospect of simultaneously hurting them while strengthening themselves must seem tremendously tantalizing.

To achieve this, the Russian-Iranian axis can pursue the encirclement strategy of the Arabian Peninsula that Iran has already been overtly conducting, as I described in May, and is evident by referring to the map below.

195414_5_

Iran and its allies already control the border across the Saudi/Wahhabi Kingdom’s northern frontier, although the Iranian grip on the Syrian portion is tenuous – hence the Russian intervention. Now Iran is also fighting a bitter proxy war with the Kingdom in Yemen, where Iran is backing coreligionist Shi’ites. From Yemen, Iran can also threaten the Bab-al-Mandeb that provides access to the Red Sea, multiplying the pressure it already exerts on the Kingdom by threatening the Strait of Hormuz at the entrance to the Persian Gulf from its own territory.

Moreover, Iran is widely believed to be supporting the Shi’a who live on top of the Saudi/Wahhabi oil reserves in the Eastern Province. The natural affinity between the Shi’a of Arabia and Iran has long worried the royal family and led them to discriminate against their Shi’ite subjects, fostering resentment among them. Attacks on the Shi’a community early this year have increased tensions. On top of all that, Iran is reportedly behind the recent Shi’a unrest in Bahrain, which Iran considers it lost “14^th province” – much as Saddam viewed Kuwait in the late 1980s.

With this being the current state of the Mideast chessboard, consider how the game can unfold. With Russian assistance, Iran can save its Syrian puppet and reinforce its defensive enclave in the Allawite homeland in the northwest of its putative boundaries. Then the combined forces of the axis can turn on ISIS, all the while boasting of doing the world a favor, and reduce its territorial control if not extirpate it entirely. Of course, the Saudi/Wahhabis will probably do whatever they can to assist their vicious ideological offspring, but it would be hard to bet against the axis.

As the axis pacifies Syria, it can then begin pressure the Saudi/Wahhabis and other Sunni petro-states to curtail their oil production enough both to accommodate the increased Iranian flow and to lift prices back to acceptable levels. $100 a barrel must sound like a nice target.

The axis’s initial pressure will probably be diplomatic, applied by both principal powers. However, with Iran’s foothold-by-proxy in Yemen and their influence in the Eastern Province and Bahrain, it could easily foment more general violence against the Saudi/Wahhabis, even within the Kingdom itself. Iran could likewise twist Bahrain’s arm and thereby rattle the cages of the lesser Sunni petro-states. Then, by trading a reduction in oil for a reduction in violence, the axis could achieve its objective.

If not, the Iranians could escalate the violence further. Perhaps ideally from the Iranian perspective, the Saudi/Wahhabis would overreact and provide Iran with an excuse to strike directly at the geographically highly concentrated Arabian oil fields and support facilities. Iran might not be willing to risk royal retaliation by attacking on its own, but it could be emboldened with Russian backing by air and sea, and perhaps even a nuclear umbrella. In that scenario, the proud Arabs would be forced to bow to the will of their ancient Persian foes – particularly since it is obvious that the US under its current president could not be relied upon for support.

An attack on the Kingdom’s fields would cause a severe and lengthy disruption of Mideast oil supply, which would dreadful for the rest of the world – but certainly not the worst-case scenario. Such a disruption would precipitate another nasty global recession and could severely weaken the US, Europe, and China, all of whose economies are fragile and probably brittle. Thus the damage inflicted could far outlast the disruption itself. This could be yet another highly attractive incentive for Putin and his ayatollah allies.

So, Putin and the ayatollahs have powerful motives to corner the world’s oil market and therefore the US and the rest of the world are facing an enormous risk. The horrible pity of this is that the US could easily demonstrate the futility of the Russian-Iranian axis trying to take the world hostage with Mideast oil, simply by opening up our surface deposits of oil shales in the Rockies. As I showed in this analysis last March, these resources could make Mideast oil irrelevant.

The US’ surface oil shales are completely different from the deep shales that are accessed through directional drilling and fracking and that grab all the headlines; the deep shales are a mere side show in terms of reserves. The surface shales hold up to 3 trillion barrels of oil versus about 50 billion barrels of tight oil accessed by fracking. The total global proven reserves of oil are 1.6 trillion barrels, and the Canadian tar sands have 1.6 to 2.5 trillion barrels (although they’re officially listed at 175 billion barrels, which are incorporated in the global total). So, the US and Canada together essentially can triple the global supply of oil, and at prices in the $60-75/barrel range. Meanwhile, Mideast reserves are about 800 billion barrels – half of Canada’s oil sands, perhaps less than a third of the US surface shales. The world no longer needs the Muslim oil.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of the Rockies surface shales sit on Federal land, and while George W. Bush opened up those lands for development, Obama rescinded that policy. These reserves now sit almost entirely idle.

As with any petroleum deposit, these surface shale reserves can’t be turned on with the wave of a wand. But they can be opened for development with just a pen, and not even a phone. For the protection of this country, and the good of the world, our current president should immediately open these reserves for development, with great fanfare. If he will not use our military to protect our interests, he should at least use our economic weapons.

There is no time to lose. Russia is on the march, in unison with the emboldened and enriched Iranians, thanks again to our president. Putin and the ayatollahs know they will enjoy only another 464 days with this president and that none of his likely replacements will be so complacent and flexible, to use his own term. We should therefore expect that they will want to make as much hay as they can while the sun reflects off of Obama’s insouciant grin.

Categories: Assad, Iran - Middle East, Iranian oil, Islamic State, Obama's America, Oil war, Putin, Russia - Middle East, Russian oil, Shiite, Sunni, U.S. oil
Tags: Assad, Iran - Middle East, Iranian oil, Islamic State, Obama's America, Oil war, Putin, Russia - Middle East, Russian oil, Shiite, Sunni, U.S. oil

Comments: 1 Comment

Czar Putin defends the West

October 14, 2015

Czar Putin defends the West, American Thinker, James Lewis, October 14, 2015

Vladimir Putin isn’t a nice liberal, but he is a realist, which is much more than any Western leader can say today. Without realism it is impossible to act morally. Without realism, everything turns into an Obamaesque kabuki play.

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

Well, Obama has systematically undercut our friends in the Middle East, and Vladimir Putin is picking up the pieces. Obama promised big change — only not the ones we see happening. As Obama promised the radical left, America is now drastically weakened; but oddly enough, peace hasn’t busted out all over.

So here comes the Czar of all Russias to rescue Christian civilization from a bloody nightmare in Syria and Iraq. While the United States is supplying major weapons to brutal Sunni gangs who keep committing horrific war crimes, jihadis are taking advantage of the chaos to make genocidal attacks on Arab Christians, Egyptian Copts, Orthodox Armenians, Kurds, Yazidis, and Druze. (And each other — of course.)

Every time another domino falls, this administration looks more shell-shocked. Their comforting delusions are crumbling. Today they’ve stopped even pretending to understand what’s going on.

Even Obama’s surrender to Iran’s nuclear obsessions is now failing. Today, none of the European “partners” in that miserable appeasement are still willing to sign Obama’s Diktat; not even the Iranians, who are getting everything they want without Obama. It’s a total capitulation, with sinister consequences to come soon.

The Germans have doubled their profitable trade with Tehran, while Russia and China are making huge military and nuclear power plant sales. Seven thousand Iranian Revolutionary Guards are fighting against U.S.-sponsored jihadis in Syria, along with ten times as many Hizb’allah fighters. Iran’s strategic noose around Saudi Arabia is tightening, and the naval chokepoint of Aden is under direct military threat.

The CIA failed to predict Putin’s intervention in Syria, yet for months everybody from Israel to Saudi Arabia has been sending top-level negotiators to Moscow. It’s the only thing they could do, after we threw them to the sharks. For nations in mortal peril, it’s any port in a storm.

And yes, it’s a fair bet that all the players carried gifts for the Tsar, to make sure they would not be victimized by the new hegemon.

The CIA failed to predict the Russian move into Syria. But you don’t need a huge intelligence “community” to see the obvious. This White House isn’t interested in the truth anyway. Obama can’t stand being contradicted, and the CIA is responding by not telling him what he doesn’t want to hear.

Syria’s President Assad is as ruthless as any dictator in the Middle East, but he based his power on protecting minorities, like his own Alawites. Like Muammar Gadaffi in Libya, he kept a precarious peace among hostile factions.

Christian bishops in the Middle East see Putin as their sole protector in the double bind between jihad and a militantly atheist West. To persecuted minorities in the Middle East, Putin has seized the moral high ground.

We have no idea what Putin is going to do next. Russia has the potential of becoming a major stabilizing force in the Middle East. But his convictions are becoming clearer. He understands Syria along the lines of his war with Chechnya: His actions there were ruthless but effective. ISIS has thousands of Chechnyan jihadis, now with combat experience, and ready to assault Russia. Putin will not tolerate that, just as China won’t tolerate its own Muslim rebels in Syria-Iraq returning to attack its vulnerable Uighur flank.

Putin carries street cred in a world of jihadist gangs. In 2002, Chechnyan terrorists murdered school children in Beslan and bombed the Dubrovka Theater. Putin reacted with brutal efficiency. His rise to power since that time is based on knocking down the Chechnyan rebellion, by bombarding entire cities. Much of Putin’s popularity among regular Russians is based on his brutal suppression of violent Islam. But the Islamists attacks still continue.

Obama has just spent half a billion dollars to arm and train “Syrian moderates,” who took the money and ran, to join the worst terrorist gangs in the neighborhood. This week we heard that 70% of our military equipment sent to “Syrian moderates” ended up in the hands of ISIS.

I know we’re not supposed to say words like “Christian civilization,” but Vladimir Putin believes them. He isn’t wrong. For four centuries, until Lenin murdered the last Romanovs in 1918, the Tsars prided themselves on being the defenders of Christianity. Like the Vatican, the Russian Orthodox Church claims a direct line of apostolic descent from the early Christian churches, by way of the Byzantine Empire. And yes, there were plenty of wars between Polish Catholics and Russian Orthodox.

There was cruel persecution of Jews whenever a scapegoat was wanted. But today the Ottoman Turks are still remembered with a special horror in Eastern and Southern Europe. Sometimes you have to choose between bad and worse.

(Several years ago Pope Benedict quoted the Byzantine Emperor Manuel Paleologus II, condemning the sadistic cruelties of jihadist Islam. Telling the truth horrified liberals around the world, the way it always does. That quote came from a time shortly before the Byzantine Empire was destroyed by jihad, leaving the remaining Orthodox Churches bereft of their original lands.)

Putin has his picture taken regularly with the Patriarch of Moscow, probably for political reasons, but also because he has a deep sense of history. Unlike every cowardly Western liberal politician who can’t say the words “Muslim barbarism,” Putin is very clear about jihad. He understands the history of horrific Muslim assaults on Russia. He knows that jihad war has not changed one little bit in a thousand years. Like Samuel Huntington, the first historian of the jihad war, Putin also understands in a very profound way that this is a war for civilization.

Vladimir Putin isn’t a nice liberal, but he is a realist, which is much more than any Western leader can say today. Without realism it is impossible to act morally. Without realism, everything turns into an Obamaesque kabuki play.

Putin was raised by an Orthodox mother and a Marxist father. He came to power by brutally putting down a Muslim terrorist rebellion in Chechnya, using the standard Russian method of bombarding entire cities until they surrendered.

As a rising KGB colonel, Putin saw his world falling apart under Gorbachev, who tried to liberalize the Soviet Empire, only to see it collapse. In his eyes, democratic liberalism doesn’t work, Soviet Marxism didn’t work, and he certainly doesn’t want nuclear jihad to win.

Americans are used to thinking of Soviet Russia as a militant atheist regime, which tried to destroy religious faith wherever it could, for seven or eight decades. One of the astonishing facts of the 20th century is the survival of traditional religion under decades of Marxist oppression. It sometimes seems as if faith tends crumble in rich consumer societies; but persecution and misery bring it back.

When the Soviet Union was beginning to crumble in the late 1980s, some members of the Central Committee were quoted as exclaiming “Bozhe moye!” — My God!! whenever another piece of bad news came in. Religion had survived, even at the secret heart of the heart of the Communist Party. The same is happening in China today.

So Putin has gone back to the Tsarist practice of using the Orthodox Church to build national unity. He is also religiously tolerant as long as it’s peaceful. As long as they don’t threaten the Tsar, people can practice their faith. (But not when it comes to militant gay movements).

If Putin is smart, he won’t abuse his new credibility and power in the Middle East. Russia stands to gain numerous benefits, as long as it is perceived to be preserving an acceptable balance of power. That also means finding a position between Iran and Saudi Arabia, between Israel and Iran, and between Europe and the oil it depends on. Russia can reap huge benefits just from protecting mutually hostile oil regimes from each other; by saving their cookies, Putin also gets into the oil game.

Putin now runs the biggest military near the world’s oil spigot, even as shale deposits are quickly being exploited all over the world.

This is a time of constant probing to discover the parameters of the new hegemony.

So far, Putin’s intervention has been cheap, taking advantage of historically stupid moves by the Euro-American Left. Putin can use his new-found influence in the Middle East to rebuild Russia’s economy in a world of fast-falling oil prices.

Categories: Assad, Christianity, Foreign policy, Iran scam, Obama - Middle East, Putin, Russia - Middle East, Russia - Syrian war
Tags: Assad, Christianity, Foreign Policy, Iran Scam, Putin, Russia - Middle East, Russia - Syrian war

Comments: Be the first to comment

Obama arms Islamic terrorists who called for “slaughtering Americans like cattle”

October 12, 2015

Obama arms Islamic terrorists who called for “slaughtering Americans like cattle,” Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, October 12, 2015

(Surely Obama, with access to top military and intelligence officials, knows precisely what he’s doing. Not only that, it couldn’t be his mess. Somebody else has to be blamed. Right? — DM)

logo_of_ghuraba_al-sham_front

The Syrian Civil War is a mess. Whether or not that disclaimer appears at the top of every article and post, you should assume that it does. There are factions and splinter groups that are constantly merging and reforming.

Which is why backing anyone in the war is hazardous. But here’s the latest phase of Obama’s “I don’t know what the hell I’m doing in Syria” strategy.

The U.S. military airdropped 50 tons of small arms ammo and grenades in northern Syria on Sunday, a senior defense official told Fox News, representing the Pentagon’s shift from training rebel fighters to equipping them.

Coming just two days after the Defense Department announced it was effectively ending its current training program, the airdrop delivery was made Sunday by four C-17 transport aircraft. The 112 pallets contained ammunition for M-16s and AK-47s.

This time, the official said Syrian Kurds were not recipients of the U.S. airdrop — only Syrian Arabs fighting ISIS. There is sensitivity in Washington over arming Syrian Kurds, whom Turkey sees as an enemy but the U.S. counts as a NATO ally.

Who is actually getting the weapons? Here’s whom the weapons are meant to be going to…

The alliance calling itself the Democratic Forces of Syria includes the Kurdish YPG militia and Syrian Arab groups, some of which fought alongside it in a campaign that drove Islamic State from wide areas of northern Syria earlier this year.

The Arab groups in the new alliance are operating under the name “The Syrian Arab Coalition” – a grouping which U.S. officials have said would receive support under a new U.S. strategy aimed at fighting Islamic State in Syria.

So Turkey has forced the US to deny weapons to the Kurdish part of the alliance. The Syriac Military Council is in the alliance too, but it’s unclear if they’re getting resupplied.

So that just leaves the Syrian Arab Coalition. And who is in the Syrian Arab Coalition?

“We met the Americans and this has been approved and we have been told these new arms … are on their way,” said Abu Muazz, a spokesman for the Raqqa Revolutionaries Front, a grouping of mainly Arab tribal insurgents who are mostly drawn from the Raqqa area.

Tribal insurgents. Sounds okay, right? Except that name doesn’t appear to be in use. This may be the Raqqa Revolutionaries’ Brigade whose Arabic name is Liwa Thuwwar al-Raqqa which was formerly allied with the Al Nusra Front… which is Al Qaeda. Since then Liwa claims to have split from Nusra and is fighting ISIS. But Nusra is also fighting ISIS.

Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi has a summary of the relationship that runs several paragraphs. (The Syrian Civil War is a mess. See above.)

The new alliance includes the YPG, various Arab groups including Jaysh al-Thuwwar (Army of Rebels) and the Arab tribal Jaysh al-Sanadeed, and an Assyrian Christian group, according to a statement announcing its establishment.

Except we’re apparently not arming the YPG. It’s unclear if we’re arming the Assyrians. But we are arming Jaysh al-Thuwwar, which is a coalition of a bunch of other groups formerly part of the FSA. The Sanadeed appear to actually be closely linked to the YPG.

But it gets messier from here.

Another faction in the new coalition, Jaysh al-Qasas, worked with IS in 2014. FSA commanders say its leader spends most of his time in Turkey and his fighters are most interested in looting.

Of course the FSA, which used to be US backed, has every reason to trash talk the current aid recipients.

“They are fighters who have moved from one militia to another,” says Abdul Rahman, a commander with the Army of Mujahideen , which is aligned with Jaish al Fata, or the Army of Conquest, the Islamist rebel alliance.“Most of them are rejects. They are not reliable — we don’t trust them,” he told VOA.

“I generally agree with the testimony of those rebels you have spoken to,” says Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi, a fellow at U.S.-based think tank the Middle East Forum. He says that armed groups in one of the largest of the factions, the Dawn of Freedom, have “reputations for corruption.”

“The main groups of the coalition are splinters from larger rebel militias and in the case of Dawn of Freedom it is essentially a regrouping of militias that had reputations for criminality in North Aleppo, such as Ghuraba al-Sham,” he told VOA. Some of the factions were thrown out of an Islamist rebel alliance.

Al-Tamimi added: “The other components of the rebel allies with the YPG are small groups of locals who fled their homes in Deir ez-Zor and Jarabulus” after the Islamic State overran the towns. Some are members of the Shammar tribe in eastern Syria, which has suffered repeated IS reprisals and massacres.

Opportunists is about the nicest thing we could say about them. But it also means they’re likely to resell weapons or engage in fake battles. And when a lot of fighters move from one militia to another, we could very well end up directly arming ISIS or Al Qaeda groups.

But don’t worry, when this falls apart, Obama will blame Hillary Clinton or McCain and claim that he never wanted to do it in the first place. Because Obama never takes responsibility.

Oh by the way, here’s something on Ghuraba al-Sham.

Ghuraba al-Sham comprising mainly Turks and fighters from former Soviet bloc countries…

As Syrian preacher Dr. Mahmud al-Aghasi, known as Abu al-Qaqa, left an Aleppo mosque after Friday prayers on September 28, an assassin stepped out of a car and opened fire with an automatic weapon. The controversial preacher received mortal wounds to the head and body, while three others were wounded. Little information on the case has emerged from the normally secretive and tightly controlled Syrian state. Most of what is known comes from al-Qaqa’s own followers in Ghuraba al-Sham (Strangers of Greater Syria), some of whom chased the killer for two to three kilometers before apprehending him.

It gets worse. Much, much worse.

On the CDs, Abu al-Qaqa is shown speaking to worshipers under the banner of a then-unknown group, Guraba al-Sham (Strangers of Greater Syria). This became the umbrella under which he operated, and whose name was imprinted on all of his CDs. On camera, he tells his followers, who are assembled before him at a mosque: “We will teach our enemies a lesson they will never forget.” He then asks: “Are you ready?” Thundering chants respond affirmatively from his audience, who get worked up into tears as they listen, and he carries on: “Speak louder so [US President George W Bush] can hear you!” Their tears make him weep as well, as he gets impassioned with anti-Americanism and adds: “Guests have come to our land … slaughter them like cattle. Burn them! Yes, they are the Americans!”

So that’s who we’re arming. The pet militia of a guy who played a key role in funneling terrorists to kill Americans in Iraq.

Today the Iraqi government aired the confession of Mohammed Hassan al Shemari, a Saudi al Qaeda member who claims to be the leader of the terror group’s forces in Diyala province. Sherari said Syrian intelligence, or the Mukhabarat, actively supports al Qaeda in Iraq. From Reuters:

Shemari said when he arrived in Syria from Saudi Arabia, he was met by a militant who took him to an al Qaeda training camp in Syria. The head of the camp was a Syrian intelligence agent called Abu al-Qaqaa, he said. “They taught us lessons in Islamic law and trained us to fight. The camp was well known to Syrian intelligence,” he said.

Once inside Iraq he undertook more training in its vast desert province of Anbar, bordering Syria, alongside 30 other foreign fighters. He then met a purported al Qaeda in Iraq leader, Omar al-Baghdadi, who he said appointed him head of al Qaeda in the violent Diyala province.

He launched gun attacks on police checkpoints in Diyala, kidnapping Iraqi officers and extorting money for their release or killed them with knives and set up suicide bombings, he said.

Assad at the time was collaborating with Al Qaeda in conducting attacks on Americans. Which is why all the Russian propaganda claiming that the US created ISIS and that Assad is the only bulwark against them is laughable. Assad was their former pal. Guraba al-Sham is a group of former Jihadists backed by Assad to kill Americans that turned against Assad.

And their dead leader really hated America.

“Our hearts are filled with joy when we hear about any resistance operations in Iraq against the American invaders. We ask people to keep praying to Allah to help achieve victory for Iraq against the US,” Sheikh Qaqa says.

Qaqa’s Islamic values go far beyond vocal – and popular – hostility toward US Mideast policy. For example, he openly calls for an Islamic state based on sharia law in Syria…

“Yes, I would like to see an Islamic state in Syria and that’s what we are working for,” Qaqa says. There are even indications that Qaqa’s support base is becoming organized. His followers hold meetings in a building that serves as an office and library. Several of his followers wear camouflage military trousers.

So we’re arming the Islamic State to fight the Islamic State. It’s a plan that can’t fail.

Sheikh Qaqa was also known as the godfather of Fatah al-Islam. Fatah al-Islam was officially classified as a terror group under Bush, but not under Obama. It was inspired by Al Qaeda and worked with Zarqawi, the leader of what would become ISIS.

It attempted to carry out terrorist attacks in Europe and it’s currently allied with ISIS.

Heck of a job, John Kerry. Heck of a job.

Categories: Assad, Kurds, Obama - Middle East, Obama's foreign failures, Russia - Syrian war, Syria war
Tags: Assad, Kurds, Obama's foreign failures, Russia - Syrian war, Syria war

Comments: 1 Comment

Archives