Trump Ditches Syrian Allies, US Positions, for the Sake of His Summit with Putin….
30 June 2018
30 June 2018
Vladimir Putin blatantly defied US warnings against supporting the Syrian army’s drive south, violated his own 2017 de-escalation deal with Donald Trump, gave Iran another leg up in Syria – and after all that, bagged a summit with the US president.
Moscow and Washington announced Thursday that the two presidents would hold their first full summit in Helsinki on July 16.
Putin calculated correctly, as it turned out, that Trump would not risk the summit by hitting back for the 25-30 Russian air strikes on June 24 inflicted on the rebel forces defending the southern Syrian town of Daraa on the Jordanian border, even though they voided the de-escalation zones he and Trump agreed to set up during a brief encounter last year.
Futile expressions of concern about the downturn of their security came from Jordan and Israel.
King Abdullah scrambled on a plane to Washington, and Israel Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu secretly called US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
But the administration in Washington and most Middle East capitals turned blank faces of indifference as the Syrian army bludgeoned its way through civilian populations to reach its southern borders.
Although preparations for the Putin-Trump summit were on the fast track, Moscow and Assad pushed forward with their plans, which focused additionally on removing obstacles from Iran’s path to a ramped-up presence in Syria.
In the absence of effective opposition, Moscow is making good progress in its goal of extending Syrian military control over the borderlands with Israel and Jordan, say our reliable military sources; and the Russians are poised ready to throw US military forces out of eastern and northern Syria.
The dual process is fast-moving.
As the Syrian army and allies drive south, Russian forces, most of them hired mercenaries, are massing in the east and north, alongside pro-Iranian militias, ready to knock over the US-backed SDF and its Kurdish component, the YPG.
All this intelligence data undoubtedly landed on President Donald Trump’s desk in the Oval Office, and certainly reached the ears of his security advisers.
It is no secret to them that Putin is aggressively consolidating his stake in Syria and promoting the Iranian footprint there, ready to put the Russian fait accompli on the table as part of the global order when he meets the US president in Helsinki.
Trump has seemingly decided to overlook Putin’s conduct, and turn aside from US allies, for the sake of getting their first tête-à-tête off the ground.
Trump may also incidentally be pleased to prove he was right when he said earlier this year that American troops in Syria ought to come home.
Finally leaving little Israel to defend her borders alone? Isaiah 17 anyone?
Trump lets Putin have Syria for a Summit,Iranian/Hizballah gain access to Israel’s border on refugee backs….
June 29, 2018
June 29, 2018
Israel’s armed forces are distributing tents, food, water and medicines to the tens of thousands of Syrian refugees reaching its Golan border in flight from the incredibly brutal Russian and Syrian air strikes on southern Syria.
The figures are staggering – 342 air strikes on Thursday night, June 28, against rebel-held towns near the Israeli and Jordanian borders – of which 299 were conducted by the Russian air force and 43 by Syrian pilots.
Nawa, a town opposite the Israeli Golan border took the heaviest bombardment.
Israel’s military correspondents, playing ball with the IDF, are withholding these horrific figures from the public, and so people don’t understand how 60,000 refugees fleeing from Nawa are suddenly fetching up on Israel’s northern border and joining the 20,000 already encamped there.
While the IDF’s humanitarian conduct is laudable, the reason for the disaster is not.
This new human catastrophe could have been prevented had the IDF acted in time to pre-empt the threat to Israel’s borders, and countered the onslaught on Daraa mounted by Assad’s army and allies with Russian air support 10 days ago.
However, Israeli inaction was part of another development not shared with the Israeli public: [or the world at large]
President Donald Trump quietly decided to let Syria go to Russia in the interests of a successful summit with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki on July 16.
Israel, Jordan, the Syrian rebel and Kurdish groups hitherto backed by the United States were left to fend for their own security as best they could.
As a last concession, the US turned a blind eye to Putin’s pass for Iranian and Hizballah forces to move in along with the Syrian army.
The Russian president grabbed the opportunity.
By unleashing heavy air bombardments for clearing the rebels still holding out in southern Syria from the path of Assad’s army – he trampled the pledges he gave Israel and Jordan and triggered an exodus of Syrianrefugees who, finding the Jordanian border shut against them, headed for Israel’s Golan border.
The tens of thousands settling on Israel’s doorstep could swell, according to some estimates, to 200,000 or 250,000.
Israel finds itself saddled with a mounting new security and humanitarian burden in the north, on top of the Gaza Strip in the south.
Middle East reality is such that the tent encampments the IDF is providing as makeshift havens for refugees will in no time flat accommodate infestations of dangerous Syrian, Iranian and Hizballah agents.
Desperate refugees will accept a few dollars to support their families for donning bomb belts and blowing themselves up against Israeli positions on the border fence.
It is already happening on the Syrian-Jordanian border. Syrian military intelligence has seized control of the large Rubkan refugee camp in Daraa and Jordanian security services are helpless to keep Iranian and Hizballah agents out.
How is the IDF going to prevent this disastrous security calamity from developing on Israel’s northern border?
As word spreads across Syria that food, shelter and medical treatment are available, the refugee population sitting on Israel’s border around Quneitrawill swell to unmanageable proportions.
For Iran and Hizballah, a large refugee camp is the perfect lair from which to reach and terrorise northern Israel.
Developing…...
A Nightmare Coming True? A Mid-East Awash with US F-35 Stealth Planes and Russian S-400's…..
30 June 2018
30 June 2018
Israel was the first Middle East nation to purchase the advanced US F-35 stealth plane, but others are fast catching up, and threatening to challenge Israel’s cherished “military edge.”
This week, the Israeli air force took delivery of a pair of these super-planes, dubbed “Adir” (Hebrew for Mighty), raising its F-35 fleet to 12, with another 38 due later to round off the transaction for 50 units.
However, the IAF is thinking hard before deciding whether to stick with taking more F-35 jets or switching to advanced versions of the F-15 fighter-bomber.
Boeing has produced an F-15SE Silent Eagle strike fighter which is an upgraded version equipped with stealth features, such as an internal weapons carriage and radar-absorbent material.
Aviation experts say that, with the addition of Israeli high-grade avionics and electronics, the new F-15E fighter could outperform the F-35 and F-22 Raptor.
Our reliable military sources say that Israel has three more pressing reasons for alternating the backbone aircraft of its air fleet.
1. More and more Middle East nations are standing in line to buy this super plane, including Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Egypt and Turkey. The introduction of US F-35's [pictured above] to those air forces would narrow Israel’s advantage in aerial combat.
2. Moscow is aggressively marketing its new Su-57 stealth plane to all and sundry in the Middle East and Gulf. Israel looked askance when the Russians brought the Su-57 to Syria in February for a series of test operations.
3. Most importantly, the IAF and Israeli intelligence are watching with growing concern Moscow’s marketing campaign in the Middle East and Asia of its S-400 Triumf (NATO codenamed SA-21 Growler) which is one of the best air defence systems in production today.
Russia is in negotiation for the sale of batteries to India, Turkey, Qatar, Egypt and the UAE.
The prospect of the Middle East becoming awash with F-35 super planes and sophisticated S-400 air defence missiles is a nightmare for Israel, but also for the United States.
Russian instructors, flying to those countries to train local teams in the use of the S-400 radar and fire control systems, will be on hand to gather sensitive intelligence on the F-35 and its secret capabilities.
Such data in Russian hands would allow its manufacturers to upgrade both their S-400 systems and the assault and electronic systems of their own Su-57 stealth planes.
The Americans are most concerned about India, the leading customer for US and Israeli advanced weaponry.
If Delhi purchases the Russian air defence system, it will be snapped up by clients in other parts of the world.
On Wednesday, June 27, sources in Washington disclosed that India will be
offered the American Terminal High Altitude Area as an alternative ballistic missile defence system, when Nirmala Sitharaman, its defence minister, and Sushma Swaraj, its external affairs minister, are in Washington on July 6 for the Indo-US 2+2 dialogue.
offered the American Terminal High Altitude Area as an alternative ballistic missile defence system, when Nirmala Sitharaman, its defence minister, and Sushma Swaraj, its external affairs minister, are in Washington on July 6 for the Indo-US 2+2 dialogue.
Another potential buyer is Qatar. Saudi Arabia warned this emirate, with whom it has a running quarrel, that its purchase of a Russian S-400 system would jeopardise Saudi national security and threatened military action if the deal goes through.
Kushner Collects a Bagful of Mid-East No's for the US Peace Plan….
30 June 2018
30 June 2018
President Donald Trump said on Monday, June 25 that “a lot of progress had been made in the Middle East,” but he did not say when the White House would release his administration’s Israeli-Palestinian peace plan, which his two advisers, Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt had been touting for the past week.
During a meeting with Jordan’s King Abdullah, [pictured with Kushner above]Trump also referred to the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, and remarked, “Things are a lot different since we ended that,” and “things had improved” since then.
But the reverse is the case; we can report after surveying the outcome of the Jared-Greenblatt seven-day (June 16-24) tour of six Middle East capitals.
They got exactly nowhere in their bid to sell the US peace plan to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Jordan, Qatar or Israel.
Trump’s emissaries were told that the US plan was unrealistic and ill-timed by the Saudi and Emirati crown princes, Muhammad bin Salman (MbS) and Muhammad bin Zayed (MbZ), Egyptian President Abdul Fatteh El-Sisi, Qatar’s Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al Thani and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.
They all insisted that with the region in turmoil, now was not the right time to discuss the peace proposal’s clauses in detail and advised shelving it for a future date.
Not content with this rebuff, the Jordanian king flew to Washington on Monday night, June 24, to warn President Trump face to face that publication of the US peace plan now would set off more unstable currents in his kingdom and a fresh round of terrorist attacks in Israel.
He took Queen Raina, [pictured below] who is of Arab Palestinian descent, along on his trip to Washington, to accentuate the fact that more than 50 percent of Jordan’s population are Arab Palestinians and another potential source of instability.
He also stressed his fixed position on Jerusalem.
Trump made the king no promises about his peace plan before receiving a briefing from Kushner and Greenblatt [pictured below] on their six-point trip.
But it is hard to see him finding time to attend to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with so much urgent business on his plate – his summit with Vladimir Putin in mid-July, the North Korean nuclear issue, the trade wars he has set off with China, Canada and China, Iran’s machinations, and the immigration controversy at home.
Our sources report that the work Kushner and Greenblatt performed in the past year remoulded the US Israeli-Palestinian peace plan into a formatcloser to an economic blueprint than a political program.
For solutions to the intractable problem of Arab Palestinians divided between two territories - 2.5 million on the West Bank under the rule of the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah, and 1.7 million living in the Gaza Strip under a Hamas regime - they shaped two separate economies supported by international institutions.
International assistance would be on tap for improving Palestinian living standards, providing jobs and bringing their economic, education and medical systems up to modern standards.
Their plan would essentially create two separate Palestinian entities.
This concept ran into three specific difficulties:
1. Extreme opposition from the Palestinian Authority – most markedly from its chairman Mahmoud Abbas, who sees the plan as a vehicle for weakening the Palestinian people by splitting it in two parts.
2. Every single Arab ruler visited by Kushner and Greenblatt was adamantly opposed to it, although for their own reasons. But they all warned that if the plan was published at this time, they would be obliged toline up against it and support Abbas.
3. The most vehement critic was the Egyptian president, [pictured above] on whom they had pinned hopes for a Gaza rehabilitation program that would kick off a comprehensive Arab Palestinian solution.
They started out by proposing to attach parts of the northern Sinai desert peninsula to the future independent Palestinian entity in the Gaza Strip. El-Sisi refused to even hear of this.
The two Americans then cut their plan down to the establishment of industrial zones in northern Sinai as a source of jobs and an economic hinterland for Gazans.
That too was rejected; El-Sisi refused to consider the building of a single Arab Palestinian factory or project on Egyptian soil in northern Sinai.
The only thing he was willing to look at was expanding the El Arish power station with US funding for supplementing electric power to the Gaza Strip.
All in all, El-Sisi knocked the stuffing out of the Kushner-Greenblatt economic plan for the Gaza Strip.
4. In any case, the two US envoys found all the Middle East rulers they approached deeply immersed in more pressing problems:
Saudi Prince Muhammad is deeply involved in a military operation to defeat the Iranian-backed Houthi insurgency in Yemen, along with the UAE crown prince; Sheikh Tamim al Thani of Qatar is busy feuding with Saudi Arabia and the UAE; Abdullah of Jordan is gravely concerned by the Syria army’s advance on Daraa province and his border.
He fears another 200,000 Syrian refugees turning up on his doorstep, bringing further destabilisation to his kingdom; while Prime Minister Netanyahu has his hands full fighting off the corruption allegations hanging over his head and the indictment filed against his wife this week for defrauding the state over household expenses.
He must also keep a weather eye on two escalating fronts – the North and Gaza
Again this week we have seen many prophetically dynamic events occur in the Middle East with practically none of this vital news being made available to the general public by a media more interested in the antics of showbiz celebrities and other assorted evils.
There is a global shock coming and the evidence of that surrounds those with the wisdom to see these days for what they are?
Keep looking up!
Israel Report
Editor; Mike Claydon
Editor; Mike Claydon
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