Israeli-Iran War in Syria Hangs in Balance between Two Summits….
14 July 2018
14 July 2018
Israel might be prevailed on to accept Syrian military forces on its Golan border - provided Bashar Assad agrees to respect the 1974 ceasefire lines and accepts a UN observer force for monitoring the demilitarised zone (DMZ).
According to reliable sources, that is the concession Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu offered Russian President Vladimir Putin when they talked in Moscow on Wednesday, July 11.
This concession was to be part of a package deal that Putin is to tie up with President Donald Trump in Helsinki on July 16.
But, above all, it would be contingent on Iran agreeing to fit in with Putin’s deals with Israel and the US and leave Syria – clearly a pipe dream.
The roughly 235 sq.km demilitarised zone, on which the Netanyahu-Putin talks hinged, runs north from the southern tip of the Golan up to Mt Hermon.
Its width varies according to the terrain from a narrow strip of a few dozen metres in the south, to 6 km. at the northern end of the Golan and widening out to 10k on the Hermon.
If Putin and the Syrians were to buy the Israeli proposal, Israel would pay the price of accepting Syrian tanks and artillery posted opposite IDF defence lines - not only on the Golan but also the Sea of Galilee (Lake Kinneret), which is Israel’s primary source of water.
For this concession, Israel would exact Russian and Syrian guarantees for the removal of all pro-Iranian forces, including Hizballah and the Iraqi, Afghan and Pakistani Shiite militias under Revolutionary Guards command, from every inch of Syria.
However, no assent on this road map emerged from the Putin-Netanyahu face-to-face in Moscow on Wednesday, July 11, although they will no doubt talk again.
Their meeting was accompanied by the sounds of the first direct Israel-Syrian duel over Quneitra and the Golan.
An Israeli Patriot downed an intruding Syrian drone and its air force retaliated by bombing three Syrian army posts in the Quneitra district.
Putin is to be offered further inducement for ridding Syria of the Iranians at his summit with President Donald Trump on July 16.
The plan is to offer a US pullback from eastern Syria and the border with Iraq – which would start at the end of the full evacuation of Iranian, Hizballah and Shiite forces from the country.
On the table first would be the US exit from the strategic Al-Tanf outpost commanding the intersection of Syria, Iraqi and Jordanian borders.
Our sources report that the aides preparing Trump’s summit with Putin advise him to limit his offer to Al-Tanf, but they realise that the president may expand this offer in the heat of bargaining.
Officials in both Washington and Jerusalem hope Putin sees the attraction of the US-Israeli proposals in that they enable Assad to take over Syria’s frontier lands with Israel, Jordan and Iraq without firing a shot, amid Russian-brokered ceasefire deals with the rebels.
But Iran is an outsize fly in the ointment.
With a stranglehold on the Syrian-Russian partnership, its rulers are fixed in their determination to stay in Syria, come what may.
They might possibly be moved by Trump offering through Putin some relief from the ever-toughening sanctions he will clamp down on the Iranian economy and oil sales in the coming months.
That scenario is just as unreal. Trump can’t afford to show weakness on Iran with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s nuclear and missile disarmament negotiations with North Korea at a delicate juncture. (See article below.)
Our intelligence sources report that Netanyahu presented Putin with a list of the units Hizballah and the ‘Shiite militias are fielding for the Syrian army’s Daraa and Quneitra operations close to the borders of Jordan and Israel:
Our sources reveal its contents here for the first time:
• Hizballah Al Radwan Division of special forces
• Two brigades of Iraq’s powerful Hashed al-Shaabi military alliance
• Liwa Fatemiyoun aka Fatemiyoun Division – an Afghan Shiite militia
• The Sainabiyoun Brigade - a Pakistani Shiite militia.
Together they comprise 18,000 combatants under the orders of Iran’s South-eastern Syrian Command from its base at Izra.
Therefore, around half of the fighting strength in south-east Syria consists of Shiite troops under Iranian command, in flagrant violation of Putin’s commitment to the US and Israel to keep those troops out of Syria’s southern campaigns.
Under no circumstances, will Bashad Assad forego this vital component of his military strength.
Another of Putin’s promises was broken when the Russian air force conducted dozens of air strikes in support of this combined southern Syrian offensive.
Netanyahu’s information was not news to the Russian president, who receives daily briefings on the various Syrian warfronts.
According to our sources, Putin’s plan was to procrastinate on Netanyahu’s complaints and keep him waiting for answers until he sees the US presidentnext Monday.
[On July 12, shortly after Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu flew out of Moscow after his talks with Putin, the Russian president sat down in the Kremlin with Ali Akbar Velayati, international affairs adviser to Iran’s supreme ruler, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
How that conversation went eventually be revealed but only after the Helsinki summit.]
He will then press Trump hard to get him to hold Israel back from going to war against the Syrian, Hizballah and pro-Iranian forces approaching its borders.
Putin has five days to turn the situation around.
Halting the Assad army’s advance in the south would help, but that will be a tall order given the counter-pressure from Iran for the Syrian ruler to keep going – especially after the initial trading of blows between Israel and Syria on Wednesday.
Let us wait and see what the coming week brings? But it would appear that Iran is in Syria for now, until God Himself brings her down on the mountains of Israel in the catastrophic battle depicted in Ezekiel 38/9 – which cannot be too far away now?
Why is Netanyahu Dithering over Fighting Iran in Syria when US Is All Agog?....
14 July 2018
14 July 2018
Jerusalem has received strong messages from Washington encouraging the IDF to go ahead with an operation for driving Iran out of Syria, along with its Hizballah and Shiite militia proxies.
One such message was handed to the IDF Chief of Staff Lt. General Gady Eisenkott in the last week of June, when he talked with General Joseph Dunford, Chairman of the US Chiefs of Staff in Washington.
It came with an offer to deploy US anti-missile missiles in Israel while also laying on intelligence and quantities of ammo and fuel as needed.
The administration estimates that a Middle East war is around the corner anyway in the coming weeks in consequence of the US embargo on Iranian oil sales.
Meanwhile, US intervention thwarted an Iranian effort to get hold of the $300 million it holds in the European-Iranian Trade Bank.
The CIA tipped Berlin off that the money was earmarked for the use of the Revolutionary Guards Al Qods Brigade which runs external terror and subversion.
The agency had received intelligence that Iran needed the money to bankroll its preparations for a war with Israel in Syria.
Germany’s Bafin markets regulator and Customs Intelligence department responded to the US tip-off by informing Tehran that the funds were unavailable pending a close scrutiny.
What this means is that the Trump administration is hitting on Iran’s international banking ties and funding for its external operations - even before the US oil embargo is clamped down in November.
On Tuesday, July 10, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo [pictured below] charged Russia with reneging on the Trump-Putin accords for Syria. In an interview with Sky News in Arabic, Pompeo said:
“We had an agreement with the Russians that they would not move in the south. There was a de-escalation zone that the Russians had agreed to. They have now violated that.”
This was a message for Israel that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu should save himself a journey to Moscow, scheduled for the following day, because Vladimir Putin is not to be trusted.
Even if he did guarantee the ouster of the Iranians and their pawns from Syria, the Russian leader would break his word.
Therefore, it was time for Netanyahu to stop treading water for deals with the Russians and start sending the IDF to do the job of evicting Iran in Syria.
This would enable Trump, when he sits down with Putin in Helsinki next Monday, to demonstrate that the US is not holding Israel back from engaging Iran.
So why is Netanyahu hanging back?
He may be worried by a former episode that ended badly.
In 2006, President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice [pictured below] urged the Israel prime minister at the time, Ehud Olmert, to conduct a blitz operation for smashing Hizballah’s war build-up in Lebanon, trusting it would be over and done in days.
However, the IDF turned out to be unprepared, the operation dragged on for 34 days, Hizballah was not smashed or defeated and northern Israel came under heavy rocket attack - until Rice managed to scrape together an unsatisfactory ceasefire.
While no one in Israel has forgotten that unfortunate experience, our sources have a different explanation for Netanyahu’s hesitancy.
Despite his hawkish image, his entire record as prime minister attests toextreme caution when it comes to full-scale war.
He is less venturesome in this respect than any of his predecessors, having taken to heart the precept that it is easier to start a war than calculating when or how it will end.
His vacillation [or the restraining hand of Israel's God?] also stems from the absence of reliable US or Israeli intelligence predictions on how Iran will respond to an Israeli offensive.
It is still an enigma and so Netanyahu and Israel’s top military chiefs are carefully taking extreme scenarios into account.
They accept that going to war against Iran and Hizballah would potentially inflame three hostile fronts on its borders – Syria, Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, and may spill over into broader regions.
In the worst case, Iran could launch ballistic missiles from its home bases against Israel’s population and strategic centres.
While hoping to avert a missile duel between Israel and Iran, Israeli strategistsunderstand that they may not be in full control.
Matters may have been taken out of their hands when on Wednesday a Syrian military drone entered Israeli space, only to be shot down by an IDF Patriot missile, and followed by Israeli air strikes against three Syrian outposts near Quneitra.
This round of hostilities may be the trigger for an Israeli-Syrian showdown over the Golan, in which pro-Iranian and Hizballah forces will certainly take part with unforeseeable consequences.
Keep an eye out for this situation to develop QUICKLY in the weeks ahead!
New US-Israeli “Project Iran”…..
14 July 2018
14 July 2018
“Project Iran” was set up during Israel’s Chief of Staff Lt. General Gady Eisenkott’s talks with top US brass in Washington on June 29 for coordinated US-Israeli military operations against Iran.
IDF Operations Chief Major General Nitzan Alon was named to head it.
To meet the multiple Iranian threats, four US-Israeli command groups weresecretly established and are revealed here:
The Nuclear Command Group: This covers the key nuclear targets in Iran: weaponry, plutonium reactors, uranium enrichment plants and centrifuge production sites.
The Ballistic Command Group: This deals with Iran’s ballistic missile stocks and launch sites, both surface and underground silos, as well as missile production plants and institutes for missile research and development.
The Anti-Subversion Command Group: Combined under this heading are overt and covert operations against Iranian military and intelligence centres across the Middle East, especially in Syria, Lebanon and Yemen, as well as responsibility for cyber warfare.
The Economic Command Group; Covers US sanctions against Iran. Israel’s contribution to this joint command is intelligence on Iran’s sanctions-busting stratagems at home and internationally.
Nitzan Alon will direct the four command groups. He was chosen for his record and his proven talents as an original, strategic thinker, capable of seeking solutions outside the box and applying unconventional methods to tasks and challenges.
He has, almost unnoticed, put together a hawkish high command comprising a group of officers who are ready to operate in places beyond Israel’s horizons.
How Did Pompeo’s North Korea Mission Get Deadlocked?
14 July 2018
A breakthrough - or the lack of one - on the road to North Korea’s nuclear disarmament is critical to the personal future of President Donald Trump and his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
Trump has stated that he views Kim Jong Un as an honourable man. It is beginning to look as if that appraisal was slightly premature?
14 July 2018
Trump has stated that he views Kim Jong Un as an honourable man. It is beginning to look as if that appraisal was slightly premature?
It also has wider repercussions for the prospects of the White House strategy for bringing Iran to heel.
Pompeo, when he faced North Korean Foreign Minister Kim Yong Choi [pictured above] in Pyongyang last week, did not get the denuclearisation negotiations off to a productive start, although Trump shot off an optimistic tweet:
“I have confidence that Kim Kong un will honour the contract we signed & more importantly, our handshake. We agreed to the denuclearisation of North Korea,” he said.
“China, on the other hand, may be exerting negative pressure on a deal because of our posture on Chinese Trade. Hope not.”
Whether or not China put its oar in, Pompeo found himself facing the implacably tough face of the Kim regime, against which Donald Trump had been widely cautioned before his June 10 summit with Kim Jong-un.
Our sources note that, while Kim Yong Chol did not repudiate his boss’s commitment to Trump to dismantle his nuclear arms, he dug his heels in against discussing any issue before hearing how the US planned to deliver on Trump’s commitments to Kim.
The North Korean wanted hard facts on tangible US steps for buttressing the Pyongyang regime and making North Korea prosperous.
Pompeo, for his part, held out for the North Koreans to produce a detailed catalogue of the facilities and research centres involved in the development of their nuclear weapon and ballistic missile programs.
On this, he drew a blank. The encounter ended up in deadlock with each side demanding of the other in effect: “You go first.”
At that point, the US Secretary got up and left.
Israel Report
Editor; Mike Claydon
Editor; Mike Claydon
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