US Exit from Syria Empowers Putin and Iran, Leaves Sunni Bloc, Israel, Jordan, Iraq in the Lurch……
22 December 2018
22 December 2018
The US troop exit from Syria announced by President Donald Trump on Wednesday, December 19, blasted through the Middle East with seismic intensity. Below is a partial run-down of the fallout:
1. Russia: President Vladimir Putin becomes the unchallenged strongman of Syria for years to come.
His army will no longer be restricted to a couple of bases but reign supreme in most parts of the country.
Still, the Russian leader will be saddled with problems: He will have to contain Iran’s influence in Damascus and cope with a re-emerging ISIS, while short of funds for the vast project of reconstruction facing Syria after a devastating seven-year war.
2. Iran: Also elevated in the power stakes is Iran’s General Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Revolutionary Guards Al Qods Brigades.
He can pose as a strong local potentate with an impressive resume. He was responsible for Iran’s decisive contribution to Bashar Assad’s victory against the Syrian insurgency;
He remodelled Hizballah’s militia to become the strongest army in Lebanon; he designed the battle for wresting Kirkuk and its oilfields from Iraq’s Kurds; engineered Hamas’ nine-month anti-Israeli campaign from the Gaza Strip; and ensured Israel’s failure to uproot the Iranian military presence from Syria – all of these feats capped by the US exit from Syria, for which the Iranian general will no doubt take credit.
Soleimani [pictured below] will claim that Washington, by taking leave of Syria, will undermine its positions in the Middle East and even weaken the impact of its sanctions against Iran.
3. Israel is a major casualty. Its military and intelligence posture hinged on the presumption of American boots on the ground in eastern and northern Syria as a barrier against pro-Iranian Iraqi militias crossing in to fight Israel in Syria and Lebanon.
The US presence was a reassuring counterweight to the Russian presence. Its departure will leave Israel standing alone against Iranian and Russian forces and their shared interests and actions.
On Wednesday night, when Israel’s leaders were still reeling from the news of the imminent US departure, some American officials offered assurance that the US Air Force would still be around for rendering assistance if necessary.
This assurance was taken with a grain of salt. No one in the Middle East feels able any longer to fully trust an American promise of assistance.
Of late, moreover, the once warm and friendly interaction between Donald Trump and Binyamin Netanyahu has been marred by occasional misunderstandings and snags in communication.
Israel’s government, army and intelligence suddenly face the immense task, running into billions of dollars, of overhauling its military.
The Syrian front will have to be rebuilt and reinforced after two years in which Israel counted on US-Russian understandings to keep the Syrian border region quiescent.
4. Jordan and King Abdullah [pictured above] are suddenly exposed even more than Israel to icy draughts from more than one direction -from Damascus, where Assad is gaining strength, from the Lebanese Hizballah, boosted by pro-Iranian Iraqi militias and sitting on their border, and directly from Tehran.
Revolutionary Iran always regarded the overthrow of a Sunni Hashemite king in Amman as a glittering - although unattainable - feat, that would have planted pro-Iranian forces on the eastern border of Israel and the northern border of Saudi Arabia, Tehran may now rate that prize to bepotentially within its reach.
Reliable sources report that when the news of the imminent US departure from Syria landed in Amman, the king contacted President Trump and asked him to delay the move from the Al Tanf base, which guards the Syrian-Jordanian border.
He asked for time to get set to face the freshly unimpeded Iranian threat. Trump promised to discuss this request with his advisers, but Abdullah’s anxiety was not allayed.
5. Iraq: Wednesday night, administration officials were quick to state that the US was not proposing to withdraw the 5,000 American troops from Iraq as well as Syria.
But that is only half the story. Reliable sources point to the disclosures in former issues of Trump administration steps to work with Tehran in setting up an agreed post-election government in Baghdad.
There is no doubt that the removal of the American presence from Syria and the opening of the Syrian-Iraqi border to free Iranian and pro-Iranian passage will strengthen Iran’s hold on Baghdad and weaken Saudi influence.
Like the Jordanian monarch, the Saudi royal house [pictured below] isbadly rattled by the escalating peril on its borders.
6. The most damaging fallout from Trump’s step is his administration’s plummeting credibility in the Middle East. Its rulers are already rating the value of his promises no higher than those of his predecessor, Barack Obama.
7. Saudi Arabia: It is hard to see how the Sunni-led moderate alliance the Trump administration worked hard to fashion by bringing Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the UAE under the US aegis will survive.
It is even harder to see how Israel will take its place in that line-up as envisioned not long ago in Washington, Riyadh and Jerusalem when cold winds are blowing into the region from the White House.
Trump’s Syria Pullout Grounded in Covert Deal for Turkey’s Takeover of North Syria…..
22 December 2018
22 December 2018
Laying the ground for US President Donald Trump’s shock decision to pull US troops out of north and east Syria, was a live wire.
His adviser on Syria, James Jeffrey, had been flitting in and out of Ankara for the past two months, under the Middle East radar, to tie up the ends of a secret deal with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan.
His movements were observed by US Defence Secretary James Mattis and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
But they were certain that Jeffrey was fleshing out the plan to carve out a US enclave of influence in north-eastern Syria and secure it with a semi-autonomous Kurdish-led state entity.
Turkey was to be allowed to expand its military control alongside the enclave.
As far as Mattis [pictured Rt below] and Pompeo [pictured Lt below] were concerned, this US-Turkish-Kurdish alignment was designed to be a barrier against the Russian-Iranian-Syrian push in Syria, with support from friendly Arab Gulf states and Israel.
Jeffrey, arguably the only American whom Erdogan trusts and calls a friend, often contended, even before his White House appointment, that US-Turkish relations are the key to stability in Syria and marred only by Turkey’s unqualified hostility to Kurds, especially the Syrian factions.
The panacea he proposed was not to tone down Erdogan’s hostility, but to persuade Syrian Kurds to break off ties with their brothers of the Turkish PKK (Kurdish Workers Party) underground movement, which Ankara designates a terrorist organization, and build relations of trust with Ankara.
Washington could then mend its ties with Ankara and restore Turkey to the role of a trustworthy ally ready to break away from Russia and Iran.
This doctrine was adopted as their policy guidelines for Syria and US-Turkish ties by the Pentagon, the State Department, the National Security Council, US intelligence agencies and a row of bodies involved in US policy making.
But Trump’s sudden decision to pull US troops from Syria forthwith revealed that this doctrine had been no more than a front for a completely different agenda, which had been developed covertly by the president’s adviser on Syria with his approval.
Behind this façade, the White House had taken steps that led up to the Trump bombshell announcement. Intelligence sources count those steps:
1. On October 12, Ankara suddenly released the American pastor Andrew Brunson. This was said to have been part of a secret deal between Ankara and Washington to lift the sanctions that would have sunk the Turkish lira and extradite the Turkish opposition cleric Fethullah Gulen, [pictured above] whom Erdogan accused of masterminding the failed 2016 coup against him. Those reports were strenuously denied by President Trump.
2. Quiet negotiations took place to dissuade Turkey from executing a $2.5bn transaction for the purchase of Russian S-400 air defence systems. Their acquisition would have led to the integration of the air defense forces of a NATO member with parallel Russian outfits in Syria and Crimea, and becoming part of Russia’s eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea deployments.
The mask came off on December 18 when the US State Department approved a possible $3.5 billion sale of Patriot air and missile defence systems to Turkey after notifying Congress of the certification.
The Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov [pictured below] hurriedly remarked that the American deal did not cancel Turkey’s purchase of S-400s. But, say our sources, he is wrong. Erdogan promised Jeffrey that he would call off the deal with Moscow if he were assured of American air defence systems as well as advanced F-35 stealth planes for his air force.
3. Another part of the charade was the US announcement that its military had established three observation posts in northern Syria for preventing clashes between Turkish forces and the US-backed Kurdish militia.
Erdogan was said to be strongly opposed to this plan. That too was a piece of deception. On the quiet, without the knowledge of Secretary Mattis or US military chiefs in Syria, Erdogan had consented to the plan, while the Americans assured the Kurds that the observation posts would keep them safe against the Turkish military concentrations they saw building up in northern Syria for a leap across the Euphrates to the east.
4. A reliable source can reveal now that these steps are coming together as a masquerade staged to conceal the crux of the deal Jeffrey struck with Erdogan.
Under that deal, it was agreed that the US army would evacuate all 12 bases in the Kurdish regions of northern Syria;
Turkish forces would then cross over into East Euphrates, march up to the Syrian Kurds’ capital of Qamishli and under its guns force Kurdish leaders to sign a political and military pact with Turkey.
This pact would affirm Turkey’s control of Syria’s entire northern regionfrom the Mediterranean coast in the west up to the Iraqi border in the east, in place of the US army.
5. Our sources report that President Trump additionally promised Erdogan that he will conduct a thorough inquiry into the charges brought against the exiled Turkish cleric with a view to eventually extraditing him to Turkey.
Erdogan turns out to be the sole winner of the deal Jeffrey negotiated on behalf of President Trump.
It resulted in the cataclysmic US military withdrawal from Syria with disastrous fallout on US allies, while the Turkish leader achieved his goals without granting a single discernible concession in return.
Why Did Israel Go for Hizballah’s Tunnels, Not Its Precision Missiles?.......
22 December 2018
22 December 2018
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu struck a high note when he first disclosed Hizballah’s secret precision missile sites near Beirut airport in a speech to the UN General Assembly on September 27.
He claimed the first site “was in the Ouzai neighbourhood on the water’s edge, a few blocks away from the runway”.
The second site,” he said, “was under the Ahed Stadium,” and the third site was “adjacent to the airport itself, right next to it.”
“Israel knows where you’re doing it, and Israel will not let you get away with it,” he said.
However, after several weeks of inaction, the Prime Minister, while awarding outstanding performance certificates to Mossad personnel, on December 6, sounded a less urgent note, when he remarked, “Hizballah has no more than just a few tens of precise missiles.”
On December 11, Major General Tamir Hayman, [pictured above] Director of Military Intelligence (AMAN), continued this downplay of the threat when he commented to a closed session of the Knesset Security Committee:
On December 11, Major General Tamir Hayman, [pictured above] Director of Military Intelligence (AMAN), continued this downplay of the threat when he commented to a closed session of the Knesset Security Committee:
“Hizballah doesn’t have the industrial capacity for upgrading and manufacturing precise missiles.”
He did not go into detail on this shortcoming or refer to the 130,000 rockets and missiles stocked in the Hizballah arsenal, but his judgement backed up Netanyahu’s second evaluation and followed an attempt to defuse the threat by diplomacy
On November 5, French President Emmanuel Macron’s special adviser Arelien Lechevallier - who visited Jerusalem at the same time as President Donald Trump’s special envoy on Syria, James Jeffrey – was entrusted with the mission of carrying a warning to Beirut that the Hizballah missile upgrade units must be shut down promptly, or else Israel would attack and destroy them.
Lechevalllier [pictured above] travelled to Beirut on Nov. 10 and handed Israel’s warning to Lebanese Foreign Minister Gibran Bassil, who passed it on to President Michel Aoun.
The answer came back in one of Hassan Nasrallah’s harangues to his followers: “The path of the Resistance is decisive, strong and triumphant achieving historic victories,” he said.
“Hizballah will unquestionably retaliate against any Israeli aggression against Lebanon. We are not afraid of any sanctions and will continue to hold on to our weapons and missiles.”
The next event in this war of words was Operation Northern Shield launched by the IDF on December 4 for uncovering and neutralising the tunnels Hizballah had run under the border into Israel.
So why did the Netanyahu government choose to challenge Hizballah on its tunnels instead of its precise missiles and, further, reduce the provocative impact by confining the operation strictly to the Israeli side of the border?
There would be little sense in destroying the small missile upgrade workshops in Lebanon while leaving the bigger factories Iran was building in Syria, when the former carried the high risk of triggering full-scale Lebanese-Israel war.
Israeli strategists have furthermore opted to pause attacks on Iranian targets in Syria, including its precision missile factory, so long as the Israel Air Force is tied down by the Russian S-300 and S-400 air defence missiles deployed in Syria.
The population in Israel is not ready to withstand a major conflict with Hizballah. Wide regions would be at risk if Hizballah carried out its threat to unleash an unprecedented barrage of 1,300-1,500 short- and medium-range rockets.
The damage to industrial infrastructure and disruption of essential utilities would precipitate an economic slowdown. This is to be prevented at all costs in an election year.
The government’s serial crises in recent weeks may well bring forward the general election scheduled for November to May.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who assumed the defence minister’s hat as well since earlier this month, along with the chief of staff Lt General Gady Eisenkot [pictured above]and most of the IDF’s high command made the decision to step around an all-out conflict with Hizballah.
But a substantial number of senior officers are convinced that delaying the assault on Hizballah’s precision missile capabilities at this time will cost dearly in the long term even more than embarking on an all-out conflict in the present.
Pros and Cons of the U.S. Pullout from Syria……………….
Caroline Glick
20 December 2018
Caroline Glick
20 December 2018
President Donald Trump's sudden announcement Wednesday that he is removing U.S. forces from Syria shocked many.
But it shouldn't have come as a surprise, because the move is consistent with key aspects of Trump's military and foreign policy.
Trump promised to bring the 2,000 U.S. Special Forces home from Syria in April.
When his announcement sparked opposition from the Pentagon and from key allies, Trump said that he would give the Pentagon six months to complete its mission to defeat so-called "Islamic State" (ISIS) forces in Syria.
Seven months later, he announced the troops will be coming home.
Trump's decision will have negative consequences. But it will also have positive consequences.
Only time will tell if the positive implications of the move will outweigh the negative ones. But it is important to set out both to consider the wisdom of his decision.
Read the FULL ARTICLE
We wish all our subscribers the most blessed Christmas, and a spiritually prosperous New Year 2019.
A year that holds great prophetic promise as world events appear to be rushing toward the fulfilment of so many Biblical promises!
Thank you too to all those who have contacted us with great encouragement and efficacious prayer during this oftentimes rather trying year!
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