Iranian, Syrian, Iraqi army chiefs plot joint operation for opening Syrian-Iraqi border .............
In the first meeting ever of the Iranian, Syrian and Iraqi armed forces chiefs on Monday, March 18 inDamascus, it was decided to launch a joint operation for reopening the border between Syria and Iraq.
Also determined was the volume of next year’s Iranian military and economic assistance to the Assad regime.
The trilateral military summit was arranged , during Bashar Assad’s surprise trip to Tehran on February 25 at his audience with supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
It was one item on a long list of decisions the two leaders reached on military, economic and strategic issues that will inevitably lead to Iran and Syria confronting the US and Israel in a clash of arms.
The three army chiefs were entrusted with implementing those decisions. To this end, Iran’s Major General Mohammad Hossein Bagheri,[pictured above] Syria’s General Ali Abdullah Ayoub and Iraq’s Lieutenant General Othman al-Ghanimi got together on Monday.
A short time earlier, the Assad regime issued a statement demanding that US forces remove themselves from Syria.
This was meant to be the lead-in to the three generals’ main decision, which was to reopen the 615km long Syrian-Iraqi border to the free movement of goods and people for the first time after five years of closure.
Each of the three armies was given a special role in the operation.
By this operation, Iran hopes, once the Russian and US presence is gone, to get started on building its much-coveted land corridor for linking the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean via Iraq and Syria under Tehran’s control. The US and Israel have managed to frustrate this ambition in the last two or three years.
It will be interesting to observe what they do this time around? A war seems the most likely outcome.
Iran Building Two New Nuclear Plants............
Files complaint against U.S. for 'crimes against humanity'
The reactor building at the Bushehr nuclear power plant in southern Iran
March 19, 2019
Iranian leaders announced on Monday the construction of two new nuclear plants, and it remains unclear if the Trump administration views this as crossing a red line since its abandonment of the landmark nuclear deal, which included provisions permitting Iran to work on heavy water nuclear reactors that could provide a plutonium-based pathway to a nuclear weapon.
On the same day it announced that these new nuclear reactors, which are being built in conjunction with Russia, would be filing papers accusing the United States of "crimes against humanity."
The new nuclear moves are rattling congressional Iran hawks, who have been critical of a series of waivers issued by the Trump administration permitting Iran to continue engaging in nuclear research, including at an underground site that once housed the regime's nuclear weapons program.
Iranian Commander: All of Israel within reach of Hezbollah's missiles ..............
Tehran has deployed some of its warships to Bab el-Mandeb strait, which connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden......
March 18, 2019
Mohammad Ali Jafari, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp.
All of Israel is now within range of Hezbollah’s missiles, Commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Major-General Mohammad Ali Jafari said in an interview with Iranian media on Sunday.
“The current status quo and the current capabilities of the Resistance Front of the Islamic Revolution are all the unique accomplishments of the Islamic Revolution which cannot be verbally described and they rather should be sensed,” he said in an interview with the Persian-language Soroush Magazine.
“The current status quo and the current capabilities of the Resistance Front of the Islamic Revolution are all the unique accomplishments of the Islamic Revolution which cannot be verbally described and they rather should be sensed,” he said in an interview with the Persian-language Soroush Magazine.
“While they once dreamed of their territorial expansion from the Nile River to the Euphrates River, and they were after realizing this wish in the past 50 years, today you can see that they have been unable to expand their land even for an inch; they even have lost some of the territories they had already occupied and are under full siege from all around their borders,” he continued.
Israel and Hezbollah last fought a war – the Second Lebanon War – in 2006, and has since then morphed from a guerrilla group to an army with a set hierarchy and procedures.
Israel and Hezbollah last fought a war – the Second Lebanon War – in 2006, and has since then morphed from a guerrilla group to an army with a set hierarchy and procedures.
With the help of Iran, it has rebuilt its arsenal since 2006 and has hundreds of thousands of short-range rockets and several thousand more missiles that can reach deeper into Israel.
“To put it in a nutshell, we can say that the enemy has not been successful in the region and all its plots and operations have ended up with nothing but failure for them and success for the Islamic Revolution and the Resistance Front,” Jafari said.
Israel’s air defences currently include the Iron Dome, designed to shoot down short-range rockets, the Arrow system, which intercepts ballistic missiles outside of the Earth’s atmosphere, and the David’s Sling missile defence system, which is designed to intercept tactical ballistic missiles, medium- to long-range rockets, as well as cruise missiles fired at ranges between 40 to 300 km.
In early March, the IDF announced that the United States deployed its THAAD anti-ballistic missile defence system in Israel as part of a month-long joint drill
Built by Lockheed-Martin the THAAD system is considered one of the most advanced systems of its kind in the world, and during the drill will be added to the existing Israeli air defence systems which defend against long-range ballistic missiles, giving the IDF an opportunity to practice it’s integration in the IAF Air Defence Array.
Also on Sunday Tehran announced that it had deployed its 61st flotilla to the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait.
“To put it in a nutshell, we can say that the enemy has not been successful in the region and all its plots and operations have ended up with nothing but failure for them and success for the Islamic Revolution and the Resistance Front,” Jafari said.
Israel’s air defences currently include the Iron Dome, designed to shoot down short-range rockets, the Arrow system, which intercepts ballistic missiles outside of the Earth’s atmosphere, and the David’s Sling missile defence system, which is designed to intercept tactical ballistic missiles, medium- to long-range rockets, as well as cruise missiles fired at ranges between 40 to 300 km.
In early March, the IDF announced that the United States deployed its THAAD anti-ballistic missile defence system in Israel as part of a month-long joint drill
Built by Lockheed-Martin the THAAD system is considered one of the most advanced systems of its kind in the world, and during the drill will be added to the existing Israeli air defence systems which defend against long-range ballistic missiles, giving the IDF an opportunity to practice it’s integration in the IAF Air Defence Array.
Also on Sunday Tehran announced that it had deployed its 61st flotilla to the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait.
“The naval group is on a mission to provide security for the routes used by the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines (IRISL) in the area of the Gulf of Aden and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait,” Iranian Navy's Southern Fleet Rear Admiral Afshin Tashk was quoted as saying by PressTV.
The flotilla includes the "Bayandor" destroyer, the Bushehr logistic warship and the Lavan warship.
The deployment of the fleet comes two weeks after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned thatIsrael’’s navy could stop illicit Iranian oil shipments.
“Iran is trying to bypass the sanctions put upon it through the covert smuggling of petroleum via the sea. As these attempts expand, the navy will have a more important role in efforts to block these Iranian actions,” Netanyahu said at a navy cadets’ graduation ceremony in Haifa in early March, adding that he calls “on the international community to halt, by any means, Iran’s attempts to bypass the sanctions via the sea.”
The deployment also comes less than a month after a large-scale naval exercise in the Persian Gulf and strategic Strait of Hormuz.
Iran has been working to upgrade its navy, with new vessels and submarines introduced to bolster the country’s aging fleet and recently announced that it had commissioned its first domestically developed submarine capable of firing cruise missiles.
A comparison between Iran and Israel shows that while Iran has a significantly larger naval assets than Israel (398 versus 65) Iran has a total coastline of 2,440 km. compared to Israel’s 273 km.
The flotilla includes the "Bayandor" destroyer, the Bushehr logistic warship and the Lavan warship.
The deployment of the fleet comes two weeks after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned thatIsrael’’s navy could stop illicit Iranian oil shipments.
“Iran is trying to bypass the sanctions put upon it through the covert smuggling of petroleum via the sea. As these attempts expand, the navy will have a more important role in efforts to block these Iranian actions,” Netanyahu said at a navy cadets’ graduation ceremony in Haifa in early March, adding that he calls “on the international community to halt, by any means, Iran’s attempts to bypass the sanctions via the sea.”
The deployment also comes less than a month after a large-scale naval exercise in the Persian Gulf and strategic Strait of Hormuz.
Iran has been working to upgrade its navy, with new vessels and submarines introduced to bolster the country’s aging fleet and recently announced that it had commissioned its first domestically developed submarine capable of firing cruise missiles.
A comparison between Iran and Israel shows that while Iran has a significantly larger naval assets than Israel (398 versus 65) Iran has a total coastline of 2,440 km. compared to Israel’s 273 km.
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