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Israel Bombs Targets In Syria As Russia Forms New Coalition Against ISIS That Could Include China
The Israeli army bombed Syrian army positions in the Kuneitra area today after a rocket or mortar landed in the border area on the Golan Heights on Sunday. It was the second time in two days a projectile fired from Syrian territory exploded in an open field on the Golan Heights; no damages or casualties were reported.
Defense Minister Moshe ‘Boogie’ Ya’alon said that the Syrian army was responsible for the firing of the projectiles and warned the Syrian army not to cross a red line.
“From our perspective this is a violation of sovereignty and a crossing of a red line. The State of Israel has no intention of ignoring such incidents, and the IDF therefore attacked two Syrian army artillery positions this evening,” Ya’alon said.
“We view the Syrian regime and its army as being responsible for what happens in their territory and we will not be tolerant in cases such as these,” the Israeli DM told reporters.
A Syrian army commander was wounded in the IDF bombardment on a Syrian town in the southwest of the Quneitra Province, the Times of Israel reported, citing the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR).
At least four rounds of IDF artillery shells hit Syrian army positions near Baath city on the Syrian Golan Heights, SOHR reported. Channel 10 in Israel reported later that 12 targets in Syria were hit by Israeli artillery.
The Israeli reaction must be seen as a warning to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his allies (Iran and Hezbollah) not to heat up the border. TV Channel 10 in Israel had reported on Thursday that Hezbollah and the Syrian Army were again trying to expand their operations beyond the Druze town of Khader opposite Mount Hermon in the northern Golan Heights.
Channel 10 News reported that residents of the Israeli communities in the area had reported loud explosions on the other side of the border over the last week. The TV station reported that the explosions were a clear sign the Syrian army had started a new offensive against Al-Qaeda offshoot Jabhat al-Nusra in the border area. The al-Nusra front controls most of the border with Israel in Syria.
The offensive was related to the Russian intervention in Syria, Channel 10 commentators said. The Russian intervention proves to be a game changer that has provided Assad with a lifeline (and probably more than that). The offensive against Jabhat al-Nusra could be the first sign the Syrian army and its allies are trying to win back lost territory, Channel 10 reported.
The Channel 10 report was followed by the news that Hezbollah has received dozens of Soviet-era tanks from the Syrian army, and that Russia, Syria, Iraq, Iran and Hezbollah have set up an operations room to share intelligence about Islamic State and other Sunni Islamist groups.
Arab media in Kuwait and Qatar and CNN reported that Iraq had entered the new coalition that has emerged after a visit to Moscow by Qasem Sulemani, the commander of the Al-Quds Brigades of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, at the end of July. The news that Iraq joined the operations room of the Russian-led coalition shows how much Iran has increased its leverage in Iraq four years after the U.S. army left the country. The Iraqi move caught the United States totally off guard, Syria Deeply reported. The news site cited the New York Times, which wrote that “American officials knew that a group of Russian military officers were in Baghdad, but they were clearly surprised when the Iraqi military’s Joint Operations Command announced the intelligence-sharing accord on Sunday.”
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah boasted last week that Russia will provide significant support to the Assad regime in Syria and was willing to send significant numbers of missiles, aircraft and accurate machine guns to the Syrian army, Lebanese media reported.
NOW Lebanon reported that the agreement between the four countries and Hezbollah includes “’…administrative mechanisms for cooperation on (the issues of) politics and intelligence and (for) military (cooperation)on the battlefield in several parts of the Middle East, primarily in Syria and Iraq.’”
The editor-in-chief of the pro-Hezbollah paper Akhbar wrote this week that Russia will “play a prominent role on the ground and will participate in combat on the battlefield with their advanced weaponry by leading operations and taking part in artillery shelling, air (raids) and otherwise, alongside the Syrian army and Hezbollah,” NOW Lebanon reported.
The new alliance of the P4+1 allies (a play on the P5+1 countries who negotiated a nuclear deal with Iran) could get the assistance of yet another new player on the Syrian killing fields. According to Iranian media, the Chinese are preparing to send navy ships and fighter planes to northern Syria and will soon join the P4+1 alliance.
The Russian News Agency Tass reported that China was ready to join the international fight against terrorism, but did not confirm the Iranian reports. Tass cited a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry who refused to confirm or deny the Iranian reports. The spokesman said he did not have the necessary information to answer questions from reporters on the subject. Analyst and weapon expert Jennifer Dyer reported today that there is currently no evidence of the presence of the Chinese navy in Syria.
The first goal of the new P4+1 alliance seems to be to freeze the conflict in Syria. That is why Russian troops have been mainly deployed in the coastal plain near the international airport of Latakia in an area where the Alawite minority is living. The alliance will probably focus on consolidation of regime control in the Lakatia Province and part of the Homs Province–the Qalamoun Mountains and the Damascus area.
The alliance’s limited goal reflects growing international realization that Syria as we know it has ceased to exist. The IDF military intelligence, for example, doesn’t use the word Syria anymore, but refers to the area as al-Sham, the same name Islamic State uses for Syria and Lebanon.
There are currently four forces that rule Syria: Islamic State (which controls almost 50% of the territory), Assad’s regime (roughly 20%), Jabhat Al-Nusra (13%) and the Kurds (17%). None of them seem to be able to achieve a decisive victory.
The Russian-led coalition will thus focus on stopping Islamic State and Jabhat al-Nusra from making further advances, and on the consolidation of Assad’s control over the vital coastal plain, the capital Damascus, and other strategic important areas. For the time being, the strategy seems to be successful; no changes in possession of territories have been reported since Russia entered the fray.
Source: http://www.westernjournalism.com/israel-bombs-targets-in-syria-as-russia-forms-new-coalition-against-isis-that-could-include-china/
