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ISIS update 9\11\2015.. current US-led-from-behind bombing campaign is a worthless videogame
President of European Council Donald Tusk in Ankara
Turks vs Kurds in brutal Frankfurt street-fight: Knives & bottles brandished
Violence surges in Turkey following end of cease-fire agreement
Aerial view of PKK’s terrorist attacks in Sirnak
Baghdad condemns Turkish incursion into Iraq
‘EU is very far from united policy against ISIS in Syria’
US intelligence docs on war against ISIS were altered – report
Analyst: Many Americans still don’t know who fathered Daesh terrorists
Foreign Policy Diary – The Violence in Middle East (in-depth analysis)
“Russia will continue helping Syria to prevent another Libya scenario”
MSM sees Russian soldiers in Syria
Governments criticize Russian activity in Syria
“Be Our Guest”: Russia Warns Washington Of “Unintended Incidents” In Syria
On Thursday evening, we chronicled the latest in the drama that is Syria’s horrific civil war, noting that, according to an Israeli defense source, “hundreds” of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards are on the ground in Syria fighting alongside the Russians to support Bashar al-Assad’s depleted forces as they battle to regain control of the country.
If true, that would answer the following question which we’ve been asking for quite some time: will Iran remain on the sidelines and allow the Houthis to be routed in Yemen and Assad deposed in Syria, or will Tehran, like Moscow, finally decide that the time for rhetoric has come to an end?
Reports of Iranian involvement come on the heels of rampant speculation about the scope of Russia’s military buildup near Latakia where US “intelligence” and a series of unnamed “Lebanese sources” claim Moscow is essentially preparing for a full-on push to rout any and all domestic opposition to the Assad regime. The question, of course, is what happens when foreign opposition to the Assad regime isn’t willing to accept the restoration of the strongman’s rule.
Predictably, there’s been no shortage of back-and-forth banter between John Kerry and Sergei Lavrov over the past several days. Here’s how Lavrov characterizes the exchange:
“Kerry was also pushing the very strange idea that supporting Bashar Assad in his anti-terror fight only strengthens the positions of ISIS, because the sponsors of ISIS would pump even more arms and money into it,” Lavrov said.
“It’s an absolutely upside-down logic and yet another attempt to appease those who use terrorists to fight dissenting regimes,” the Russian FM said, mentioning US attempts to cooperate with varrious extremist groups in Syria over the past few years.
“It’s a colossal mistake that the US-led [anti-ISIS] coalition never considered interaction with Syria, not even information exchange,” Lavrov said. “I cannot comprehend this logic, or rather absolute lack of logic.”
“We help not only Syria, we also provide weapons to Iraq and other countries of the region that find themselves on the frontline with the terror threat. Equally for Iraq and other countries, we do so without any political preconditions,” Lavrov said.
And on Friday, Lavrov took it up a notch with a series of very serious-sounding (albeit hilariously overstated, we hope) soundbites delivered at a news conference in Russia. Here’s Reuters:
At a news conference, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Russia was sending equipment to help Assad fight Islamic State. Russian servicemen were in Syria, he said, primarily to help service that equipment and teach Syrian soldiers how to use it.
Russia was also conducting naval exercises in the eastern Mediterranean, he said, describing the drills as long-planned and staged in accordance with international law.
Lavrov blamed Washington for cutting off direct military-to-military communications between Russia and NATO over the Ukraine crisis, saying such contacts were “important for the avoidance of undesired, unintended incidents”.
“We are always in favor of military people talking to each other in a professional way. They understand each other very well,” Lavrov said. “If, as (U.S. Secretary of State) John Kerry has said many times, the United States wants those channels frozen, then be our guest.”
Yes, “be our guest”, which, unless something is lost in translation there (as it was when Hillary Clinton hilariously presented Lavrov with a giant red button that was supposed to say “reset” but actually said “overcharged” in 2009) sounds quite a bit like the Kremlin telling Washington that it’s just fine with Russia if the West wants to risk getting into a scenario where Russian and US jets end up in an “accidental” dog fight in the skies above Syria.
We will now anxiously await Kerry’s response which will almost certainly contain the words “very” and “concerned”, which would be accurate as long as he’s talking about Assad’s fate and not the fate of ISIS.
Iranian troops join Russians in Syria fighting
Israeli security sources claim Quds Force sending hundreds of elite troops in unprecedented cooperation with Russia to save embattled Syrian regime.
Qasem Soleimani, commander of Iran’s elite Quds Force, has sent hundreds of ground soldiers into Syria in the past few days apparently in cooperation with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, said a senior Israeli security official Thursday.
Russia has also recently deployed military assets into Syria and according to the Israeli source, has teamed up with Iran in an unprecedented attempt to protect the embattled regime of Bashar Assad from falling to rebel groups including the Islamic State.
The Israeli source said that Iran’s increased military involvement in Syria was “due to Assad’s crisis and under Russian-Iranian cooperation as a result of a meeting between Soleimani with Russian President Vladimir Putin,” said the Israeli source.
The only Iranian force that has operated in Syria so far has been the Basij militia, a paramilitary organization with a relatively small number of fighters.
The security official said that Israel has little to worry about Russia’s military activity in Syria saying that it is “not directed at Israel.
“We have dialogue with Russia and we aren’t in the middle of the Cold War,” continued the source. “We have open channels with the Russians.”
Israeli security leaders assess that Assad currently controls just 25-30 percent of Syria, mainly around the country’s shoreline where critical supplies are shipped into ports.
“It’s hard to forecast whether Russia’s presence will decide the fate of Syria, but it will lengthen the fighting and bloodletting for at least another year because ISIS won’t give up,” said the Israeli source.
Along Israel’s border with Syria in the Golan Heights, Assad maintains just two enclaves at Quneitra and another smaller area further north, centered around Syrian-Druze villages that look to the regime for protection.
Rebels used bad weather caused by a massive sandstorm across the Middle East in the last few days to gain control of a government-controlled air field near the northern city of Idlib.
US Fears Russian Syria Peace Plan Not Russian Intervention
The M5 highway is the absolutely strategic artery connecting Damascus with the north and west of Syria. Those were the days – during Hafez Assad and then Bashar, up to 2011 – when everyone could be back and forth on the M5 like it was a safe autobahn.
A month ago, though, ISIS/ISIL/Daesh captured the strategic, mostly Christian town of al-Qaryatain, northeast of Damascus. The overstretched Syrian Arab Army, so far, has been hopeless in trying to recapture it.
This is particularly worrying because the fake “Caliphate” is now a mere 30km away from the M5 highway. OK, the highway had been under threat in the past, on and off, by a few snipers holed up in the wasteland of north Damascus. But if ISIS/ISIL/Daesh ever manages to cut it in half, then this would signify nightmare territory for Damascus.
The chances arguably are minimal, because a possible fall of the M5 would be prevented in the first place by a hardcore line of defense – comprised of Hezbollah and Iran military advisers and Special Forces. These would take care of the trouble – without involvement of Russian military experts/advisers which the Russian Foreign Ministry confirmed are indeed in Syria.
They’d have to be; after all they are implementing existing military contracts between Moscow and Damascus, and must teach Syrians how to operate Russian hardware.
So Damascus, even in a critical situation, does not need Russian boots on the ground. What they may rely on is sound advice by GRU and SVR special adviser teams. “The Russians are coming” meme parroted by lousy Western/Israeli intel may in fact refer to these teams coupled with some Russian marines deployed to beef up security at Tartus and the airbase close to Latakia.
R2P is back
Meanwhile, ISIS/ISIL/Daesh continues to annex territory like clockwork. It’s one of the wonders of the geopolitical heavens that Pentagon/NATO drones can pinpoint and surgically obliterate the odd fake “Caliphate” operative while un-surgically ignoring those gleaming, stealth white Toyota convoys parading havoc across ‘Syraq’ concealed by desert storms.
ISIS/ISIL/Daesh can now operate over a huge territory. And every territory lost by Damascus’ forces is now instantly occupied not only by ISIS/ISIL/Daesh but also by Jabhat al-Nusra, a.k.a Al-Qaeda in Syria, or Ahrar al-Sham. All of them hardcore Salafi-jihadis. Not a single US-trained/weaponized “moderate rebel” in sight.
What this implies, politically, is zero possibility of a power-sharing agreement in Damascus. It’s either total victory against the fake “Caliphate”, all across ‘Syraq’ – or death. The precedents are grim. When the Syrian Arab Army was winning against the Caliphate goons, they retreated into Iraqi territory.
This also implies that the current US-led-from-behind bombing campaign is a worthless videogame – with futility reaching Walhalla dimensions with Britain and France now merrily joining the bombing. The only realistic way this beheading-demented motley crew of Salafi-jihadi takfiris may be soundly defeated, on the ground, is by an alliance of Syrian, Hezbollah, Iran and Iraq forces coordinating with precision bombing guided by first-hand intel gathered in the theatre of operations.
It’s not going to happen. Because the White House, the Pentagon, the House of Saud and Sultan Erdogan – beyond any uplifting rhetoric – simply don’t want it. For them, it’s the regime change way, or the highway (as in allowing the fake “Caliphate” to take the M5 highway.)
The bottom line: “The Russians Are Coming” Syria intervention plot is nonsense. It would be simply pointless militarily, apart from politically unsustainable in Moscow. Advising Damascus, yes – that will go on.
Meanwhile, the number of “regime change refugees”, as analyst Vijay Prashad coined them, will keep on swelling. Vast swathes of European-wide public opinion – which has just ‘discovered’ there’s a real, nasty civil war raging in Syria – are already demanding that “something” should be done. As in even more bombing of Syria (thus the French and the British “joining” the action.)
What may be on the cards though is something even more sinister: Libya remixed. Remember the responsibility to protect the would-be victims of a would-be Gaddafi-conducted, massacre of civilians? In this post-Orwellian world, a new R2P war is slouching towards Damascus to be born masking, once again, an obsession with regime change.
That’s what Russia is trying to prevent. For the NATO-GCC Warmonger Party, Make Love, not War will never protect regime change refugees. Their code is crystal clear: Make Bombs, Not Refugees.
Syria in Last 24 Hours: Air Force Destroys Terrorists’ Positions in Lattakia
The Syrian warplanes pounded the strongholds of Al-Nusra Front terrorist group in the province of Lattakia in the last 24 hours, killing tens of terrorists and injuring dozens more.
The Syrian army destroyed the vehicles and wireless communication stations of the terrorists in the Northern parts of Lattakia.
The Syrian security sources, meantime, announced that more than 44 terrorists were killed in the army’s attacks in Lattakia.
Also in the past 24 hours, some 26 Takfiri terrorists were killed in Syrian military operations in Hama province.
Field sources said that 11 terrorists, including their leader nicknamed “al-Sheikh Sa’ad”, were killed during an operation in Kafar Zeta town in the Northern countryside of Hama. A vehicle equipped with a 14.5 mm machine gun was also destroyed.
Six terrorists from “al-Islam Brigade” terrorist group were also killed in Kasheemeh farm in the outskirts of the town.
The Syrian forces killed nine terrorists, and destroyed their arms and ammunition to the East of al-Qadour gas station in al-Lattamneh town, 35 kilometers to the North of Hama city.
Meantime, the Syrian army targeted positions of the Takfiri terrorists in several areas across the Northern Province of Aleppo and its countryside, inflicting heavy losses on them.
A military source said the army destroyed a number of terrorists’ positions, and killed and injured scores of them in the neighborhoods of al-Jdaida, al-Ramousa, al-Ashrafyia, al-Rashidin 4, al-Sheikh Lutfi, al-Layramoun, Bani Zaid, al-Amiryia, al-Sheikh Ahmed, al-Ridwanyia, al-Halabyia, al-Sheikh Khudir and Ekthar al-Bizar in Aleppo.
A group of terrorists were also killed in military operations in Arbid village, and in the vicinity of the Air Force Academy, 40 km to the East of Aleppo city. Terrorists’ positions and equipment were also destroyed.
Elsewhere, the Syrian government forces destroyed positions of the ISIL terrorists in the Northeastern countryside of Sweida.
The army bombed a hideout of ISIL terrorists with their vehicles in the vicinity of Tal Sa’ad in the Northeastern countryside of Sweida, killing and injuring a large group of terrorists.
Meantime, Israel attacked a position of the Syrian Army in Zabadani that was used by government and Hezbollah’s joint troops to pound terrorists, according to a military source.
The Israeli Air Force has carried out airstrikes against an artillery position of the Syrian Army near the town of Zabadani, around 45 km (28 miles) from Syria’s capital Damascus, a military source told Sputnik.
“Israeli warplanes carried out airstrikes at an artillery position belonging to the Syrian Army,” the source said. “The artillery was used by the army to repel attacks from militants in the eastern part of Zabadani.”
The source added that terrorists attacked Syrian army positions on the east side of Zabadani in the early hours of Thursday. The Syrian military, supported by the artillery shelling, managed to repel the attack after a three-hour battle.
After the Israeli Air Force carried out the airstrike, militants reportedly launched a second assault attempt, also repelled by the government’s forces, according to the source.
The Syrian army and Hezbollah troops on Wednesday completed their mop-up operations in the city of Zabadani that was seized back from the terrorists last week.
“The resistance forces have purged terrorists from Zabadani in a two-day operation,” an informed source told FNA.
The sources added that the terrorists had dug tunnels underneath the buildings in Zabadani to get to other parts of the city.
The Syrian army and popular forces seized the city of Zabadani on September 1.
On Sunday, military sources said that the Syrian Army and the Hezbollah, in their mop-up operations in Zabadani, uncovered one of the largest supply tunnels of rebel groups in Zabadani area.
The sources said that the Syrian Army’s 63rd Brigade of the 4th Mechanized Division – in coordination with Hezbollah, the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP), and the National Defense Forces (NDF) – uncovered one of Harakat Ahrar Al-Sham’s large supply tunnels that stretched from the Beit Al-Dalati neighborhood to the outskirts of Southern Zabadani.
The large tunnel unearthed by the Syrian army and Hezbollah was used by Harakat Ahrar Al-Sham militants to resupply and reinforce their embattled combatants that were completely surrounded by the Syrian Armed Forces and Lebanese Resistance near Zabadani’s city-center.
Syrian Army Kills over 100 ISIL Militants in Deir Ezzur in Last 48 Hours
Syrian Army, Hezbollah Repel Rebel Attack in Zabadani Countryside
Baghdad Denounces Turkish Ground Force’s Incursion into Iraq
Kurdish Fighters Rebuff ISIL Attack near Kobani North of Syria
Russia Sends Firearms, Grenade Launchers to Syrian Army to Counter ISIL
Israel Conducts Airstrikes at Syrian Artillery near Damascus
Source: http://blogdogcicle.blogspot.com/2015/09/isis-update-9112015-current-us-led-from.html
