World Threats

The Jerusalem Post is reporting that Egyptian forces have seized 190 surface to air missiles and other munitions.

Egyptian authorities intercepted a shipment of at least 190 antiaircraft missiles in Sinai probably destined for Gaza on Saturday, Palestinian news Agency Maan reported. According to the report, the Egyptian police raided several storage areas in the area and discovered the secret cache hidden in a remote region in the center of the peninsula. In addition to the antiaircraft missiles, rockets and other ammunition were seized, as well as a large supply of illegal drugs. Reports also stated that authorities raided several locations in Rafah, where they found more stores of explosives and weapons. Earlier on Saturday Kuwaiti newspaper Alrai reported that Syria’s military is on high alert for an Israeli attack on Hizbullah weapons depots located in the country.

Please read the entire article.

Analysis. That is a lot of missiles. You might think that somebody is preparing for a major conflict. Unfortunately, the last sentence is a little ambiguous about where the Hezbollah weapons storage areas are. Since Syria’s military is on alert I will presume that the weapons storage areas are in Syria. Better the weapons should get destroyed before they get to the followers of Hassan Nasrallah.

In a related article Debka is reporting that the United States is selling the Israelis a whole lot of gas.

US Defense Security Cooperation Agency, DSCA, informed Congress of the sale to Israel of 60 million gallons of unleaded gasoline, 284 million gallons of JP-8 aviation jet fuel and 100 million gallons of diesel fuel at an estimated cost of two billion dollars. The date is significant, Debkafile’s intelligence sources find. Ten days earlier, the Japanese tanker M.Star was attacked in Omani waters of the Strait of Hormuz with 200,000 tons of oil.

And at the end of the article this sentence. “Also Saturday, the Kuwait Al-Rai claimed that Israel is making its last preparations for an attack on the Hizballah missile stores located in Syria close to the Lebanese border, for which an IDF armored division has been called up.” The IDF does not call up armored divisions on a whim. Yadzi may well get his “chaos” in the not too distant future.

Debka is reporting on a speech by Khaled Mashaal at last night’s Iftar dinner. He pretty much threatened the neighborhood with war if they support Abbas and the upcoming peace talks.

Read the rest of this entry »

Debka is reporting that Mohammad Ali Jafari, Head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, and two others secretly visited Damascus hours before the Bushehr reactor began to be fueled.

The group stayed only long enough to confer with Syrian president Bashar Assad and his military and intelligence chiefs on three topics:

1. The roles Syria and Hizballah will play in a potential Iranian military reprisal to a possible American or Israeli strike on its nuclear sites.
2. The probable repercussions of an Iranian decision to use Hizballah or pro-Iranian terrorists as proxies for a pre-emptive strike – or strikes – against Israel.
3. How Syria can help discourage the Persian Gulf and Saudi Arabia from their willingness to support a US or Israel attack on Iran with bases, intelligence assets and other means.

…

Debkafile’s military sources add that Israel is taking very seriously the presence in Gen. Jafari’s secret delegation to Damascus of two high-ranking IRGC Al Qods officers. They have been identified as Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis, commander of Iran’s terrorist and spy networks in Iraq, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, and Hassan Mahdavi, formally designated IRGC envoy to the Lebanese Hizballah, who was recently elevated to overall command of the Lebanese terrorist organization.
This promotion effectively changes the status of Hizballah, which is represented as a political force in Lebanon’s parliament and government, from Tehran’s surrogate to external arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps under the direct command of an al Qods officer – an ominous pointer to the goals Iran has set itself in a country bordering on northern Israel.

Please read the entire article for more important information.

Analysis. One other person who is directly concerned wit this change of events is King Abdullah II of Jordan. My presumption has always been that the Syrians would attack the Golan head on. The other way to attack Israel is by doing a “Desert Storm” end around and going through Jordan as far south as Amman and then turning west across the Jordan river Valley and driving for the Mediterranean. An attack such as this splits Israel.

This is also an indication that Iran is being allowed to proceed with their plans for war without a whole lot of impediment. A good deal of this has to do with the sunni Arab countries doing not a whole lot on their own to stifle the Iranians. It is nice for McDonell-Douglas that the Saudis are buying another 84 Eagle jets. However, I am not seeing any indications that they will be put to productive use. I would be more impressed if the Saudis created two infantry divisions.

This one boils my blood. Israel and the Kurds have had a working relationship for years, as they have shared many common enemies. However, it appears that Israel’s former alliance with Turkey has been used to attack the Kurdish people.

According to the Israeli source Debka, Israeli-made drones operated by Turkey have been used to attack Kurdish villages in coordination with a Syrian offensive. This particular sentence is infuriating:

The drones are being used to track Kurds in flight across Syria’s borders, mainly into Lebanon, where Hizballah is helping Syria hunt the refugees down.

This is a global outrage. The Kurdish people in Iraq finally got a modicum of freedom and now their torturers in Syria, Turkey, and Iran have stepped up their efforts. And to use such terrorists as Hezbollah to help in this effort is just another reminder of the Kurdish people’s opposition to groups like al Qaeda and other Islamist groups.

Furthermore, this is helping the Islamic Republic of Iran:

Debkafile‘s intelligence sources have no doubt that Iranian intelligence officers stationed in Damascus and Beirut jumped at the opportunity to learn more about the Israeli wonder-drones.

What a terrible shame. It is my hope that the Kurdish people are able to overthow their oppressors in Assad, Khamenei, and Erdogan.

Iran basically controls the Sunni Hamas terrorist group, but here we have the Iraqi branch of Hamas trying to blow up Shiite mosques. If the Iraqi branch is closely tied to Iran and/or the Palestinian Hamas, then it must be assumed that Iran is trying to use a cover to instigate civil strife in Iraq. They cannot tolerate a secular Shiite/Sunni alliance that successfully runs the Iraqi government, and therefore they must make it collapse or at least become hugely unpopular. This comes as Iraqi Baathists calling themselves “the resistance” openly meet in Damascus.

Here’s the text of the MEMRI post:

Iraqi security forces announced the arrest yesterday of Hayder Fadhel Hussein Al-Zahiri in the province of Diyala, in Iraq. He is described as one of the leaders of Iraqi Hamas, involved in the blowing up of Shi’ite mosques in addition to carrying out acts of kidnapping and murder.

At the same time, the U.S. Army announced the arrest of a leader of the Hizbullah Battalions (kata’ib Hizbullah) in Iraq, along with two of his assistants. He is accused of smuggling weapons into Iraq and carrying out
attacks against Iraqi and U.S. forces.

Sources: Al-Rafidayn, May 10, 2010; Independent Press Agency, Iraq, May 10, 2010

World Net Daily is reporting an excerpt from Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin that Hezbollah is ready for the next war.

A new report from Britain’s MI6 intelligent agency confirms the situation in the Middle East is tailor-made for Hezbollah to strike at Israel, especially since the terrorist group recently received a supply of state-of-the art missiles from Iran, according to a report from Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin.

The situation is so serious that Prime Minister Gordon Brown and opposition leader David Cameron both have been briefed as the nation’s general election advances. The winner soon could be facing a serious international crisis.

Please read the rest of the article.

Analysis. No S*** Sherlock! Anybody who has followed the adventures of Hezbollah recently is already aware that these people have done nothing since 2006 except prepare for war. We have done a pretty good job of documenting this fact which a whole lot of the rest of the World has ignored. The most recent addition to the Hezbollah inventory was some SCUD missiles not to mention the advanced SAMs and the SSMs that almost sunk an Israeli destroyer in 2006. These folks have enough bombardment rockets of all types to support a major invasion. Ready for war? You bet your life they are (and you are betting your life). (FYI there are Hezbollah cells in the United States and Canada. Wonder what they are going to do when it hits the fan in the Middle East?!)

This is a case where ignorance is not bliss. It is not even just ignorance. It is asking for trouble. The UN Security Council Resolution was supposed to prevent Hezbollah from rearming especially south of the Litani River. Fat chance. A bunch of very nice but very incapable UN Peace Keepers sent to Lebanon did a pretty good job of documenting the rearming but could do nothing about it. They were basically hostages and they knew it. Out numbered. Out gunned. And no support from New York.

Right now the only question is who blinks first and over what? Hamas has gotten its share of rockets from Hezbollah through the Gaza tunnels. There are evidently some “El Queda” groups in Gaza that Hamas does not have a whole lot of control over at the moment. There is no unity among the two groups of Palestinians.

I continue to believe that Iran is holding Hezbollah in reserve. The missiles that the Iranians launch in retaliation for an Israeli strike on their nuclear facilities are much more likely to come from Lebanon than Iran. I also believe there will come a time in the near future where Hezbollah may be used to goad Israel into attacking. I believe a whole lot depends on the internal situation in Iran and how close the mullahocracy believes they are to losing control of the country. We have documented the current labor strife in Iran thanks to our friends there. This may be an indication that money is tight due to slower than normal oil sales and the money going to the RGC and the nuclear program.

Un-subsidized gasoline is up to 800 tomans a liter. No idea what the value of 800 tomans is relative to dollars. But it is up from the last time we got gas price information when the subsidized amount was cut from 100 liters a month to 80 liters a month. Ahmadinejad’s request for 4,000,000 million tomans for subsidies is probably going no where even at half that. So, stay tuned.

The Treasury Department has blacklisted Muthanna Harith al-Dari for his role in Al-Qaeda in Iraq. Among the details from the report are:

As of August 2008, al-Dari sought to reinvigorate Iraq’s terrorist insurgency by providing training to any insurgent group fighting coalition forces. He attended training meetings in Syria that were conducted by Al Qaeda in Iraq, during which he described the organization’s attack plans to jihadist trainees.

As of October 2008, al-Dasri “provided $1 million to an AQI member who actively recruits Iraqis in Syria and al-Anbar province to support AQI, instructing the recruiter to tell new AQI recruits that they would be paid up to $10,000 upon completion of their training in Syria,” according to the Treasury Department.

Syria is in bed with Al-Qaeda. Enough of that whole “impossibility of cross-ideological cooperation between extremists” garbage.

The Long War Journal reports that a U.S.  and Iraqi forces have killed Abu Khalaf, a senior Al-Qaeda member who managed the transportation of fighters into Iraq from Syria, where he was based until last fall. From the report:

“Khalaf was responsible for coordinating recent suicide attacks in Baghdad and Anbar,” the official said. There have been five mass-casualty suicide attacks in Baghdad since August 2009, including two attacks this week, as well as several suicide attacks in Ramadi.

“Khalaf was perhaps the most dangerous AQI [Al Qaeda in Iraq] facilitator in Iraq,” the official said. His death “leaves a void in AQI hierarchy.”

Walid Jumblatt, a Druze leader in Lebanon, denies that the terrorist group Fatah al-Islam is connected to Al-Qaeda (as the U.S. State Dept. says), arguing that it is actually a creation of the Syrian government. Personally, I do not think that Syria’s use of Fatah al-Islam as a proxy necessarily means it isn’t linked to Al-Qaeda. In fact, it’s a perfect way for the Assad regime to disguise its own ties to the terrorist organization and others.

From the report:

According to Jumblatt Syria had a plea bargain deal with Fatah al-Islam leader Shaker Absi to free him from prison against heading up the terrorist organization and move to Lebanon to create havoc. This way Syria will camouflage its role and can use the fact that he was in jail as an excuse to deceive the Lebanese people.

And…

According to eyewitnesses Fatah al-Islam militants are flush with cash. The eyewitnesses said that Fatah al-Islam has acquired several buildings and large parcels of land as soon as it landed at the Nahr el Bared refugee camp…all of which was paid for cash. The eyewitnesses asked ” who is financing these people , because none of the Fatah al-Islam militants does any work ?”

The Lebanese anti Syrian majority accuses Syria of forming , training and funding Fatah al-Islam. Syria was also accused by the US and France “of state sponsored terrorism.”

This may be a response to criticism that the terrorist group hasn’t done enough to fight Israel, but Al-Qaeda has published a report that admitted that the organization has a branch in Damascus and that this branch carried out rocket attacks on Israel from Lebanon on June 17, 2007 and in January 2008.

The report also claimed that eight rockets found in Lebanon on December 25, 2008 belonged to Al-Qaeda-Damascus. This branch is led by “close comrades of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi,” it says, proving that Syria acted as a safe haven for the Al-Qaeda element of the Iraqi insurgency.

The Iraqis gave one more piece of evidence tying Syria to the horrific twin bombings in August and General Petraeus has gotten in the mix, revealing that Al-Douri is in Damascus. That’s been widely understood, but this is the highest ranking U.S. official to confirm it and this fact hasn’t been pointed out in months.

From MEMRI:

In the third day of hearings at the Iraqi parliament, Iraqi Interior Minister Jawad Al-Bolani is reported to have revealed in the secret hearings that the cellphone call record of the suicide bomber who blew up the Foreign Ministry last August indicates that he made his last call to someone in Damascus before the operation.

In a related matter, General David Petraeus, U.S. CENTCOM head, told Al-Arabiya TV that Izzat Al-Douri, deputy to Saddam Hussein and one of the men most wanted by the Iraqi government, is in Damascus.

[In his youth, Al-Douri sold ice blocks from a horse-drawn cart; he is known in Iraq as "The Iceman"]

Sources: Al-Mada, December 15, and al-Rafidayn, December 14, 2009

A new satellite channel has begun broadcasting into Iraq called “Saddam Channel.” In reading about this propaganda station, I found this unsurprising revelation:

No one seems to know who is bankrolling the so-called Saddam Channel, although the Iraqi government suspects it’s Baathists whose political party Saddam once led. The Associated Press tracked down a man in Damascus, Syria named Mohammed Jarboua, who claimed to be its chairman.

Just another thing Syria is doing to wage war on its Iraqi neighbors.

Update: It’s being reported that “Saddam Channel” broadcasted from Libya and has suddenly stopped airing.

The Assad regime of Syria is permitting Al-Qaeda to establish a network in the northeastern part of the country from which it can wage war in Iraq.  This has been documented on WorldThreats.com for quite awhile, but this report adds several new details, including that the network is growing.

“There is an entire Al Qaida infrastructure in eastern Syria that includes induction, training, financing and logistics,” an official said. “The Syrian regime knows about this and allows this to continue.”

The report says the Syrian government received “tens of millions of dollars in bribes” to allow Al-Qaeda to operate and that the regime has been promised that it won’t be targeted in return for their safe harbor. There has been debate about whether “Al-Qaeda in Iraq” is really related to the same “Al-Qaeda” that operates under Bin Laden’s leadership and carried out the 9/11 attacks, but this report makes clear that the operatives in Syria come straight from Bin Laden’s ranks.

Issa Al-Masri, a high-level Al-Qaeda operative, left Pakistan for Syria in June, and even operates from Damascus, where he coordinates the flow of money and weapons into Iraq. Also working from Damascus under the protection of Syrian intelligence are two former senior members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party, Sattam Farhan and Mohammed Younis Al-Ahmed.  According to the report, the Baath remanants and Al-Qaeda are actively working together from Syria to carry out attacks on the elected Iraqi government.

The Iraqis have added another threat to Syria, on top of trying to establish a U.N. tribunal to prosecute those in Syria facilitating the violence, and thus exposing the Assad regime’s involvement. Iraq now says that they will end their economic ties with Syria if it does not stop providing insurgents with safe passage and extradite Baathist insurgents involved in the horrific bombings in Baghdad since August.

The Iraqis are handing the confessions of three captured terrorists involved in the October bombings in Baghdad to the U.N. as part of their effort to have a tribunal created and expose Syria.

To better understand Syria’s complicity in radical Islamic terrorism, check out Barry Rubin’s article in Middle East Quarterly, which I might add, mentions yours truly.

Click here for my latest Pajamas Media article. This is an update on the Iraq-Syria crisis. The Al-Maliki government continues to accuse Syria of helping Al-Qaeda and other terrorists and insurgents carrying out attacks in Iraq. Their push for a U.N. tribunal to prosecute those in Syria assisting them has caused a steep drop in violence in Iraq, proving how critical outside support is to the survival of non-state actors.

Update: France is supporting Iraq’s call for a UN tribunal. That’s right–France is now tougher than the U.S. on Syria. In related news, the Iraqi Foreign Minister is expressing frustration that the U.S. can’t accept that Baathists and radical Islamic terrorists cooperate on a regularly basis. It is simply incredible to me that the belief that terrorists of different ideological or religious stripes won’t cooperate is still prevalent in the U.S. government. Read MEMRI’s article below:

Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zibari has told the London daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat that there is cooperation between the Iraqi Ba’th party and Islamist elements in carrying out the deadly bombings in Iraq, and that the Americans fail to understand such cooperation between a secular political party and religious elements.

He said that Syria is turning a blind eye to activity by Iraqi terror elements on its soil, and France is supporting Iraq’s intent to establish an international investigation committee on the bombings in Iraq.

Source: Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, London, November 19, 2009