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Ed Webb

IDF chief warns US not to rejoin Iran deal - Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East - 0 views

  • On Jan. 26, the day Al-Monitor ran an article describing hints of a military option against Iran that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was directing at the new US administration, the chief of the Israel Defense Forces, Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi, delivered his annual address at Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies. His remarks shocked Israel’s political-defense establishment and likely reverberated in Washington and Tehran. Contrary to the position taken by two of Kochavi’s predecessors, Lt. Gen. (res.) Benny Gantz and Lt. Gen. (res.) Gabi Ashkenazi, who currently serve as Israel’s ministers of defense and foreign affairs, respectively, Kochavi launched a direct attack on the Barack Obama administration’s 2015 nuclear deal with Iran and delivered thinly veiled hints to the new Democratic administration.
  • “A return to the 2015 nuclear agreement, or even if it is a similar accord with several improvements, is bad and wrong from an operational and strategic point of view. Operationally, because it would enable Iran to enrich quantities of uranium, develop centrifuges to the point of a nuclear breakout. Strategically, it will drag the Middle East into a nuclear race,”
  • The timing of his remarks could not have been more sensitive, two days before the first working visit to Israel by US CENTCOM Commander Gen. Kenneth McKenzie and just one week after the Joe Biden administration took office. Kochavi did not give the Americans the usual 100 days of grace and did not leave the messaging to the politicians.
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  • Netanyahu associates were quick to issue a clarification, as diplomatic affairs analyst Barak Ravid reported immediately following Kochavi’s appearance, emphasizing that the prime minister is not interested at this stage in a confrontation with the US administration and is in fact seeking to develop an intimate dialogue with the Americans allowing him to present his position
  • Associates of Gantz and Ashkenazi were less laid back. Both spoke with their American counterparts shortly afterward, Ashkenazi with Blinken and Gantz with incoming Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. Al-Monitor has learned that both ministers assuaged their counterparts’ concerns, explaining that Kochavi was not expressing an official Israeli position and that Israel seeks a productive, professional dialogue with the administration to bridge the gaps between them and ensure the closest coordination possible.
  • disseminated the full text of his speech to all the top IDF brass the following day
  • Kochavi’s position runs counter to that of most senior Israeli defense and intelligence officials (except for Mossad director Yossi Cohen, whose views are equally militant), who contend that the absence of a nuclear agreement with Iran is more of a threat to Israel than the deal from which the United States withdrew in 2018.
  • His address was not cleared with his superiors, the security cabinet or the government.
  • Kochavi’s position collides head on with the understandings that Gantz, Ashkenazi and probably Netanyahu are trying to develop along the Washington-Jerusalem axis.
  • was the shift professional or shaped by political considerations?
  • Kochavi’s abilities and charisma make him a natural candidate for Israel’s leadership after the Netanyahu era. In trying to depict himself as more Netanyahu than Netanyahu, he could be signaling that such is indeed his goal
  • He is building himself up as a defense hawk, a position that has been Netanyahu’s winning card for years.
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    Israel's internal politics and its foreign policy interacting
Ed Webb

IS 'producing weaponised mustard gas': Watchdog | Middle East Eye - 1 views

  • The global watchdog tasked with destroying chemical weapons is probing more than 20 reports of the alleged use of toxic weapons in Syria since August, its chief told the AFP news agency on Friday.And, in what he called an "extremely worrying" development, Ahmet Uzumcu revealed that the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) believes the so-called Islamic State (IS) group has manufactured its own mustard gas for use in Syria and Iraq.
  • The OPCW is already "collecting information and analysing" it, the OPCW director general said, to see if the allegations "are credible or not in order to deepen our investigation"."The number (of allegations) is quite high. I counted more than 20," said Uzumcu, revealing that even on Thursday the Syrian authorities had sent to the OPCW fresh reports of chemical weapons use against them.
  • Samples of mustard gas taken from attacks in Syria and Iraq have now been analysed by the OPCW's dedicated laboratories and "the findings do suggest that this substance may have been produced by IS itself," said Uzumcu.It was "poor quality, but still harmful ... and it was weaponised so it's extremely worrying," the OPCW chief said."Especially given the fact that there are several foreign fighters in those countries who may go back to their countries of origin one day. This requires a high-degree of vigilance within our countries," he warned.
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  • "I don't think we will be able to investigate them all," Uzumcu said, highlighting the difficulties of working in a conflict zone.
Sana Usman

Al-Qaeda's top leader Dr. Ayman al-Zawahri hideaway in FATA. Said US Adviser - 0 views

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    The Al-Qaeda's top leaders, as well as its new chief after Bin Laden Egyptian National Dr. Ayman al-Zawahri, keep on to "hideaway" in Pakistan's tribal areas, adjoining to Pak-Afghan Border, U.S. President Barrack Obama's top counterterrorism counselor said vowing to carry them to justice like Late Osama bin Laden.
Sana Usman

Syrian Opposition Leader step-down for the sake of unity - 0 views

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    The chief of Syrian top opposition said he was geared up to step-down for sake of harmony among rebels-exiled and in Syria, whose partitions have set aside them from their main goal of acknowledgment as heirs to President Bashar al-Assad.
Ed Webb

UPDATE 1-Saudi spy chief says Riyadh to shift away from U.S. over Syria, Iran | Reuters - 0 views

  • Saudi Arabia's intelligence chief has said the kingdom will make a "major shift" in dealings with the United States in protest at its perceived inaction over the Syria war and its overtures to Iran, a source close to Saudi policy said on Tuesday.Prince Bandar bin Sultan told European diplomats that Washington had failed to act effectively on the Syria crisis and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, was growing closer to Tehran, and had failed to back Saudi support for Bahrain when it crushed an anti-government revolt in 2011, the source said.It was not immediately clear if Prince Bandar's reported statements had the full backing of King Abdullah."The shift away from the U.S. is a major one," the source close to Saudi policy said. "Saudi doesn't want to find itself any longer in a situation where it is dependent.
  • he suggested that the planned change in ties between the energy superpower and its traditional U.S ally would have wide-ranging consequences, including on arms purchases and oil sales
Ed Webb

Russia airstrike kills 36 civilians: Syria opposition chief - 2 views

  • A Russian airstrike killed 36 civilians, including five children, in the central Syrian province of Homs on Wednesday, the head of Syria's main opposition group said.
  • Russian warplanes carried out strikes in three Syrian provinces along with government aircraft on Wednesday, its first military engagement outside the former Soviet Union since the occupation of Afghanistan in 1979.
Ed Webb

Obama: Global arms dealer-in-chief | Middle East Eye - 2 views

  • A newly released report reveals Obama is the greatest arms exporter since the Second World War. The dollar value of all major arms deals overseen by the first five years of the Obama White House now exceeds the amount overseen by the Bush White House in its full eight years in office by nearly $30 billion
  • I knew there were record deals with the Saudis, but to outsell the eight years of Bush, to sell more than any president since World War II, was surprising even to me, who follows these things quite closely. The majority, 60 percent, have gone to the Persian Gulf and Middle East, and within that, the Saudis have been the largest recipient of things like US fighter planes, Apache attack helicopters, bombs, guns, almost an entire arsenal
  • The Congressional Research Service found that since October 2010 alone, President Obama has agreed to sell $90.4 billion in arms to the Gulf kingdom.“That President Obama would so enthusiastically endorse arming such a brutal authoritarian government is unsurprising, since the United States is by far the leading arms dealer (with 47 percent of the world total) to what an annual State Department report classifies as the world’s “least democratically governed states,” notes Micah Zenko, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
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  • In 2008, the United Nations banned the use of cluster munitions - an agreement the US is yet to ratify. Why? Cluster bombs are the number one seller for Textron Systems Corporation – a Wall Street-listed company located in Providence, Rhode Island
  • In February of this year, the Obama administration announced it would allow the sale of US manufactured armed drones to its allies in the Middle East
Ed Webb

Pentagon Official Questions U.S. Message to Muslims - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has written a searing critique of government efforts at “strategic communication” with the Muslim world, saying that no amount of public relations will establish credibility if American behavior overseas is perceived as arrogant, uncaring or insulting.
  • most strategic communication problems are not communication problems at all,” he wrote. “They are policy and execution problems. Each time we fail to live up to our values or don’t follow up on a promise, we look more and more like the arrogant Americans the enemy claims we are.”
  • “That’s the essence of good communication: having the right intent up front and letting our actions speak for themselves,” Admiral Mullen wrote. “We shouldn’t care if people don’t like us. That isn’t the goal. The goal is credibility. And we earn that over time.”
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  • “there has been a certain arrogance to our ‘strat comm’ efforts.” He wrote that “good communications runs both ways.”“It’s not about telling our story,” he stated. “We must also be better listeners.”
  • Coinciding with the publication of his essay, Admiral Mullen released a YouTube video inviting questions from members of the armed services and the public on a range of national security and military personnel issues for an online discussion. “The chairman intends to use social media to expand the two-way conversation with service members and the public,” said a statement announcing the interactive video question-and-answer session.
Ed Webb

Syria Comment » Archives » "Bush White House Wanted to Destroy the Syrian Sta... - 0 views

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Erin Gold

Al Jazeera English - Europe - Italy convicts CIA rendition agents - 0 views

  • An Italian judge has convicted 23 US secret agents over the 2003 abduction of an Egyptian imam from a Milan street in an extraordinary rendition by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
  • trial was the first in the world to centre on the agency's controversial programme, in which "terror" suspects are thought to have been transferred to countries known to practise torture.
  • case concerned the seizure of Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, and his transfer to Egypt, where he claims he was tortured.
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  • All of the Americans were tried in absentia, with 22 sentenced to five years in jail and Robert Seldon Lady, the Milan CIA station chief, handed eight years in prison.
  • Citing diplomatic immunity, Judge Oscar Magi told the Milan courtroom on Wednesday that he was acquitting three other Americans.
  • Magi said the men were protected by by state secrecy rules
  • CIA has not commented on any of the allegations surrounding Abu Omar".
  • Some of them [those convicted], including Seldon Lady and Jeff Castelli, the CIA chief of station in Rome, left the country when they were found to be part of the operation and they never came back to Italy. "It is very unlikely they will come now that they have been convicted
  • even if the verdict is upheld, it seems unlikely they will be extradited."
  • Abu Omar, an imam granted political asylum in Italy, was taken from a Milan street on February 17, 2003, in an operation allegedly co-ordinated by the CIA and  SISMI.
  • He was released after four years in prison without being charged
  • Abu Omar told Human Rights Watch in 2007 that he was "hung up like a slaughtered sheep and given electrical shocks" during his time in Egypt. "I was brutally tortured and I could hear the screams of others who were tortured too," he told the organisation.
Ed Webb

A Brief History Of Extremism - Is It Worse Than Ever? - History Extra - 0 views

  • extremists believe the ‘other’ must always be opposed, controlled or destroyed because its intrinsic nature and existence is inimical to the success of the extremists’ own group
  • examples of extremist behaviour can be found almost as far back as our written histories extend
  • Rome razed Carthage to the ground in 146 BC after an extended siege, killing an estimated 150,000 residents and selling the survivors into slavery, in what Yale scholar Ben Kiernan calls “the first genocide”.
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  • a Jewish group known as the Sicarii, who violently opposed Roman rule and killed fellow Jews they saw as collaborators. They were reputed to have committed mass suicide under siege at the mountain redoubt of Masada in 73 CE
  • In 657 CE, the new religion of Islam experienced its first outbreak of extremism, a sect known as the Kharijites, who are remembered for their zealous beliefs and brutal violence against Muslims who they believed had strayed from the true path
  • Christianity was not immune to these dynamics either, at times launching crusades and inquisitions to violently root out sectarians and unbelievers they viewed as “infidels”. One of these, the Albigensian Crusade of the 13th century, wiped out a deviant Christian sect in France known as the Cathars. Legend (possibly apocryphal) holds that the commander of the Roman Catholic forces uttered a Latin phrase that is remembered today, somewhat altered in translation, as “Kill them all and let God sort them out”. Whether the words were said or not, the massacre of Beziers in 1209 killed 20,000 Cathars, and by the end of the Crusade the entire sect had been slaughtered.
  • As some Spaniards expressed horror at the enslavement and extermination of indigenous people in the Americas, intellectuals of the day crafted racial and ideological arguments to excuse and even justify these horrors, arguing that the natural superiority of Spaniards justified the enslavement of the continent’s indigenous residents, “in whom you will scarcely find any vestiges of humanness”. These justifications were understood by 19th-century thinkers as one link in the chain that led to the American adoption of racial slavery – one of history’s most egregious and shameful extremist practices, which victimised millions of people of African descent over the course of hundreds of years.
  • In addition to helping the supply-side of extremism, social media and other online technologies also empower demand. Before the internet, it was harder for curious people and potential recruits to find information about extremist groups and make contact with their members. Now, anyone with a keyboard can quickly seek out extremist texts and even make contact with extremist recruiters
  • The 1980s gave rise to modern jihadist extremism: the mobile, transnational movement significantly spearheaded by al Qaeda which raised the issue of violent extremism to a global priority in 2001 on September 11; it was elevated still further by the rise of ISIS in the 2010s. Today, thousands of jihadist extremists take part in violent activities all over the globe, from terrorism to insurgency. The same period has seen a resurgence of white nationalism and white supremacy in the United States and Europe, many of whom focus on Muslims as their chief enemy, pointing to the depravities of jihadism as part of their justification for their hate. But it’s not only white extremists who are targeting Muslims. In Myanmar, a new breed of Buddhist extremists seeks to exterminate Muslim Rohingya communities. In China, ethnic Uighurs who practice Islam are being incarcerated and ‘re-educated’ in concentration camps, a fact that too rarely features in discussions of extremism.
  • We don’t always frame our collective memory as a history of extremism; maybe if we did, it would place current events in context
  • Despite the pervasive role extremism has played in history, some elements of modern life can fairly be understood as making things uniquely worse. Chief among these is the rise of globally interconnected social media networks.
  • Technologies that turbo-charge the transmission of ideology have a disproportionate effect on the spread of extremist ideas
  • The Nazis killed six million Jewish people during their time in power, and millions of others, including disabled people, LGBTQ people and Soviet, Serbian, Roma and Polish civilians. Although the Nazis were defeated, their legacy lives on today in the form of (at least) dozens of neo-Nazi groups around the world
  • Extremist movements eventually fall, even if it takes hundreds of years.
  • We may never banish extremism from the human experience, but we can save lives and preserve societies by managing and understanding it.
Ed Webb

Bolton's New NSC Chief Of Staff Served As VP Of Gaffney's Anti-Muslim Hate Group - Talk... - 0 views

  • National Security Adviser John Bolton’s new pick to be the National Security Council chief of staff has served for the last five years as the Senior Vice President for Policy and Programs at the Frank Gaffney-founded Center for Security Policy, a Southern Poverty Law Center-designated hate group that espouses anti-Muslim conspiracy theories. 
  • Gaffney and the group have for years promoted anti-Muslim beliefs, including accusing government officials of being aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood.
  • Fleitz is also a former CIA analyst and frequent guest on Fox News.
Ed Webb

Iran's Cleric Spymaster Is Caught in the Middle | Provocateurs | OZY - 0 views

  • the 65-year-old cleric, Alavi. An unlikely spy chief, he is emblematic of the multiple power centers vying for control within Iran. He is widely seen as close to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader. Yet at the same time, as a minister, he is the sword arm of reformist President Hassan Rouhani’s turf war with Tehran’s hardliners. And there’s a third ball he needs to juggle: the IRGC
  • When threats against Iran mount, the IRGC’s influence grows: It has virtually taken control of large parts of the country’s domestic and foreign policy in recent years
  • Alavi is the point man to watch on Iran’s restless youth who seek more political openness. His agents also recently came down heavily on Christians after he controversially claimed that Christianity was gaining popularity in Iran. The cross from a 100-year-old Assyrian Presbyterian church was taken away and the building padlocked.The move was a sign of how Alavi’s religious background influences his intelligence work. Even Alavi had expressed surprise when Rouhani appointed him as the intelligence minister in 2013. Due to his proximity with Khamenei, he was expecting some other assignment that would fit his experience as a religious teacher. Just before his present job as spy-in-chief of the Iranian government, Khamenei had designated Alavi as the head of the political conscience of the army — making sure its religious commitment remained steadfast.
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  • With the IRGC’s profile expected to rise amid the tensions with the U.S., Alavi’s role as a principal troubleshooter for Khamenei and Rouhani — who have their own significant differences — is only expected to grow. The best way to check the IRGC’s legitimacy? Demonstrate that the government intelligence forces are adept at tackling the U.S.
  • Some professionals in the intelligence business who have scrutinized Alavi closely find him “an ordinary cleric.” “Either he conceals his smarts associated with a professional intelligence boss or he is a simple religious preacher in the wrong job,” says a diplomat who met him years ago and asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals.
  • Contrary to the common view in the West, Iran is a noisy democracy where Rouhani can be chased by aggressive reporters during press conferences in Tehran. Normally, the criticism against government ministers is sharp, but much has changed since the U.S. withdrew from the nuclear deal Tehran negotiated with global powers, which had promised sanctions relief in return for curbs on Iran’s nuclear program. Now dissent is seen as subversion
  • Rouhani, who came in on the platform plank of signing the nuclear deal and reviving the battered economy, suddenly has to compete with fundamentalists, and that means turning Iran into a police state. “Iranian intelligence is very good. No intrusion by a foreign agency lasts beyond 24 hours,” claims an intelligence source who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation.
Ed Webb

President's eldest son, Mahmoud al-Sisi, sidelined from powerful intelligence position ... - 0 views

  • Mahmoud al-Sisi, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s son and a senior official in the powerful General Intelligence Service (GIS), is being reassigned to a long-term position at Egypt’s diplomatic delegation in Moscow
  • perception within the president’s inner circle that Mahmoud al-Sisi has failed to properly handle a number of his responsibilities and that his increasingly visible influence in the upper decision-making levels of government is having a negative impact on his father’s image
  • suggestion that the president’s son be sidelined also came from senior government figures in the United Arab Emirates, a close and influential ally of Egypt, who view Mahmoud al-Sisi’s role as having become damaging to the president
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  • Russia seemed like an appropriate choice due to its close relations with Egypt, as well as the longstanding admiration among many senior Egyptian officials for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s style of governance
  • Among the primary reasons for sending Mahmoud al-Sisi to Moscow was his failure to properly handle most of the responsibilities assigned to him, according to the GIS sources. Chief among them was the media, over which he has exercised direct control for more than a year. In 2017, the GIS began to exert direct control over the media through acquisition, purchasing a controlling stake in the Egyptian Media Group, the biggest media conglomerate in Egypt. The corporation has several influential newspapers and television outlets under its control, including ONtv and the Youm7 newspaper. GIS also owns the DMC television network. Yet during Mahmoud al-Sisi’s tenure, the president has been unsatisfied with the media’s performance to the extent that he publicly criticized local media coverage on several occasions, one GIS official said.
  • A number of informed sources told Mada Masr at the time that, on the president’s orders, Mahmoud al-Sisi oversaw the fierce crackdown that followed the protests, with over 4,000 people arrested, including prominent activists, lawyers, university professors, and political opposition figures. At the time, the president was in New York to take part in the UN General Assembly on the advice of his closest aides, particularly Abbas, a longtime confidant of the president and current head of GIS.
  • Sending Mahmoud al-Sisi to Moscow will also help alleviate growing tensions within GIS about the role of the president’s son in the removal of senior officials from their posts in the intelligence apparatus since the president formally came to power in 2014
  • The process of removing senior members of the GIS came under the pretext that they were “Omar Suleiman’s men” (the late intelligence chief under Mubarak) who had no loyalty to the “new state.”
  • “I think that President Sisi knows very well that there is a general state of dissatisfaction within governmental institutions. There are considerable worries inside the state apparatus that cannot be underestimated,” the source close to Abu Dhabi’s decision-making circles said. “I think he understands that his popularity on the streets has declined for various reasons, some of which are economic, while others are rooted in social and political grievances. Besides, the wound inflicted by his handover of Tiran and Sanafir to Saudi Arabia three years ago has not healed. Sisi will certainly not ignore the growing signs of anger altogether.”
  • The new Russia post may instead be an attempt to hone his skills by becoming a military envoy in a country of great strategic importance to Egypt, including in its role in constructing a nuclear power plant in Dabaa.
  • His two siblings include Mustafa, who works in the Administrative Control Authority, and Hassan, who moved from the oil sector to a GIS position nearly three years ago.
  • “The advice was that the son should not cast a shadow over the president’s position, so that the situation of Hosni and Gamal Mubarak is not repeated.”
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