Group items tagged

A good plan when your overall aim is to create an obedient mercenary statelet in the center of the Middle East. As the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency wrote in 2012: THERE IS THE POSSIBILITY OF ESTABLISHING A DECLARED OR UNDECLARED SALAFIST PRINCIPALITY IN EASTERN SYRIA (HASAKA AND DER ZOR), AND THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT THE SUPPORTING POWERS TO THE OPPOSITION WANT, IN ORDER TO ISOLATE THE SYRIAN REGIME. But this plan requires to fight the Syrian and Russian air-forces which will do their utmost to defend the SAA group and the 100-200,000 ISIS besieged Syrian civilians in Deir Ezzor. The the U.S. and its allies may be willing to do that. A well known British Tory member of parliament already made noise that British fighter jets should be free to shoot down Russian planes in Syria. The U.S. had claimed that British planes took part in the Deir Ezzor ambush. The defenders of Deir Ezzor lack their own air defenses. The Russian systems at the Syrian west-coast can not reach that far east. The Syrian system are mostly positioned to defend Damascus and other cities from attacks by Israel. Russia recently talked about delivering 10 new Pantsyr-S1 short-to-medium range air defense systems to Syria. At least two of those should be airlifted to Deir Ezzor as soon as possible.

UPDATE: I was just made aware of a recent speech by Hizbullah leader Nasrallah who smells the same stinking plot: Sayyed Nasrallah said that the Americans intend to repeat Fallujah plot when they opened a way for ISIL to escape towards eastern Syria before the Iraqi warplanes targeted the terrorists’ convoy, warning that the same deceptive scheme is possible to be carried out in Mosul.

All the .mil conspiracy theory folks (me) knew why those ships were sent into the straits. The only thing we couldn't figure out was what kind of false flag the U.S. would use to Tomahawk Yemen because nobody would believe the Houthis would be dumb enough to fire on a U.S. missile cruiser. They hate the U.S., but have no reason to rattle our cage THAT much. They fired on the UAE-contracted Swift because it was bringing armor and weapons to Saudi puppet Hadi's forces in Yemen. Attacking a U.S. missile destroyer accomplishes absolutely nothing for them. When the Houthis heard the USS Mason and Nitze were attacked, they thought it was a joke. They denied any such attack as preposterous, asking the obvious question: "Why the hell would we ever do that? But it gets a little better for us in tinfoil hat land. This post by someone looking for images of deleted Tweets sums it up nicely: https://twitter.com/teddy_cat1/status/786333929309556736 Few hours before Reuter's announcement of a U.S. Navy destroyer came under missile attack off Yemen on Sunday, Saudi official accounts on tweeter like Journalist Fahd Kamely and Saudi-24 News had tweeted that the Royal Saudi Naval Forces targeted what they thought to be an Iranian ship for suspicion of supplying Houthis with weapons! They immediately deleted their tweets following this announcement, but many people have saved a picture for those tweets before being deleted and since then are circulating them on tweeter...

So we know the U.S. Navy lied when they said the missiles came from Yemen. The RSNF most likely did launch the missiles and used the 'Iranian arms smuggling' as a cover story in case anyone noticed. The U.S. destroyers were never targeted or in danger, but probably did use the occasion to test their anti-missile defenses. All this set up the false flag, providing Obama and excuse to order the U.S. Navy to Tomahawk the Yemeni coastal radars at the behest of some pissed-off UAE emir (likely a Clinton Foundation donor).

This year has seen momentum shift against Assad's government in Syria's 4-year-old civil war, which has killed 250,000 people and driven around half of Syria's 23 million people from their homes. An ally of Damascus since the Cold War, Moscow maintains its only Mediterranean naval base at Tartous on the Syrian coast, and protecting it would be a strategic objective. Recent months have also seen talk of a new role for outside forces in Syria, with NATO-member Turkey proposing the creation of a "safe zone" free from both Islamic State and government forces near its Syrian border. Even if Russians operated the missiles and kept them out of the hands of the Syrian army, the arrival of such an advanced anti-aircraft system could also unsettle Israel, which in the past has bombed sophisticated arms it suspected were being handed to Assad's Lebanese guerrilla allies, Hezbollah. 

"In the Middle East you never know what will happen. If the Russians end up handing it (SA-22) over to the Syrian military I don't think the Israelis would intervene but they would go bananas if they see it heading towards Hezbollah in Lebanon," the diplomatic source said. An Israeli military spokesman declined to comment on the missile system. A senior Israeli defense official briefing reporters on Thursday said Israel was in contact with Moscow and would continue its policy of stopping advanced weapons reaching Hezbollah. "We have open relations with the Russians who have come to save Assad in the civil war. Along with this, we will not allow our sovereignty to be compromised or the transfer of advanced or chemical weapons (to Hezbollah). We are following the developments and keeping open channels with Moscow." 

Israel’s defense establishment appears to be torn between wanting to see Assad gone as this would deliver a blow to Iran and Hezbollah and wanting Assad to remain in power because the potential alternative to the present regime could be militant Islamists. Another option is to attempt to shoot down an Israeli jet in Lebanese airspace. All three Israeli airstrikes against sites west of Damascus were conducted from the Lebanese side of the border using long-range standoff missiles. The Israeli Air Force used a similar technique in October 2003 when it attacked the Ain es-Saheb training camp for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command which was located 20 kilometers east of the Lebanese border and in the same general area as the more recent strikes.

Following the Israeli air raid against the suspected nuclear reactor near Deir al-Zor in 2007, Syria received newer missiles from Russia, mainly short- to medium-range systems such as the Pantsir S1 and the Buk-M2. Syria is currently seeking to acquire the long-range S-300 system from Russia. Reports suggest that Syria has been paying for the missiles and that they could be delivered in the coming three months.

If an Israeli jet was shot down over Lebanon, the Lebanese can argue with justification that Israel repeatedly breaches Lebanese sovereignty with its illegal overflights (so far this year at a rate roughly double the same period in 2012). Israel does not hesitate to shoot down any aircraft deemed hostile that breaches Israeli airspace, so why should Lebanon not do the same, either directly by Hezbollah (if it possesses the capabilities) or with the assistance of Syrian air defense units? On the other hand, the downing of an Israeli jet would shatter Israel’s long-standing “red line” concerning the use of advanced antiaircraft weapons in Lebanon.