Iran is continuing to develop missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons - Bill Gertz - http://freebeacon.com/national-security/pentagon-iran-continuing-work-on-nuclear-systems/
Iran is continuing to develop missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons despite an interim agreement on its nuclear programs, according to a Pentagon report.
"Although Iran has paused progress in some areas of its nuclear program and fulfilled its obligations under the Joint Plan of Action (JPOA), it continues to develop technological capabilities that also could be applicable to nuclear weapons, including ballistic missile development," a one-page unclassified summary of the report says.
A copy of the report was obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
The report was due to Congress in January but was not sent to the Armed Services Committee as required by law until this month. Analysts said the delay appeared designed to avoid upsetting Tehran and the nuclear talks.
Disclosure of the continuing development of nuclear delivery capabilities comes amid reports that Iran increased the amount of nuclear material that could potentially be used to build nuclear weapons despite the JPOA.
The State Department sought to challenge International Atomic Energy Agency reports on the increase in Iranian nuclear material, despite President Obama's claim that the nuclear agreement had halted Iran's nuclear program.
State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said this week that the increase in nuclear production was expected and that the amount has increased and decreased.
Iran's military also continues to threaten the strategic Strait of Hormuz, the Pentagon report said.
"Iran continues to develop its capabilities to control the Strait of Hormuz and avenues of approach in the event of a military conflict," the report said, adding that Tehran is "quietly fielding increasingly lethal weapon systems, including more advanced naval mines, small but capable submarines, armed unmanned aerial vehicles, coastal defense cruise missile batteries, attack craft, and ant ship-capable missiles."
U.S. officials said Iranian backing for Houthi rebels in Yemen is also aimed at gaining access to the strategic Red Sea strait called the Bab-el-Mandeb, which, like the Strait of Hormuz, could be used by Iran to disrupt oil and other shipping.
Tehran's support for terrorism also has not stopped, according to the Pentagon.
"Iran's covert activities appear to be continuing unabated," the report says. "The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF) remains a key tool of lran's foreign policy and power projection, particularly in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Bahrain, and Yemen."
The IRGC Quds Force also is continuing to improve its access within foreign countries and its ability to carry terrorist attacks "to safeguard or advance Iran's interests," the report said.
U.S. officials disclosed to the Free Beacon last week that Iran is increasing the number of Quds Force fighters and Lebanese Hezbollah militants it is sending to Yemen, to support pro-Iran Houthi rebels there.
The report asserts that Iran's military doctrine is "primarily defensive" and seeks to insulate Iran from more aggressive Iranian policies involving covert action and terrorism.
Iranian military forces seek to deter attacks, survive initial strikes, and retaliate against aggressors.
"The ongoing civil war in Syria and the instability in Iraq have tested, but not fundamentally altered, this posture," the report said. "Meanwhile, over the past year, the tone of publicity surrounding major military exercises has remained tempered, a trend that began in 2013, probably in support of negotiations over Iran's nuclear activities."
Iranian forces have been working with Iraq's government to battle Islamic State forces that have taken over large portions of that Middle East state. They have included IRGC fighters.
The report, dated January 2015, concludes that Iran has not substantively altered its military and security strategies in the past year.
"However, Tehran has adjusted its approach to achieve its enduring objectives, by increasing its diplomatic outreach and decreasing its bellicose rhetoric," the report said.
President Hassan Ruohani has sought to project a global message of "moderation and pragmatism" in support of those objectives.
Also, Iran is seeking to become the dominant regional power and in pursuit of that aim has "unwaveringly sought to improve its deterrent capabilities and increase its regional influence."
Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who is thought to be ill, "remains atop Iran's power structure as both the political-spiritual guide and the commander in chief of the armed forces."
The Senate Armed Services Committee, in its report on the fiscal 2016 defense authorization bill passed May 19, expressed concerns about the annual report on Iran's military.
The report was due to Congress on Jan. 30 but said as of May it had not been provided.
"The committee remains concerned about the threat posed by Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile development programs," the report said.
Last year Director of National Intelligence James Clapper testified that Iran "would choose a ballistic missile as its preferred method of delivering nuclear weapons." And in February, Iran launched a Safir long-range missile system.
"In 2013, the National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC) made the following statement about this system: Iran could develop and test an ICBM capable of reaching the United States by 2015," the report said.
"Since 2008, Iran has conducted multiple successful launches of the two-stage Safir space launch vehicle (SLV) and has also revealed the larger two stage Simorgh SLV, which could serve as a test bed for developing ICBM technologies."
The committee asked the secretary of defense to provide an update on Iran's ballistic missile programs.
As a result of the delay in the annual Iran military power report, the committee directed the Pentagon to provide a briefing on the Iranian missile threat, and to update the January report.
Ilan Berman, an Iran specialist with the American Foreign Policy Council, said the release of the report is good news but "has long been conspicuous by its absence."
"The study is long overdue, and its delay suggests that the administration has been leery of injecting inconvenient facts into the Iran debate as it closes in on a nuclear deal with the regime in Tehran," Berman said.
"The findings of the report confirm that Iran's destructive regional activities have not abated over the past year," he added.
"If anything, they have increased despite Iran's dialogue with the West," Berman said. "The product can be seen in the battlefield victories of Yemen's Iran-supported Houthi rebels, of the persistence of the Assad regime in Syria, and of the growing profile and capabilities of Iraq's Shi'a militias."
"Iran's activities represent a significant challenge to peace and security in the Middle East," he said.
"The real question is what, if anything, the White House is prepared to do about it?" he said.
Mark Dubowitz, another Iran expert, said Tehran is continuing to develop long-range ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads, in violation of U.N. Security Council limits.
"The Obama administration ceded to Iranian demands that their missile program was non-negotiable and, instead, has tried to reassure Congress that this missile threat can be mitigated by constraining Iran's ability to develop a nuclear warhead," said Dubowitz, executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
"This major administration concession to Iran will greatly complicate the U.S. intelligence community's ability to detect whether Iran has develop a nuclear warhead-carrying ICBM capable of reaching the continental United States," he added. "By its very nature, it is much more difficult to detect and prevent warhead development, which can take place in small, covert facilities, than it is to determine the nature and extent of a hostile missile program. In yet another example of how deeply flawed the emerging Iran deal will be, Tehran will have a much easier pathway to develop systems."
Iranian Revolutionary Guards Quds Force chief Qassem Soleimani has vowed that upcoming developments in Syria will soon "surprise" the world, Al-Quds al-Arabi reported.
"The world will be surprised by what we and the Syrian military leadership are preparing for the coming days," the state Islamic Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) quoted him as saying, according to the London-based daily.
The Quds Force commander's comment comes after a recent visit to Syria where he toured the Latakia region, which has come under threat from rebels after they seized the nearby Idlib province last week following months of sweeping victories against the regime.
Al-Quds al-Arabi reported that Soleimani "began his trip in Jourin, which lies on the contact point with the opposition forces that form the Army of Conquest."
The town, which lies a little over 40 kilometers east of Latakia, is not far from rebel lines in the Al-Ghab Plain, where regime forces have begun to bolster defense lines ahead of an expected insurgent attack.
A number of pro-regime outlets reported on Soleimani's trip over the weekend, including pro-Hezbollah Mulkak news which said the Iranian military commander met with the Syrian army's chief of staff as well as top field commanders and Hezbollah officials during his secret visit.
"An agreement was reached [during the meetings] that will be translated onto the [battlefield]," the outlet claimed.
Meanwhile, a defected National Defense Force militiaman told Al-Quds al-Arabi that Soleimani's trip aimed to formalize the "entry of Iranian officers to supervise and aid the battles in coastal Syria for the first time since the outbreak of Syrian uprising."
"Prior aid was limited to only logistical aid," the unnamed source said.
Alawite concerns
Soleimani's visit to the Latakia region comes amid heightened concerns in the Alawite-populated coastal enclave following regime defeats in Idlib and other regions of the war-torn country.
As regime forces come under increasing strain amid manpower shortages, Damascus has moved to mobilize its Alawite base.
Over the weekend, the government moved to form a new Coastal Shield Brigade that would recruit Latakia Province residents who have avoided compulsory military service.
A defected army officer from the region told Al-Jazeera Sunday that the regime was "working to gather members" for the Coastal Shield Brigade in Latakia through an "arrest campaign that [targets] all young men in the city, born after 1973."
"The number of young men arrested in one week reached 1,000. They were pulled out of the city's mosques and [off] the streets."
Other than arresting young Alawite men avoiding conscription, the Syrian regime has sought to recruit women and Baath Party employees, according to recent reports in anti-Damascus news outlets.
A change in strategy?
Soleimani's promise of upcoming surprises was made as an influential Iranian militant group thought to be close to the country's rulers has called for tens of thousands of infantrymen to be sent to Syria, according to a report by Saudi-owned news channel Al-Arabiya.
"Iran must send 50,000 soldiers from the infantry force to Syria to manage the war there and prevent the fall of the Assad regime, which has begun to collapse recently," Al-Arabiya reported, citing a study on Iran's management of the war in Syria conducted by Ansar e-Hezbollah.
According to the cited study, the mission of the 50,000 soldiers would be to ensure Syria's coastal region is not cut off from Damascus.
"Iran must preserve the vital corridor [connecting] Damascus to Latakia, Tartous and the Lebanese border."
"[Any] delay by Iran in [implementing] this pre-emptive action will cause the fall of Damascus airport, which in turn [means] the severing of the essential communication and supply line Iran [uses] to assist the Syrian regime.
Ansar e-Hezbollah, which was formally created in 1992, serves as a plain-clothed attack guard used by the Iranian government to target opponents of the clerical ruling system.
Although not an official part of Iran's security services, the paramilitary group receives state training and is thought to be close to top circles of the country's authorities.
Ansar e-Hezbollah's study comes as the Syrian government has faced serious military setbacks, losing the Idlib province last week following months of sweeping rebel advances, as well as the desert town of Palmyra, which was stormed by ISIS on May 20.
Reports have emerged that the regime is moving toward considering a change in strategy to withdraw its forces to protect core government-held areas stretching from Syria's coast through Homs down to Damascus.
The new policy would serve as a reversal of Assad's strategy of deploying the army in all areas of Syria, including in bases and other surrounded regime-controlled areas in the east and north of the country, where ISIS now controls 50% of Syria's territory.
Hezbollah's General Secretary Hassan Nasrallah frequently brags that his 80,000 missiles can reach any point in Israel. He may have to compromise on this. His masters in Tehran are casting about urgently for ways to save the Assad regime in Damascus and halt the Islamic State's' inexorable advance on Baghdad and the Shiite shrine city of Karbala. According to debkafile's Gulf sources, Iran is eyeing the re-allocation of the roughly 1,000 long-range rockets in Hezbollah's store for warding off these calamities.
Some would be fired from their pads in Lebanon, exposing that country to retaliation, after Beirut rebuffed Hezbollah's demand for the Lebanese army to join in the fight for Assad.
Iran has not so far approved the plan. But if it does go through, Iranian spy drones operating over the war zones would feed with targeting data on ISIS and rebel positions and movements to the Hezbollah rocket crews manning the mobile batteries of Fajr-5s - range 400-600 km; Zelzal-2s - range 500 km; Fateh-110s -range 800 km; and Shaheen 2s - 800-900 km.
Discussions in Tehran on this option took on new urgency Thursday, May 28, when White House spokesman Josh Earnest declared that the United States "would not be responsible for securing the security situation in Iraq. Our strategy is to support the Iraqi security forces... back them on the battlefield with coalition military air power as they take the fight to ISIS in their own country," he said.
Tehran took this as confirmation that the US was quitting the war on the Islamic State in Iraq although the Obama administration's decision was coupled with a free hand for the Baghdad government to do whatever it must to deal with the peril, including calling on external forces for assistance in defending the country.
In the Iraqi arena, Iran has thrown into the fray surrogate Shiite militias grouped under "The Popular Mobilization Committee." It is led by Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, who turns out to be an Iranian, not an Iraqi, and working under cover as the deputy of the Al Qods Brigades Commander Gen. Qassem Soleimani.
This grouping is too shady for President Barack Obama to accept as worthy of US air support. Therefore, the entire anti-ISIS campaign has been dumped in Iran's lap. Loath to expose its own air force planes to the danger of being shot down over Iraq, Iran is looking at the option of filling the gap with heavy missiles.
In the Syrian arena, Tehran is under extreme pressure:
1. The Assad regime can't last much longer under fierce battering from the rebel Nusra Front, freshly armed and funded with massive assistance from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey. To disguise this group's affiliation with al Qaeda, the Saudis have set up a new outfit called "The Muslim Army of Conquest." In a few days it was joined by 3,000 Nusra adherents.
2. The Syrian army has lost heart under this assault and many of its units are fleeing the battlefield rather than fighting, with the result that Bashar Assad is losing one piece of territory after another in all his war sectors. Soon, he will be left without enough troops for defending Damascus.
3. Although Hezbollah's leaders proclaim their determination to fight for Assad in every part of Syria, the fact is that the Shiite group is too stretched to support a wide-ranging conflict in Syria and defend its own home base in Lebanon at one and the same time.
4. Tehran is also considering rushing through a defense pact with Damascus to enable Assad to call on Iranian troops to come over and rescue him.
5. Saudi Arabia has singled out leaders of top Hezbollah leaders for sanctions. This week, Riyadh impounded the assets and accounts of Khalil Harb and Muhammad Qabalan in Gulf banks. This act was taken in Tehran as a major provocation.
The names don't mean much outside a small circle in the region. However, Harb is Hezbollah's supreme chief of staff whose military standing is comparable to that of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander Gen. Ali Jaafary, while Qabalan is the organization's senior intelligence and operations officer and responsible for orchestrating Hezbollah's terrorist hits outside Lebanon.
The Iranians are not about to let this affront go by without payback, which could come in the form of missile attacks by Hezbollah on Saudi-backed groups in Syria.
Thursday, June 4, reliable sources in Tehran expected the Iranian government to invoke its 2006 mutual defense pact with Syria "in the coming hours" for the transfer of Iranian troops to Syria - most likely by air. This was reported by debkafile's exclusive military and intelligence sources. It would be Tehran's first direct military intervention in the Syria conflict as it goes into its fifth year. Bashar Assad's regime and the Syrian and Hezbollah armies are collapsing under the twin assaults of the Islamic State and the armed Syrian opposition forces and in need of urgent life support.
The possibility of invoking the Iranian-Syrian mutual defense pact for saving the Assad regime was first raised in a debkafile article on May 30.
Tehran was persuaded that, without direct intervention, its ally would go under at any moment Thursday when Islamic State forces broke through Syrian army defenses to the northern Syrian Kurdish town of Hasakeh, which sits on the Syrian-Iraqi-Turkish border junction. Towards evening, the Islamists had come to within one kilometer of the strategic town and captured its power station. Its defenders, the Syrian army's 52nd Division, were falling apart under the ISIS assault; some of the soldiers making a run for it.
Although the town is ruled by a coalition of central government and local Kurds, there was no operational coordination between the Syrian and Kurdish forces defending the town against the common enemy.
If ISIS manages to take Hasakeh, it would chalk up its third major victory in a couple of weeks after capturing Palmyra in Syria and the Iraqi town of Ramadi. Its fall would provide the Islamists with an open route across northern Syria to northern Iraq and strengthen their grip on Mosul, their Iraqi capital.
It would also count as a major setback for the United States, whose air strikes in support of Hasakeh's Kurdish defenders failed to stall the Islamist advance.
In the southern sector too, Syrian troops of the 68th and 13th divisions defending Deraa are reported to have laid down arms and fled under the massive onslaught of the opposition Army of Conquest coalition.
Tehran's final decision about sending a substantial Iranian force to Syria is awaited in the coming hours. This intention was strongly intimated in the last 48 hours by Adm. Ali Shamkhani, head of Iran's National Security Council, and Gen. Qassem Soleimani, supreme commander of Iran's Middle East operations. Both announced that dramatic events for Syria are to be expected in the coming days.
Iran is continuing to develop missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons despite an interim agreement on its nuclear programs, according to a Pentagon report.
"Although Iran has paused progress in some areas of its nuclear program and fulfilled its obligations under the Joint Plan of Action (JPOA), it continues to develop technological capabilities that also could be applicable to nuclear weapons, including ballistic missile development," a one-page unclassified summary of the report says.
A copy of the report was obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
The report was due to Congress in January but was not sent to the Armed Services Committee as required by law until this month. Analysts said the delay appeared designed to avoid upsetting Tehran and the nuclear talks.
Disclosure of the continuing development of nuclear delivery capabilities comes amid reports that Iran increased the amount of nuclear material that could potentially be used to build nuclear weapons despite the JPOA.
The State Department sought to challenge International Atomic Energy Agency reports on the increase in Iranian nuclear material, despite President Obama's claim that the nuclear agreement had halted Iran's nuclear program.
State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said this week that the increase in nuclear production was expected and that the amount has increased and decreased.
Iran's military also continues to threaten the strategic Strait of Hormuz, the Pentagon report said.
"Iran continues to develop its capabilities to control the Strait of Hormuz and avenues of approach in the event of a military conflict," the report said, adding that Tehran is "quietly fielding increasingly lethal weapon systems, including more advanced naval mines, small but capable submarines, armed unmanned aerial vehicles, coastal defense cruise missile batteries, attack craft, and ant ship-capable missiles."
U.S. officials said Iranian backing for Houthi rebels in Yemen is also aimed at gaining access to the strategic Red Sea strait called the Bab-el-Mandeb, which, like the Strait of Hormuz, could be used by Iran to disrupt oil and other shipping.
Tehran's support for terrorism also has not stopped, according to the Pentagon.
"Iran's covert activities appear to be continuing unabated," the report says. "The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF) remains a key tool of lran's foreign policy and power projection, particularly in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Bahrain, and Yemen."
The IRGC Quds Force also is continuing to improve its access within foreign countries and its ability to carry terrorist attacks "to safeguard or advance Iran's interests," the report said.
U.S. officials disclosed to the Free Beacon last week that Iran is increasing the number of Quds Force fighters and Lebanese Hezbollah militants it is sending to Yemen, to support pro-Iran Houthi rebels there.
The report asserts that Iran's military doctrine is "primarily defensive" and seeks to insulate Iran from more aggressive Iranian policies involving covert action and terrorism.
Iranian military forces seek to deter attacks, survive initial strikes, and retaliate against aggressors.
"The ongoing civil war in Syria and the instability in Iraq have tested, but not fundamentally altered, this posture," the report said. "Meanwhile, over the past year, the tone of publicity surrounding major military exercises has remained tempered, a trend that began in 2013, probably in support of negotiations over Iran's nuclear activities."
Iranian forces have been working with Iraq's government to battle Islamic State forces that have taken over large portions of that Middle East state. They have included IRGC fighters.
The report, dated January 2015, concludes that Iran has not substantively altered its military and security strategies in the past year.
"However, Tehran has adjusted its approach to achieve its enduring objectives, by increasing its diplomatic outreach and decreasing its bellicose rhetoric," the report said.
President Hassan Ruohani has sought to project a global message of "moderation and pragmatism" in support of those objectives.
Also, Iran is seeking to become the dominant regional power and in pursuit of that aim has "unwaveringly sought to improve its deterrent capabilities and increase its regional influence."
Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who is thought to be ill, "remains atop Iran's power structure as both the political-spiritual guide and the commander in chief of the armed forces."
The Senate Armed Services Committee, in its report on the fiscal 2016 defense authorization bill passed May 19, expressed concerns about the annual report on Iran's military.
The report was due to Congress on Jan. 30 but said as of May it had not been provided.
"The committee remains concerned about the threat posed by Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile development programs," the report said.
Last year Director of National Intelligence James Clapper testified that Iran "would choose a ballistic missile as its preferred method of delivering nuclear weapons." And in February, Iran launched a Safir long-range missile system.
"In 2013, the National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC) made the following statement about this system: Iran could develop and test an ICBM capable of reaching the United States by 2015," the report said.
"Since 2008, Iran has conducted multiple successful launches of the two-stage Safir space launch vehicle (SLV) and has also revealed the larger two stage Simorgh SLV, which could serve as a test bed for developing ICBM technologies."
The committee asked the secretary of defense to provide an update on Iran's ballistic missile programs.
As a result of the delay in the annual Iran military power report, the committee directed the Pentagon to provide a briefing on the Iranian missile threat, and to update the January report.
Ilan Berman, an Iran specialist with the American Foreign Policy Council, said the release of the report is good news but "has long been conspicuous by its absence."
"The study is long overdue, and its delay suggests that the administration has been leery of injecting inconvenient facts into the Iran debate as it closes in on a nuclear deal with the regime in Tehran," Berman said.
"The findings of the report confirm that Iran's destructive regional activities have not abated over the past year," he added.
"If anything, they have increased despite Iran's dialogue with the West," Berman said. "The product can be seen in the battlefield victories of Yemen's Iran-supported Houthi rebels, of the persistence of the Assad regime in Syria, and of the growing profile and capabilities of Iraq's Shi'a militias."
"Iran's activities represent a significant challenge to peace and security in the Middle East," he said.
"The real question is what, if anything, the White House is prepared to do about it?" he said.
Mark Dubowitz, another Iran expert, said Tehran is continuing to develop long-range ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads, in violation of U.N. Security Council limits.
"The Obama administration ceded to Iranian demands that their missile program was non-negotiable and, instead, has tried to reassure Congress that this missile threat can be mitigated by constraining Iran's ability to develop a nuclear warhead," said Dubowitz, executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
"This major administration concession to Iran will greatly complicate the U.S. intelligence community's ability to detect whether Iran has develop a nuclear warhead-carrying ICBM capable of reaching the continental United States," he added. "By its very nature, it is much more difficult to detect and prevent warhead development, which can take place in small, covert facilities, than it is to determine the nature and extent of a hostile missile program. In yet another example of how deeply flawed the emerging Iran deal will be, Tehran will have a much easier pathway to develop systems."
Iran's military mastermind promises a 'surprise' in Syria - http://www.businessinsider.com/irans-military-mastermind-promises-a-surprise-in-syria-2015-6
Iranian Revolutionary Guards Quds Force chief Qassem Soleimani has vowed that upcoming developments in Syria will soon "surprise" the world, Al-Quds al-Arabi reported.
"The world will be surprised by what we and the Syrian military leadership are preparing for the coming days," the state Islamic Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) quoted him as saying, according to the London-based daily.
The Quds Force commander's comment comes after a recent visit to Syria where he toured the Latakia region, which has come under threat from rebels after they seized the nearby Idlib province last week following months of sweeping victories against the regime.
Al-Quds al-Arabi reported that Soleimani "began his trip in Jourin, which lies on the contact point with the opposition forces that form the Army of Conquest."
The town, which lies a little over 40 kilometers east of Latakia, is not far from rebel lines in the Al-Ghab Plain, where regime forces have begun to bolster defense lines ahead of an expected insurgent attack.
A number of pro-regime outlets reported on Soleimani's trip over the weekend, including pro-Hezbollah Mulkak news which said the Iranian military commander met with the Syrian army's chief of staff as well as top field commanders and Hezbollah officials during his secret visit.
"An agreement was reached [during the meetings] that will be translated onto the [battlefield]," the outlet claimed.
Meanwhile, a defected National Defense Force militiaman told Al-Quds al-Arabi that Soleimani's trip aimed to formalize the "entry of Iranian officers to supervise and aid the battles in coastal Syria for the first time since the outbreak of Syrian uprising."
"Prior aid was limited to only logistical aid," the unnamed source said.
Alawite concerns
Soleimani's visit to the Latakia region comes amid heightened concerns in the Alawite-populated coastal enclave following regime defeats in Idlib and other regions of the war-torn country.
As regime forces come under increasing strain amid manpower shortages, Damascus has moved to mobilize its Alawite base.
Over the weekend, the government moved to form a new Coastal Shield Brigade that would recruit Latakia Province residents who have avoided compulsory military service.
A defected army officer from the region told Al-Jazeera Sunday that the regime was "working to gather members" for the Coastal Shield Brigade in Latakia through an "arrest campaign that [targets] all young men in the city, born after 1973."
"The number of young men arrested in one week reached 1,000. They were pulled out of the city's mosques and [off] the streets."
Other than arresting young Alawite men avoiding conscription, the Syrian regime has sought to recruit women and Baath Party employees, according to recent reports in anti-Damascus news outlets.
A change in strategy?
Soleimani's promise of upcoming surprises was made as an influential Iranian militant group thought to be close to the country's rulers has called for tens of thousands of infantrymen to be sent to Syria, according to a report by Saudi-owned news channel Al-Arabiya.
"Iran must send 50,000 soldiers from the infantry force to Syria to manage the war there and prevent the fall of the Assad regime, which has begun to collapse recently," Al-Arabiya reported, citing a study on Iran's management of the war in Syria conducted by Ansar e-Hezbollah.
According to the cited study, the mission of the 50,000 soldiers would be to ensure Syria's coastal region is not cut off from Damascus.
"Iran must preserve the vital corridor [connecting] Damascus to Latakia, Tartous and the Lebanese border."
"[Any] delay by Iran in [implementing] this pre-emptive action will cause the fall of Damascus airport, which in turn [means] the severing of the essential communication and supply line Iran [uses] to assist the Syrian regime.
Ansar e-Hezbollah, which was formally created in 1992, serves as a plain-clothed attack guard used by the Iranian government to target opponents of the clerical ruling system.
Although not an official part of Iran's security services, the paramilitary group receives state training and is thought to be close to top circles of the country's authorities.
Ansar e-Hezbollah's study comes as the Syrian government has faced serious military setbacks, losing the Idlib province last week following months of sweeping rebel advances, as well as the desert town of Palmyra, which was stormed by ISIS on May 20.
Reports have emerged that the regime is moving toward considering a change in strategy to withdraw its forces to protect core government-held areas stretching from Syria's coast through Homs down to Damascus.
The new policy would serve as a reversal of Assad's strategy of deploying the army in all areas of Syria, including in bases and other surrounded regime-controlled areas in the east and north of the country, where ISIS now controls 50% of Syria's territory.
Iran weighs turning Hezbollah's anti-Israel missiles against ISIS to save Damascus and Baghdad - http://www.debka.com/article/24633/Iran-weighs-turning-Hizballah's-anti-Israel-missiles-against-ISIS-to-save-Damascus-and-Baghdad
Hezbollah's General Secretary Hassan Nasrallah frequently brags that his 80,000 missiles can reach any point in Israel. He may have to compromise on this. His masters in Tehran are casting about urgently for ways to save the Assad regime in Damascus and halt the Islamic State's' inexorable advance on Baghdad and the Shiite shrine city of Karbala. According to debkafile's Gulf sources, Iran is eyeing the re-allocation of the roughly 1,000 long-range rockets in Hezbollah's store for warding off these calamities.
Some would be fired from their pads in Lebanon, exposing that country to retaliation, after Beirut rebuffed Hezbollah's demand for the Lebanese army to join in the fight for Assad.
Iran has not so far approved the plan. But if it does go through, Iranian spy drones operating over the war zones would feed with targeting data on ISIS and rebel positions and movements to the Hezbollah rocket crews manning the mobile batteries of Fajr-5s - range 400-600 km; Zelzal-2s - range 500 km; Fateh-110s -range 800 km; and Shaheen 2s - 800-900 km.
Discussions in Tehran on this option took on new urgency Thursday, May 28, when White House spokesman Josh Earnest declared that the United States "would not be responsible for securing the security situation in Iraq. Our strategy is to support the Iraqi security forces... back them on the battlefield with coalition military air power as they take the fight to ISIS in their own country," he said.
Tehran took this as confirmation that the US was quitting the war on the Islamic State in Iraq although the Obama administration's decision was coupled with a free hand for the Baghdad government to do whatever it must to deal with the peril, including calling on external forces for assistance in defending the country.
In the Iraqi arena, Iran has thrown into the fray surrogate Shiite militias grouped under "The Popular Mobilization Committee." It is led by Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, who turns out to be an Iranian, not an Iraqi, and working under cover as the deputy of the Al Qods Brigades Commander Gen. Qassem Soleimani.
This grouping is too shady for President Barack Obama to accept as worthy of US air support. Therefore, the entire anti-ISIS campaign has been dumped in Iran's lap. Loath to expose its own air force planes to the danger of being shot down over Iraq, Iran is looking at the option of filling the gap with heavy missiles.
In the Syrian arena, Tehran is under extreme pressure:
1. The Assad regime can't last much longer under fierce battering from the rebel Nusra Front, freshly armed and funded with massive assistance from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey. To disguise this group's affiliation with al Qaeda, the Saudis have set up a new outfit called "The Muslim Army of Conquest." In a few days it was joined by 3,000 Nusra adherents.
2. The Syrian army has lost heart under this assault and many of its units are fleeing the battlefield rather than fighting, with the result that Bashar Assad is losing one piece of territory after another in all his war sectors. Soon, he will be left without enough troops for defending Damascus.
3. Although Hezbollah's leaders proclaim their determination to fight for Assad in every part of Syria, the fact is that the Shiite group is too stretched to support a wide-ranging conflict in Syria and defend its own home base in Lebanon at one and the same time.
4. Tehran is also considering rushing through a defense pact with Damascus to enable Assad to call on Iranian troops to come over and rescue him.
5. Saudi Arabia has singled out leaders of top Hezbollah leaders for sanctions. This week, Riyadh impounded the assets and accounts of Khalil Harb and Muhammad Qabalan in Gulf banks. This act was taken in Tehran as a major provocation.
The names don't mean much outside a small circle in the region. However, Harb is Hezbollah's supreme chief of staff whose military standing is comparable to that of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander Gen. Ali Jaafary, while Qabalan is the organization's senior intelligence and operations officer and responsible for orchestrating Hezbollah's terrorist hits outside Lebanon.
The Iranians are not about to let this affront go by without payback, which could come in the form of missile attacks by Hezbollah on Saudi-backed groups in Syria.
Tehran expected to invoke defense pact for large-scale troop deployment to Syria - http://www.debka.com/article/24646/Exclusive-Tehran-expected-to-invoke-defense-pact-for-large-scale-troop-deployment-to-Syria
Thursday, June 4, reliable sources in Tehran expected the Iranian government to invoke its 2006 mutual defense pact with Syria "in the coming hours" for the transfer of Iranian troops to Syria - most likely by air. This was reported by debkafile's exclusive military and intelligence sources. It would be Tehran's first direct military intervention in the Syria conflict as it goes into its fifth year. Bashar Assad's regime and the Syrian and Hezbollah armies are collapsing under the twin assaults of the Islamic State and the armed Syrian opposition forces and in need of urgent life support.
The possibility of invoking the Iranian-Syrian mutual defense pact for saving the Assad regime was first raised in a debkafile article on May 30.
Tehran was persuaded that, without direct intervention, its ally would go under at any moment Thursday when Islamic State forces broke through Syrian army defenses to the northern Syrian Kurdish town of Hasakeh, which sits on the Syrian-Iraqi-Turkish border junction. Towards evening, the Islamists had come to within one kilometer of the strategic town and captured its power station. Its defenders, the Syrian army's 52nd Division, were falling apart under the ISIS assault; some of the soldiers making a run for it.
Although the town is ruled by a coalition of central government and local Kurds, there was no operational coordination between the Syrian and Kurdish forces defending the town against the common enemy.
If ISIS manages to take Hasakeh, it would chalk up its third major victory in a couple of weeks after capturing Palmyra in Syria and the Iraqi town of Ramadi. Its fall would provide the Islamists with an open route across northern Syria to northern Iraq and strengthen their grip on Mosul, their Iraqi capital.
It would also count as a major setback for the United States, whose air strikes in support of Hasakeh's Kurdish defenders failed to stall the Islamist advance.
In the southern sector too, Syrian troops of the 68th and 13th divisions defending Deraa are reported to have laid down arms and fled under the massive onslaught of the opposition Army of Conquest coalition.
Tehran's final decision about sending a substantial Iranian force to Syria is awaited in the coming hours. This intention was strongly intimated in the last 48 hours by Adm. Ali Shamkhani, head of Iran's National Security Council, and Gen. Qassem Soleimani, supreme commander of Iran's Middle East operations. Both announced that dramatic events for Syria are to be expected in the coming days.
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