What coordination? Russia and Israeli warplanes play cat and mouse over Syria - http://www.debka.com/article/24990/What-coordination-Russia-and-Israeli-warplanes-play-cat-and-mouse-over-Syria
Syrian media reported an Israeli air force attack Sunday, Nov. 1, after two sorties Friday night against Syrian army and Hezbollah bases in the Qalamoun Mountains on the Lebanese border. The IDF declined to confirm or deny these reports. Syrian sources described a large number of Israeli airplanes as bombing a Hezbollah unit based in the village of El Ain in northern Lebanon and the arms depot of the 155th Brigade of the Syrian army at Al-Katifa to the east.
The two targets are 70 km apart. So these air strikes must have targeted two key points along the Iranian arms supply route to Hizballah.
They also raise three important questions:
1. Did Israel's Tel Aviv command center use the hotline to Russian headquarters to give Moscow prior warning of air strikes against Syrian and Hezbollah targets, explaining that no harm was intended to the Russian military in Syria?
Hardly likely; the Russians would not be expected to tolerate Israeli bombardments so close to their own military enclave in Latakia province.
2. Did Russian surveillance planes and stations detect the approach of Israel's bombers and decide not to interfere?
After all, Israel has turned a blind eye to repeated Russian air strikes in the last few days against rebel positions in the southern Syrian town of Deraa and Quneitra opposite IDF Golan positions. The two cases suggest a gentlemen's agreement between Russia and Israel to abstain from interfering with each other's air operations over Syria, so long as there are no direct clashes between the two air forces. This could easily have happened when Russian planes bombed Quneitra.
So is Moscow giving Israel enough aerial leeway to strike Iranian, Syria and Hezbollah targets so long as there is no interference in Russian operations?
That too is unlikely because it would amount to permission for the Israeli air force to operate inside the anti-access/area denial bubble which the Russian air force has imposed over Syria.
3. Did the Israeli air force use electronic warfare measures to jam the tracking systems installed in Russian spy planes and air defense missile systems in Syria?
debkafile's military sources have this answer: Israel and Russia have been conducting a clandestine electronic contest for 33 years, since the memorable episode in 1982, when the Israeli air force destroyed in a single strike the entire Russian air defense missile system installed in Syria.
Since then, the Russians have worked hard to develop electronic warfare measures for gaining on the Israeli edge, without much success.
This was strikingly demonstrated in September 2007, when the Russian-made electronic tracking and warfare systems, which were the backbone of Syria air defense missile batteries, missed the Israeli warplanes as they came in to bomb the North Korean-built Iranian-Syrian plutonium reactor going up in northern Syria.
This lapse may have recurred in the case of the Israeli air sorties Saturday.
IDF Prepares for Possible Combined Attack from Iranian-Backed Syrian Forces - By Raphael Poch -
https://www.breakingisraelnews.com/52843/idf-prepares-for-possible-combined-attack-from-iranian-backed-syrian-forces-idf/#Ou166F1rVoTm6Joh.97
"Though a host should encamp against me, my heart shall not fear; though war should rise against me, even then I will be confident." (Psalms 27:3)
A senior source in the IDF told Israeli media outlets that the Mount Hermon Brigade, the IDF brigade which sits closest to the Syrian border, is preparing to counter combined terrorist attacks from Iranian-backed forces in Syria.
According to the anonymous source, the brigade has been training to respond to a variety of attack scenarios, including a combined attack which could include simultaneous border bombs, rockets, attempted kidnappings of soldiers and possible anti-tank missile fire.
"There is someone who gets up every morning and asks, how can I carry out an attack on Israel? Most of the time, they run into great difficulties," he said.
The forces are backed by the Iranian-led radical axis of Sunni Muslims in and around the Druze village of Khadr. This is the only area on the border of Israel which is currently controlled by pro-Assad forces. The rest of the area along the Israeli-Syrian border is in the hands of a variety of Sunni rebels that are fighting against the Assad regime.
Exchanges of fire between the two groups occur on a daily basis while the Hermon Brigade soldiers watch from their mountain outposts. Israel is unwilling to get dragged into the Syrian civil war that has continued since the Arab Spring revolts in 2011.
The IDF continues to monitor the area to prevent spillover from the war culminating in attacks against Israel. Since the Russian air force has begun providing air support to the Assad regime, the Syrian military, under the control of Assad, and other pro-Assad forces have become assertive and have retaken several posts along the border with Israel.
Though Israel has provided medical support to some of the civilians from the village of Khadr, there are still many forces at work that wish to lash out and attack Israel.
"The other side thinks carefully about whether it wants to open a front against Israel. We are the fortified wall that will not allow this front to open," the military source said. "Every breach [of our security] receives a clear answer."
In the past, the IDF was primarily worried about attacks coming from Syrian commando units along the border. The IDF source said, "I'm not thinking about the Syrian commando unit, which is down to a third of its original size, and is busy defending Damascus. The current threats are Iranian-backed terrorist organizations, and this is a different type of threat that requires us to prepare our forces in a different way."
"The threat is changing. It is less static, and more mobile. It changes every day. If we remain fixed in our ways, we will no longer be relevant," the officer said.
The IDF has adapted its tactics to allow for a more immediate response to any oncoming attack by giving middle- and lower-ranking field officers more authority and flexibility in decision making. This will allow the command structure to make swift decisions and eliminate threats before they become too dangerous.
While the IDF units in the area work closely with Military Intelligence and receive updates on a daily basis, units on Mount Hermon have been preparing for the scenario of attacks that come without prior intelligence warnings.
China wants to step up military cooperation with Iran's air force - Ben Blanchard - http://www.businessinsider.com/china-wants-to-step-up-military-cooperation-with-irans-air-force-2015-11
China wants to step up cooperation with Iran's air force, the head of the Chinese air force told his Iranian counterpart on Monday, the latest in a series of high-level military contacts.
Ma Xiaotian told Hassan Shah Safi that relations between the two air forces had developed smoothly.
"(We) hope that cooperation can go up another level," Ma said, according to a statement issued by China's Defense Ministry, which did not elaborate.
A senior Chinese admiral visited Tehran last month and last year, for the first time ever, two Chinese warships docked at Iran's Bandar Abbas port to take part in a joint naval exercise in the Gulf and an Iranian admiral was given tours of a Chinese submarine and warships.
China and Iran have close diplomatic, economic, trade and energy ties, and China has been active in pushing both the United States and Iran to reach agreement on Iran's controversial nuclear program.
Under a multilateral deal, agreed in July, sanctions imposed by the United States, European Union and United Nations will be lifted in return for Iran agreeing to long-term curbs on a nuclear program that the West has suspected was aimed at creating a nuclear bomb.
The US, Turkey, Iran and the Ezekiel 38 alliance - Bill Wilson - www.dailyjot.com
The US, Russia, Turkey, and Iran are clashing in Syria in a high stakes geopolitical game for control of the Middle East-a game that has end time prophetic significance. Competing interests are Turkey and Iran. Syria is Iran's vassal state. Turkey is allowing the Islamic State to do its dirty work. Russia is helping Syria. The US is playing both sides, ostensibly assisting the balance of power against Iran, but also helping Iran with its nuclear development and economic recovery. It appears on the surface that Turkey and Iran are enemies, but there is more to the picture. In July of 2012, Turkey was actively selling gold in noticeable amounts-to Iran, in exchange for oil--in defiance of US and European sanctions.
Bullion Vault, an online gold market research company reported that Turkey had exported $4.02 billion worth of gold between January and May that year. Iran bought 75% of Turkey's gold sales during the period. Turkey then bought millions of tons of oil from Iran despite a commitment at the time to uphold US and European Union oil sanctions against Iran. There was an EU ban on trading gold, oil, and diamonds with Iran. Notwithstanding, Iran used the gold to buy food supplies. This demonstrated that a ban on buying foodstuffs is inconsequential when using gold as the currency. It also revealed how these public enemies work as private allies.
It is obvious to many analysts that Turkey, while playing the West as a secular democratic ally, is in actuality using its Islamic political influence and economic capital to bring Iran and other Islamic states into its orbit. Turkey is considered a power broker in the Middle East that has gravitated from an ostensible secular democracy toward Islam in recent years. Another twist is that while the US "president" publicly promoted sanctions against Iran, in 2012 he granted Turkey a temporary waiver exempting it from US sanctions, as reported by Reuters, indicating the US exempted all 20 of Iran's top oil buyers from the sanctions because they slightly reduced oil imports.
In reality, Turkey sidestepped US and European sanctions on Iran by paying for oil with gold with the US "president's" help. Not many years ago analysts would have scoffed at the idea that Turkey, the gemstone of secular democracy in an Islamic dominated region, would go rogue and begin siding with fundamental Islamist regimes. Recall to memory, however, that less than 100 years have passed since Turkey dissolved the Islamic Caliphate that ruled the entire region. Now it appears to be in a revival with the help of the US, and Turkey plays a major role both politically and prophetically. Remember Ezekiel 38:3 where God says, "Behold, I am against thee, O Gog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal." Magog, Meshech and Tubal are located in modern day Turkey.
A 'Cold War 2.0' playing out in the Middle East - Ariel Ben Solomon -
http://www.jpost.com/landedpages/printarticle.aspx?id=431959
Putin's government tries to establish a security belt stretching from Iraq to the Mediterranean, expert tells the "Post."
The US is facing a "Cold War 2.0" against Russia in places such as Ukraine, the Baltic states, and Syria as President Vladimir Putin's government tries to establish an external security belt stretching from Iraq to the Mediterranean, a US-based expert told The Jerusalem Post.
Such a security belt would pass from Iran to parts of Iraq and Syria, and form a barrier against Sunni Islamists, Ariel Cohen, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and the director of the Center for Energy, Natural Resources and Geopolitics at the Institute for Analysis of Global Security in Washington, told the Post in an interview on Tuesday.
Cohen is in Israel for the Jerusalem Leaders Summit being held in Jerusalem this week, where Post editor-in-chief Steve Linde moderated a session on Tuesday.
The security belt would be approximately at a distance of 1000 miles from Russia's southern border.
"Russia is in an alliance with the Shia because they are afraid of the Sunnis," said Cohen, adding that it is a pragmatic relationship "where each side is using the other."
Asked if Russia's military intervention in Syria would hamper Israel's ability to attack by air, Cohen responded that Israel's reported recent strike against Hezbollah on Friday shows that it maintains its redlines and that it advised the Russians about what they are.
Of course, noted Cohen, there is a real risk in Syria that "we could wake up one day with the headline that a Russian jet shot down a US or Israeli plane or vice versa."
However, Russia, the US, and Israel are prepared for such a scenario as they have created emergency lines of communication.
Regarding US strategy in Syria, Cohen said that its idea of using proxies in Syria failed, and the only viable force in Syria is the Kurds.
Speaking of the future of the Syrian civil war, the logical assumption is that there will be an agreement that paves the way for a transition from the regime of President Bashar Assad, he said. The other option is that the conflict there will expand between the Shia-Russian axis and the Sunnis.
Regarding Turkey's election results, which gave a victory to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Islamist AK Party, Cohen said that "the US and Israel need to find ways to work with Turkey," as its geopolitical importance and central geographic location dictates this.
"It is clearly in Turkey's interest not to continue this prolonged friction with Israel. The gain on both sides would be so much greater if both sides could work together," he noted.
On Turkey's part, it is clear that its support of the regional Muslim Brotherhood project has failed. But, "if Erdogan's government does not act pragmatically and its Islamist ideology becomes predominant, then all bets are off."
The erasing of borders in the Middle East could mean the historical conflict between Russia and Turkey could return, he added.
"They have fought more than 20 wars in the past 300 years and Turkey has lost every time," said Cohen, noting the exception of the Crimean War, where the Ottoman Empire was allied with France and Britain.
Anti-air missiles in ISIS hands also imperil Saudi, Jordanian and Israeli skies - http://www.debka.com/article/24994/Anti-air-missiles-in-ISIS-hands-also-imperil-Saudi-Jordanian-and-Israeli-skies
The British Cobra (emergency cabinet) decision of Wednesday, Nov. 4, not to send airliners to or from Sharm El-Sheikh, where 20,000 British tourists are stranded, further strengthens the assumption that the Russian Metrojet Flight 9268 was downed over Sinai Saturday by a terrorist missile. It confirms that air traffic over Sinai and landings at Sharm are under threat from the ground - else why leave a large group of Britons under virtual siege in the Egyptian Red Sea resort? London said that the suspension of flights to Sharm was "indefinite."
Moscow early Thursday accused London of being moved to this action out of hostility to Russia rather than security concerns.
Downing Street released a statement Wednesday saying: "As more information has come to light, we have become concerned that the plane may well have been brought down by an explosive device." This statement was criticized by Egypt as "premature" - not a good omen for the conversation Prime Minister David Cameron is due to hold with his visitor, Egyptian president Abdel-Fatteh El-Sisi, later Thursday.
The British government has therefore stubbed toes in Moscow and Cairo without coming up with an emergency plan for evacuating its citizens from Egypt, whether overland to Cairo by bus or by sea aboard ships picking them up at the Red Sea resort and sailing through the Suez Canal.
This lack of initiative is a sign of confusion and uncertainty.
So far, the drawn-out deliberations and prevarications by officials in several countries regarding the crash of the Russian plane are meant for one purpose: to gain time for doing nothing about ISIS in Sinai. Neither the US, Russia or Britain is ready to send forces to the peninsula to confront the terrorists head-on.
The Ansar al Sharia terrorist organization in Libya, which attacked the US consulate in Benghazi and murdered the American ambassador in 2012, has the very missiles capable of shooting down large airliners flying at high altitudes: Russian-made ground-to-air Buk missiles, which have a range of between three and 42 kilometers. This ultra-violent Islamist terror group has very close operational ties with ISIS-Sinai, and very possibly smuggled the missile system into Sinai from Libya.
A number of intelligence agencies are aware of this and so a flock of leading European and Persian Gulf airlines lost no time in rerouting their flights to avoid Sinai straight after the Russian air disaster.
By causing this disaster, the Islamist terrorists coolly aimed for four goals:
1. Retaliation for Russian intervention in Syria
2. An attempt to destabilize the regime of Egyptian President Fattah Al-Sisi
3. To show up the inadequacies of the 63-member coalition that the US formed in its effort to fight ISIS
4. To parade before the world the Islamic State's operational prowess, its ability to shoot down the large passenger planes of the world's biggest powers.
For five days, intelligence and flight safety experts dismissed the claim of responsibility that ISIS issued on the evening of October 31, maintaining that it was not to be taken seriously because no proof had been provided to support the claim - as if the charred fragments of the plane spread across tens of kilometers of desert were deniable.
In the second of its three messages, ISIS repeated its claim Wednesday, Nov. 4, promising details of how it downed the plane at a later date.
While more and more Western governments are coming around to accepting that the Russian airliner's crash was caused by an explosive device, debkafile's counterterrorism sources repeat that they cannot rule out the possibility of a missile. The argument made on Wednesday in Washington and London that terrorist organizations do not have missiles capable of downing such planes is are simply incorrect.
ISIS-Sinai's possession of an advanced ground-air missile system does not only endanger planes in the peninsula's airspace, but also those aircraft flying over the Suez Canal as well as parts of Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Israel. One of the Egyptian president's main purposes in his London visit was to try and persuade Prime Minister Cameron to join an Egyptian military operation against Ansar al Sharia in Libya and so eliminate a major prop and arms supplier for ISIS-Sinai. He does not hold out much hope of success.
How the Syrian conflict could get even bigger and bloodier - By David Ignatius -
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/how-the-syrian-conflict-could-get-even-bigger-and-bloodier/2015/11/03/1973d678-826a-11e5-a7ca-6ab6ec20f839_story.html
President Obama says he doesn't want to turn the Syria conflict into a proxy war. Unfortunately, that's already happening, as combatants join the battle against the Islamic State with radically differing agendas that could collide.
Let's look at the confusing order of battle: The United States has decided that its strongest partner against the Islamic State is a Syrian Kurdish force known as the YPG. But Turkey, nominally our NATO ally, says the YPG has links with what it claims is a Kurdish terrorist group. How's that going to work out? No answers yet.
Russia, meanwhile, contends that it is fighting the Islamic State, alongside forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. But Russian warplanes have been bombing Islamist rebel groups that are covertly supported by the United States, Turkey and Jordan - and these brigades are fighting back hard. The rebels are posting videos bragging about their success with U.S. anti-tank missiles. The battle looks eerily like Russia's war in Afghanistan, in embryo. Where's it heading? No answer there, either.
Saudi Arabia and Iran have been fighting by proxy in Syria for nearly four years. This may be the most toxic conflict of all, because it feeds the Sunni-Shiite sectarian inferno that is immolating the Middle East.
Look across the map of shattered Syria and you see contradictory coalitions and partnerships. With so many powerful military forces gathering in the same area, the danger for accidents and miscalculations is large.
Why is this proxy war escalating at the same time the outside powers are holding diplomatic talks about resolving the conflict? The United States, Russia, Iran, Turkey and Saudi Arabia sent representatives to Vienna last week to explore the political transition they all claim to favor. The meeting was not encouraging: No Syrian combatants attended, and the outside powers disagreed sharply about what a transition should look like.
"Fight and talk" is a recurring cycle in Middle East conflict. So perhaps the recent military escalation is the prelude to diplomatic negotiations, as each side tries to extend its territory and strengthen its bargaining position before serious talks begin. We should be so lucky. But both Assad and the rebels seem as unready for compromise as ever.
Studying Syria from north to south, it's clear where "deconfliction," as the military puts it, is needed to avoid unintended disaster.
On the northern front, the United States needs to deepen its consultations with Turkey as it escalates support for Syrian Kurdish forces and their Arab allies. President Obama is sending fewer than 50 Special Operations forces to Syria, but make no mistake, this is a significant commitment. The U.S. troops will need air support - not just to bomb the Islamic State, but for resupply, rescue if they get in trouble, and perhaps to enable the cycle of intelligence-driven "night raids" that was so devastating in Iraq.
What does Turkey think about this expanded U.S. role on its border, especially after the decisive election victory Sunday by the sometimes Kurdophobic President Recep Tayyip Erdogan? Pentagon officials say the Turks should be reassured, because the United States will now have greater oversight of the YPG's 25,000 fighters and can prevent supplies from getting to the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, which Turkey views as a terrorist group. It's a reasonable argument, but it needs Ankara's assent.
On Syria's southern border with Jordan, the United States has quietly helped train a rebel coalition known as the Southern Front, which claims 35,000 fighters in 54 brigades. Last week, Russian warplanes attacked some of those U.S.-backed forces at Al-Harra in southwest Syria, the site of a former Russian signals-intelligence station captured by the rebels. This is crazy. Moscow and Washington should look to de-escalate the situation, rather than torch it more.
But in the inexorable logic of the Syria conflict, worse is ahead. Maj. Essam al-Rayes, the spokesman for the Southern Front, told me in a telephone interview Tuesday that his forces expect a new Syrian onslaught this week, backed by Russia, to recapture ground south of Damascus. This pursuit of "victory" only helps the extremists.
What's over the hill, if the outside powers don't find a path toward de-escalation? Here's one grim hint: I had visits over the past several weeks from leaders of Kurdish political movements in Iran and Syria who envision the day when a greater Kurdistan dissolves the borders of those nations, as well as Turkey and Iraq.
If Russia, Iran, Turkey and the other proxy fighters don't help put the pin back in this grenade, a more devastating, region wide explosion lies ahead.
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