Russia upgrades Syria-based electronic station to warn Iran of US/Israeli attack

DEBKAfile Special Report February 27, 2012, 11:09 AM (GMT+02:00)


The Russians have upgraded their Jabal Al Harrah electronic and surveillance station south of Damascus opposite Israel’s Sea of Galilee, adding resources especially tailored to give Tehran early warning of an oncoming US or Israeli attack, debkafile’s US military sources report.
Before it was boosted by extra advanced technology and manpower, the station covered civilian and military movements in northern Israel up to Tel Aviv, northern Jordan and western Iraq. Today, its range extends to all parts of Israel and Jordan, the Gulf of Aqaba and northern Saudi Arabia.

Part two of Moscow’s project for extending the range of its Middle East ears and eyes consisted of upgrading the Russian-equipped Syrian radar stationed on Lebanon’s Mount Sannine and connecting it to the Jabal Al Harrah facility in Syria. Russian technicians have completed this project too. Russia is now able to additionally track US and Israeli naval and aerial movements in the Eastern Mediterranean up to and including Cyprus and Greece.

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Iran names Istanbul for nuclear talks, buttresses Assad with Russia

DEBKAfile Special Report February 19, 2012, 6:30 PM (GMT+02:00)

Iran continues to behave as though it is calling the shots. The first formal announcement of the resumption of Iran-world powers nuclear talks (confirming debkafile’s exclusive) came from its Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Selahi who Sunday, Feb. 19, named the venue as Istanbul, Turkey. Saturday, two Iranian warships got away with delivering arms for Bashar Assad’s crackdown on protest without US or Israeli interference.
They docked at Tartus port Saturday alongside a Russian naval flotilla, symbolizing their joint effort to preserve Assad.
US and Israeli naval craft were entitled by UN sanctions to intercept and search the Kharq supply ship carrying illegal arms and military equipment for Bashar Assad’s army as it sailed past Israel’s Mediterranean coast with the Sahid Qandi destroyer. But they abstained from doing so for fear of a firefight at sea with the Iranian destroyer.
The Egyptian Suez authorities were equally wary of trouble and so did not exercise their authority to search the arms vessel.

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First foreign troops in Syria back Homs rebels. Damascus and Moscow at odds

Syrian tank on fire in Homs

British and Qatari special operations units are operating with rebel forces under cover in the Syrian city of Homs just 162 kilometers from Damascus, according to debkafile’s exclusive military and intelligence sources. The foreign troops are not engaged in direct combat with the Syrian forces bombarding different parts of Syria's third largest city of 1.2 million. They are tactical advisers, manage rebel communications lines and relay their requests for arms, ammo, fighters and logistical aid to outside suppliers, mostly in Turkey.
This site is the first to report the presence of foreign military forces in any of the Syrian uprising's embattled areas.
Our sources report the two foreign contingencies have set up four centers of operation - in the northern Homs district of Khaldiya, Bab Amro in the east, and Bab Derib and Rastan in the north. Each district is home to about a quarter of a million people.

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24 Signs That We Are Getting Dangerously Close To A Major War In The Middle East

Is 2012 the year when we will see a major war in the Middle East?  For years we have heard about rising tensions in the Middle East, and for years we have heard politicians express concerns about Iran's nuclear program, but now things really do seem to be reaching a boiling point.  In just the past few days, the U.S. government has imposed tough new sanctions on Iran and has totally shut down the U.S. embassy in Syria.  The truth is that we are getting dangerously close to a major war in the Middle East. So will Israel strike Iran at some point in the next few months?  Will the U.S. military intervene in the rapidly escalating conflict inside of Syria?  If a major war does erupt, it could send the price of oil skyrocketing and there is the potential that the war could broaden very quickly.  Hezbollah has already indicated that it will side with Syria, and there is always the potential that Hamas could as well.  Russia and China have both stated that they are completely opposed to military action by the United States against Iran and Syria, and they have even hinted that they would possibly even help defend those countries.  As the nations of the world take sides, there is even the potential that we could see World War III develop.  Let us hope that it never comes to that, but with the world as unstable as it is right now, you never know what may happen.
What makes war so much more likely now is that nobody has shown any signs of backing down.
Syrian President Bashar Assad has sworn that he will never step down.
U.S. President Barack Obama says that it is only a matter of time until he is forced to step down and that no other outcome is acceptable.
Iran has sworn that it will never end its nuclear program.
The United States believes that if Iran is allowed to develop a nuclear weapon it would be a fundamental threat to world security.
Israel believes that if Iran is allowed to develop a nuclear weapon it would be a fundamental threat to the very existence of the nation of Israel.
So if nobody backs down, what is going to happen?
I think we all know what is going to happen.
The following are 25 signs that we are getting dangerously close to a major war in the Middle East....
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Obama still tries to stop Israeli Iran strike. West confronts Iran in Syria

DEBKAfile Special Report February 6, 2012, 3:35 PM (GMT+02:00)

Barack Obama

 
US President Barack Obama, by asserting Sunday, Feb. 5, he doesn't think Israel has made a decision on whether to attack Iran, indicated he preferred to keep Israel back from military action and set aside as a strategic reserve, while at the same time using the broad presumption of Jerusalem's assault plans to intimidate Iran into opting for diplomatic talks on its nuclear program.
To this end, the president directly contradicted Defense Secretary Leon Panetta's statement six days earlier that he expected Israel to strike Iran in April, May or June.
In Israel, no knowledgeable source any longer doubts that the Netanyahu government has already reached a decision. It was instantly assumed that Maj. Gen. Amir Eshel, whose appointment as the next Israeli Air Force commander was announced Sunday, would lead the coming operation against Iran.
Obama also said, "We are going to be sure we work in lockstep as we proceed to try to solve this – hopefully diplomatically." debkafile's analysts report that by "lockstep" he meant the role to which he had assigned Israel in the massive disinformation contest underway between the West and Iran.

Iran, the US and the Strait of Hormuz crisis

Source: Stratfor.com , Author: George Friedman

Posted: Wed January 18, 2012 4:06 pm

 

 

INTERNATIONAL. The United States reportedly sent a letter to Iran via multiple intermediaries last week warning Tehran that any attempt to close the Strait of Hormuz constituted a red line for Washington.

The same week, a chemist associated with Iran's nuclear program was killed in Tehran. In Ankara, Iranian parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani met with Turkish officials and has been floating hints of flexibility in negotiations over Iran's nuclear program.

This week, a routine rotation of U.S. aircraft carriers is taking place in the Middle East, with the potential for three carrier strike groups to be on station in the U.S. Fifth Fleet's area of operations and a fourth carrier strike group based in Japan about a week's transit from the region.

Next week, Gen. Michael Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will travel to Israel to meet with senior Israeli officials. And Iran is scheduling another set of war games in the Persian Gulf for February that will focus on the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' irregular tactics for closing the Strait of Hormuz.

While tensions are escalating in the Persian Gulf, the financial crisis in Europe has continued, with downgrades in France's credit rating the latest blow. Meanwhile, China continued its struggle to maintain exports in the face of economic weakness among its major customers while inflation continued to increase the cost of Chinese exports.

Putin, a thorn in Washington's flesh

By: F. William Engdahl Special to Salem-News.com

Why Putin?

The salient question is why Putin at this point? We need not look far for the answer. Washington and especially Barack Obama’s Administration don’t give a hoot about whether Russia is democratic or not. Their concern is the obstacle to Washington’s plans for Full Spectrum Dominance of the planet that a Putin Presidency will represent. According to the Russian Constitution, the President of the Russian Federation head of state, supreme commander-in-chief and holder of the highest office in the Russian Federation. He will take direct control of defense and foreign policy.

We must ask what policy? Clearly strong countermeasures against the blatant NATO encirclement of Russia with Washington’s dangerous ballistic missile installations around Russia will be high on Putin’s agenda. Hillary Clinton’s “reset” will be in the dustbin if it is not already. We can also expect a more aggressive use of Russia’s energy card with pipeline diplomacy to deepen economic ties between European NATO members such as Germany, France and Italy, ultimately weakening the EU support for aggressive NATO measures against Russia. We can expect a deepening of Russia’s turn towards Eurasia, especially with China, Iran and perhaps India to firm up the shaky spine of resistance to Washington’s New World Order plans.

It will take more than a few demonstrations in sub-freezing weather in Moscow and St. Petersburg by a gaggle of corrupt or shady opposition figures such as Nemtsov or Kasparov to derail Russia. What is clear is that Washington is pushing on all fronts—Iran and Syria, where Russia has a vital naval port, on China, now on Russia, and on the Eurozone countries led by Germany. It has the smell of an end-game attempt by a declining superpower.

The United States today is a de facto bankrupt nuclear superpower. The reserve currency role of the dollar is being challenged as never since Bretton Woods in 1944. That role along with maintaining the United States as the world’s unchallenged military power have been the basis of the American Century hegemony since 1945.

Weakening the role of the dollar in international trade and ultimately as reserve currency, China is now settling trade with Japan in bilateral currencies, side-stepping the dollar. Russia is implementing similar steps with her major trade partners. The primary reason Washington launched a full-scale currency war against the Euro in late 2009 was to preempt a growing threat that China and others would turn away from the dollar to the Euro as reserve currency. That is no small matter. In effect Washington finances its foreign wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya and elsewhere through the fact that China and other trade surplus nations invest their surplus trade dollars in US government Treasury debt. Were that to shift significantly, US interest rates would rise substantially and the financial pressures on Washington would become immense.

Faced with growing erosion of her unchallenged global status as sole superpower, Washington appears now to be turning increasingly to raw military force to hold that. For that to succeed Russia must be neutralized along with China and Iran. This will be the prime agenda of whoever is next US President.

Thawing The Cold War: Russia Found To Be Supplying Syria With Weapons, US Not Amused

Turkey halts Iranian arms corridor to Syria, balks at nuclear Iran

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report January 12, 2012, 10:46 AM (GMT+02:00)

When IDF Military Intelligence chief Maj.-Gen. Aviv Kochavi accused Iran and Hizballah Wednesday, Jan. 11of directly helping Bashar Assad repress the uprising against him with arms, Turkey had just taken a stand against the Iranian corridor running weapons to Syria via its territory, debkafile's military sources report.
Earlier this week, Ankara reported halting five Iranian trucks loaded with weapons for Syria at the Killis Turkish-Syrian border crossing and impounding its freight. According to our intelligence sources, the Iranian convoy was not really stopped at Killis but at the eastern Turkish Dobubayazit border crossing with Iran, near Mount Ararat. This supply route for Syria had been going strong for months. Ankara's decision to suspend it has reduced its volume by 60 percent.

The war dance is in full swing

By Victor Kotsev

If the most recent wave of escalations in the Middle East is a bluff, it is a very convincing one. Russian analysts speculate that a military intervention against either Syria or Iran (or both) could start by the end of the month; the latter is still hard to imagine, but the time frame seems to correspond to the nature of the developments and the rate at which they are being announced.

Barring a full-scale war in the Middle East in the next few weeks, we could think of what is happening on both sides as a modern version of a war dance, a dress rehearsal for a showdown and a spectacle for domestic consumption, for the enemy and for the international community alike.

Russian, French warships off Syria, Iran, US drones over Iranian coast

DEBKAfile Special Report January 9, 2012, 10:21 AM (GMT+02:00)
 
US, Russian French and British air and naval forces streamed to the Syrian and Iranian coasts over the weekend on guard for fresh developments at the two Middle East flashpoints.
The Russian carrier Admiral Kuznetsov anchored earlier than planned at Syria's Tartus port on the Mediterranean Sunday, Jan. 8, arriving together with the destroyer Admiral Chabanenko and frigate Yaroslav Mudry.
To counter this movement, France consigned an air defense destroyer Forbin to the waters off Tartus.

debkafile's military sources report a buildup in the last 48 hours of western naval forces opposite Iran in the Persian Gulf and Arabian Sea in readiness for Tehran to carry out its threat to close the Strait of Hormuz.

Britain has dispatched the HMS Daring, a Type 45 destroyer armed with new technology for shooting down missiles, to the Sea of Oman, due to arrive at the same time as the French Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier.

Our sources report too that Saturday, the giant RQ-4 Global Hawk UAV, took off from the USS Stenning aircraft carrier for surveillance over the coasts of Iran. The Stennis and its strike group are cruising in the Sea of Oman at the entrance to the Strait of Hormuz after Tehran announced it would not be allowed to cross through.

Israeli drone over Turkish-Syrian border. Battles in Syrian-Jordanian-Israeli border triangle

Israeli Eitan drone

Military tensions are building up on Syria's borders. Wednesday, Jan. 4, Turkish military sources reported sighting an Israeli Eitan (Heron) drone in the sky above the Turkish Hawk Brigade 14 stationed on the northern Syrian border at Kirikhan in the Hatay district of southern Turkey.  The Israeli drone was said to have hovered over the encampment for four hours.
A request by local Turkish officers to fire anti-air missiles to down the Israeli Eitan went unanswered by the Turkish general staff until the drone was gone. According to the Turkish sources, two Turkish F-16 fighter jets were scrambled from the Diyarbakir 2nd Air Force Command Strike Center and stayed overhead as long as the Israeli drone was present.
debkafile reports this is the first time Israeli UAV's have been reported monitoring events on the Turkish-Syrian border. On Dec. 16, our sources disclosed 21 Syrian Scud missile launchers had been stationed opposite Hatay province as a warning to Turkey, NATO and Arab forces to stay out of the Syrian uprising.

British Media Propaganda Aims at Triggering NATO Military Intervention against Syria

by Tony Cartalucci

Channel 4 makes Goebbels proud with conveniently timed propaganda piece.

With the UN's recent "human rights" report falling flat, for lack of evidence and being compiled by Karen Koning AbuZayd, a director of the US Washington-based corporate think-tank, Middle East Policy Council, that includes Exxon men, CIA agents, US military and government representatives, and even the president of the US-Qatar Business Council, the corporate-media has stepped in to give faces and screams to the alleged victims of Wall Street and London's premeditated implosion of Syrian society.

The UN's human rights chief, Navi Pillay had been having difficulties peddling the recycled lies used just months ago to commence NATO and UN-sanctioned genocide in Libya, in what is now verified, even confessed fabrications produced by the Libyan opposition and filtered through corporate foundation-funded Human Rights Watch, the International Criminal Court, and the UN. Additionally, Syria itself had brushed off attempts by the Wall Street and London compromised Arab League and their numerous, feckless attempts to impose ultimatums clearly crafted in Washington and given an "Arab" face.