Between silence and speculation: An Egypt-Iran reconciliation

June 26 2023

Photo Credit: The Cradle

Amidst ongoing regional diplomatic activity, the major missing piece in the diplomatic jigsaw is the normalization between Cairo and Tehran; can they set aside differences, end decades of tensions, and write a new chapter in West Asia-North Africa relations?

By The Cradle’s Egypt Correspondent

Forty-four years after severing relations, amid an uptick of diplomatic activities across the region, Egypt and Iran are finally taking cautious steps towards rapprochement. For decades, the two countries have followed divergent paths on foreign policy.

Yet, recent developments in West Asia, following reconciliations between several countries, have prompted talk of a potential breakthrough.

These developments include Saudi Arabia and Iran’s Beijing-brokered rapprochement, Syria’s return to the Arab League, Riyadh’s resumption of ties with Damascus, a thaw in Turkiye’s relations with Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Egypt, in addition to the onset of direct talks with the Ansarallah-led government in Yemen.

‘Silence from Egypt is a position’

The prospect of a rapprochement between Iran and Egypt has stirred different responses from the two nations. Tehran has openly expressed its willingness to mend ties with Cairo, even from the highest levels of authority.

In contrast, Egypt’s silence has been deafening – literally. In mid-May, Egyptian media quoted one source saying, “The ongoing official silence from Egypt is a position.” This steadfast silence by the Egyptian government is reminiscent of its stance towards Turkiye.

That lull was eventually broken when Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan unexpectedly shook hands in Doha during the FIFA World Cup in Qatar.

This surprising gesture raises the question: Could an Iranian-Egyptian handshake be on the horizon as well? The diplomatic landscape seems to be shifting, leaving room for speculation and optimism over a potential reconciliation between these two geostrategic regional states.

On 14 May, Fada Hossein Maleki, a member of the Iranian parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, revealed that negotiations between Iran and Egypt were underway in Iraq, with the intention of re-establishing relations between and reopening embassies.

But the most important Iranian announcement was made by the Islamic Republic’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei himself, who welcomed the restoration of relations with Egypt during his meeting on 29 May with the Sultan of Oman Haitham bin Tariq, whose country traditionally plays the role of regional mediator.

Shadi Ibrahim, a researcher in international relations and security studies at Istanbul University, informs The Cradle that the differences between Tehran and Cairo differ from Egyptian-Turkish disputes, as the issues with Iran “are primarily external and not internal, unlike Ankara, which Cairo sees as a competitor for influence and wealth in the region.”

According to Ibrahim, Egyptian-Iranian rapprochement was not initially on Cairo’s agenda due to these external reasons that date back to the Iranian revolution. However, with Arab Persian Gulf capitals – that sought to isolate Iran since 1979 – now mending ties at breakneck speed with Tehran, the process of reconciliation with Egypt is now also beginning to take shape.

A chequered history

Historically, the relationship between Egypt and Iran has experienced alternating phases of close alliance and intense hostility. A connection between the two regional states was solidified in 1939 when then-Iranian Crown Prince Mohammad Reza Pahlavi married Princess Fawzia, the daughter of King Fuad I of Egypt and Sudan. However, their subsequent divorce in 1945 led to a crisis between the two nations when her brother, King Farouk of Egypt, insisted on the divorce and refused Princess Fawzia’s return to Iran.

As relations thawed, the Free Officers Revolution overthrew King Farouk in July 1952, and Egypt raised the banner of Arab nationalism and confrontation against Israel. Given pre-revolutionary Iran’s recognition of Israel in 1960, relations deteriorated once again and remained uneasy until the death of President Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1970.

Under the leadership of Nasser’s successor, President Anwar Sadat, Egypt, and Iran experienced a resurgence in ties. However, the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, shattered the progress as it toppled the pro-western and pro-Israel Shah, who subsequently sought refuge in Egypt, where he remained until his death in 1980.

Iran’s revolution stood in hostile opposition toward the Zionist occupation state – just as Egypt was finalizing its Camp David peace treaty with Tel Aviv. The same reasons that drove Abdel Nasser to sever ties with Iran in 1960 were echoed in Khomeini’s decision to do the same with Egypt in 1979.

Decades of frozen relations between Egypt and Iran finally started to warm up with the January 2011 uprising that toppled President Hosni Mubarak. In a significant step, Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi visited Tehran in April 2012, marking the first visit by an Egyptian president to Iran in three decades.

This was followed by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s visit to Cairo in February 2013, signifying a new chapter in their relationship and the announcement of embassy reopenings.

However, the subsequent Sisi-led and Saudi/Emirati-backed coup against Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood-dominated government in July of the same year halted the progress of relations with Tehran, albeit with a reduced level of hostility. Egypt, thereafter, adopted a strategy of “neither hostility nor friendship.”

Post-Camp David

Since the 1978 signing of the Camp David Accords, Cairo has aligned itself with US policy against Iran. Any shifts in relations between the two regional states today “come in the context of bilateral polarization and the competition of regional powers among themselves,” political analyst Abd al-Rahman Adel tells The Cradle.

In recent years, Egypt’s status has diminished in light of regional changes, which shifted the balance of power to favor wealthy Persian Gulf sheikhdoms. This transformed Cairo from an “active power” into a “state affiliated with the new forces in the region.”

During this period, the polarization between Persian Gulf Arab states and Iran – as well as among the Gulf states themselves – ignited unrest and conflict. An economically strained Egypt, reliant on the Gulf’s largesse, positioned itself as a reliable ally in its geopolitical struggle against Iran, aiming to achieve a sense of balance, particularly in Yemen.

Though with time, “these countries discovered that Egypt’s role was modest and its participation was limited, contrary to expectations,” Ibrahim explains to The Cradle. Aid to Egypt from the Gulf was severely curtailed as a result.

Impact of Saudi-Iran normalization

The rise of new global powers like Russia and China coincides with the declining US status in West Asia and Washington’s shift of focus to the Ukraine war and China’s backyard. Then in March, a significant development occurred with implications for Egyptian-Iranian relations.

Tehran and Riyadh agreed to normalize their relations in Beijing, China, after seven years of estrangement. This breakthrough served as a green light for countries in the wider region, including Egypt, to engage in dialogues with Iran. Prior to that, in August 2022, Kuwait and the UAE had agreed to restore full diplomatic relations with the Islamic Republic.

In February of last year, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian announced that a new page had opened in Iran’s relations with the countries of the region, saying “our hand is open to our neighbors,” and stressing that “strengthening relations with neighbors, especially Arab countries, is a key priority in Iranian politics.”

In May, Amir-Abdollahian expressed hope that Tehran and Cairo will resume relations, stating: “We have always welcomed the development of relations between Tehran and Cairo,” adding, “The heads of our missions – interests sections – in Tehran and Cairo have good meetings. There is good access to the authorities of both countries.”

Iraqi mediation efforts

Multiple sources claim that Iraq has been hosting talks between representatives from Iran and Egypt since March, with Iraq’s Prime Minister Muhammad Shia al-Sudani leading mediation efforts. Despite all the positive speculation, however, Iraqi sources say that the communication has not yet led to understandings to start normalizing relations. Sources point out that Cairo is still not enthusiastic about normalizing ties for reasons that have not yet been disclosed.

Iraqi political sources tell The Cradle that Sudani aims to establish himself as a key interlocutor between Iran and Arab countries, as his predecessor Mustafa al-Kadhimi sought to do. While the Iraqi president has informed Riyadh of his intention to mediate between Cairo and Tehran, the Saudis have reportedly not shown much enthusiasm.

The sources emphasize that Cairo is unlikely to take serious steps toward improving relations with Iran until the relationship between Tehran and Riyadh reaches a more favorable level.

It is expected that Egyptian President Sisi would require clear support from his Saudi and Emirati patrons – Mohammed bin Salman and Mohammed bin Zayed – before restituting Egyptian-Iranian relations.

Simultaneously, the Sultanate of Oman is playing an important role in facilitating negotiations between Cairo and Tehran. Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi disclosed that Omani Sultan Haitham bin Tarik had conveyed a message from Cairo expressing its desire to improve relations. However, Arab diplomatic sources indicate that Oman’s efforts are still in their infancy, and have not yet resulted in significant progress.

Limited gains; minimal impact on Israel

Researcher Ibrahim believes that the restoration of relations between Egypt and Iran may not lead to much more than “the economic benefit of the Egyptian regime and breaking the isolation imposed on Iran.” In any case, this economic openness is likely to remain limited, with little room for substantial growth and expansion, particularly in light of Israel’s presence along the borders.

Ibrahim and Adel agree that “the Egyptian-Iranian rapprochement will be on a limited scale and will not in any way harm the Egyptian partnership with Israel, nor will it contradict American policy.”

According to Shadi, “Iran will benefit more from these relations.” Transforming relations from negative to positive, even if it is limited to the economic or religious tourism sector, “may represent a step towards a greater role in the future in issues important to Iran, such as the conflict with Israel.”

However, Shadi points out that Cairo is well aware of this, and “will not allow Tehran to compete with it in the Palestinian file.” Cairo benefits here from its geographical location and the fact that Egyptian lands are the only passage to the world for the Iranian-backed Palestinian resistance factions in Gaza. This reality reinforces Egypt’s position and ensures that it remains a pivotal, albeit passive player in the Palestinian context.

As the situation continues to unfold, it is unclear how Egypt’s relationship with Iran will develop and whether it will lead to a broader transformation in regional dynamics or primarily serve as a limited and pragmatic engagement.

The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.

Iraq and Syria Survived the U.S.-NATO Attack and the Destruction

March 24, 2023

Source

By Steven Sahiounie

March 2003 and March 2011 have a great deal in common, but that is not where the story begins, Steven Sahiounie writes.

The 20^th anniversary of the U.S. attack on Iraq for regime change coincides with the 12^th anniversary of the U.S. attack on Syria for regime change. March 2003 and March 2011 have a great deal in common, but that is not where the story begins.

The destruction of two nations, sitting side by side in the Middle East, began in 1996 with the strategy paper called “A Clean Break”, written by the man known as “The Architect of the Iraq War”.

“A Clean Break” was authored in part by Richard T. Perle, an American Jew from New York. Being born a Jew is not paramount to this story, but being an Israeli agent is. There should be a test when working on sensitive and top-secret plans for the U.S., that your allegiance is sworn to the U.S. and no other country on earth. Perle was an American, but his allegiance lay elsewhere.

Perle delivered the paper to Benjamin Netanyahu, who had just been elected as Prime Minister of Israel. The paper presents the reasons for the U.S. to attack and destroy Iraq and Syria. After President Bill Clinton took office, the paper was presented to him for action, but he declined. But, by the time of the 9/11 bombing of the WTC in NYC in 2001, the time was ripe to dust off the paper and Perle and his associates found President George W. Bush a willing partner.

Perle was the chairman of the Defense Policy Board, which was responsible for developing reasons for the U.S. to attack other countries. The Pentagon does not develop policy, they simply are asked to report if a planned attack can be carried out successfully, or not. There is an old saying, “A soldier’s job is not to question why, a soldier’s job is to do or die”. Wars and attacks by the U.S. cannot be blamed on the Pentagon, that blame must rest on the Oval Office, the State Department, the CIA, and the Defense Policy Board.

The 9/11 attack was carried out on the orders of Osama bin Laden, a Saudi national living in Afghanistan, and a leader of Al Qaeda, a terrorist group following the political ideology of Radical Islam, which is the same ideology as the Muslim Brotherhood, with hundreds of followers in the U.S.

The trick was how could the Bush administration connect Al Qaeda to Saddam Hussein, the leader of Iraq? The director of the CIA, George Tenet, repeatedly told Bush that there was no connection.

The second strategy of the Bush administration, was to build the case for invading Iraq based on Saddam Hussein having “Weapons of Mass Destruction” (WMD). The CIA was able to support that premise, not based on any facts, but based on the idea that Hussein might have WMD. When Tenet was asked about the WMD, he replied “We will find it when we get there.” That proved to be wishful thinking, as no WMDs were ever found by thousands of armed and highly skilled U.S. soldiers who combed every nook and cranny in Iraq, for years.

So how did the U.S. public and Congress come to believe the Bush administration’s lies? That was accomplished by the U.S. mainstream media. The Bush administration spoon-fed false information to key journalists in the most reputable media outlets. The journalists were unable to personally verify the information on WMD, and they refused to reveal their sources who were the highest-ranking officials in the U.S. government. Without the complicity of the media, the case for going to war in Iraq could never have been believed.

The events leading up to the first day of the bombing in Baghdad were unfolding so rapidly, that the ‘red flags’ of doubt were overlooked. Hans Blix was returning to his hotel in Baghdad when Bush announced to the world on TV that he would order the beginning of the bombing in 24 hours. Blix was blindsided when confronted by a microphone thrust in his face at the entrance of the hotel. At first, he didn’t believe the Bush order, and reiterated the results of his visits to numerous sites in Iraq, that Hussein had no WMD, they had been destroyed previously.

But, that never stopped the bombing from commencing on time. While the bombs were falling across Baghdad, Blix was back in NYC delivering his detailed report to Ban Ki-Moon, UN Secretary-General, which made the case that the Bush attack was based on a lie. All of this was covered in the media, but it was too late to stop the war machine.

The U.S. was not alone. The UK and many of the NATO allies signed up for the Bush war on Iraq. All of them bear responsibility for their participation in an unjustified war that cost millions of lives. The U.S. coalition partners blame their decision to participate on the fact they believed in U.S. intelligence, and they believed in the lies. Another factor in their decision to follow the U.S. lead was the fact that the U.S. had been the sole ‘Super Power’. Those days are over, as the international community recognizes the new multi-polar world.

When Perle penned “A Clean Break” in 1996 for the leader of Israel, the attack on Syria was included, sort of a ‘2 for 1’ idea. Take out both Iraq and Syria at the same time, and Israel will be a safer place. Once Donald Rumsfeld became involved in planning the 2003 attack on Iraq, he counseled against including Syria. His decision was based on knowing two countries’ destruction is too big of a goal to be accomplished. He decided to focus on destroying Iraq only.

Syria was not attacked, and the war next door did not spill over the border. Syria accepted 2 million Iraqi refugees, and Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt came to Damascus in 2009 and met President Assad because of his open-door Iraqi refugee policy.

The plans to destroy Syria began in the 1996 paper by Perle, and by March 2011 the President Obama administration had already started on their plans to create a ‘new Middle East’ and Obama utilized NATO to assist in the attack, invasion, and occupation of Libya. The U.S.-NATO attack on Libya was the precursor to the attack on Syria which used Syrian followers of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood and later were replaced by international terrorists following Radical Islam, such as Al Qaeda and finally ISIS.

Today, Iraq lies destroyed. It has never been reconstructed. Large areas still have no water, electricity, or medical care. The infrastructure of Iraq is broken. The Iraqi constitution was drafted by the invaders and has set the parliament up as a sectarian and ethnic quota system. In the U.S., it would be unthinkable to base elected offices on religion or ethnicity, but it was the U.S. invaders who developed the Iraqi constitution which has locked the country into an unworkable system of corruption based on who your parents were, and where did they live. The U.S. also insisted the Iraqi form of government be a Parliamentary system, which has kept the country locked into chaos as there is no central leader who can get things done, unlike the U.S. Presidential system.

Syria resisted the U.S.-NATO attack and the people fought back. Now, after 12 years there exists a possibility that brighter days are ahead for the Syrian people and the hope of reconstruction. In Iraq, there is also hope that the suffering they endured at the hands of brutal invaders, who committed atrocities against civilians, can be relegated to the pages of history, and a new chapter in security and prosperity can begin.

Maligned in Western Media, Donbass Forces are Defending their Future from Ukrainian Shelling and Fascism

November 24, 2022 

Eva Bartlett

*The author with Pyatnashka commanders at outpost near Avdeevka, Donetsk People’s Republic. [Source: Photo courtesy of Eva Bartlett]

Published Nov 19, 2022, Covert Action [See the comments section, some apologists for the West’s war on Syria have resurfaced…]

Smeared, stigmatized, and lied about in Western media propaganda, the mostly Russian-speaking people of the Donbass region were being slaughtered by the thousands in a brutal war of “ethnic cleansing” launched against them by the neo-Nazi regime in Kyiv, which the U.S. installed after the CIA overthrew Ukraine’s legally elected president in a 2014 coup.

Although the Donbass people had been pleading for Russian military aid to defend them against the increasingly murderous military assaults by the Ukraine government forces, which killed more than 14,000 of their people, Russian President Vladimir Putin declined to intervene. Instead, he tried to broker a peace agreement between the warring parties.

But the U.S. and Britain secretly colluded to sabotage peace negotiations, persuading president Zelenksy to ignore the Minsk III peace agreement that the Ukraine government had previously signed, and which had been countersigned by Russia, France and Germany.

Realizing that the U.S. and its NATO allies would never permit peace negotiations to succeed, Putin finally sent troops into Ukraine on February 24. Russian troops went in to support and reinforce the outnumbered and outgunned Donbass Forces who had been defending their land against attacks by the Kyiv government for nearly eight years.

Voices From the Frontlines of Former Eastern Ukraine Republics

In the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) in October, I went to a frontline outpost 70 meters from Ukrainian forces in Avdeevka (north and west of Donetsk), according to the Donbas commanders I spoke with there. [Watch our interview here]

To reach that position, I went with two other journalists to a meeting point with two commanders of Pyatnashka—volunteer fighters, including Abkhazi, Slovak, Russian, Ossetian and other nationalities, including locals from Donbas.

From there, they drove us to a point as far as they could drive before walking the rest of the way, several minutes through brush and trenches, eventually coming to their sandbagged wood and cement fortified outpost.

It has changed hands over the years, Ukrainian forces sometimes occupying it, Donbas forces now controlling it.

*“Vydra,” a unit commander of the Pyatnashka fighters. [Source: Photo courtesy of Eva Bartlett]

One soldier, a unit commander who goes by the call sign “Vydra” (Otter), was formerly a miner from the DPR who had been living in Russia with his family. In 2014, he returned to the Donbas to defend his mother and relatives still there. He spoke of the outpost.

“We dug and built this with our hands. Several times over the years, the Ukrainians have taken these positions. We pushed them back, they stormed us…Well, we have been fighting each other for eight years.”

There, artillery fire is the biggest danger they face. “You can hide from a sniper, but not from artillery, and they’re using large caliber.”

His living quarters is a dank, cramped, room with a tiny improvised bed, with another small room and bed for others at the outpost.

A sign reads: “If shelling occurs, go to the shelter.” The kind of sign you see all over Donetsk and cities of the Donbas, due to Ukraine’s incessant shelling of civilian, residential areas. In a frontline outpost where incoming artillery is the norm, the sign is slightly absurd, clearly a joke.

An Orthodox icon sits atop the sign. Ukrainian nationalists hang and spray Nazi graffiti and slogans of death; these fighters revere their faith.

A poster, with the DPR flag, reads: “We have never known defeat, and it’s clear that this has been decided from above. Donbas has never been forced to its knees, and no one will ever be allowed to.”

The only things decorating the space are tins of tuna and canned meat, instant noodles, and washing powder. Their existence is bare minimum, nothing glamorous about it; they volunteer because, as they told me, this is their land and they will protect it.

Perhaps surprising to some, when Vydra was asked whether he hates Ukrainians, he replied emphatically no, he has friends and relatives in Ukraine.

“We have no hatred for Ukraine. We hate those nationalists who came to power. But ordinary Ukrainians? Why? Many of us speak Ukrainian. We understand them, they understand us. Many of them speak Russian.

I’ve been involved in sports a lot of time, wrestling. So, I’ve got a lot of friends in Dnepropetrovsk, Kharkov, Kirovograd, Odessa, Lvov, Ivano-Frankivsk, Transcarpathia.

I have relatives in western Ukraine, and we still communicate. Yes, they say one thing on the street, but when we talk to each other, they say, ‘Well, you have to, because the SBU is listening.’

Ukraine shouts about democracy, then puts people in handcuffs for no reason. My aunt got in trouble because they found my photo on her Skype.

And I’m on the Myrotvorets [kill list] website.” [As is the author, see this article.]

He spoke of Ukraine’s shelling from 2014, when the people of the Donbass were unarmed and not expecting to be bombed by their own country.

“When the artillery hit the city of Yenakievo, east of Gorlovka, we were defenseless. We went with hunting rifles and torches to fight them. Most of the weapons we had later were captured from them. We had to go to the battlefield without weapons in order to get the weapons.”

When asked if he was concerned that Ukrainian forces might take Donetsk he replied no, of course not, they didn’t succeed in 2014, they won’t now.

When asked whether he had a message for soldiers of the Ukrainian army, Vydra replied without hesitating, “Go home! We’ve been saying that since 2014: Go home. Unequivocally, we don’t want them here, but we don’t want to kill them. I’m not speaking about nationalists, I’m speaking about Ukrainian soldiers, who are drafted or forcefully employed in the Ukrainian army. Guys, go home, either surrender or go. This is our land. We’re not leaving, we’re not going anywhere.”

I asked how he felt to be treated and described as sub-human, to be called dehumanizing names, a part of the Ukrainian nationalists’ brainwashing propaganda. As I wrote previously:

“Ukrainian nationalists openly declare they view Russians as sub-human. School books teach this warped ideology. Videos show the extent of this mentality: Teaching children not only to also hate Russians and see them as not humans, but also brainwashing them to believe killing Donbas residents is acceptable. The Ukrainian government itself funds neo-Nazi-run indoctrination camps for youths.”

“It’s offensive,” Vydra said, “We are saddened: There are sick people. We need to heal them, slowly.”

I asked whether he thought friendship between Ukrainians and Russians would be possible.

“It will take years for any friendship. Take Chechnya, one region of Russia, it was at war. But slowly, slowly…We must all live together. We are one people.” Indeed, now Chechen fighters are one of the most effective forces fighting alongside Donbas and Russian soldiers to liberate Donbas areas from Ukrainian forces.

He opened a zippered trousers pocket and proudly brandished a small plastic sleeve containing children’s drawings, also containing icons of saints and Christ, and prayers…

“This is very personal, it’s like my guardian angel. I put it in plastic, I don’t even keep my ID in plastic. I’ve been carrying this one in my pocket since February. I’ve been in all sorts of hot spots. A child drew this, we receive letters from children. It’s very nice to look at them when it’s hard and we are under fire.”

He read one letter:

“We are waiting for you. Thank you for risking your lives to defend Donbas. Yulia and Ira.”

“I don’t even know who are Yulia and Ira,” he said smiling.

Showing the icons, he said, “This is Saint Ushakov, our great commander. This is Jesus Christ, our Heavenly Protector. This Abkhazi icon was given to me by the guys. This is a prayer book. And here is a prayer,” he said of one page prayer.

“These words are to support when times are very hard. When there is heavy shelling, it can go on for hours. So, while you’re sitting there, you can read this.

Especially for the younger guys, 22, 23 years old, just finished college. This is new to them.”

Commanders Speak of Geopolitical Reasons for Ukraine’s War

Outside, sitting in front of an Orthodox banner and a collection of collected munitions—including Western ones—two platoon commanders, “Kabar” and “Kamaz,” spoke of the bigger geopolitical picture. [See video]

“America is running the show here,” Kabar said. “It builds foreign policy on the basis of how its domestic policy is built, which is through conflicts with external countries. They are accustomed to proving their power to their people through terrorism around the world, inciting fires in Syria, in the east. They played the card of radical Islam there.

And now they are playing the card of fascism. They do not see themselves on the other side of good. They need wars, blood, cruelty, and they signed Europe up for this.

However, they’ve missed one point: Russia, since the days of the Soviet Union, has never retreated in large scale wars. They took Europe and pushed it to slaughter Russia, and they put Russia in such a position that it must secure its national interests. Europe needs to understand this, to pay attention to history, to stop being led by the United States.”

“Kabar,” a commander of the Pyatnashka fighters. [Source: Photo courtesy of Eva Bartlett]

When asked about his feeling regarding Ukrainians, “Kabar” replied similarly to Vydra.

“We don’t blame the whole Ukrainian people. Ukrainians are our friends, they are our relatives. They’ve been struck by evil, and it’s not their fault, ordinary people are not to blame for this. We will liberate them from fascism, we’ll show them brotherhood, and we’ll make friends.

This is a good opportunity for us to defeat evil. God has honored us with this right to fight evil.”

Kamaz, when asked why he is fighting, replied that this is his homeland, he was born here, and that he has a son who he doesn’t want to inherit Ukraine’s war on the Donbas.

“I myself am Greek by nationality. Ukrainians are Slavs, they are our brothers, their grandfathers fought together shoulder to shoulder with our grandfathers against Nazism and fascism. We are here to finish it, so that our children live a normal happy life. We are fighting for the future.”

He spoke of America’s continuous need for war.

“We’ve seen it in Syria and Yugoslavia, where they destroyed everything and then set everything up their own way, so the people must submit, almost like slaves.”

I asked whether he thought peace between Ukraine and Russia is possible.

“Yes, possibly, why not? But at the moment, the President of Ukraine said there will be no negotiations.

Negotiations are possible, but I think not with this president. When he comes to his senses, he will not be able to negotiate, because he took a lot of money.”

Before leaving the outpost, we chatted a bit with the commanders. A puppy sought the attention of a young soldier. Another puppy ran around our feet. The outpost commanders and soldiers take care of the dogs. Their presence added a somewhat surreal touch to the scene: an outpost which is routinely shelled, where life can cease to exist at any moment, and these happy, well-cared for puppies running around like dogs anywhere.

Western Media Inverted Reality, Lauding Nazis and Demonizing Defenders

While many in the West think that this conflict started in February 2022, those following events since 2014 are aware that, following the Maidan coup and Odessa massacre, and the rise of fascism in Ukraine against the Ukrainian people, the Donbas republics wanted to distance themselves from Ukraine’s Nazis and fascism.

The sacrifices which the people of the Donbas republics have endured, particularly those fighting to protect their families and loved ones, have been and continue to be immense.

Just as the heroes of the Syrian Arab Army were maligned, so too have Donbas forces have been maligned by Western media, though both are defending their homelands from terrorist forces trained and funded by the West. Terrorists given the freedom to commit endless atrocities against Donbas civilians.

These defenders, many living in dank trench conditions didn’t choose war, they responded to it, to protect their loved ones and their future. In spite of more than eight years of being warred upon by Ukraine, they retain their humanity.

WORLDMuslim Brotherhood Mob Boss Qaradawi Dies

September 30, 2022

Declan Hayes

The only tragedy about the death at 96 years of age of Youssef al-Qaradawi, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, the world’s deadliest terrorist grouping, is that the Muslim Brotherhood did not die along with him.

The only tragedy about the death at 96 years of age of Youssef al-Qaradawi, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, the world’s deadliest terrorist grouping, is that the Muslim Brotherhood did not die along with him.

Qaradawi was the Egyptian born spiritual head of the Muslim Brotherhood murder gang. Typical of the beliefs Qaradawi espoused was that Hitler went too easy on the Jews, that the world’s 100 million Shia, along with all apostates from Sunni Islam, must be exterminated and that his Islamic Caliphate should rule over us all. He lived in Qatar and, when not spewing out misogynistic, Shiaphobic, anti Semitic bile from that excuse for a country on al Jazeera’s top rating TV show. this hateful, Hitler loving demagogue issued fatwas to the Muslim Brotherhood faithful to slaughter Syria’s minorites and “apostates”.

The Muslim Brotherhood, its strong links with Western intelligence forces and dubious Trotsykist groups notwithstanding, is the Arab world’s original, most subversive, and most dangerous terrorist organization. It strongly believes in imposing the Caliphate and, as their countless atrocities in Egypt and Syria show, murdering or subjugating all who resist them. There will be no peace in the Arab or Western worlds until the Muslim Brotherhood is crushed in its Egyptian and Syrian spawning grounds and in those areas of the Western world NATO has allowed it colonize. Syria’s former ruler, the late Hafez el Assad, accurately described these NATO aligned devils in this video.

Following their failed 1982 coup, most Syrian Muslim Brotherhood terrorists fled into safe haven bolt holes from where they built a network of dedicated and highly professional cadres to spew their toxins. Though the Muslim Brotherhood Support Network in the West deserves a lot more scrutiny to determine why supposed left wing groups support these sectarian cut throats, they are, from my experience at least, protected by MI5 and allied intelligence agencies.

Take the case of Omar Gabbar, who shared a platform with prominent child sex jihad proponent Muhammed al-Arefe. Not only did Gabbar’s Hand in Hand for Syria front group secure one of the world’s top child sex jihadist recruiters in their first month of operation “from a Leicester kitchen table” but their original posters were designed by Turkish-based hacks of the terrorist Free Syrian Army, whose flag is emblazoned on the logo of Hand in Hand for Syria. Gabbar should, together with the legal hounds and British armed response units he set on me, consider that decent people, who are not members of the Muslim Brotherhood or any of its satellites, have got very lengthy prison tariffs for much less. Though al-Arefe is now barred from Britain, Omar Gabbar remains there and, like many others, who brought al-Arefe to Britain, is allowed work, as a hospital consultant in his case, where he has access to the young and impressionable children al-Arefe expects to do sex jihad.

The Muslim Brotherhood are allowed leverage the professional status of operatives like Gabbar not only to bring sex jihadist recruiting sergeants like Al Arefe to England to help the Canadian secret service ferry child brides like Shamima Begum to their Syrian caliphate but to collect tens of millions of dollars for the Caliphate under false pretenses thanks, in large part to the control MI5 have over the Charity Commission which can be seen, inter alia, by the example of Samara’s Appeal, a dodgy Anglican cult charity focused on Syria, which is exempted from having to list its trustees.

Gabbar is not the Muslim Brotherhood’s only well placed British asset. Dr Rola Hallam is the daughter of Mousa al Kurdi, one of the head honchos in the supposedly moderate wing of Syria’s Murder Inc; she can drive through ISIS checkpoints at will, as this website based on BBC Panorama’s farcical puff piece plainly illustrates.. Though Hand in Hand for Syria’s collusion with ISIS, as evidenced by their ability to sail through ISIS checkpoints and to work in ISIS strongholds, is a further indication that the moderate and less moderate wings of Syria’s Murder Inc are in bed together and that the British and Irish authorities should consider rounding up the flotsam working with them, that will not happen because Qaradawi’s Muslim Brotherhood are so well engrained at the heart of British and Irish political life.

At the center of the effort to hijack Ireland’s traditional tolerance stand the extremists of the Clonskeagh Mosque aka The Islamic Cultural Centre of Ireland, which Wikileaks’ leaked U.S. cable and all informed writers say, have embedded ties to the most extreme elements of the Muslim Brotherhood murder gang. The mosque or “cultural center”, which gets massive subsidies from the opaque Dubai-based Al Maktoum foundation and sources linked to other totalitarian Gulf states, regularly hosts such “scholars” as Saudi cleric Salman al Awda, who calls for the total extermination of all Americans, and Egyptian demagogue Wagdy Ghoneim, whose views likewise make him an international pariah in places where the writ of the Muslim Brotherhood does not run as deeply as it does in Ireland.

The “cultural center’s” head religious figure is Hussein Halawa, an Egyptian blow-in, who has lived in Ireland for decades but who cannot speak either English or Irish. Halawa reported directly to Yusuf al-Qaradawi through The European Council for Fatwa and Research (ECFR) which al Qaradawi controlled. Although the arch-bigot Qaradawi was eventually banned from Ireland, Halawa not only remains at large but his children, who were arrested on Muslim Brotherhood related terror charges in Egypt, became a cause célèbre amongst Ireland’s media and large sections of Ireland’s political class, despite Halawa being a leading supporter of Qaradawi and his cut throats. If Halawa was just an otherwise parasitical, functionally illiterate Egyptian blow-in and if female Irish “reverts” were not ending up in accident and emergency wards after “honor beatings”, some of this idiot’s utterances might be tolerable but the fact that his children felt compelled to rush to aid Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood as they persecuted Copts and lynched Shias should be definite warning flags even if an alarmingly large number of Irish politicians and other useful idiots opportunistically support him.

In an earlier piece on MI5 subversion in Iran, I cited the great Gamal Nasser mocking the Muslim Brotherhood over their attempts to destroy secular Egypt. Qaradawi and the Muslim Brotherhood could claim to have got the last laugh both in Egypt and Syria, thanks both to their outright terrorism and the massive support they have received from the intelligence agencies of the United States, Canada, Britain, Israel, Ireland and a host of other countries with no more regard to the harm they do than have any other comparable bunch of sociopaths. Although Syria’s current President has repeatedly warned the West against the spill over effects of Muslim Brotherhood terrorism, Western leaders do not care because it is not how they are hard wired.

As long as the Biden, Obama, Clinton, Cheney, Blair and Bush families, together with their minions, can benefit from promoting the Zelenskys and Qaradawis of this world, innocents will continue to die in Armenia, Syria, Yemen, Russia or anywhere else, Western Europe included, they choose to make a wasteland. So, to conclude, grieve not for Qaradawi but only that the Muslim Brotherhood and all its obnoxious tentacles have survived him.

Geopolitical tectonic plates shifting, six months on

August 24, 2022

by Pepe Escobar, posted with the author’s permission and widely cross-posted

Six months after the start of the Special Military Operation (SMO) by Russia in Ukraine, the geopolitical tectonic plates of the 21^st century have been dislocated at astonishing speed and depth – with immense historical repercussions already at hand. To paraphrase T.S. Eliot, this is the way the (new) world begins, not with a whimper but a bang.

The vile assassination of Darya Dugina – de facto terrorism at the gates of Moscow – may have fatefully coincided with the six-month intersection point, but that won’t change the dynamics of the current, work-in-progress historical drive.

The FSB may have cracked the case in a little over 24 hours, designating the perpetrator as a neo-Nazi Azov operative instrumentalized by the SBU, itself a mere tool of the CIA/MI6 combo de facto ruling Kiev.

The Azov operative is just a patsy. The FSB will never reveal in public the intel it has amassed on those that issued the orders – and how they will be dealt with.

One Ilya Ponomaryov, an anti-Kremlin minor character granted Ukrainian citizenship, boasted he was in contact with the outfit that prepared the hit on the Dugin family. No one took him seriously.

What’s manifestly serious is how oligarchy-connected organized crime factions in Russia would have a motive to eliminate Dugin as a Christian Orthodox nationalist philosopher who, according to them, may have influenced the Kremlin’s pivot to Asia (he didn’t).

But most of all, these organized crime factions blamed Dugin for a concerted Kremlin offensive against the disproportional power of Jewish oligarchs in Russia. So these actors would have the motive and the local base/intel to mount such a coup.

If that’s the case that spells out a Mossad operation – in many aspects a more solid proposition than CIA/MI6. What’s certain is that the FSB will keep their cards very close to their chest – and retribution will be swift, precise and invisible.

The straw that broke the camel’s back

Instead of delivering a serious blow to Russia in relation to the dynamics of the SMO, the assassination of Darya Dugina only exposed the perpetrators as tawdry operatives of a Moronic Murder Inc.

An IED cannot kill a philosopher – or his daughter. In an essential essay Dugin himself explained how the real war – Russia against the collective West led by the United States – is a war of ideas. And an existential war.

Dugin – correctly – defines the US as a “thalassocracy”, heir to “Britannia rules the waves”; yet now the geopolitical tectonic plates are spelling out a new order: The Return of the Heartland.

Putin himself first spelled it out at the Munich Security Conference in 2007. Xi Jinping started to make it happen when he launched the New Silk Roads in 2013. The Empire struck back with Maidan in 2014. Russia counter-attacked coming to the aid of Syria in 2015.

The Empire doubled down on Ukraine, with NATO weaponizing it non-stop for eight years. At the end of 2021, Moscow invited Washington for a serious dialogue on “indivisibility of security” in Europe. That was dismissed with a non-response response.

Moscow took no time to confirm a trifecta was in the works: an imminent Kiev blitzkrieg against Donbass; Ukraine flirting with acquiring nuclear weapons; and the work of US bioweapon labs. That was the straw that broke the New Silk Road camel’s back.

A consistent analysis of Putin’s public interventions these past few months reveals that the Kremlin – as well as Security Council Yoda Nikolai Patrushev – fully realize how the politico/media goons and shock troops of the collective West are dictated by the rulers of what Michael Hudson defines as the FIRE system (financialization, insurance, real estate), a de facto banking Mafia.

As a direct consequence, they also realize how collective West public opinion is absolutely clueless, Plato cave-style, of their total captivity by the FIRE rulers, who cannot possibly tolerate any alternative narrative.

So Putin, Patrushev, Medvedev will never presume that a senile teleprompter reader in the White House or a cokehead comedian in Kiev “rule” anything. The sinister Great Reset impersonator of a Bond villain, Klaus “Davos” Schwab, and his psychotic historian sidekick Yuval Harari at least spell out their “program”: global depopulation, with those that remain drugged to oblivion.

As the US rules global pop culture, it’s fitting to borrow from what Walter White/Heisenberg, an average American channeling his inner Scarface, states in Breaking Bad: “I’m in the Empire business”. And the Empire business is to exercise raw power – then maintained with ruthlessness by all means necessary.

Russia broke the spell. But Moscow’s strategy is way more sophisticated than leveling Kiev with hypersonic business cards, something that could have been done at any moment starting six months ago, in a flash.

What Moscow is doing is talking to virtually the whole Global South, bilaterally or to groups of actors, explaining how the world-system is changing right before our eyes, with the key actors of the future configured as BRI, SCO, EAEU, BRICS+, the Greater Eurasia Partnership.

And what we see is vast swathes of the Global South – or 85% of the world’s population – slowly but surely becoming ready to engage in expelling the FIRE Mafia from their national horizons, and ultimately taking them down: a long, tortuous battle that will imply multiple setbacks.

The facts on the ground

On the ground in soon-to-be rump Ukraine, Khinzal hypersonic business cards – launched from Tu-22M3 bombers or Mig-31 interceptors – will continue to be distributed.

Piles of HIMARS will continue to be captured. TOS 1A Heavy Flamethrowers will keep sending invitations to the Gates of Hell. Crimean Air Defense will continue to intercept all sorts of small drones with IEDs attached: terrorism by local SBU cells, which will be eventually smashed.

Using essentially a phenomenal artillery barrage – cheap and mass-produced – Russia will annex the full, very valuable Donbass, in terms of land, natural resources and industrial power. And then on to Nikolaev, Odessa, and Kharkov.

Geoeconomically, Russia can afford to sell its oil with fat discounts to any Global South customer, not to mention strategic partners China and India. Cost of extraction reaches a maximum of $15 per barrel, with a national budget based on $40-45 for a barrel of Urals.

A new Russian benchmark is imminent, as well as oil in rubles following the wildly successful gas for rubles.

The assassination of Darya Dugina provoked endless speculation on the Kremlin and the Ministry of Defense finally breaking their discipline. That’s not going to happen. The advances along the enormous 1,800-mile front are relentless, highly systematic and inserted in a Greater Strategic Picture.

A key vector is whether Russia stands a chance of winning the information war with the collective West. That will never happen inside NATOstan – even as success after success is ramping up across the Global South.

As Glenn Diesen has masterfully demonstrated, in detail, in his latest book, Russophobia , the collective West is viscerally, almost genetically impervious to admitting any social, cultural, historical merits by Russia.

And that will extrapolate to the irrationality stratosphere, as the grinding down and de facto demilitarization of the imperial proxy army in Ukraine is driving the Empire’s handlers and its vassals literally nuts.

The Global South though should never lose sight of the “Empire business”. The Empire of Lies excels in producing chaos and plunder, always supported by extortion, bribery of comprador elites, assassinations, and all that supervised by the humongous FIRE financial might. Every trick in the Divide and Rule book – and especially outside of the book – should be expected, at any moment. Never underestimate a bitter, wounded, deeply humiliated Declining Empire.

So fasten your seat belts: that will be the tense dynamic all the way to the 2030s. But before that, all along the watchtower, get ready for the arrival of General Winter, as his riders are fast approaching, the wind will begin to howl, and Europe will be freezing in the dead of a dark night as the FIRE Mafia puff their cigars.

• Map of the current frontlines 6 months into the SMO

Sayyed Nasrallah: We are Convinced in Our Syria War Involvement, Will Take Part in Any Future One

 August 23, 2022

Speech of the Secretary-General – Speech of the Secretary-General during the festival of the fortieth anniversary of Hezbollah

Batoul Wehbe

Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah refrained on Monday from saying anything new regarding the dispute with the Israeli enemy over offshore gas, saying Hezbollah was holding back and watching them babbling.

“I will not speak of anything new. We have said everything that we should say. Now we are all waiting. And whoever waited for more than 10 years can wait for a few more days. No problem. Threats are worthless, and our decision and approach are clear,” Sayyed Nasrallah said in a televised address as part of a festival, a holographic panorama, dubbed “The Alphabet of Victory”.

“Let’s wait and stay calm. We’re always hearing threats and the last of which was from (Israeli Defense Minister Benny) Gantz,” he added.

To us, Sayyed Nasrallah denoted, all of these threats are of no value. “Our decision, rhetoric and orientation are clear and we are awaiting the coming days to act accordingly,” he indicated.

Hezbollah’s leader began his speech by hailing the artistic panorama, dubbed “Alphabet of Victory”, that was performed prior to his speech, narrating the story of the forty years of the Islamic resistance’s ongoing journey.

“When we speak about the resistance’s 40 years, it must be made clear that we do not cut the connection with the time before 1982; there is a deep and fundamental connection to all the efforts, struggles, actions and frameworks that existed before 1982,” Sayyed Nasrallah said.

“We highly appreciate the efforts of our great scholars in our Islamic arena who spread awareness and promoted moral virtue,” he said, recounting the scholars who rallied with the resistance since its emergence, namely Sayyed Mohamad Baqer Sadr, Sayyed Moussa Sadr, Imam Khomeini, and Sayyed Ali Khameni.
“The victory in 2000 put an end to ‘Greater Israel project’ and shattered the so-called ‘invincible army’,” the Hezbollah leader pointed.

Sayyed Nasrallah stated that Hezbollah will not give in to any threats regarding the demarcation of Lebanon’s maritime borders, describing such threats as worthless. “The latest steadfastness achievement of July War is Hezbollah’s involvement in the issue of Lebanon’s restoration of its oil and gas rights,” Hezbollah’s S.G. pointed out.

“We are en route to developing the military infrastructure and capabilities to keep pace with current developments at the level of weapons and technology,” he added.

Turning to Lebanese issues, Sayyed Nasrallah said the Army-People-Resistance formula is firm whether it was included in the ministerial statement or not. He pointed that liberating the remaining occupied Lebanese territories was a national responsibility.

“Part of our responsibility in the coming stage is to establish deterrence equations to protect Lebanon’s land, people and wealth,” he indicated. “Any effort to liberate Lebanon’s occupied lands is a national responsibility. Therefore, Israel’s threats about demarcation of Lebanon’s maritime borders are worthless.”

Sayyed Nasrallah lauded the relations with Amal, saying: Since its establishment, Hezbollah’s resistance operations against the Israeli invasion were in cooperation with Amal movement. “One of the achievements is the turnover of our relation with Amal movement from a negative to a positive, integral one,” he said.

Regarding the Palestinian cause, Sayyed Nasrallah said it is part of our nation’s religion, culture, honor and dignity, warning that there is no place for abandonment or retreat whatsoever. He also specified that Hezbollah has been maintaining close ties with all resistance groups in Palestine and will continue to do so. “We have also supported the Palestinian refugees and emphasized their right to dignified return to Palestine,” he also said.

Sayyed Nasrallah mentioned in his speech the Lebanese chess champion, Nadia Fawaz, who withdrew from the 4th round of the 28th Abu Dhabi International Chess Festival to avoid competing with an Israeli contender, following the steps of Charbel Abou Daher who also withdrew from the 2022 Youth MMA World Championships to avoid playing against an Israeli opponent for the same reason.

“Our bets are placed on youths like Charbel Abou Daher and Nadia Fawaz who refused to face Israeli contenders,” Sayyed Nasrallah said, hailing their courage amid some Arab’s bowing to ‘Israel’. “We had no problem in developing Lebanon’s relations, especially with Arab states, but some sides want to turn Lebanon into an inferior, we reject this,” he implied.

Elsewhere in his remarks, Sayyed Nasrallah accused the United States of trying to fan the flames of civil war in Lebanon by pitting the resistance movement against the Lebanese army. “There are sides who strive to push the resistance into a clash with the Lebanese army and security forces, this is a permanent and publicized American scheme.” However, he made it clear that Hezbollah won’t be dragged into civil war or sectarian strife.

“Some issues need to be addressed, like the Tayyouneh case due to its deep connection to civil peace,” he said referring to Tayyouneh clashes last October where protesters were attacked by Lebanese Forces gunmen.

Sayyed Nasrallah promised that in the coming stage Hezbollah will be keen on developing and consolidating the understanding with the Free Patriotic Movement.

“Our prime issue during the next stage is cooperating with various political powers in order to build a just and capable state,” he also said. “We look forward towards a state that does not yield to the American embassy’s pressure and to any other embassy or foreign dominance.”

Syria took good part in His eminence’s speech. He praised it as the basis for the Resistance Axis and the steadfastness front, and a partner in the refusal to surrender to Israeli conditions. He further said that the support for Syria is permanent and will never waiver. “Syria is the cornerstone of the resistance front and our partner in refusing to surrender to Israeli conditions,” he said.

Day after day we grow more convinced in our choice and decision to get involved in Syria’s War, he said, warning that “If Syria is exposed to any similar attack, we will not hesitate in getting involved in that confrontation.”

Sayyed Nasrallah voiced optimism in the resistance capabilities, saying: We are optimistic in regards to the balances of strengths and weaknesses which are in favor of the resistance axis. “We will remain part of the resistance axis, we bet on it as an ultimate power capable of facing hegemony schemes and securing sanctities. We have always stood by the oppressed people of the region, including in Yemen, Iraq and Afghanistan and will also do this in the future,” he ended up saying.

Source: Al-Manar English Website

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Welcoming speech of the Russian Minister of Defence at the opening of 10th Moscow Conference on International Security

August 17, 2022

The opening of the 10th Moscow Conference on International Security took place at Avangard Centre for Military and Patriotic Education of Youth within the framework of ARMY 2022 IMTF. The Minister of Defence of the Russian Federation, General of the Army Sergei Shoigu, addressed the participants of the event:

Ladies and gentlemen!

It is a pleasure to welcome you to the 10th Moscow Conference on International Security.

This conference comes at a time of radical change in global and regional security. The unconditional dominance of the US and its allies is a thing of the past. On February 24, 2022, the start of the special military operation in Ukraine marked the end of the unipolar world.

Multipolarity has become a reality. The poles of this world are clearly defined. The main difference between them is that some respect the interests of sovereign states and take into account the cultural and historical particularities of countries and peoples, while others disregard them. There have been numerous discussions on this topic during previous sessions of the Moscow conference.

In Europe, the security situation is worse than at the peak of the Cold War. The alliance’s military activities have become as aggressive and anti-Russian as possible. Significant US forces have been redeployed to the continent, and the number of coalition troops in Eastern and Central Europe has increased manifold.

It is important to note that the deployment of additional NATO Joint Force formations on the bloc’s “eastern flank” had already started before the start of the special military operation in Ukraine.

NATO has dropped its masks. The aggressive nature of the bloc was no longer concealed by the wording of the coalition’s purely defensive orientation. Today, the alliance’s strategic planning documents enshrine claims to global dominance. Alliance’s interests include Africa, the Middle East and the Pacific Rim.

In the West’s view, the established system of international relations should be replaced by a so-called rules-based world order. The logic here is simple and ultimatumatic. Either the alliance’s “democratic partner” candidate loses sovereignty and becomes supposedly on the “right side of history”. Or it is relegated to the category of so-called authoritarian regimes, against which all kinds of measures, up to and including coercive pressure, can be used.

Given that the Conference is attended by heads of defence agencies and security experts from different regions of the world, I would like to highlight some aspects of the special military operation in Ukraine.

In Ukraine, the Russian military is being confronted by combined Western forces that run the leadership of that country in a hybrid war against Russia.

The supply of weapons and military equipment to Ukraine is being stepped up, and training of the Ukrainian army is being carried out. Huge financial resources are transferred to maintain the viability of the nationalist regime.

The actions of Ukraine’s armed forces are planned and coordinated by foreign military advisers. Reconnaissance data is supplied from all available NATO sources. The use of armaments is supervised by Western specialists.

NATO’s efforts are aimed at prolonging the agony of the Kiev regime. However, we know for a fact that no one in NATO has any doubt that the goals of the Russian leadership’s special military operation will be achieved, and that plans to strategically and economically weaken Russia are failing. The dollar has not reached the ceiling of 200 roubles, as predicted by the US president, the Russian economy has stood firm.

The special military operation has dispelled the myth of “super-weapons” supplied to Ukraine by the West, which are capable of fundamentally changing the situation on the front. Initially, they were talking about deliveries of Javelin anti-tank systems, some kind of “unique” drones. Lately, the Westerners have been promoting the role of super-weapons with HIMARS multiple launch rocket systems and long-range howitzers. However, these weapons also grind to a halt in battle. They did not make a significant impact. The Russian weapons, for their part, have proved their best qualities in combat.

We are taking a close look at trophy weapons from the West. The features and their specific qualities are taken into account in order to improve the way combat operations are conducted and the effectiveness of Russian armaments.

The supply of NATO weapons to Kiev means that Western countries are responsible for their inhumane use and for the deaths of civilians in Donbass and in the liberated territories. Ukrainian armed forces operations are planned in Washington and London. Not only are the coordinates of the targets to be attacked provided by Western intelligence, but the input of this data into weapons systems is conducted under the full control of Western specialists.

Kiev’s role in the West’s combat approach has been reduced to supplying manpower, which is seen as expendable. This explains the huge loss of personnel in Ukraine’s armed forces and territorial defence formations.

So far, the real figures of dead soldiers and mobilised so-called territorial defence forces have been concealed by the Kiev leadership.

In time, however, this information will become public. The testimonies of POWs of AFU allow us to form a realistic picture of what is happening on the other side of the front. The dismissive attitude towards the loss of foreign soldiers reinforces the thesis that NATO has purely selfish interests in Ukraine. Clearly, Britain’s colonial experience as the main sponsor of the Kiev regime has come in very handy for London in dealing with the current leadership in Kiev.

Against this background, speculation is spreading in the media about the alleged use of Russian tactical nuclear weapons in the special military operation or the readiness to use chemical weapons. All of these information gibberish are lies.

From a military point of view, there is no need to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine to achieve its goals. The main purpose of Russian nuclear weapons is to deter a nuclear attack. Its use is limited to extraordinary circumstances as defined in the Russian guideline documents, which are open to public inspection.

The allegations about the possible use of chemical weapons in Ukraine are also absurd. Let me remind you that, unlike the US, such weapons were completely destroyed in our country back in 2017 as part of our international obligations. Meanwhile, poisoning provocations have become the hallmark of Western-sponsored so-called civil society organisations such as the White Helmets in Syria.

The information provocations are aimed at distracting attention from the facts discovered in Ukraine that US experts have conducted banned military and biological research.

Currently, a significant amount of data has been accumulated and is regularly made available to the general public. Work will continue in this direction.

US military-biological activities in Ukraine are not exceptional. Pentagon-controlled laboratories have been established and operate in many post-Soviet, Asian, African and Latin American countries. Local authorities generally have no control over research carried out on their premises that poses a lethal threat to the local population. The consequences of epidemics, I believe, were felt by all during the period of the fight against the spread of coronavirus.

I would like to focus separately on the humanitarian aspects of the special military operation. Compliance with the Geneva Conventions on the rules of war has always been and remains the focus of commanders at all levels. Since the beginning of the operation, orders have been issued stipulating the procedures to be followed by soldiers in dealing with civilians and enemy prisoners of war.

In the territories liberated from nationalists, the troops are actively involved in the delivery of humanitarian aid, the restoration of infrastructure and the maintenance of law and order. This was the case in Syria, in Nagorno-Karabakh, and it is also the case in Donbass.

On humanitarian issues, there has been fruitful cooperation with the UN and the International Committee of the Red Cross. We are grateful for the constructive, depoliticised cooperation of the leaders and staff of these organisations who interact with us. In particular, under the auspices of the UN and with Turkey’s active role, the difficult problem of grain exports from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports was resolved. The Red Cross specialists carry out an important mediation mission in relation to captured soldiers.

NATO has recently initiated a new phase of alliance enlargement, with Sweden and Finland joining the military bloc. The claim that the reason for this was the Russian special operation is untrue.

The practical rapprochement between these countries and the alliance has been ongoing for many years. In fact, the regional association NORDEFCO (Committee for Nordic Defence Cooperation) is a northern affiliate of NATO and serves as a cover for these countries’ participation in joint military training activities.

Of course, the official involvement of Helsinki and Stockholm in NATO’s strategic planning and the possible allocation of territory to these states for deployment of strike weapons will change the security environment in the Baltic region and the Arctic and will require a reconsideration of approaches to defence of Russian territory.

Certain conclusions have already been reached and are enshrined in the updated Maritime Doctrine approved by the President of the Russian Federation on July 31. Work will continue in this area.

The reinforcement of the NATO military grouping on the “eastern flank” completes the degradation of the trust and arms control mechanisms that emerged in Europe during the Cold War. A few years ago, experts proposed that the European experience should be used to build confidence-building measures, in particular in the Pacific Rim. Now, of all the “baggage” of the Euro-dialogue, only the idea of bloc confrontation is exported to Asia, which has not brought anything positive to security in Europe.

Today, no one remembers the US destruction of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the Intermediate-Range and Shorter-Range Limitation Treaty and the Open Skies Treaty. Although previously these agreements were crucial for disarmament and confidence-building.

Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which was conceived as a platform for dialogue and consideration of different views, has become a generator of anti-Russian narratives.

Vienna Document 2011 remains formally in force, but there are no prospects for practical implementation. In the absence of trust between the parties, the verification mechanism effectively becomes a source of intelligence, which is not in the spirit of this agreement.

The situation with regard to the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty is also complicated. The agreement remains in force until 2026. On the Russian side the commitments are fulfilled, the declared levels of carriers and warheads are maintained within the established limits.

U.S. claims that Russia must earn the right to continue dialogue with the U.S. do not resist criticism. Arms control is a two-way street.

The result is only achievable if the interests and commitment of all participants are balanced. I believe that the Russian experience of interaction with the West in the field of disarmament shows that the so-called rules-based peace it promotes does not involve the implementation of treaty obligations in the traditional sense. This fact needs to be taken into account when entering into agreements, especially in the field of security and arms control.

Western opposition to the consolidation of a multipolar world, along with Europe, is most active in the Asia-Pacific region, where the US has begun to dismantle the existing ASEAN-based system of regional cooperation. This started with the announcement of the AUKUS initiative by the US, Australia and the UK. Plans to expand this partnership to include new regional partners have not been concealed. AUKUS is merging with NATO, which in turn claimed a dominant role in the Asia-Pacific region at the June summit. This is despite the fact that all NATO countries are thousands of miles away from the region.

On 2 August, the Russian Federation marked the 77th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s entry into the war with Japan, the occasion for which was Tokyo’s militarist policy. The defeat of Japanese forces in the Far East effectively sealed the end of World War II and provided the start for the liberation of the peoples of Asia from colonial oppression. The assistance of the USSR was of key importance. We remember and are proud of the legacy of our ancestors, including those who laid the foundation for military cooperation between Russia and the countries of the Asia-Pacific region.

Another dangerous regional trend is the AUKUS focus on developing a nuclear submarine fleet in Australia. The implementation of this plan would have a complex negative impact on global and regional security, creating the conditions for undermining the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.

The US claims that nuclear-powered submarines are needed in Australia ostensibly to offset China’s growing naval capabilities. This logic in fact replicates the actions of the US in justifying its exit from the Intermediate-Range and Shorter-Range Missile Treaty. The collapse of this agreement was also motivated by the need to offset Russian and Chinese efforts to develop missiles with a range allegedly prohibited by the treaty.

In the global context, the appearance of a nuclear-powered fleet in Australia will provide an excuse for other states to begin developing similar armaments. Pandora’s box will be opened, the global nuclear arms race will resume.

AUKUS has the potential to develop into a politico-military alliance. It cannot be excluded that NATO’s experience with joint nuclear planning and joint “allied” nuclear exercises will also be transferred to the region. The technical basis for this is already being laid by the active promotion of US-made aircraft. The participation of nuclear and non-nuclear weapon states in joint exercises on the use of nuclear weapons is contrary to obligations under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Transferring nuclear training from Europe will blow up the region.

Although it can be assumed that this is precisely the purpose of the US. The provocative landing in Taiwan of a third person of the US bureaucratic hierarchy is another move to destabilise the situation.

Block-less, equal interaction in the region is an achievement that should not be lost due to externally imposed phobias and attempts to counter a multipolar world.

Mechanisms for interaction and dialogue with extra-regional partners are created and are proving their relevance and effectiveness. First and foremost is the ASEAN Defence Ministers’ and Partners’ Meeting, the so-called “ADMM-Plus” format. Its diverse activities focus on security issues of relevance to the Asia-Pacific region.

In addition, there is positive experience of cooperation within the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, of implementing mutually beneficial projects on a bilateral basis.

As before, we are ready to share our experience of combat training, in particular during the Vostok-2022 strategic exercise to be held in the near future.

Despite significant successes in the fight against terrorism in the Middle East, the threat of international terrorist groups taking over the initiative remains. The Syrian military, in cooperation with allies and partners and with the support of the Russian Aerospace Forces, continues to suppress spikes in terrorist activity. We see a particular danger in using the Kurdish factor to unsettle the situation in Syria.

The engagement of the guarantor countries in the Astana format remains virtually the only legal and effective mechanism to address security concerns in Syria. We welcome the increased engagement between the Syrian leadership and the Arab world. Overcoming contradictions created by outside forces is possible and necessary.

The role of the military in building trust between countries is an important element in the search for political solutions. We expect that the Moscow conference will be one of the rallying points for the stabilisation of the situation in the Near East.

After the rapid withdrawal of US and NATO forces from Afghanistan, the situation in the Central Asian region remains extremely tense. Afghanistan’s new leadership faces serious military and economic challenges. The legacy of two decades of alliance troop presence is a disappointing one. As a result, there remains a high level of terrorist danger in the region.

The security problems of Central Asia can only be solved by coordinated action by all the countries and international organisations concerned. For our part, we will continue to support our Collective Security Treaty Organisation allies in enhancing the capabilities of national armed forces.

It is important to keep the topic of Afghanistan on the agenda of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation discussions. Russia, China, India, Iran and Pakistan together could make a significant contribution not only to stabilising the region, but also to preventing the threat from spreading beyond its borders.

The security of each region, despite the general trends of a multipolar world, has its own peculiarities.

For Africa, the specificity lies in the desire of the countries of the collective West to return to the order and rules of engagement typical of the colonial period. Neo-colonialism is imposed through military pressure on governments of sovereign countries and support for separatist and terrorist movements. A case in point is Libya, where statehood has still not been restored after the NATO invasion. Another example is the situation in West Africa, where European troops have been deployed on the pretext of combating terrorism. For decades, these EU missions had been fighting terrorists, training national security forces, until they recognised the utter failure of their own efforts.

I would like to point out that African governments and leaders are holding their own, as they call it, in the context of a multipolar world, to pursue their own agenda of independence, sovereignty, economic development and defence capabilities.

The Russian Ministry of Defence is seeking to expand cooperation with African countries in the field of military and military-technical cooperation. Interest in the participation of national teams and delegations from Africa in the Army International Games and the “ARMY 2022” IMTF has increased significantly. It is very encouraging that prominent military commanders from our friendly states – Burundi, Cameroon, Guinea, Mali, Sudan, Uganda, Chad, Ethiopia and the Republic of South Africa – are present in this hall today. We appreciate your support and intend to increase cooperation on mutually beneficial projects.

Latin America today faces serious security challenges because of the American desire to maintain influence in the region under the provisions of the so-called Monroe Doctrine. Liberal values, whose adherence is seen by the US as agreeing to live in a world based on their rules, in fact mask the true objective – to build up a military presence by blocking the possibility of sovereign development of states.

U.S. policy focuses on deterring engagement by countries in the region with any other pole of power outside Washington’s control. The purpose of this policy is to involve the region in a confrontation with Russia and the PRC, to destroy traditional ties and to block new forms of cooperation in the military and military-technical spheres.

Anti-Russian information campaigns are launched in Latin America, hiding the truth about the causes and course of the special military operation in Ukraine. Analogies can be drawn to the British actions during the conflict in the Falkland Islands. What is happening in the Western media today with the coverage of the Russian special military operation was also happening when the media was chorally broadcasting only one point of view – that of London.

The question arises: are such policies in the fundamental interest of the countries of the region? The answer is clear – no. We hope that during the discussions at the conference we will hear assessments of the situation in Latin America from our partners from Venezuela and Nicaragua.

The Tenth Moscow Conference on International Security has a special importance for the Russian Ministry of Defence as organiser of the forum for a number of reasons.

Firstly, the conference is taking place during the ongoing special military operation in Ukraine. Despite attempts of the US and NATO to isolate Russia once again, your participation in the forum is a visible confirmation that these plans have collapsed. We appreciate your support.

Secondly, a multipolar world is the reality of today. The transition from dominance by a single global leader to several centres of gravity is not an easy one. However, this creates real conditions for the development of sovereign states.

Thirdly, the role of military agencies is changing in the new realities. The military not only guarantees a secure environment for economic development, but through military cooperation it builds predictability and trust between countries.

Finally, this is the tenth anniversary conference, which allows for a kind of review of what has been achieved over the years. It is important to observe how the priorities of the discussions have changed, and which conclusions and recommendations from the forum have been put into practice over the years. A short historical overview, prepared by Russian experts, can be viewed on the monitors between plenary sessions.

I wish you all good health and interesting contacts and discussions during your stay in Moscow.

Thank you for your attention.

source: https://eng.mil.ru/en/news_page/country/more.htm?id=12433677@egNews (which is blocked by western freedom loving democracies, so you need a VPN to access it!)

انطلاق المقاومة ضد الاحتلال الأميركيّ في سورية

 الخميس 28 تموز 2022

ناصر قنديل

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-عام 2014 كان مفصلياً في حياة سورية عندما ظهر الطريق المسدود أمام مشروع إسقاط الدولة ورئيسها، وفشل الرهان على عشرات آلاف الإرهابيين الذين تم جلبهم من كل أنحاء الدنيا، وتكفل بهم الجيش السوري بدعم قوى المقاومة بإلحاق الهزيمة بهم، فجاء الجواب مركباً، تم تصنيع تنظيم داعش بقرار أميركي كشفه الرئيس السابق دونالد ترامب مشيراً بإصبع الاتهام إلى هيلاري كلينتون، ثم تمّ اتخاذ ظهور داعش وتمدده ذريعة للتمركز الأميركي على الأراضي السورية وعودتها الى الأراضي العراقية، وبالتوازي قام الجيش التركي الذي قدّم الملاذ لتكوين داعش وتنظيم صفوفه، كما فعل مع التشكيلات الإرهابية التي سبقته، بالتوغل داخل الأراضي السورية محكماً السيطرة على محافظة إدلب وأجزاء من محافظة حلب، وكما اتخذت أميركا من صنيعتها داعش ذريعة لاحتلال محافظتي الحسكة والرقة، وقامت بتشجيع نشوء كانتون كردي مسلح فيهما، اتخذ الرئيس التركي من ظهور الكانتون التركي ذريعة احتلال قواته للأراضي السورية، وتهديده الدائم بتوسيع عمله العسكري إلى المزيد من الأراضي.

–

نهاية عام 2015 بدأ التحول المعاكس مع تموضع القوات الروسية في سورية، وتناغم الأداء الروسي السوري الإيراني بمشاركة المقاومة لخوض حرب إنهاء داعش في سورية، بينما كان الحشد الشعبي مع المقاومة و الجمهورية الإسلامية الإيرانية يعيدون تكوين الجيش العراقي بالتوازي مع خوض معركة تحرير العراق، وتحقق ستاتيكو استراتيجي في البلدين، حيث الاحتلال الأميركي والاحتلال التركي يسيطران على الأراضي السورية في عدة محافظات تعادل ثلث مساحة سورية، وبعض الأراضي العراقية، لكن مشروع اسقاط العراق وسورية بات من الماضي، حتى جاءت قمة طهران وفتحت طريق كسر معادلة هذا الستاتيكو، حيث تموضعت روسيا الى جانب ايران وراء الدولة السورية، سواء بقرار رعاية مقاومة سورية وطنية وشعبية بوجه الاحتلال الأميركي، أو بقرار الجيش السوري مواجهة أي عمل عسكري تركي نحو الأراضي السورية، والمعادلة واضحة، إنهاء الاحتلال الأميركي ينهي الكانتون الكردي ويسقط الذريعة التركية، فيفتح الباب لوضع مستقبل الاحتلال التركي على الطاولة، بينما يتولى الحشد الشعبي في العراق تذكير الأتراك بجدية القرار، بحتمية وقف العمليات وانسحاب الاحتلال.
–

خلال السنوات التي مضت نضج وعي شرائح واسعة من أبناء سورية في مناطق الجزيرة، شرق الفرات حيث الاحتلال الأميركي، لصالح مشروع المقاومة، وبذلت الدولة السورية ومؤسساتها العسكرية والأمنية جهوداً جدية ودؤوبة على تنظيم صفوف قوى المقاومة السورية، وكانت قوى المقاومة في المنطقة المساندة للدولة السورية تنقل خبراتها لهذه المقاومة الصاعدة، وكانت إيران لا تبخل بما ينبغي لتكوين قوة المقاومة الواعدة، وخرجت تظاهرات عديدة بوجه الاحتلال الأميركي، ووقعت مصادمات شعبية مع وحدات الاحتلال، ونفذت عمليات محدودة متباعدة ضد مواقع الاحتلال، لكن قبل أيام قليلة بدا أن قرار بدء العمل المقاوم المتواصل حتى طرد الاحتلال الأميركي قد اتخذ، فكان كلام وزير الخارجية السورية فيصل المقداد عن حتمية انسحاب قوات الاحتلال الأميركي، والا فسيلقى مقاومة شعبية تجبره على الخروج، إشارة واضحة بهذا الاتجاه.

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. لم يبق للاحتلال من ذريعة بعد حرمان داعش من أي ملاذ آمن، غير المناطق التي يسيطر عليها الاحتلال الأميركي نفسه، وفضائح قيامه بنقل بعض قيادات داعش الى أفغانستان قبل انسحابه منها ضجت بها وسائل إعلام غربية، وكلام ترامب العلني عن تبرير الاحتلال بسرقة النفط بحد ذاته فضيحة، وطرد الاحتلال سيعني حكماً تحرير ثروات سورية من النفط والغاز، وما يترتب على ذلك من عودة فورية للكهرباء الى كل المناطق السورية، وحل أزمات المحروقات التي يعاني منها كل السوريين، والأميركي معني بأن يفهم بأن قصف معسكراته هذه المرة بالصواريخ ليس إلا بداية لعمل سيتواصل، ويفرض عليه الانسحاب، وعليه أن يختار سحب قواته عمودياً، أي وهم أحياء، قبل أن يبدأ بسحبهم أفقياً، أي في التوابيت.

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• مجزرة دهوك بعيونٍ تركية: «نقطة انكسار» لأنقرة

Journalist Steve Sweeney Exposes RSF’s Call For Censorship of Russian Media As Ukraine Bombs Donbass Civilians

July 27, 2022

Eva Bartlett

Steve Sweeney has reported from hot spots around the world, exposing Imperialist war crimes and attempts to interfere in and destabilize sovereign nations.

He is Morning Star International Editor, founder of Media Workers for Palestine, and reports on global liberation movements, press freedom & resistance.

Steve contacted me the other day to ask for a statement on Reporters Without Borders’ (RSF) recent appeal to censor Russian media, on their premise that Russian media is “inciting hatred” and “condoning war crimes.”

He also contacted RSF with an excellent list of questions including why a (supposed) press freedom group is demanding that alternative media narratives are censored, could they give concrete examples regarding what they’ve accused Russian media of doing (no), and whether RSF would comment on journalists like me being put on Ukraine’s kill list because of my reporting from on the ground in Donbass, where I’ve just returned incidentally.

After a series of insightful exchanges, I asked Steve to please have a conversation with me about all of this. What a conversation it was! In our conversation, he details how RSF panicked and stalled replying, only to essentially give lengthy non-answers and flat out refuse to address some questions (including the one about me and Ukraine’s kill list).

A spoiler: Steve notes that RSF is not the neutral body it pretends to be, instead receiving obscene amounts of money from NED, Soros’ Open Society, USAID, the Ford Foundation…a “rogue’s gallery of the worst kind of regime change organizations.”

As RSF endeavours to shut down Russian media, I joined my Russian colleagues today in going to sites that were bombed by Ukraine yesterday in Gorlovka, killing one civilian & leaving two others in critical condition. This is the sort of crimes Ukraine has been perpetrating for over eight years, and its courageous journalists like my colleagues who have been putting their lives on the line to expose Ukraine’s genocide of the Donbass people. RSF by whitewashing Ukraine’s crimes is abetting in genocide.

RELATED LINKS:

–Reporters Without Borders launches campaign to censor Russian media

–How the World Press Freedom Index Was Politicized – Long Before the New Cold Wars

–British Media “WHITEWASHING” Ukrainian Neo-Nazis – UK Editor Tells RT

–Western media quick to accuse Syria of ‘bombing hospitals’ – but when TERRORISTS really destroy Syrian hospitals, they are silent

–Western media and politicians prefer to ignore the truth about civilians killed in Donetsk shelling [When Kiev’s guilt in attacks on a maternity hospital cannot be denied, it’s simply brushed under the carpet]

–Ukrainian strike on Donetsk market was a terrorist act

–I’m on a ‘hit list’ Kiev allows to silence dissent & journalism. That’s all you need to know about Ukrainian ‘democracy’

https://myrotvorets.center/criminal/bartlett-eva-karen/

How cute: instead of doing a report on the fact that Ukraine has me on a kill list for my journalism, Canadian state-funded CBC seems to be gearing up to do a smear on my participation on a tribunal on Ukraine's war crimes.

I'm 99% sure CBC/Joe know of the kill list, because… pic.twitter.com/9QszNRpAIA

— Eva Karene Bartlett (@EvaKBartlett) June 2, 2022

–Ukrainian journalist arrested in Spain at behest of Kiev’s intelligence services

https://ingaza.wordpress.com/2022/07/27/journalist-steve-sweeney-exposes-rsfs-call-for-censorship-of-russian-media-as-ukraine-bombs-donbass-civilians/

Under Fire from Ukraine and Misperceived by the West, The People of the DPR Share Their Stories

However, in my opinion, RSF could stand condemning the kill list more loudly & frequently (I couldn't find any recent mentions, only from 2016 or so), particularly since journalists whose details were put on the site were then assassinated…https://t.co/dQGbIm8iR4

— Eva Karene Bartlett (@EvaKBartlett) July 4, 2022

How the Mainstream Media Whitewashed Al-Qaeda and the White Helmets in Syria

–‘Many US commentators have never BEEN to countries they comment on, see entire world from Washington perspective’ – Stephen Kinzer

Government-Funded CBC Smears Me. Interview With Maverick Media: “CBC Fake News: Hit Piece Targets Journalists (Eva Bartlett)”

–UE investigation: Former ombudswoman Lyudmila Denisova told fictional stories about rape to “help Ukraine”

–Here’s what I found at the reported ‘mass grave’ near Mariupol

This outstanding report from Syria by Eva Bartlett penetrates the 'iron dome' of Western propaganda, also known as news.
It is about a chemical attack that never happened in a country attacked, subverted and blockaded in your name.https://t.co/AX1Zwbg0g0

— John Pilger (@johnpilger) May 27, 2021

Deconstructing the NATO Narrative on Syria

A Personal Reply to the Fact-Challenged Smears of Terrorist-Whitewashing Channel 4, Snopes and La Presse

Syrians Flock to Vote in Lebanon

Syrians filled the polling stations to defend their sovereignty and now fill the streets to celebrate the result

–British Government’s Dirty War on Syria

–Journalist found beheaded in eastern Syria in suspected jihadist killing

–“HURRAH FOR THE AZOV!”- The curious case of the BBC whitewashing of Nazism in Ukraine

https://www.mintpressnews.com/aleppo-how-us-saudi-backed-rebels-target-every-syrian/222594/embed/#?secret=vca48nvVNV#?secret=cNlGMBcgxF

Human Rights front groups (“Humanitarian Interventionists”) warring on Syria

They Saw and Heard the Truth — Then Lied About It: Media on Donbass Delegation Omitted Mention of Ukraine’s 8 Year War on the Autonomous Republics

• Government-Funded CBC Smears Me. Interview With Maverick Media: “CBC Fake News: Hit Piece Targets Journalists (Eva Bartlett)”
• As West blames Moscow for ‘food crisis’, ships sail from Mariupol with Moscow’s help while Ukraine holds vessels in its ports
• The Lugansk People’s Republic has now been brought under the control of the LPR & Russia

هوكشتين في بيروت آخر الشهر ولبنان يخشى مناورات جديدة: إسرائيل تظهر استعداداً لـ«تنازل» قبل أيلول

 الإثنين 25 تموز 2022

فلسطين خبر الأخبار 

هوكشتين عائد: تنازل واضح أم مناورة؟

يبدو أن كوّة فتحت في جدار مفاوضات ترسيم الحدود. المؤشر الأول اتصال الوسيط الأميركي عاموس هوكشتين بالمسؤولين اللبنانيين وإبلاغهم نيته القدوم إلى بيروت في 31 تموز و 1 آب المقبلين للقاء الرؤساء الثلاثة وقائد الجيش ووزيري الخارجية والطاقة، إضافة إلى اجتماع لم يعرف بعد ما إذا كان سيكون منفرداً مع نائب رئيس المجلس النيابي الياس بو صعب.

المؤشر الثاني جاء من تل أبيب عبر تسريبات، قد لا يمكن الركون إليها، تعطي إشارة إلى ما قد يحمله هوكشتين، علماً أن لبنان ينتظر من الوسيط الأميركي رداً واضحاً ومكتوباً حول طلباته. وصدر في ساعة متأخرة من مساء أمس كلام لافت في كيان الاحتلال تمثل في تسريبات إلى «القناة 12» العبرية التي كشفت أن «إسرائيل وجّهت مساء اليوم (أمس)، عبر الولايات المتحدة وفرنسا، تحذيراً شديد اللهجة إلى لبنان و(السيد حسن) نصرالله، خشية أن يحاول القيام باستفزازات حول منصات الغاز». وفي المقابل، بحسب القناة، «تضغط إسرائيل على الولايات المتحدة للوصول إلى اتفاق بحلول أيلول المقبل»، أي موعد انتهاء المهلة التي منحتها المقاومة إلى من يعنيهم الأمر للتحرّك لتحصيل حقوق لبنان في ثروته، بدءاً من إثبات الملكية، وصولاً إلى بدء أعمال التنقيب والحفر، تمهيداً للاستخراج (…) أو «فإن أحداً لن يستخرج غازاً من المنطقة البحرية كلها»، كما هدّد الأمين العام لحزب الله.
وقال مصدر متابع في بيروت إن التقديرات الأولية تشير إلى أن الوسيط الأميركي «يعرف أن أي جواب سلبي ستكون له ارتدادات ليست في صالح العدو، وهو اطلع من جديد على مطالب لبنان الواضحة في عدة ملفات، تشمل بداية الإقرار بحقوق لبنان في المياه الإقليمية، وتثبيت هذه الحقوق بما لا يقبل أي تعديل أو تغيير، ثم الإعلان عن ضمانات بأن تباشر الشركات العالمية المعنية، بمعزل عن جنسيتها، أعمال التنقيب والتحضير لعمليات الاستخراج فوراً، والإسراع في إزالة العقبات السياسية أمام صفقات توريد الغاز المصري والكهرباء الأردنية إلى لبنان». وتوقع المصدر أن يعمل الأميركيون على صيغة قد لا تحسم الأمور كلها بطريقة تظهر إسرائيل في موقع المتراجع أو المهزوم تحت ضغط تهديدات حزب الله.
ويبدو أن الإسرائيليين يريدون من لبنان، عبر الأميركيين، أن تتعهد الحكومة اللبنانية بمنع حزب الله من القيام بأي أعمال استفزازية أو عمليات عسكرية فوق حقول الغاز على طول الساحل الفلسطيني. وهو أمر «غير ممكن، وكلام المقاومة كان واضحاً في أن مجرد إعلان لبنان عن تلقيه ضمانات عملية موثوقة بالحصول على كامل حقوقه ومباشرة الشركات في العمل، فإنها لن تقدم على مهاجمة المنصات الإسرائيلية، وفي حال حصول أي مناورة لن تتردد في توجيه ضربة مباشرة، وهو كلام كان شديد الوضوح من قبل السيد نصرالله نفسه».
وبحسب المصادر، فإن الحذر اللبناني مردّه «عودة البعض إلى الحديث عن البلوك رقم 8». وفي المعلومات أن طرحاً يُناقش بعيداً من الإعلام فحواه التحايل على الملف من خلال إقرار الأميركيين بكامل حقوق لبنان في حقل قانا، لكن من دون أن يكون ذلك مرتبطاً بترسيم واضح، أي أن لبنان أمام احتمال مناورة جديدة تحت عنوان «خط هوكشتين» الذي قدم في شباط الماضي خطياً وفضّل لبنان عدم الإجابة عليه. الاقتراح يقتطع جيباً من حقل قانا المحتمل (جنوبه) بالإضافة إلى أجزاء من البلوك رقم 8 تقع إلى الجنوب منه. والحديث الحالي يتمحور حول القبول بترك تلك الأجزاء مقابل منح لبنان كامل حقل قانا، بمعنى إدخال تعديل على طبيعة الطرح الأميركي.

يطلب الاسرائيليون من لبنان التعهد بمنع حزب الله من القيام بعمليات عسكرية على طول الساحل الفلسطيني

الذريعة المُستند إليها غير علمية، وتدّعي خلو الأجزاء المُطالب بها من جانب هوكشتين من أي مكامن غاز ونفط محتملة، ويسعى الإسرائيلي للحصول عليها لإدخالها في مشروع مد أنابيب الغاز.
يشار هنا إلى وجود دراسات لدى هيئة قطاع البترول، تؤكد وجود مكامن في البلوك رقم 8 طبقاً لدراسات زلزالية أجراها العدو سابقاً وتمكن خبراء من الوصول إليها عن طريق شركات. كذلك، صرّح خبراء نفط لـ«الأخبار» بأن حقول الغاز عادة متداخلة في ما بينها وهي أقرب ما تكون إلى «مغاور» متشابكة تحت المياه. وأن إصرار العدو على قضم جزء من البلوك رقم 8 يأتي، في تقدير الخبراء، لرغبته بإلزام مبدأ التشارك مع الدولة اللبنانية في البلوك 8 في حال تخلى عن حيازته لجيب من قانا.
وفي تقدير خبراء أن ثمة أسباباً تقنية لا تخدم فرضية جرّ الأنابيب من الحقول الإسرائيلية صوب البلوك رقم 8، بحيث أنها تنعطف نزولاً. وهذه الانعطافة لا جدوى منها وإنما تتسبب بارتفاع الكلفة بالإضافة إلى أنها خاطئة من الناحيتين التقنية والهندسية. بالتالي، يصبح التذرع بمسألة الحاجة لاستخدام تلك الأجزاء لمرور الأنابيب ستاراً يخفي الوجهة الحقيقية لاستخدامها (فرض التشارك مع لبنان).

الاستنفار الإسرائيلي
وسط هذه التطورات، لا يحتاج الأمر إلى كثير من التدقيق لاكتشاف أن العدو الإسرائيلي، على المستويين السياسي والأمني، يتعامل بكثير من الحذر مع التهديدات المتكرّرة للسيد نصرالله. وينسحب هذا الحذر على تداول وسائل الإعلام الإسرائيلية التطوّرات والمستجدّات في القضية، ويظهر هذا من خلال التفاعل المحدود والمتأخّر مع التهديدات التي أطلقها نصرالله أول من أمس. إذ من المعلوم أن التداول بقضايا حسّاسة من هذا النوع يخضع لمعايير شديدة ودقيقة تفرضها «الرقابة العسكرية» على وسائل الإعلام، وإذا ما تقرّر الخوض في القضية، فثمّة خطوط عامة تحدّدها الرقابة، ومعلومات تتعمّد تسريبها المؤسّسة الأمنية إلى وسائل الإعلام، بشكل يخدم المصلحة الإسرائيلية. ويوم أمس، وفي ساعات بعد الظهر، بدأت تظهر التعليقات الصحافية على تهديدات نصرالله. وفي حين بدأت التعليقات بضرورة أخذ تهديدات حزب الله بـ«جدّية»، لأن «تصريحات نصرالله تدلّ على أن أيلول سيكون متوتّراً للغاية»، إلا أن «هذا لا يعني أننا في طريقنا إلى الحرب مع حزب الله»، لكن «بالتأكيد يهدف نصرالله إلى التصعيد».
وعلى صعيد متصل، كشف موقع «واللا» العبري، أمس، أنّ «سلاح البحرية الإسرائيلي أجرى تدريبات مكثّفة في الأشهر الماضية حول كيفية التعامل مع التهديدات الصاروخية المحتملة من قبل حزب الله»، مشيراً إلى أنّ «الإعلان عن تلك التدريبات (…) يأتي على خلفية تهديدات نصرالله». وأشار الموقع إلى أن «التدريبات حاكت تعرّض مختلف الوحدات لهجمات صواريخ الكروز والصواريخ الدقيقة وبعيدة المدى». وأكّد «واللا» أن «سلاح البحرية الإسرائيلية رفع حالة التأهب القصوى في البحر المتوسط، وتحديداً قبالة منصّة الغاز الطبيعي كاريش (…) وتم تركيب أجهزة استشعار متقدّمة للإنذار المبكر لتعزيز الطبقات الواقية». وقرّر الجيش الإسرائيلي «تشكيل هيئة قيادة عليا مكوّنة من ممثلين عن أجهزة الاستخبارات وسلاح البحرية ووزارة الدفاع وقسم العمليات وسلاح الجو للتعامل مع التهديدات». كما تقرّر «إجراء تمرين كبير الشهر المقبل من شأنه محاكاة السيناريوهات المتطرفة في الساحة البحرية»، وأفاد مسؤولون أمنيّون بأن «اللواء أهارون حاليفا، رئيس شعبة الاستخبارات العسكرية (أمان)، خصّص السلطة الكاملة والموارد المخصّصة للتهديدات في المجال البحري وحماية المياه الاقتصادية الإسرائيلية».
من جهة أخرى، أشار الكاتب الإسرائيلي يوسي يهوشع، في تقرير نشرته «يديعوت أحرونوت» أمس، إلى أن «الآراء منقسمة في الجيش الإسرائيلي: في حين أن هناك من يقترح التباطؤ، هناك المزيد من الأصوات التي تزعم أن تصعيد حزب الله يتطلّب عملاً انتقامياً». وتحدّث يهوشع عن «مناقشات حسّاسة في الموضوع في الأيام القليلة الماضية (…) جرت بمشاركة رئيس الوزراء يائير لابيد ووزير الدفاع بيني غانتس ورئيس الأركان أفيف كوخافي وآخرين، حول خيارات سلوك الحزب المتوقّع، والرد الإسرائيلي المحتمل». واستعرض ما اعتبرها «خيارات حزب الله»، وهي برأيه «مهاجمة المنصّة بطائرات من دون طيار، أو استخدام غوّاصين، أو على الأرجح، كما يقدّر الجيش الإسرائيلي، إطلاق مسيّرات لجمع المعلومات من دون المخاطرة بالمسّ بالمدنيين».
وفي المقابل، فإن «المعضلة»، بحسب تعبير يهوشع، تكمن في «الوجهة التي سيتمّ اختيارها كي لا يضطّر الطرفان للانجرار إلى أيام قتالية وإلى التدهور»، واستعرض الخيارات المحتملة أيضاً، و«أوّلها قصف أهداف للحزب في سوريا، وثانيها مهاجمة مواقع بنية تحتية بعيدة للحزب في قلب لبنان مثل مستودعات الصواريخ غير الدقيقة، وثالثها ضرب أهداف أخرى للحزب يُفضَّل أن تكون فارغة على الحدود الشمالية».

من ملف : هوكشتين عائد: تنازل واضح أم مناورة؟

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With eye on the CIA, Moscow cracks the whip at Israel

The Jewish Agency is Israel’s life source and the Kremlin shut it down this month. The fallout may be a measurable schism between Moscow and Tel Aviv, in which the latter has a lot to lose.

July 25 2022

Photo Credit: The Cradle

By MK Bhadrakumar

A row has erupted in Russian-Israeli relations over the functioning of the Jewish Agency in Moscow. The Jerusalem Post first reported on 5 July that Moscow had ordered the Jewish Agency to cease all operations in Russia, in a formal letter from the Russian Justice Ministry “earlier this week.”

The Jewish Agency initially played down the development in a statement which said, “As part of the work of the Jewish Agency’s delegation in Russia, we are occasionally required to make certain adjustments, as required by authorities. Discussions with the authorities are ongoing with the aim of continuing our activities in accordance with the rules. Even now, there is a dialogue.”

An unnamed senior Israeli diplomat told the Jerusalem Post, “Russia is saying the Jewish Agency illegally collected info about Russian citizens… We will bring up the Jewish Agency [with Russian authorities] and address it in an organized way. It will be taken care of at the embassy level. We don’t totally understand the reasoning [of the request to stop Jewish Agency’s activities in Russia].”

The problem runs deep

However, on 11 July, the Russian news agency RIA Novosti disclosed that a four-week long audit of the Sohnut (as the Jewish Agency is known in Russia) by the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation had been underway since 30 May, within the purview of the federal law on “Non-Commercial Organizations.”

The Ministry of Justice conveyed to RIA Novosti that on the basis of the results of the audit, “an act was prepared, which has been sent to the address of the location of the organization (Sohnut).”

Since then, to borrow the metaphor from the Old Testament, the cloud “as small as a man’s hand rising from the sea” when Elijah first saw it, has swiftly turned into a storm. On July 21, Russia’s TASS news agency reported that the Basmanny District Court of Moscow received on that day a lawsuit from the Russian Ministry of Justice requesting that the Russian branch of the Jewish Agency for Israel be liquidated. The grounds for the suit were not provided.

The Jewish Agency has a larger-than-life stature and is closely connected to, albeit not funded by, the Israeli government. It is an international organization that fosters links between Jews across the world and Israel and promotes the immigration of Jews to Israel, a process known as “Aliyah.”

Entangled US roots

The Jewish Agency is closely connected with American Jewish organizations. Billionaire Mark Wilf, who was elected as the new chairman of the board of the Jewish Agency for Israel on 10 July, was previously the chair of The Jewish Federations of North America’s board of trustees and closely associated with a variety of educational and philanthropic boards in both the United States and Israel.

Make no mistake, the Kremlin would have weighed the pros and cons carefully before deciding to shut down the Sohnut’s operations in Russia, which launched in 1989 when under heavy US pressure, then Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev agreed to open the doors for the emigration of Jews to Israel as quid pro quo for western economic aid.

There would have been compelling reasons, for sure, for the Kremlin to take such a decision. It appears that the justice ministry in Moscow is in possession of incriminatory documents. The Jewish Agency would have been under the scanner for some time before the decision to crack the whip.

The emigration of Jews is of course a highly sensitive issue for the state of Israel (and the powerful Jewish lobby in America). On Sunday, the Israeli paper Algemeiner underscored that Tel Aviv is very much seized of the matter. Indeed, the country is also heading for a crucial legislative election on 1 November.

Israel reacts

Prime Minister Yair Lapid said after a meeting of ministers on Sunday, “Closing the Jewish Agency offices would be a serious event that would affect relations.”

Lapid added, “The Jewish community in Russia is deeply connected to Israel and its importance increases in any political conversation with the Russian leadership. We will continue to operate through the diplomatic channels, so that the important activities of the Jewish Agency will not be stopped.”

A delegation of Israeli officials is leaving for Moscow this week. Lapid does not have the wherewithal to operate skillfully in the Kremlin, as did his predecessor Benjamin Netanyahu. Lapid’s focus is on the Biden administration, but in such tricky situations, it does not add to Israel’s aura in Moscow that it wields influence in Washington.

Russia is cracking the whip at a very sensitive time. An Israeli prime minister who cannot serve the interests of the Jewish diaspora is not exactly glorifying himself in domestic politics.

Indeed, this development has nothing to do with bigotry against Jews. During Netanyahu’s regime, Putin use to associate himself personally with Jewish events in Israel. Putin was conscious of the influential ethnic Jewish community who migrated to Israel and considered them to be part of the motherland and an asset for Russia.

Conceivably, Russia’s national security interests are involved here. According to the World Jewish Congress, Ukraine is home to between 56,000 and 140,000 Jews. Ukrainian Jews are prevalent throughout Ukrainian society, including high offices of the state, President Volodymyr Zelensky himself being one of them.

As for Russia, the Jewish population is estimated at around 165,000, making them the sixth-largest Jewish community outside of Israel. The Jewish communities in Ukraine and Russia have kinship historically. Possibly, the hostile anti-Russian stance of the Israelis and Ukrainians touched raw nerves in Moscow. The Israeli press has reported about “volunteers” leaving for Ukraine to fight Russian forces.

The US-Israel intelligence nexus

The Israel government pretends to be “neutral” but then, it is a member of US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s “coalition of the willing” fighting Russian forces in Ukraine.

Call it a trapeze or balancing or double-crossing act, but Moscow cannot afford to ignore the ground realities, given the nexus between the US and Israeli intelligence. Succinctly put, the possibility exists that the Jewish Agency operatives in Russia  have had covert liaison with the US intelligence.

From February-March, Moscow began uprooting all vestiges of US intelligence from Russian soil, including Carnegie’s Moscow Centre. It is entirely conceivable that the CIA had a “back-up” plan and “sleeper cells” in Russia handled through associates. The fact remains that the Jewish Agency also has an office in Kiev and Israeli military runs a hospital for treating wounded Ukrainian soldiers. Of course, Ukraine’s spy agency is also very active. All things taken together, the Russian intelligence possibly caught up with the nexus.

The deterioration of Russian-Israeli relations is happening at a time when regional security in West Asia is in transition. On a broader plane, this is also a transformative period in the geopolitics of the region. The fact that Biden was roundly snubbed in Jeddah when he tried to sell the idea of an anti-Russia, anti-China regional alliance speaks for itself.

Therefore, in this spat, Israel will be the loser. As for Russia, one potential irritant in its ties with Iran — Russian-Israeli equations in Syria — is getting removed. This could measurably impact the situation in Syria, which Israel has been bombing, unprovoked, since 2017. Russia has cast its net wide in West Asia and its diplomatic successes are not going to be affected because of this falling out with Israel.

Israel should have acted early enough when Elijah’s small cloud, “as small as a man’s hand” was spotted in May when the Russian inspectors arrived at the doorstep of the Jewish Agency in Moscow. Tel Aviv probably didn’t expect things to snowball.

Clearly, the Israeli reflex was to hush up. That shows nervousness that Russian intelligence has caught up with something highly unsavoury.

The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.

Analytical | The International Agency .. a role in establishing the continued survival of “Israel”!

HTS attacks Church in Syria leaving 2 dead, 15 wounded

24 Jul 2021

Source: Agencies

By Al Mayadeen English 

Two people have been killed and 15 others were injured in an attack on a church in Hama, Syria, reportedly launched by Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham.

The site where the missile landed in Hama, Syria on July 24, 2022

An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) on Sunday attacked a religious celebration in Hama, Syria, killing two people and injuring 15 others.

“A suicide drone armed with a missile fell near a gathering during a religious celebration marking the opening of the Hagia Sophia. This was followed by another UAV falling down in the same location,” local sources reported.

“Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham launched two UAVs equipped with cameras and small-sized missiles that directly targeted the religious gathering,” the sources added.

Footage showing the first drone falling down on the attendees gathered near the church was circulated on social media.

لحظة استهداف حفل افتتاح كنيسة آية صوفيا في وسط #سوريا#إرم_نيوز #حماة pic.twitter.com/zivV9YiJe2

— Erem News – إرم نيوز (@EremNews) July 24, 2022

فيديو لموقع المستهدف من قبل المسلحين في كنيسة #أية_صوفيا في #السقيلبية ب #حماه .#سورية pic.twitter.com/RFMSVwPswn

— Khaled Iskef خالد اسكيف (@khalediskef) July 24, 2022

The sources revealed that the Syrian air defense force dealt with several UAVs flying overhead in the city, shooting several unauthorized drones down.

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Israel Bombs Damascus Countryside, 3 Killed 7 Injured, a Challenge to Russia!

JULY 22, 2022

ARABI SOURI

Israel bombed the city of Sayyeda Zainab in the southeastern countryside of Damascus shortly after midnight, three soldiers were killed and seven others were wounded in an initial official Syrian military report, this latest Israeli bombing comes less than three days after Russian President Putin condemned previous repeated Israeli bombings against Syria.

A Syrian military spokesperson said in an official statement carried by Sana:

“At exactly 12:32 a.m. this morning, the Israeli enemy carried out an air attack with bursts of missiles from the direction of the occupied Syrian Golan, targeting some points in the vicinity of the city of Damascus. Our air defense media confronted the aggression’s missiles and shot down some of them.”

The brief statement concluded that ‘three soldiers were killed, seven others were wounded, and some material losses were caused’ as a result of the Israeli aggression.

Other sources, including Israeli news outlets, claim that members of Hezb Allah were among the casualties, Sayyeda Zainab is a small city in the Damascus southern Ghouta, formerly orchids, in which the shrine of the granddaughter of Prophet Muhammad PBUH is buried in the shrine in the city which is named after her.

The video is also available on BitChute, Odysee, and Rumble.

Israel bombs Sayyeda Zainab in Damascus countryside

Hezb Allah’s initial intervention in Syria was to assist in protecting the Islamic shrines, especially this one after the NATO-sponsored anti-Islamic terrorists started attacking Muslim prayer houses, shrines, and the graves of the Prophet’s companions buried in Syria.

We will find out the details shortly, if there were members of Hezb Allah within the casualties, the Hezb will officially report that and they will retaliate to the aggression on their own separately from Syria’s retaliation.

In August 2019, Israel bombed an apartment in Sayyeda Zainab killing two Hezb Allah soldiers assigned to guard the shrine, Hezb Allah vowed to avenge the killing of its soldiers and within less than a week, Hezb Allah blew up a vehicle of the Israeli IDF terrorists in northern occupied Palestine killing and injuring who’s inside it.

Israel did once more bomb another site used by Hezb Allah killing one of the group’s soldiers in the same area in July 2020, this record is not yet settled by the Hezb who is awaiting a proper time to score it, if there were casualties of the Lebanese resistance party in this latest Israeli aggression, the Hezb will definitely retaliate and will score among the IDF terrorists the same number of casualties if not more.

Today’s Israeli bombing against Damascus is seen as a humiliating message to Russia whose officials have issued a flurry of statements condemning the Israeli war crime of bombing Damascus International Airport on the 10th of last month, June, the Russian statements escalated very recently, and including a direct condemnation by the Russian President Putin during his trilateral summit in Tehran with his Iranian counterpart President Raisi and the Turkish madman Erdogan who joined in condemning the Israeli repeated aggression against Syria!

Israel Rushes to Rescue Al-Qaeda Terrorists in Syria

Russia is not in direct conflict with Israel in Syria, however, it’s acting as a peace arbitrator in its capacity as one of the five permanent member states of the United Nations Security Council, the council supposedly responsible for maintaining peace and security around the globe, in addition to Russia’s long-standing relations with Syria which one of the main reasons of the US-led war of terror on it was because of Syria’s refusal to allow the US camp to extend a gas pipeline from Qatar to Europe through Syria thus strangling both Russia and Iran back in 2008 when both of these countries were not in a good economic position.

Syria accepted to shoulder the burden of the most heinous and evil war waged against one small country by most of the world countries including three of the main superpowers and all of the super-rich countries, directly and by using tens of thousands of anti-Islamic Wahhabi and Muslim Brotherhood Al Qaeda, ISIS (ISIL), and their affiliated terrorists.

The least Russia can do is withdraw from the weird agreement it signed with Israel to ‘operate’ over Syria, or notify the Syrian side about Israel’s intentions of bombing Syria conveyed to the Russians within the framework of this agreement in order for Syria to prepare the defenses, relocate its troops to avoid casualties, and to take other necessary precautions to limit the damage from such aggression until the time Syria is capable of directly retaliating against Israel.

Russia, could also, at least ask the Israeli ambassador to Moscow to leave until further notice especially since this latest Israeli aggression comes less than three days after Russian President Putin condemned the previous Israeli attacks on Syria.

Russia, could also, at least, allow Syria to use the 6 decades old S300 air defense systems that Syria bought over 12 years ago its delivery was delayed upon the request of Israel allowing the Israelis, Turks, and other members of NATO to freely bomb Syria multiple times since. The systems were delivered to Syria after Israel used a Russian IL20 military plane as a shield to carry out an aggression against the Syrian port city of Latakia in September 2018, the Syrian outdated S200 air defense missiles fired at the attacking Israeli fighter jets hit instead the larger bird the Israelis were hiding behind killing all 15 Russian soldiers and technicians onboard the Russian IL20 plane. Despite delivering the systems, many sources confirm that the Russians are not allowing the Syrian air defense units to use those systems until this very day.

Russia, could as well, at least suspend or even reduce the volumes of the ‘thriving’ businesses with Israel including tourism which provides Israel with hundreds of millions of dollars it uses part of that to humiliate Russia in Syria and to arm the Nazi battalions in Ukraine whose goals are to kill Russian people, in addition to Israel helping Turkey with its Bayraktar drones which were used against Russia in Syria and in Ukraine!

July 2018 Israeli article about Israel arming Neo-Nazis in Ukraine

Syria, on its part, should start developing its own independent air defense systems and it’s about time to retaliate to the Israeli aggression, there’s nothing much left to lose in Syria, casualties or damage to infrastructure, while wherever Syria hits back in Israel the Israelis will lose a lot.

Syria, as well, should stop granting amnesty to the terrorists who are still fighting against the Syrian state and who are thinking of joining the reconciliation process in the future, give them a limited time for the amnesty, these are traitors in addition to being terrorists as they are aiding all the enemies of the Syrian people in Israel, the USA, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar. These terrorists are exhausting Syria’s capabilities to a very large extent.

Israel will continue to bomb Syria as long as Syria does not retaliate, there’s already a very long list of war crimes that Israel committed against Syria including the bombing of civilian infrastructures like the Damascus International Airport, several times, Latakia seaport, several times, and scientific centers, to name a few, retaliating in kind will deter Israel from further aggressions, the Russians, and the UNSC can afterward ask all the parties to maintain restraint, especially that the UNSC collectively is a partner to Israeli aggressions by refusing to condemn these war crimes.

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Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s article «Staged incidents as the Western approach to doing politics»

July 18, 2022

https://mid.ru/en/foreign_policy/news/1822333/

Published in Izvestia newspaper

Today, the Russian Armed Forces, together with the self-defence units of the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics, are delivering on the objectives of the special military operation with great resolve to put an end to the outrageous discrimination and genocide of the Russian people and eliminate direct threats to the security of the Russian Federation that the United States and its satellites have been creating on Ukrainian territory for years. While losing on the battlefield, the Ukrainian regime and its Western patrons have descended to staging bloody incidents to demonise our country in the eyes of the international community. We have already seen Bucha, Mariupol, Kramatorsk, and Kremenchug. The Russian Defence Ministry has been regularly issuing warnings, with facts in hand, about upcoming staged incidents and fakes.

There is a distinctive pattern that betrays the provocations staged by the West and its henchmen. In fact, they started long before the Ukrainian events.

Take 1999 – the village of Račak in Serbia’s Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija. A group of OSCE inspectors arrived at the site where several dozen corpses dressed in civilian clothes were discovered. Without any investigation, the mission head declared the incident an act of genocide, even though making a conclusion of this kind was not part of the mandate issued to this international official. NATO immediately launched a military aggression against Yugoslavia, during which it intentionally destroyed a television centre, bridges, passenger trains and other civilian targets. Later, it was proved with conclusive evidence that the dead bodies were not civilians, but militants of the Kosovo Liberation Army, an illegal armed group, dressed in civilian clothes. But by that time the staged incident has already taken its toll, offering a pretext for the first illegal use of force against an OSCE member state since the signing of the Helsinki Final Act in 1975. It is telling that the statement that triggered the bombings came from William Walker, a US citizen who headed the OSCE’s Kosovo Verification Mission. Separating Kosovo from Serbia by force and setting up Camp Bondsteel, the largest US military base in the Balkans, were the main outcomes of the aggression.

In 2003, there was the infamous performance by US Secretary of State Colin Powell in the UN Security Council with a vial containing white powder of some sort, which he said contained anthrax spores, alleging that it was produced in Iraq. Once again, the fake worked: the Anglo-Saxons and those who followed their lead went on to bomb Iraq, which has been struggling to fully recover its statehood ever since. Moreover, it did not take long before the fake was exposed with everyone admitting that Iraq did not have any biological weapons or any other kinds of WMDs. Later, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who was one of the masterminds of the aggression, recognised that the whole affair was a fraud, saying that they “may have been wrong” or something like that. As for Colin Powell, he later tried to justify himself by claiming that he was misled by the underlying intelligence. Either way, this was yet another provocation that offered a pretext for delivering on the plan to destroy a sovereign nation.

There was also Libya in 2011. The drama had specifics of its own. The situation did not go as far as direct lies, like in Kosovo or Iraq, but NATO grossly distorted the UN Security Council resolution, which provided for a no-fly zone over Libya in order to “ground” Muammar Gaddafi’s air force. It did not fly to begin with. However, NATO started bombing the Libyan army units who were fighting terrorists. Muammar Gaddafi died a savage death, and nothing remains of the Libyan statehood. Efforts to put the country back together have yet to succeed, with a US representative once again in charge of the process, appointed by the UN Secretary General without any consultation with the UN Security Council. As part of this process, our Western colleagues have facilitated several intra-Libyan agreements on holding elections but none of them materialised. Illegal armed groups still reign supreme on Libyan territory, with most of them working closely with the West.

February 2014, Ukraine – the West, represented by the German, French, and Polish foreign ministers, de facto forced President Viktor Yanukovich into signing an agreement with the opposition to end the confrontation and promote a peaceful resolution of the intra-Ukrainian crisis by establishing a transitional national unity government and calling a snap election, to be held within a few months. This too turned out to be a fraud: the next morning, the opposition staged a coup guided as it was by anti-Russia, racist slogans. However, the Western guarantors did not even try to bring the opposition back to its senses. Furthermore, they switched immediately to encouraging the coup perpetrators in their policies against Russia and everything Russian, unleashing the war against their own people and bombing entire cities in the Donbass region just because people there refused to recognise the unconstitutional coup. For that, they labelled the people in Donbass terrorists, and once again the West was there to encourage them.

At this point, it is worth noting that, as it was soon revealed, the killing of protestors on the Maidan was also a staged incident, which the West blamed either on the Ukrainian security forces loyal to Viktor Yanukovich, or on the Russian special services. However, the radical members of the opposition were the ones who were behind this provocation, while working closely with the Western intelligence services. Once again, exposing these facts did not take long, but by that time they already did their job.

Efforts by Russia, Germany, and France paved the way to stopping the war between Kiev, Donetsk and Lugansk in February 2015 with the signing of the Minsk Agreements. Berlin and Paris played a proactive role here as well, proudly calling themselves as the guarantor countries. However, during the seven long years that followed, they did absolutely nothing to force Kiev to launch a direct dialogue with Donbass representatives for agreeing on matters including the special status, amnesty, restoring economic ties, and holding elections, as required by the Minsk Agreements which were approved unanimously by the UN Security Council. The Western leaders remained silent when Kiev took steps which directly violated the Minsk Agreements under both Petr Poroshenko and Vladimir Zelensky. Moreover, the German and the French leaders kept saying that Kiev cannot enter direct dialogue with the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics, and blamed everything on Russia, although Russia is not mentioned in the Minsk agreements even once, while remaining basically the only country that kept pushing for the agreements to be implemented.

If anyone doubted that the Minsk Package was anything but yet another fake, Petr Poroshenko dispelled this myth by saying on June 17, 2022: “The Minsk Agreements did not mean anything to us, and we had no intention to carry them out… our goal was to remove the threat we faced… and win time in order to restore economic growth and rebuild the armed forces. We achieved this goal. Mission accomplished for the Minsk Agreements.” The people of Ukraine are still paying the price of this fake. For many years now, the West has been forcing them to accept an anti-Russian neo-Nazi regime. What a waste of energy for Olaf Scholz with his calls to force Russia to agree to an agreement guaranteeing Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty. There already had been an agreement to this effect, the Minsk Package, and Berlin with Paris were the ones who derailed it by shielding Kiev in its refusal to abide by the document. The fake has been exposed – finita la commedia.

By the way, Vladimir Zelensky has been a worthy successor to Petr Poroshenko. During a campaign rally in early 2019, he was ready to kneel before him for the sake of stopping the war.

In December 2019, Zelensky got a chance to carry out the Minsk Agreements following the Normandy format summit in Paris. In the outcome document adopted at the highest level, the Ukrainian President undertook to resolve matters related to the special status of Donbass. Of course, he did not do anything, while Berlin and Paris once again covered up for him. The document and all the publicity accompanying its adoption turned out to be no more than a fake narrative promoted by Ukraine and the West to win some time for supplying more weapons to the Kiev regime, which follows Petr Poroshenko’s logic to the letter.

There was also Syria, with the 2013 agreement on eliminating Syria’s chemical weapons stockpiles in a stage-by-stage process verified by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), for which it received the Nobel Peace Prize. After that, however, there were outrageous provocations in 2017 and 2018 staging the use of chemical weapons in Khan Shaykhun and Duma, a Damascus suburb. There was a video showing people calling themselves the White Helmets (a would-be humanitarian organisation which never showed up on territories controlled by the Syrian government) helping alleged poisoning victims, although no one had any protective clothing or gear. All attempts to force the OPCW Technical Secretariat to perform its duties in good faith and ensure a transparent investigation into these incidents, as required by the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), failed. This, however, did not come as a surprise. The Western countries have long privatised the Technical Secretariat by having their representatives appointed to the key positions within this structure. They contributed to staging these incidents and used them as a pretext for US, British, and French airstrikes against Syria. Incidentally, they carried out these bombings just a day before a group of OPCW inspectors arrived there to investigate the incidents at Russia’s insistence, while the West did everything to prevent this deployment.

The West and the OPCW Technical Secretariat it controls demonstrated their ability to stage fake incidents with the would-be poisonings of the Skripals and Alexey Navalny. In both cases, Russia sent multiple requests to The Hague, London, Berlin, Paris, and Stockholm, all left without a reply, even though they fully conformed with the CWC provisions and required a response.

Other pending questions have to do with the Pentagon’s covert activities in Ukraine carried out through its Defense Threat Reduction Agency. The traces that the forces engaged in the special military operation have discovered in military-biological laboratories in the liberated territories of Donbass and adjacent areas clearly indicate direct violations of the Convention on the Prohibition of Biological and Toxin Weapons (BTWC). We have presented the documents to Washington and to the UN Security Council. The procedure has been initiated under BTWC to demand explanations. Contrary to the facts, the US administration is trying to justify its actions by saying that all biological research in Ukraine was exclusively peaceful and civilian in nature – with no evidence of any of this.

In fact, the Pentagon’s military-biological activities around the world, especially in the post-Soviet countries, require the closest attention in light of the multiplying evidence of criminal experiments with the most dangerous pathogens in order to create biological weapons conducted under the guise of peaceful research.

I have already mentioned the staged “crimes” of the Donbass militia and participants in the Russian special military operation. There is one simple fact that clearly shows how much these accusations mean: having shown the “Bucha tragedy” to the world in early April 2022 (we have suspicions that the Anglo-Saxons had a hand in setting the stage for the show), the West and Kiev have not yet answered the very basic questions about whether the names of the dead were established and what post-mortem examinations showed. Just as in the above-described Skripals and Navalny cases, the propaganda production has premiered in the Western media, and now it’s time to sweep it all under the rug, brazen it out, because they have nothing to say.

This is the essence of the well-worn Western political algorithm – to concoct a fake story and ratchet up the hype as if it’s a universal catastrophe for a couple of days while blocking people’s access to alternative information or assessments, and when any facts do break through, they are simply ignored – at best mentioned on last pages of the news in small print. It is important to understand that this is not a harmless game in the media war – such productions are used as pretexts for very material actions such as punishing the “guilty” countries with sanctions, unleashing barbaric aggressions against them with hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties, as it happened, in particular, in Iraq and Libya. Or – as in the case of Ukraine – for using the country as expendable material in the Western proxy war against Russia. Moreover, NATO instructors and MLRS aimers are, apparently, already directing the actions of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and nationalist battalions on the ground.

I hope there are responsible politicians in Europe who are aware of the consequences. In this regard, it is noteworthy that no one in NATO or the EU tried to reprimand the German Air Force Commander, a general named Ingo Gerhartz, who got carried away higher than his rank and said NATO must be ready to use nuclear weapons. “Putin, do not try to compete with us,” he added. Europe’s silence suggests that it is complacently oblivious of Germany’s role in its history.

If we look at today’s events through a historical prism, the entire Ukrainian crisis appears as a “grand chess game” that follows a scenario earlier promoted by Zbigniew Brzezinski. All the good relations talk, the West’s proclaimed readiness to take into account the rights and interests of Russians who ended up in independent Ukraine or other post-Soviet countries after the collapse of the USSR turned out to be mere pretence. Even in the early 2000s, Washington and the European Union began to openly pressure Kiev to decide which side Ukraine was on, the West or Russia.

Ever since 2014, the West has been controlling, hands-on, the Russophobic regime it brought to power through a coup d’état. Putting Vladimir Zelensky in front of any international forum of any significance is also part of this travesty. He makes passionate speeches, but when he suddenly offers something reasonable, he gets a slap on the wrist, as it happened after the Istanbul round of Russian-Ukrainian talks. At the end of March, it seemed that light glimmered at the end of the tunnel, but Kiev was forced to back off, using, among other things, a frankly staged episode in Bucha. Washington, London and Brussels demanded that Kiev stopped negotiating with Russia until Ukraine achieved full military advantage (former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson tried especially hard, and many other Western politicians did too, still incumbent, although they have already proved just as inept).

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell’s statement about this war having to be “won on the battlefield” by Ukraine suggests that even diplomacy has lost its value as a tool in the European Union’s staged performance.

In a broader sense, it is curious to see how Europe, lined up by Washington on the anti-Russian front, has been hardest hit by the thoughtless sanctions, emptying its arsenals to supply weapons to Kiev (without even asking for a report on who will control them or where they go), and freeing up its market only to subsequently buy US military products and expensive American LNG instead of available Russian gas. Such trends, coupled with the de facto merger between the EU and NATO, make the continued talk about Europe’s “strategic autonomy” nothing more than a show. Everyone has already understood that the collective West’s foreign policy is a “one-man theatre.” Moreover, it is consistently seeking ever new theaters of military operations.

One element of the geopolitical gambit against Russia is granting the status of an eternal EU candidate country to Ukraine and Moldova, which, it seems, will also face an unenviable fate. Meanwhile, a PR campaign has been initiated by President of France Emmanuel Macron to promote the “European political community,” which offers no financial or economic benefits, but demands full compliance with the EU’s anti-Russia actions. The principle behind it is not either/or but “who is not with us is against us.” Emmanuel Macron explained the gist of the “community”: the EU will invite all European countries – “from Iceland to Ukraine” – to join it, but not Russia. I would like to stress that we are not eager to join, but the statement itself showcases the essence of this obviously confrontational and divisive new undertaking.

Ukraine, Moldova and other countries being courted by the EU today are destined to be extras in the games of the West. The United States, as the main producer, calls the tune and devises the storyline based on which Europe writes the anti-Russia screenplay. The actors are ready and possess the skills acquired during their tenure at the Kvartal 95 Studio: they will provide a voice-over for dramatic texts no worse than the now forgotten Greta Thunberg and play musical instruments, if needed. The actors are good: remember how convincing Vladimir Zelensky was in his role as a democrat in the Servant of the People: fighter against corruption and discrimination against Russians and for all the right things in general. Remember and compare it with his immediate transformation in his role as president. It is perfect Stanislavsky Method acting: banning the Russian language, education, media and culture. “If you feel like Russians, then go to Russia for the sake of your children and grandchildren.” Good advice. He called Donbass residents “species” rather than people. And this is what he said about the Nazi Azov battalion: “They are what they are. There is plenty of such people around here.” Even CNN was ashamed to leave this phrase in the interview.

This prompts a question: what will be the outcome of all these storylines? Staged incidents based on blood and agony are by no means fun but a display of a cynical policy in creating a new reality where all principles of the UN Charter and all norms of international law are attempted to be replaced with their “rules-based order” in an aspiration to perpetuate their dwindling domination in global affairs.

The games undertaken by the West in the OSCE after from end of the Cold War, where it considered itself a winner, had the most devastating consequences for the modern international relations. Having quickly broken their promises to the Soviet and Russian leadership on the non-expansion of NATO to the east, the United States and its allies nevertheless declared their commitment to building a unified space of security and cooperation in the Euro-Atlantic region. They formalised it at the top level with all OSCE members in 1999 and 2010 within the framework of a political obligation to ensure equal and inseparable security where no country will strengthen its security at the expense of others and no organisation will claim a dominating role in Europe. It soon became evident that NATO members do no keep their word and that their goal is the supremacy of the North-Atlantic Alliance. Even then we continued our diplomatic efforts, proposing to formalise the principle of equal and inseparable security in a legally binding agreement. We proposed this a number of times, the last one in December 2021, but received a flat denial in response. They told us directly: there will be no legal guarantees outside NATO. Which means that the support of the political documents approved at the OSCE summits turned out to be a cheap fake. And now NATO, driven by the United States, has gone even further: they want to dominate over the entire Asia-Pacific region in addition to the Euro-Atlantic. NATO members make no effort to conceal the target of their threats, and China’s leadership has already publicly declared its position regarding such neo-colonial ambitions. Beijing has already responded by citing the principle of indivisible security, declaring its support for applying it on a global scale to prevent any country from claiming its exclusivity. This approach fully coincides with Russia’s position. We will make consistent efforts to defend it together with our allies, strategic partners and many other like-minded countries.

The collective West should come back to Earth from the world of illusions. The staged incidents, no matter how long they go on, will not work. It is time for fair play based on the international law rather than cheating. The sooner everyone realises that there are no alternatives to objective historical processes where a multipolar world is formed based on respect for the principle of sovereign equality of states, fundamental for the UN Charter and the entire world order, the better.

If members of the western alliance are unable to live according to this principle, are not ready to build a truly universal architecture of equal security and cooperation, they should leave everyone alone, stop using threats and blackmail to recruit those who want to live on their own wits and acknowledge the right to freedom of choice by independent self-respecting countries. This is what democracy is all about, the real democracy, not one played out on a shabbily built political stage.

Andrei Martyanov: Response to YouTube “military analysts”

July 16, 2022

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Andrei Martyanov: SAS and BRICS

July 14, 2022

Please visit Andrei’s website: https://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/
and support him here: https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?u=60459185

Hamas’ return ticket to Damascus won’t come cheap

The Palestinian resistance movement’s complicated relationship with Syria is headed for a reset, but it won’t be on their terms.

July 06 2022

Photo Credit: The Cradle

Despite excited media reports of a Hamas-Syria rapprochement, nothing is finalized: the Palestinian resistance movement has much more to prove still.

By The Cradle’s Palestine Correspondent

On 21 June, two unnamed Hamas sources told Reuters that the Palestinian resistance movement had decided to restore ties with Damascus following a decade-long rift after Hamas expressed support for the Syrian opposition.

The news caused a row, and it seems that this may have been the purpose behind its leak.

Shortly after the report, dozens of websites, satellite channels and media commentators in Turkey, Qatar, and the UK who are sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood – the political Islamist group to which Hamas belongs ideologically – distanced themselves from Hamas, which has neither confirmed nor denied the reports.

However, comments made by the head of the Political Bureau of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, has added credence to these claims.

In a speech before the National Islamic Conference in Beirut, on 25 June, Haniyeh said, “The time has come after ten years to make historic reconciliations in the Islamic nation.”

“What is happening in the region today is very dangerous as Israel is paving the way through military and security alliances to fight Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas,” he added.

So how accurate are the reports about “high-profile” secret meetings between Hamas and the Syrians? Is there a relationship between Haniyeh’s visit to Beirut and the timing of these revelations?

The heavy legacy of Khaled Meshaal

When Hamas left Syria over a decade ago, the office of Khaled Meshaal, who was the head of the movement’s Political Bureau at the time, justified the decision as stemming from “moral premises.”

They contended that the Hamas movement stands with the people in deciding who will rule them, saying “even if the ruler supports our right, we will not support his falsehood.” This reverberated within the movement, and the majority of its popular base supported “Syrian revolution” in the face of “the regime that is slaughtering its people.”

That was back in 2011, when the so-called Arab Spring helped sweep the Muslim Brotherhood (MB or Ikhwan) and its affiliates into power in Egypt and Tunisia, and paved the way for the MB-aligned Syrian armed opposition to take control of the outskirts of Damascus. .

But only four years later (2015), the picture was completely reversed: Egypt’s Mohammed Morsi was ousted in a Gulf-backed military coup; Tunisian President Kais Saied turned against the Brotherhood’s Ennahda party and removed it completely from the political scene. And Damascus gradually regained control over the vital parts of Syria.

In the wider region, the regime of Omar Al-Bashir fell in Sudan, and the Muslim Brotherhood’s influence in Libya, Yemen, Jordan and Kuwait was severely diminished.

New leadership, a new direction

It was inevitable that these significant region-wide changes would also transform Hamas’ leadership to reflect the new political scene. In 2017, Ismail Haniyeh was appointed head of the Political Bureau, while that same year, Yahya Al-Sinwar, who was released from Israeli prisons in 2011, became the leader of the movement in Gaza.

Seen as a hawk, Sinwar relies on the absolute support of the movement’s military arm, the Al-Qassam Brigades, and as such, introduced a new political approach to Hamas’ regional relations.

Although Sinwar’s first move was to reorganize relations with Cairo after a four-year estrangement, by far his most important change was to revive Hamas’ relations with the Axis of Resistance, making it the movement’s top foreign policy priority.

Within a few years, the Hamas leader in Gaza had re-established full relations with Iran and Hezbollah, but its return to Damascus still remains the biggest obstacle.

In order to thaw the ice with Syria, Iran mediated first, followed by Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), and more recently, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). This deadlock was not broken until after the Hamas operation “Sword of Jerusalem” in May 2021.

Testing the waters

In that same month, Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad responded to a greeting from Al Qassam Brigades, conveyed by the Secretary General of PIJ Ziad Al-Nakhaleh, with a corresponding greeting. After that, contacts began to increase between Syrian officials and Hamas leaders.

Syrian sources informed The Cradle that a year ago it was decided to “reduce security measures against a number of Hamas members in Syria, release a number of detainees, and reveal the fate of other missing persons.”

But that didn’t achieve normalcy between Syria and Hamas either. There are those within the latter, it appears, who continue to sabotage progress made with Damascus.

To understand the dynamics of this particular relationship – present and its future – it is necessary to review its stages throughout the years.

From Amman to Damascus

Hamas began paving the way for its relationship with Syria in the early 1990s through visits made by its official Musa Abu Marzouk. In 1992, Mustafa Al-Ledawi was appointed as the head of an unofficial office for the Hamas in Damascus.

The great leap occurred with the visit of the founder of Hamas, the late Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, to Damascus in 1998. This official visit, and the warm reception accorded Yassin, constituted a huge breakthrough in relations, after which the late President Hafez Al-Assad authorized Hamas’ official presence in Syria, providing it with political and security facilities and logistical and material support.

Despite previous bad blood between Damascus and the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, notably in regard to the Hama massacre in 1982, there were several prudent reasons for the Syrian government and Hamas to collaborate.

One reason can be traced to the rivalry between Hafez Assad and the late Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Chairman Yasser Arafat, who sided with the late Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in the Gulf War (1990–91) after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait on 2 August, 1990.

On 21 November, 1999, a plane carrying Hamas’ then-political bureau chief Khaled Meshaal landed at Damascus airport, after being expelled from Jordan and refused a reception by many Arab capitals.

Since then, a number of political bureau members relocated to Damascus, and Hamas’ activities in Syria intensified. Between 2000 and 2010, the relationship further strengthened over several events, including the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, the 2005 withdrawal of the Syrian army from Lebanon, the 2006 July war between Israel and Hezbollah, and most importantly, the Israeli aggression against Gaza in 2008.

Syrian support

Hamas official Mahmoud Al-Zahar, who was interviewed by The Cradle in Gaza, talks about an important detail that the media did not mention at the time. When Hamas formed its first government in Gaza in 2007, in which Zahar was foreign minister, “Syria was the only Arab country that recognized the diplomatic red passport issued from Gaza.”

Zahar says: “The Syrian leadership gave us everything. On my first visit to Damascus, we were able to solve the problem of hundreds of Palestinian refugees stuck on the Syrian-Iraqi borders, and Syria adopted the Palestinian calling code (+970), and expressed its willingness to provide support to the elected Palestinian government. For that, it faced an Arab, international, and American war.”

Today, Zahar is the designated official tasked by Sinwar to revive the relationship with Damascus. This was confirmed by sources in Hamas, who said that he traveled to Mecca for the Hajj pilgrimage, and may head from there to Damascus.

These details are meaningful: it means Egypt is spared the censure of allowing Zahar to travel to Syria, and would avoid an awkward situation for Cairo in front of the US, Israelis and Gulf Arabs.

From Damascus to Doha and Ankara

The Syrian crisis that erupted in March 2011 put Hamas in a unique bind of its own making. Fellow Palestinian Islamists in PIJ, for example, did not take a radical position on the “revolution” from 2011 to 2017, and were content with maintaining their offices in Damascus, although its political and military leadership relocated to Beirut due to deteriorating security conditions.

On the other hand, Hamas issued its first statement regarding the Syrian crisis on 2 April, 2011, in which it affirmed its support for the Syrian people and leadership, and considered that “Syria’s internal affairs concern the brothers in Syria… We hope to overcome the current circumstances in order to achieve the aspirations of the Syrian people, and preserve Syria’s stability and its internal cohesion, and strengthening its role in the line of confrontation and opposition.”

This wishy-washy statement did not hide the hostile stance of the movement’s members and elites, who all adopted the anti-Syrian narrative. On 5 November, 2011, the Syrian security forces stormed the offices of Hamas, confiscated its assets, and shuttered them.

In early 2012, Meshaal traveled to Doha, Qatar, before holding a scheduled meeting with Bashar Al-Assad. Hamas declared that the meeting “will not be useful.”

Hamas and the opposition

On 8 December, 2012, the movement burned bridges with Damascus when Meshaal and Haniyeh raised the flag of the “Syrian revolution” during a celebration marking the movement’s launch in the Gaza Strip in front of tens of thousands of their supporters.

In a parade held during the celebration, a number of members of the Al-Qassam Brigades wore the opposition flag on their backs.

The Syrian government’s reaction was no less restrained. Assad accused Hamas of actively participating in the war against the Syrian state by supporting Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate Jabhat Al-Nusra, and by providing instructions to opposition factions on ways to dig tunnels and fortify them to withstand aerial bombardment.

Other opposition militant groups such as Bait Al-Maqdis, Faylaq Al-Rahman and Army of Huda announced that they were affiliated with Hamas.

Once an Ikhwani, always an Ikhwani

In 2016, Assad said in an interview with Syrian newspaper Al-Watan: “We supported Hamas not because they are Muslim Brotherhood, but rather we supported them on the grounds that they are resistance. In the end, it was proven that the Ikhwani (member of Muslim Brotherhood) is Ikhwani wherever he puts himself, and from the inside remains a terrorist and hypocrite.”

All this may seem a thing of the past, but it still affects the formation of a new relationship between the two parties, especially after the return of turncoat Meshaal and his team a year ago to important leadership positions in Hamas.

Although the majority of the movement’s leadership has changed, the old legacy of Meshaal still weighs heavily on everyone, especially in Damascus. There are many in Syria who still warn the “wound is open;” that Hamas has not yet closed it, but rather wants a “free return.”

Understanding Hamas’ structure

Before explaining Hamas’ recent decision to restore ties with Syria, it is necessary to know how the movement is run to ensure representation and accountability. Hamas has a Shura Council of 15 members, chosen in elections in which cadres of certain organizational ranks participate.

These cadres choose their representatives in the local advisory councils from different regions (West Bank, Gaza, Jerusalem, territories occupied in 1948, and prisons). As for members of Hamas’ base, they elect their representatives in the General Consultative Council, which in turn elects the Political Bureau.

Despite this ‘healthy democracy,’ the position on Syria produced two contradictory currents:

The first current is led by Meshaal, who was head of the Political Bureau until 2017. It includes Ahmed Youssef, a former adviser to Haniyeh, and Nayef Rajoub, one of the most prominent leaders of Hamas in the West Bank.

The second current has no specific leader, but Zahar was the public face before Sinwar joined him.

Between these two viewpoints, Ismail Haniyeh and Musa Abu Marzouk maintain a state of ‘pragmatism’ by taking a middle position between the Qatar-Turkey axis and the Axis of Resistance.

Although the decision to leave Syria was taken with the full approval of the members of the Shura Council and members of the Political Bureau, the entire burden of the decision was placed on Meshaal. The man, who was a personal friend of Assad and Secretary General of Hezbollah Hassan Nasrallah, became blacklisted by the Axis of Resistance.

Meshaal’s influence

All prior efforts to restore relations between Hamas and Syria were a “waste of time” as long as Meshaal was at the helm of the movement. This was not only the opinion of the Syrians, but of many Iranians as well.

In 2015, for example, when there were media reports about efforts to restore Hamas-Syrian relations, the Iranian Tabnak website (supervised by General Mohsen Rezaei, a leader in the Revolutionary Guards and currently one of the advisors to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei) launched a scathing attack against Meshaal.

At that time, Meshaal had refused to visit Tehran if he was not received at the highest levels – that is – to meet specifically with Khamenei. The Tabnak website wrote: “Meshaal and the Hamas leaders lined up two years ago on the side of the international terrorists in Syria… They are now setting conditions for the restoration of relations between Hamas and Iran as if Iran did not have any conditions.”

Since that time, Meshaal and his team have remained staunchly reluctant to even talk about restoring relations with Damascus. In addition to their loyalty (to some extent) to Turkey and Qatar, they were aware that reviving relations would weaken their organizational position within Hamas, and contribute to increasing the influence of their rivals.

On the other hand, these rivals remained weak until 2017, as Meshaal managed to marginalize Mahmoud Al-Zahar who did not receive any influential positions.

Re-joining the Resistance Axis

The formation of the new Political Bureau meant there were now a large number of officials who were not involved in any public positions on the Syrian crisis – such as Sinwar, Saleh Al-Arouri, and Osama Hamdan, who maintained a balanced relationship with all parties.

Zahar told The Cradle that Sinwar was “convinced” of his theses about the shape of the “last battle with Israel.” He added: “I spoke with Abu Ibrahim (Sinwar) for a long time about restoring the bond with the components of the nation that have hostility to Israel, specifically Hezbollah, Syria and Iran, and this is the pillar of Hamas’ foreign policy in the future.”

Nevertheless, Zahar believes that Damascus “will refuse to deal with the movement’s leadership, which took the lead during the war.” But it is likely that the Syrians will accept to deal with him personally, which he will seek during his forthcoming visit.

What’s Next?

Well-informed sources in Hamas revealed to The Cradle that the movement’s Political Bureau met this month and made the decision to return to Syria, despite Meshaal’s objection.

The resolution has two aims: first, to build a resistance front in the “ring countries” surrounding Palestine; and second, to establish a maritime line of communication between Gaza and the port of Latakia, in Syria.

The sources also revealed that Jamil Mezher, who was recently elected deputy secretary general of the PFLP, conveyed a message from Sinwar to the Syrian leadership calling for the restoration of relations between the two parties.

After his visit to Damascus, Mezher met with Haniyeh in Beirut to discuss the results. Haniyeh also met Nasrallah, as well as Ziad Al-Nakhaleh in an expanded meeting of the leaderships of Hamas and the PIJ in the Lebanese capital. All these events took place in one week.

According to Hamas sources, Haniyeh informed Nasrallah that the movement has unanimously taken an official decision to restore relations with Damascus. The two sides also discussed the demarcation of the maritime border between Lebanon and Israel.

The sources confirm that “Hamas is ready to simultaneously target gas-stealing platforms from the Gaza sea, in the event that Hezbollah targets an exploration and extraction vessel in the Karish field.”

Hamas sources, as well as an informed Syrian source, however, deny holding any recent new meetings between the two parties. The Syrian source reveals that meetings sponsored by Islamic Jihad were held last year.

What does Syria stand to gain?

On the other hand, Damascus has its reasons for postponing the return of this relationship. Of course, internal reasons can be overlooked if Bashar Al-Assad himself makes the decision.

But it is the current regional situation and the re-formation of alliances that worries the Syrian leadership the most.

It is true that Assad the son, like his father, has learned the ropes in dealing with the MB, but now he has no need for a new headache caused by the return of Hamas. There is no great benefit from this return except in one case: the normalization of Syrian relations with Turkey, Qatar, or both.

On Syria’s terms

Only in this scenario, can bridges be re-built with Hamas. But the conditions for this are currently immature, as this normalization will be at the expense of Syria’s relationship with its ally Russia, whether in the issue of gas supplies to Europe or stopping the military operation that Ankara is threatening against Kurdish terrorists in northern Syria.

Syria, which has already improved its relations with the UAE, and is currently working to improve its relations with Saudi Arabia and Jordan, will not include a “losing card” in its stack of cards now.

It will also not compete with Egypt over a file – the relationship with Hamas – which Cairo considers its monopoly in the region.

Also, Damascus is not in the midst of a clash of any kind with the Palestinian Authority and the Fatah movement, which took advantage of the exit of Hamas to consolidate their position in the Syrian capital and improve their relationship with Assad.

However, when news broke about the possible resumption of Hamas-Syrian relations, this time Damascus did not launch an attack on the movement and did not comment negatively on the news of the rapprochement and the restoration of the relations – as it did previously.

There is no doubt that the battle of the “Sword of Jerusalem” and the presence of a new leadership in Hamas’ Political Bureau has thawed the ice significantly. But the answer to when full rapprochement will be achieved is a decision likely to be made between Assad and Nasrallah.

The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.

Syrians Confronting US Occupation Army and its SDF Proxies in Hasakah

JULY 5, 2022

ARABI SOURI

Syrians in a village in the northeastern province of Hasakah with the help of the Syrian Arab Army unit deployed in the area confronted a US army column of armored vehicles and forced them to change retreat, and villagers further to the northeast within the Hasakah province clashed with the US-sponsored Kurdish SDF separate terrorists who raided their villages.

The following report by the Syrian Ikhbariya news channel (banned from broadcasting in the free world) details the above-mentioned confrontations:

Syrians Confronting US Occupation Army and its Kurdish SDF Proxies in Hasakah

The video is also available on Bitchute, Odysee, and Rumble.

Local sources reported that a convoy of the American occupation, consisting of five vehicles, tried to cross from the village of Al-Mujaibara towards one of its bases in the Hasakah countryside, the people, with the support of the Syrian Arab Army, confronted the convoy and expelled it from the area.

In the Rmelan area in the countryside of Qamishli, popular demonstrations took place to condemn the violations of the Kurdish SDF militia, during which the demonstrators raised banners denouncing its repressive practices and restrictions on citizens.

US-Sponsored Kurdish Militia Burn Wheat Fields in Qamishli

Local sources said that the protests took place in the villages of Yusufiya and Al-Junaidiah, belonging to the Rmelan area in the northeastern countryside of Qamishli, against the SDF-backed militia, which is backed by the American occupation forces, demanding the expulsion of its militants from the area and an end to its practices, confiscation of the people’s livelihood and property, theft and smuggling of oil, and an end to kidnapping young men to force them to fight in its ranks.

The sources stated that the protesters blocked the main roads with burning tires and stones and chanted slogans condemning the SDF militia, which brought reinforcements to the area in order to suppress and disperse the demonstrators.

End of the transcript

The US regime maintains an illegal presence in Syria, carries out illegal and terrorist operations against the people, steals Syrian oil and wheat, and supports terrorist groups in their war crimes against the Syrian people.

Western mainstream media falsely report the military and terrorist operations of the US army and its sponsored proxy groups as combating terrorism when those are the real terrorists the Syrian people are fighting, the western mainstream media in its fake reporting are accomplices to war crimes, and those parroting the lies of the western officials and their media, or simply not countering them, are willingly, knowingly or ignorantly participating in the killing, maiming, oppressing the Syrian people.

Trump Regime Illegals Murder a Syrian Civilian, Get to Taste Syrian Anger

Trump Regime Illegals Murder a Syrian Civilian, Get to Taste Syrian Anger
Trump regime forces illegally in Syria had to bomb their way to safety from an angry mob of locals, after murdering a civilian, on Wednesday. … Continue reading

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It is time for Israel’s gut punch

Today, Israel bombed Damascus Airport, tomorrow it could strike the Presidential Palace. Despite the threat of war, Israel must now receive swift, fierce retaliatory measures.

June 13 2022

Eye for an eye: Will Israel’s illegal strike on Damascus airport invite a proportional retaliation against Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv?Photo Credit: The Cradle

By Abdel Bari Atwan

In an escalatory attack on Syria last Friday, Israeli warplanes launched missiles strikes on Damascus International Airport, damaging runways, passenger terminals and crossing a major red line. Tel Aviv’s latest aggression has put Syria’s main passenger airport out of service for days, if not weeks, in a deliberate provocation against the Axis of Resistance.

This aggression, which violates all the previous rules of engagement, came in the immediate aftermath of a month-long Israeli military exercise in the eastern Mediterranean. These drills, we were told, mimicked real-time attacks against Iran, Syria, southern Lebanon, and even the likes of Yemen and Iraq.

“One who is safe from punishment will continue to commit the same crimes”

Hundreds of illegal Israeli missile strikes against Syria have taken place over the past five years, under the pretext of bombing ‘Iranian arms convoys to Hezbollah.’ Over time, these attacks have evolved into the bombing of alleged Syrian and Iranian military targets inside major cities in the Arab republic.

Friday’s Israeli attack occurred just before dawn, a day after Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah delivered a speech promising to target a UK/Greek gas exploration ship near the disputed Karish gas field. What made this latest attack unique was it marked the first time that the Damascus International Airport’s civilian transport area had been targeted by Israeli military strikes.

This means that Tel Aviv has underestimated the threats of retaliation from the Axis of Resistance. Israel, it seems, is subsumed in the fog of self-deception, and like “one who is safe from punishment, will continue to commit the same crimes.”

Will there be a response?

On Al-Quds Day, held on the last Friday of the holy month of Ramadan, Nasrallah stated that the Axis of Resistance will respond to any Israeli aggression within the Syrian depth. He further stressed that the long-held notion that retaliation must be reserved for the “right time and place” has fallen forever. This begs the tough question: Will the Axis respond to the missile raid on a most prominent and important site of the Syrian state, both politically and militarily (i.e., Damascus International Airport), in order to preserve its credibility, prestige and dignity?

The ones to answer this question are the Syrian leadership, and Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad personally. While it is clear that a response to this blatant and unprecedented Israeli aggression may lead to a regional war, silence, inaction, and avoidance of “Israeli traps” will almost certainly lead to further escalation from Tel Aviv.

If there is no Syrian or Axis military response to Israel’s crossing of this red line, we should not be surprised if future Israeli raids target all civilian airports, more Syrian infrastructure such as water and electric stations, and possibly the Presidential Palace itself.

Syria is not afraid of war and has fought four of them in the past 40 years – in addition to an 11-year internal war of attrition led by the United States, the European Union, and their Arab allies. The foreign aggressors spent hundreds of billions of dollars to destroy and partition Syria, and overthrow its government, but Damascus did not fall or surrender.

We do not believe Syria can fear a new war, especially because it has a solid army that is hard to defeat and has significant battle experience. Most importantly, we believe that the Syrian military will be difficult to defeat because it belongs to the Axis of Resistance, who itself has a massive arsenal of missiles, submarines and drones.

The likelihood of responding to this blatant Israeli aggression is much greater in our view than the possibilities of silence, even if this response leads to an all-out war. It cannot and should not be a random retaliatory strike, and it requires coordination and consultation with all the arms of the Resistance Axis, the development of a deterrence strategy in which roles are well distributed and integrated, and requires both patience and recklessness to achieve a positive, honorable outcome.

The Russian Role

As Syria’s major power ally, Russia’s silence in the face of years of illegal Israeli strikes – and Moscow’s refusal to green light a Syrian military response or equip it with the necessary defense capabilities such as advanced S-400 missile systems – bears the greatest responsibility for reaching this unfortunate, humiliating situation for the Syrian leadership.

On Sunday, the Syrian army held immediate exercises by order of President Assad, under the supervision of the minister of defense and Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces General Ali Mahmoud Abbas, in the presence of the deputy chief of Russian forces present in Syria.

This may be an indication that the response to this Israeli aggression is imminent.

The time has come to respond

The Axis of Resistance should not hesitate to respond to this insult as soon as possible. This legal and justified retaliation should be at least as powerful as the illegal and unjustified Israeli aggression, and it should take place in the occupied Palestinian depth. From the perspective of a legitimate right to self-defense, the response should be tit-for-tat: an airport for an airport, a port for a port, and infrastructure for infrastructure.

We know very well that war is costly, but this time its cost to the Israeli enemy will be much greater because its losses will be “existential,” as Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said in his last speech.

Syria did not choose this war; it did not initiate aggression and has demonstrated the highest levels of self-restraint. But now the knife has reached the bone, and restraint has become counterproductive.

At this point in time, inaction would prolong a deadly siege that has exceeded the limit of starvation. It is why the time for debate is over, and all honorable people should stand in the trenches to defend this nation and its just causes. Syria has sacrificed tens of thousands of martyrs. It has lost lives and territories, but refused to bargain, surrender and normalize relations with the occupation forces. For this, Syrians have paid the heftiest of prices in the Arab and Islamic realm.

We stood, and we will stand, in the trench of Syria, in confronting this Israeli aggression, and responding to it with the same amount of ferocity, if not more. Over the course of 8,000 years of its honorable civilized history, Syria has faced many aggressors, and it will emerge victorious once again.

The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.

Assad: Syria Will Stand Firm against Any Turkish Onslaught on Its Territory

June 9, 2022

By Staff, Agencies

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has once again rejected Turkish military operations in the occupied northern part of the country, saying  the army will directly confront the Ankara government’s incursions and offensives wherever military facilities are present.

“If Turkish forces launch an attack in areas where Syrian military troops are present, the latter will definitely fight back and put up defense,” Assad said in an interview with Russia’s state-owned and Arabic-language RT Arabic television news network, which is scheduled to be broadcast in full on Thursday evening.

He added, “Two and a half years ago, there was a direct confrontation between Syrian and Turkish forces, and Syrian soldiers managed to strike a number of Turkish units that had encroached into our territories.”

“If it is not possible for Syrian army forces to face up to Turkish incursions, popular resistance will swing into action in the first place,” Assad pointed out.

On Saturday, Syria vehemently condemned Turkey’s acts of aggression against the Arab country, saying Turkish forces incursions into its territory violate international law.

“The aggressive threats of the Turkish regime pose a blatant violation of the international law and the sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity of Syria,” the official news agency SANA cited an unnamed source in Syria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates as saying in a statement.

The statement added that Turkey’s incursions into the Syrian territory contradict the understandings and agreements reached through the Astana process and constitute a serious threat to peace and security in the region while undermining internationally-sponsored agreements on the lines of the de-escalation zones in Syria.

Elsewhere in his remarks, Assad censured the recent Western hawkish stance against Russia over its military campaign in neighboring Ukraine.

“Russia is facing a war that I personally believe has nothing to do with the eastward expansion of the [US-led] North Atlantic Treaty Organization [NATO]. This is a war that existed before communism and World War II, and has been going on for a long time,” the Syrian president said.

He emphasized, “We can look at Russia from two perspectives. If we view Moscow as an ally of Damascus, either its victory in Ukraine campaign or stronger political role at the world stage will be highly beneficial for us.

“Moreover, Russia’s power can restore the lost international balance, albeit partially. This is the balance we are looking for as it will primarily affect small countries like Syria in the first place,” Assad said.