Yemeni forces target USS Truman, down F-18, thwarting attack on Sanaa
Sputnik – 22.12.2024
Fighters of the Yemeni Ansar Allah (Houthi) group have repelled joint US-UK air forces attack, shooting down a US Navy F/A-18 fighter jet during their attack on USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier in the Red Sea, the group’s military spokesman, Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree said on Sunday.
“During the operation an F/A 18 jet was shot down attempting to repel the attack [on the US aircraft carrier],” Saree said on air of Almasirah TV channel.
Eight cruise missiles and 17 unmanned aerial vehicles were involved in the operation, the spokesman said.
He pointed out that the majority of fighter jets left Yemen’s air space and headed for the neutral waters of the Red Sea trying to repel the attack on the carrier. USS Harry S. Truman left its positions after the strikes, Saree said.
In early December, the Houthis attacked a destroyer and three army supply vessels of the United States with missiles and drones in the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea.
Earlier in the day, the Associated Press, citing CENTCOM, reported that a US Navy F/A-18 jet was downed by friendly fire over the Red Sea during an attack on Houthi targets. Both pilots ejected safely, with one sustaining minor injuries.
The fall of Syria: A NATO, Zionist and Gulf state operation
By David Miller | Al Mayadeen | December 21, 2024
The day after the ceasefire with Hezbollah was announced on 26 November the so-called Syrian rebels launched their offensive.
But this was not just an isolated coincidence. Not only were fighters attacking Syria from the North, but two other fronts were opened at the same time showing clear co-ordination.
From the North East the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (or SDF) attacked.
And from the South, there is a relatively new grouping called the Southern Operations Room.
Who were these groups and who is backing them?
First, in the North, were two groups. The first is the Syrian National Army the rebranded name for former constituents of the Free Syria Army, a collection of militias most of which have been supported directly in the past by the US.
Then there is Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham the rebranded name of the Nusra Front, the former Al Qaeda franchise. It is reportedly the strongest and largest so-called rebel group in Syria. Its leader Abou Mohammed al Jolani, has been successively the deputy leader of Islamic State in Iraq, the founder of the Nusra Front in Syria, a defector to Al-Qaeda who then rebranded HTS as something separate from Al-Qaeda. This is even admitted by the mainstream media as in this report from NBC:
When Syria’s vicious civil war erupted in 2011, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, leader of the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), sent Jolani to Syria to establish the Al-Nusra Front, a branch of Al Qaeda. Their conflict escalated two years later. Jolani rejected Baghdadi’s calls to dissolve the Nusra Front and merge it with ISI to form ISIS. Instead, he pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda, which later disassociated itself from ISIS. The Nusra Front then became Al Qaeda’s Syria affiliate and later battled ISIS for supremacy in the battle against Assad.
Both HTS and the SNA are being supported directly by Turkiye.
Turkiye obviously has its own interests but as a NATO member, it is under the leadership of the US. Jolani is himself effectively a US asset as well. Here is Aaron Zelin the chronicler of Takfiri groups for Zionist regime asset WINEP:
HTS and its leader, Abu Muhammad al-Jolani, have sought to garner support from the United States and other Western governments over the past years in a bid to get themselves removed from terrorist lists. Although that has yet to occur, their overtures did not fall on deaf ears, at least during the Trump administration.
Zelin quotes a spring 2021 interview with Frontline by former US special representative James Jeffrey, which noted that he had “engaged with the group via backchannels while serving in President Trump’s State Department. He also noted that Washington had stopped targeting Jolani in August 2018.” In his view, “HTS was the least bad option of the various options on Idlib, and Idlib is one of the most important places in Syria, which is one of the most important places right now in the Middle East.”
In his long interview, Jeffrey also noted that
- We got Mike Pompeo to issue a waiver to allow us to give aid to HTS
- I received and sent messages to HTS
- Messages from HTS: “We want to be your friend. We’re not terrorists. We’re just fighting Assad.”
- The US was “supporting indirectly the armed opposition”
- “It was important to us that HTS not disintegrate”
- It was important “to ensure that nobody somewhere in the terrorist bureaucracy would decide to take a shot at [Jolani]… that would have been bad.”
- “Our policy was, … to leave HTS alone.”
- “Syria, … is the pivot point for whether [there can be] an American-managed security system in the region.”
- [The] Abraham Accords, … was, … encouraged by what we were doing in Syria and elsewhere.”
- And the fact that we haven’t targeted [HTS] ever, the fact that we have never raised our voice to the Turks about their cohabitation with them … “It’s just like [Turkiye] in Idlib. We want [Turkiye] to be in Idlib, but you can’t be in Idlib without having a platform, and that platform is largely HTS. Now, … HTS is a U.N.-designated official terrorist organization. Have I ever or has any American official ever complained to [Turkiye] about what [they’re] doing there with HTS? No.”
- HTS “are the least bad option”
In the North East of Syria, Kurdish fighters of the Syrian Democratic Forces are a proxy for the US, which is in occupation of Syrian oil fields there. US officials refer to this part of Syria as being “owned” by the US with its “local partner” the SDF. The US has a smallish number of troops there and appears to depend on the roughly 100,000 Kurdish forces who enable them to steal almost all of Syria’s oil.
In the south of Syria, a seemingly new grouping emerged. The Southern Operations Room, reportedly a merger of a coalition of Sunni and Druze groups, announced its creation on December 6. Staggeringly they were reportedly the first to reach Damascus. According to reports, these fighters would appear to be related to the previous Southern Operations groupings created by Jordanian & US intelligence agencies.
The CIA covert operation Timber Sycamore was run out of Amman in Jordan and involved the transfer of weapons, including from Saudi Arabia to the Jordanian intelligence agency for onward transmission to Syrian rebel groups. The agency is known as the General Intelligence Directorate. In fact, as Salon reported in 2016, “the CIA essentially created the GID to help shield the Jordanian monarchy from internal and external threats.” Fighters from the Southern Operations Room were the first to reach Damascus on the 7th of December and may have been involved in the widely seen footage of armed rebels removing large numbers of boxes from the Syrian Central Bank.
So, all four of the supposedly disparate “rebel” forces would appear to be backed directly or indirectly, by the US, even though some (especially HTS/SNA and the Kurdish SDF) seem to have contending interests in some areas.
The HTS forces are famously murderously sectarian, and more evidence of this quickly emerged. At a geopolitical level, they are directly helping the Zionists to continue the genocide. Let’s remember that the Zionists have been undertaking continuous strikes on Syria over the last year. The “rebels” even appeared to credit the Zionists with successfully supporting their march on Damascus, In advance of the ceasefire announcement they carried out further attacks, which are continuing. The Zionists themselves were quite open about how useful the alleged ‘uprising’ is.
“From Israel’s perspective, the rebel advance in northern Syria further isolates Iran and Hezbollah”, said Avi Melamed, a former Israeli intelligence official and Arab affairs adviser to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
Many of the weapons Hezbollah used against “Israel” in the recent war were transferred to them via Syria, according to Marco Moreno, a former senior officer in the IOF’s Human Intelligence Unit 504.
The rapid advance of HTS and the SNA has been enabled by Israeli strikes against Resistance groups that support the Syrian government.
According to Melamed: “This ongoing Israeli pressure, coupled with the rebel offensive, weakens the ‘Axis of Resistance’ and challenges Iran’s hegemonic ambitions.”
The extraordinary speed of the ending of the Assad government begs all sorts of questions about what happened and the significance of the events.
It is no surprise that “Israel”, the US, Turkiye and other supporters of Western power should celebrate, but the significant outpouring of positive sentiment from Muslims was perhaps more surprising.
The failure to appreciate the geopolitics of it all and to apparently blithely accept the victory of takfiri terrorists is disturbing for those who see the importance of Muslim unity.
More will likely become clear in the future, but for now, we can say that it appears that an agreement was reached between Russia, Iran, some Gulf states and the US. This allowed the Assad family to exit with some apparent guarantees on an orderly transition, including an order from the Syrian government side for the Army to stand down, and commitments from some of the opposition about avoiding looting and attacks on minorities, desecration of religious shrines and the like. The deal will also reportedly allow Russia to maintain its air and Naval base in Syria, but it is not clear how that will turn out.
The apparent support for the so called “revolution” in sections of the Muslim community in the UK and elsewhere is an indication of the success of propaganda and misinformation much of it from the West and the Zionist entity.
Despite myriad assertions, it is not true that the Palestinian armed factions opposed Assad. With the exception of the Hamas Political Bureau between 2012 and 2020, every Palestinian Resistance faction supported Assad including the PFLP, PFLP-GC, DFLP, PIJ, PLA, Liwa Al Quds, and Fatah al-Intifada. It is true that elements of the Hamas politburo (in Qatar – particularly Khaled Mesh’aal), was always closer to the Qatari/Turkish line and broke with Assad from 2012-20.
However, the targeting of Hamas leaders by the Zionist entity has been based particularly on those who support the Axis of Resistance, because they are the ones perceived as a threat. The most obvious example is Yahya Sinwar. Some of them still remain. Those at the sharp end of confronting the Zionist genocide knew more than anyone, how much their supplies of weapons and other equipment depended on Assad’s support.
From the other side, it’s also true that Bashar al-Assad, was made repeated offers by King Abdallah of Saudi Arabia and others to accrue huge personal benefits if he gave up on Palestine and Lebanon, and cut ties with the Resistance. He refused. Even up until the last days of his rule, the UAE’s Islamophobic Zionist dictator Mohammed bin Zayed made Bashar an offer on behalf of the US to cut the Axis of Resistance in return for the US keeping him in power. He refused.
He was made such offers because Syria was the backbone of Palestine and the Lebanese Resistance, without which both will find it very difficult to recover from a logistical perspective. The arms, money, and intelligence that are essential to fighting guerrilla warfare on a serious scale require state support, and Syria under Bashar was the land bridge for all of those supplies reaching Lebanon and Palestine. Which is why they were assiduously bombed by the Zionists.
David Miller is an investigative researcher, broadcaster, and academic. He is the founder and co-director of the lobbying watchdog Spinwatch and editor of Powerbase.info.
Scandalous detention of Iranians by US to extort information
Press TV – December 21, 2024
Two Iranian nationals have been recently arrested in the United States and Italy on allegations of involvement in equipping drones allegedly used in attacks on American forces—a claim Iran has strongly rejected as baseless.
On the evening of December 16, Mohammad Abedini Najafabadi, 38, a mechanical engineering graduate from Sharif University of Technology, was detained by Italian police at Milan Airport while preparing to travel to Switzerland. The arrest, carried out at the request of the United States, has cut off all direct contact with him.
Meanwhile, Mahdi Mohammadsadeghi, 42, a US resident, was arrested in Massachusetts around the same time.
According to reports, the arrests of the two individuals are allegedly linked to a January 28 drone attack carried out by Iraqi armed groups against a US military outpost in Jordan known as Tower 22.
The attack killed three American soldiers and injured 47 others. The FBI claims that the equipment used in the drone attack was supplied by these two individuals.
A university peer of Mohammad Abedini told Tasnim News Agency that Abedini is an Iranian national and the CEO of Sanat Danesh Rahpooyan Aflak (SDRA), a company in Iran specializing in precision measurement equipment.
The company’s products have diverse applications, including medical and sports technologies.
Abedini also headed a Swiss-based company, Illumove SA, which focused on motion capture equipment manufacturing. All activities of these companies were conducted under the legal and financial oversight of the Swiss government.
The unnamed source explained that due to their advanced technology, the equipment produced by these companies has multipurpose uses. Once legally sold in Iranian markets, the products can be purchased and utilized by any individual or entity.
However, the US government has fabricated charges, claiming the equipment was used in drones involved in the aforementioned attack, leading to the arrest and prosecution of these individuals.
He emphasized that the lack of formal communication with the Iranian embassy and the denial of access to Abedini constitutes a clear case of abduction.
“Even if the allegations were proven, the appropriate course of action would have been to prevent his entry into Europe or the United States, not to detain him based on unsubstantiated claims,” he said.
Since two days ago, Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, through its consulate in Italy, has launched extensive efforts to secure Mohammad Abedini’s release or at least obtain information about his condition. It is hoped that these efforts will yield results before any judicial action is taken against him.
Washington trained, armed extremist groups to topple Syrian government: Report
Press TV – December 20, 2024
The United States prepared and bolstered an armed group in southern Syria weeks prior to the offensive that ousted President Bashar al-Assad, a Western media report says.
In the first indication that Washington had prior knowledge of the offensive, the group known as Revolutionary Commando Army (RCA) revealed it had been told to scale-up its forces and “be ready” for an attack that could lead to the end of the Assad government, the Telegraph reported.
The RCA fighters, trained by Britain and the US, were told “this is your moment” during a briefing by US Special Forces stationed in the Arab country before Assad was toppled on December 8, the report noted.
The RCA fighters said Washington had prior knowledge of the offensive, which was mainly led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). The RCA was told to increase its forces and prepare for a major attack that could “end” the Syrian government.
Capt Bashar al-Mashadani, an RCA commander said in the weeks preceding the offensive, the RCA’s ranks were expanded by smaller “freelance” units, all of which were briefed at the US al-Tanf air base.
“They did not tell us how it would happen,” al-Mashadani told the Telegraph from a former Syrian army air base on the outskirts of the city of Palmyra.
“We were just told: ‘Everything is about to change. This is your moment. Either Assad will fall, or you will fall.’ But they did not say when or where, they just told us to be ready.”
The RCA is an armed group established by defected Syrian Arab Army (SAA) troops and is headquartered in the al-Tanf area, near the Syria-Jordan-Iraq border area, in southern Syria.
US forces are also stationed in the al-Tanf area, where they claim to be fighting the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group in the region.
‘On the US payroll’
According to the British newspaper, the RCA remains on the US’s payroll, as Washington claims to require their assistance to prevent the resurgence of Daesh. All members of the force continued to be armed by the US and to receive their salary of $400 a month.
The group has now filled a major void vacated by the former government forces, taking over one-fifth of the country’s territory and pockets north of the capital.
Among the chief targets of the US-backed operation was Palmyra, known for its ancient ruins.
Palmyra was among the main objectives of the US-backed operation, according to the Telegraph. Fighters who captured the Russian-controlled air base in Palmyra were reportedly told to prepare to take such action in early November.
The sources also said that Americans coordinated communication between RCA and HTS during the offensive. The HTS and its leader, Abu Mohammad al-Joulani, are terror-listed by the US.
The report indicates not only that Washington knew about the offensive led by HTS, but that it had precise intelligence about its scale.
It would therefore be only one of many ironies if the US has been in an effective alliance with a group like HTS, which was al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria, the report said.
A senior delegation of US diplomats on Friday arrived in Syria to speak directly to the representatives of HTS, which is designated a terrorist group by Washington.
Is Seeking to Stop a War a Crime?
Whistleblowers and other government activists need to be heard
By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • December 18, 2024
The early November detention of Asif Rahman, a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer, indicted in a federal national security court in the Eastern District of Virginia on two counts of “willful retention and transmission of national defense information under the Espionage Act,” was largely downplayed in the national media. He was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on Tuesday November 5th at the US Embassy in Phnom Penh in Cambodia where he was stationed and was sent to appear in the nearest federal court in Guam on Thursday the 7th to be charged. After his initial court appearance and indictment, Rahman, was transferred to a federal prison in Virginia.
Rahman was a CIA analyst with a top-secret clearance that gave him access to the classified material that passed through the Agency’s Cambodia Station, which would have included much of the routine collection and dissemination of information on developments in Asia. Rahman allegedly selected one report containing two files relating to plans by Israel to attack Iran, which he then placed on an Iranian frequented site on the Telegram messaging app called the “Middle East Spectator,” which in turn claimed that the information came from a Pentagon source. After being posted it attracted a considerable audience, including US security monitors, numerous Iranians and, inevitably, the Israelis. The two top secret documents were marked as having been produced by the US government’s National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency. They included satellite imagery from October 15th and 16th that showed that Israel was moving Air Force military assets preparatory to conducting a military strike on Iran. Bear in mind that Israel has long sought to eliminate Iran as an adversary in the Middle East region they share, up to and including assassination of Iranian scientists and government officials and air attacks on targets in places like Syria that have been regarded as Iranian allies. Iran, for its part, has never attacked Israel prior to recent developments relating to the Gaza conflict.
The US government declared the leak of the classified files to be “deeply disturbing” and investigators who finally focused on Rahman declared that he might have been “ideologically” motivated to expose the information. Rahman has declared himself to be not guilty and as the case relates to intelligence on a non-allied foreign country’s military making preparations for war it raises some ethical problems as well as political issues connected to Israel’s unofficial special relationship with the United States government. It is, for example, not normal for someone detained for leaking classified information to be imprisoned as the preparations for trial are underway unless they are likely to flee jurisdiction. Rahman is from a prominent and wealthy family based in Vienna Virginia and his father Muhit Rahman and lawyer Amy Jeffress sought to have him stay at home with family in custodial pretrial, which is normal, but a ruling by US District Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles overruled a magistrate who said a week before that Rahman could be free of additional restrictions including detention while he is awaited his trial. Jeffress has indicated that she will be appealing the detention order which was restored by Giles.
In the event, Israel decided to proceed with its plans and carried out the attack targeting Iran’s air defense systems and missile manufacturing facilities in late October. Citing no actual evidence, court papers related to the case reveal that the US government claims the leak of the files caused Israel to delay its attack plans. Prosecutor Troy Edwards said the volatile nature of the developing situation in the Middle East made the leak especially dangerous. He explained that “It is hard to overstate what other circumstances present graver risks of danger to human life than unilaterally deciding to transmitting information related to plans for kinetic military action between two countries.”
Actually, stopping the planned “kinetic action” is the solution if one wants to save lives. Edwards’ line of reasoning, encouraging one side to proceed, could be considered to be the reverse of what might be true if one is truly seeking to mitigate the “danger to human life.” While it is unquestionably true that a government employee who takes classified information and shares it is committing a serious crime under the Espionage Act as well as other legislation, one might argue that Rahman, if actually guilty as charged and convicted, may have been responding to what he might have considered to be mitigating circumstances. By exposing information on Israeli plans to attack Iran he might have believed that he was actually saving many lives as well as avoiding an escalation of a developing major war in the Middle East. He may have revealed information that the US government considered to be classified due to the way it was obtained by satellite but which, apart from that fact, did not in any way impact on the national security of the United States. Quite the contrary, as it would be quite plausible to argue that the United States would have been dragged into any conflict escalated by Israel against Iran, which does not in any way threaten the US, and which would serve no American national interest. Examining the leak from that perspective it would be quite reasonable to argue that Rahman, if he is guilty of mishandling the classified information, was trying to avert escalating a war that would quite plausibly do damage to all countries involved, including the United States and Israel.
The Rahman case is just one more indication of how anything having to do with Israel is not quite treated by government and media in the same fashion as for any other country. It is clearly a response to the immense power of the Israel Lobby in the United States. There is a strong tendency by the US to always defer to actions and behavior that Israel exhibits while also giving the Jewish state a pass when the results are awful or even genocidal as they are in Gaza. And there is a certain irony in how it all plays out going in the other direction. Israel, in fact, has a history of actively spying against the United States without any real consequences to make it pay a price for such behavior. The most devastating spy ever to steal American defense secrets was Jonathan Pollard, a Jewish civilian employee of the US Navy, who stole whole rooms full of classified information in the 1980s, including the beyond top secret National Security Agency‘s ten-volume manual on how the US gathers its signal intelligence, to include the technical details of how the US collected information on its actual enemies during the Cold War, revealing aspects of US intelligence gathering’s “sources and methods.” The defense information went to Israel where it was used in part to trade for visas from Moscow so Russian Jews could emigrate, certainly arguably a good cause, but paid for by damaging US security. Other US classified information went from Tel Aviv to China. Condemned to a life prison sentence, Pollard actually spent years in jail, where, in 1995, he became an Israeli citizen, but he was eventually released under parole in 2015 requiring him to stay in the United States. The parole requirement was canceled by President Donald Trump and Pollard immediately returned to Israel where he was celebrated as a hero. So much for Israel as America’s good friend and ally.
By another definition, Rahman, even if found guilty as charged over the sharing of classified documents, might easily be viewed as a whistleblower, revealing information that the United States government had collected on a foreign government that might lead to a war and many deaths. Rahman may have believed that the exposure of the war plans would make Israel pause and reconsider. And maybe it would also lead the United States to also reexamine its often touted “ironclad” support of everything that Israel does as excessively risky in a volatile part of the world where Washington has considerable real interests in terms of energy issues and national security.
If Rahman were to consider himself a whistleblower acting as he did as a matter of conscience, he would not be the first CIA officer to do so. John Kiriakou was an analyst and later a case officer and counterterrorism specialist for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) who worked in the Middle East, Pakistan and Greece. After leaving the Agency he became a senior investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and later a consultant for ABC News, after which he became the operating manager of a political risk analysis consulting firm in Arlington Virginia. To John’s credit, he became the first US government official to confirm, during an interview with a reporter in December 2007, that waterboarding, which was simulated drowning, was routinely used to interrogate terrorist suspects, which he described as torture. One victim was reportedly waterboarded 183 times in a secret prison.
In Kiriakou’s case, as it was and still is illegal for the US government to torture people to extort a confession, the same Virginia court that is trying Rahman had to avoid allowing the potential war crimes issue to surface. So on April 5, 2012, Kiriakou was indicted, not for exposing torture, but rather for one count of violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, three counts of violating the Espionage Act, and one count of “making false statements” for lying to the Agency’s Publications Review Board regarding a book that John was writing. Kiriakou pleaded not guilty and was released on bail. His time in court began on September 12th, 2012, at the District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. It was conducted as a closed hearing in line with the Classified Information Procedures Act. On October 22, 2012, Kiriakou agreed to a plea bargain of guilty to one count of passing classified information to the media, violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act and thereby avoiding a formal trial. All other charges were dropped. On January 25th, 2013, John Kiriakou was sentenced to 30 months in a federal prison. On February 3rd, 2015, Kiriakou was released to serve a final three months under house arrest at his home in Virginia. Following his release, Kiriakou said his case was not about leaking information but about exposing torture, continuing, “and I would do it all over again.”
Kiriakou, to his immense credit, never walked away from what he did, declaring firmly that the torture regime and the lies that supported it was wrong, both illegal and immoral. Was Asif Rahman a whistleblower like Kiriakou? The answer to that depends on one’s point of view as he might have been seeking to stop a war rather than start one. He may have thought that it was something that his conscience and sense of shared humanity obligated him to do without regard for the possible consequences to himself. We will see how he defends himself when he finally appears before the judges. It will possibly be a very interesting discussion about America’s values as a nation vis-à-vis the questionable behavior of the state of Israel, but instead of listening to what Rahman has to say, the public will likely be hearing something like this from those in government as echoed by the captive media: Michael Waltz, Trump’s foreign policy advisor nominee recently said “When [Secretary of State] Blinken touched down in Israel yesterday, I hope he apologized to Bibi for leaking their battle plans, and told the Israelis that they were right all along. Because the Ayatollah is in hiding right now, not because of Biden, but because of Bibi.” The sad reality is that Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has overwhelmed Joe Biden and will likely do the same to Donald Trump, has been allowed to become the prime architect of the shambles that the Middle East has become with no one but a handful of whistleblowers seeking to restore sanity.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected].
USS Harry S. Truman Leads American Naval Deployment to Middle East
Sputnik – 15.12.2024
The USS Harry S. Truman Carrier Strike Group arrived in the Middle East on December 14, entering the US Central Command’s (CENTCOM) area of responsibility. The deployment was announced by CENTCOM on the social media platform X.
The group includes the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman, Carrier Air Wing 1 with nine aviation squadrons, the guided-missile cruiser USS Gettysburg (Ticonderoga class), and two guided-missile destroyers, USS Stout and USS Jason Dunham (Arleigh Burke class).
Earlier in November, US F-15E Strike Eagle fighter jets were deployed to the region from the United Kingdom, reinforcing the American military presence in the Middle East.
The deployment comes amid heightened regional tensions and US President-elect Donald Trump’s earlier remarks promising to avoid “starting wars” once he officially takes office.
Israel Gives Biden His Marching Orders
Syrian land will be annexed into “Greater” Israel
By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • December 13, 2024
My former CIA colleague Larry Johnson has a real ability to clarify the significance of the constantly growing deep dark hole that Joe “Mumbles” Biden, he of failing mental capacity, has hurled the American people into. Larry wrote on December 12th that “There is still plenty of time before Donald Trump is inaugurated for Joe Biden’s team of cretins to start World War III. I think the biggest risk is that Israel may be emboldened to attack Iran and try to destroy sites, and may be encouraged to do so by the Biden lackeys. In short, American interference, at the behest of Netanyahu’s Israel, has left the Middle East in ruins, with over a million dead and open wars raging in Libya, Sudan, Somalia, Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine, and with Iran on the brink of a nuclear arsenal, being pushed against its own inclinations to this eventuality. The collapse of the Assad regime has prompted a punishing military response from Israel, which has launched airstrikes at military targets across Syria and deployed ground troops both into and beyond a demilitarized buffer zone for the first time in 50 years.”
Given the destruction and partitioning of Syria, it has become impossible to consider United States foreign policy without some acceptance that it is driven and, in a sense, directed by Israel and Israel’s formidable domestic lobby in the US. “The Lobby,” as it is commonly referred to, controls both Congress and the White House on key issues and manages the media narrative in such a fashion as to make Israel the permanent victim, never the aggressor. Even though Israel is now marching in triumph across what remains of Syria and has indicated that it will be sticking around as an occupier, the move is being described as “temporary” and “defensive” by White House spokesmen. The Lobby’s success rests on the corruption that lots of money can buy, obvious to nearly everyone in politics, but a forbidden topic, sometimes referred to as an antisemitic “trope,” i.e. “Jews and money.” Israel’s role in managing the Joe Bidens and Donald Trumps is largely exercised in the broader Middle East but it also includes passionately supporting Volodymyr Zelensky’s Ukraine, a process derived in part from Jewish mythologizing and obtaining revenge for the alleged “pogroms” carried out in imperial Russia. Subsequent Jewish dominance of the Soviet intelligence and security services, which saw the killing of millions of Christians in Russia, Ukraine and Eastern Europe, are carefully excluded from the narrative.
In the latest bit of “mowing the grass” by the Israeli military, the country’s new Defense Minister Israel Katz told the press that the Israel Air Force (IAF) had carried out more than 480 strikes across Syria during the two days after the initial invasion, deliberately destroying most of Syria’s strategic weapon stockpiles. Meanwhile, the Israeli navy totally destroyed the Syrian fleet based at Latakia overnight. Katz hailed the operation as “a great success.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, on the day before, had called the rapid defeat of Bashar al-Assad’s regime as “a new and dramatic chapter… The collapse of the Syrian regime is a direct result of the severe blows with which we have struck Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran… we are changing the face of the Middle East.”
When informed of the initial invasion of al-Assad’s Syria by Israeli, Turkish, insurgent and US forces, Donald Trump said that the conflict was none of our business and it would be best to keep out of it. Hopefully that will be the policy after January 20th’s inauguration, but one recalls that Trump’s record of pandering to Israel is almost as bad as Biden’s, and he was the one who decided (admittedly under pressure from the Pentagon) to continue in 2017 the military occupation of a third of Syria that included its oil resources and its best agricultural land. Add in the crippling US and European sanctions on Damascus and one might argue that since that time Syrians have been poor and starving, causing refugee flows and hostility towards the al-Assad government that contributed to the success of the recent uprising.
To be sure, many Syrians are celebrating the fall of an admittedly repressive, authoritarian, and corrupt Bashar al-Assad government. But other Syrians, particularly from hitherto protected minority groups like Christians, Alawites and Shiites, are now living in fear of or fleeing from the violent sectarian insurgents that have taken the place of President al-Assad. Christian Churches have already been looted and desecrated and warned not to hold Christmas services, not to sponsor Christmas parades, and not to display the image of St. Nicholas.
To be sure, fearing what is to come is legitimate as the “rebel” leader of the al-Qaeda derived Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) Terror group, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, who now goes by his given name Ahmed al-Shara, is a founder of al-Qaeda in Syria, al-Nusra, and a former deputy to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. The US State Department has listed him as a terrorist as well as HTS as a terrorist group, and has placed a $10 million bounty on al-Jolani’s head, which presumably will soon be removed by Joe Biden. There is plenty of blood on al-Jolani’s hands and little in the way of evidence that he will not opt to slaughter those who he sees as his enemies, much of the killing being guided by the extreme religious groups that make up his followers. Indeed, there are already reports of group killings, including numerous soldiers in the Syrian Arab Army who surrendered rather that fight the insurgents.
Al-Jolani now claims that his extremism was just a “phase” and he has several times confirmed that he wants good relations with Israel, clearly a condition imposed by the US to allow him to remain in power. He has even suggested that Israeli air support enabled his warriors to move quickly from their bases in the north to Damascus. But al-Jolani has never actually apologized for or disowned the atrocities committed on his watch in 2011-3 when he was actively killing fellow Syrians. This includes August 2013 massacres in some of the Alawite areas of Latakia, which included “the systematic killing of entire families,” an international investigation later determined. One observer also reported that the insurgents were devoted to “sectarian mass murder” This is the legacy of the new “inclusive” government in Syria. According to one other ominous report, it appears that Sharia law has already been announced by the newly installed justice minister, Shadi Alwaisi.
So, what is in it for the United States? Nothing but a curt thank you from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who clearly connived with Joe Biden’s Special Envoy Amos Hochstein, an Israeli by birth, to set the ball rolling towards Syria through adroit use of an attack on southern Lebanon to disarm Hezbollah followed by a phony ceasefire in Lebanon that gave Netanyahu a free hand and empowered Israel to invade and overthrow its neighbor Syria, parts of which will undoubtedly be annexed to help create Eretz or “Greater” Israel. It was and is all part of a plan by the US and Israel to reshape the Middle East to benefit the Jewish state and you can bet that Iran is the next target. And a delusional Joe Biden took credit for it all in his usual haphazard way, claiming after the regime change that Assad’s “main allies” — Iran, Hezbollah, and Russia — “are far weaker today than they were when I took office.” Their inability to save Assad was “a direct result of the blows that Ukraine, Israel have delivered upon their own self-defense, with unflagging support of the United States.”
Sure Joe, what bullshit. At the end of the day, to bring down Syria the US spent billions of dollars arming an insurgency that they knew was dominated by al-Qaeda in a government replacement scheme that benefited only Israel and Turkey and which targeted a country that in no way threatened the United States. It sure makes sense to me and I hope you will be comforted by it when you are hauled off to prison after you leave office and are prosecuted for exceeding your constitutional authority by involving the United States in two unnecessary wars. Some might call it treason!
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected].
OCCUPIED: Former IDF Volunteer to Chair House Foreign Affairs Committee, Trump Approves
By Frankie Stockes | SPN | December 12, 2024
At the behest of President-elect Donald Trump, GOP House Leadership has named Israeli-funded-and-tied Congressman Brian Mast as the new House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman, marking the first known time in American history that a veteran of a foreign military has led a congressional committee. Last year, Mast also became the first known member of Congress to wear the uniform of a foreign military to work at the U.S. Capitol, when he donned his IDF uniform in support of Israel’s campaign in Gaza, following the outbreak of war.
Assuming he’s confirmed by the GOP House Conference, Rep. Mast (R-FL) will succeed Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX) as the Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman, giving the staunchly pro-Israel Mast jurisdiction over ALL of America’s foreign relations that come through Congress, including war powers, treaties, and the deployment of American troops overseas.
These duties are especially relevant to Mast’s background and loyalties, as he is a staunch opponent of a two-state solution in the Middle East, supporting Israel’s continued seizure of Palestinian land and the expansion of Israel’s borders.
Mast has even cheerled the wholesale slaughter of Palestinian civilians, telling the media in 2023 that he “would encourage the other side to not so lightly throw around the idea of innocent Palestinian civilians… I don’t think we would so lightly throw around the term innocent Nazi civilians during World War II.”
The Israeli press has rejoiced in Mast’s installation as chairman, with The Times of Israel calling him a “pugnacious defender of Israel in [America’s] Congress” in an article published this week.
“The US House of Representatives elected Florida Representative Brian Mast, a zealous pro-Israel Republican who has volunteered with a group that assists the Israeli army, to chair the powerful House Foreign Affairs Committee,” The Times of Israel report went on, before revealing that President-elect Trump is behind the pending installation of Brian Mast.
“Insiders say that President-elect Donald Trump lobbied the Republican Steering Committee, which names committee chairs, to choose Mast.”
Mast, a self-proclaimed Christian and a U.S. Army veteran who lost both of his legs in the Middle East, later volunteered to serve the IDF and says on his campaign website that his worldview was shaped at Israeli “Shabbat tables.”
“I worked to strengthen the relationship between our two countries, as both a private citizen and as a soldier, because the national security of the United States is directly tied to the strength of Israel,” says Mast, who also says he will “advance policies” that are favorable to Israel and even use the force of the United States government to ensure that the American People are FORCED to support Israel.
“I will do all I can to put an end to the dangerous Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement,” he says.
Mast’s ties to Israel go well beyond serving the IDF and since his political career began, he’s received more than half a million dollars from the Israel lobby, with AIPAC holding the distinction of being his top donor.
HTS officials order Palestinian resistance factions to disarm, close bases in Syria: Report
The Cradle | December 13, 2024
Representatives from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the new ruling extremist organization in Damascus, informed the representatives of the Palestinian factions in Syria they would no longer be allowed to possess any weapons, training camps, or military headquarters, Ibrahim Amin of Al-Akhbar reported on 13 December.
Amin further reports that the factions must dissolve their military formations as soon as possible in exchange for political and charitable work under the roof of the new Syrian state.
Palestinian factions, including Fatah, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC), the Saiqa, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) Martyr Ali Aswad Brigad, have had a presence in Syria as guests of the government for decades.
A source in the PFLP-GC revealed to Erem News that the factions were informed of the decision in meeting headed by Ahmed al-Sharaa, also known as Abu Muhammad al-Julani, in the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp in the capital, Damascus.
Palestinians came to Syria as refugees during the 1948 Nakba. That year, pre-state Zionist militias ethnically cleansed some 750,000 Palestinians from the land that became the state of Israel, making them refugees in neighboring countries.
Many Palestinian refugees settled in Syria in the Yarmouk Camp on the southern outskirts of Damascus. The camp became the capital of the Palestinian diaspora.
The Palestinian factions formed armed resistance groups and provided manpower for the Palestinian Liberation Army (PLA), which served as an auxiliary to the Syrian Army.
Amin notes that the practical result of these steps taken by HTS, led by former Al-Qaeda leader Abu Mohammad al-Julani, who now goes by his real name Ahmad al-Sharaa, is that the Palestinians are prohibited from using Syria as a headquarters or passage for any activity against Israel.
In 2012, the predecessor to HTS, the Nusra Front, invaded and occupied Yarmouk, seeking to use it as the gateway to conquer Damascus. The camp was largely destroyed over the following years in the course of the fighting. ISIS also occupied the camp and fought against the Syrian army and Palestinian factions there.
Amin says that although the new Syrian government does not talk about establishing relations with Israel, its representatives talk about taking practical steps to prevent any existing or potential resistance against Israel from Syrian territory.
He writes that Israel may seek to force the Lebanese government to take similar actions against Palestinian factions in the refugee camps in Lebanon.