#iran naval forces

[workersolidarity]

🇮🇷⚔️⛴️ 🚨

IRANIAN NAVY SEIZES GAS TANKER SAILING THROUGH THE PERSIAN GULF

Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. (IRGC) announced it has seized a foreign gas tanker vessel shipping what Iranian authorities said was over 2-million litres of "smuggled" gas thorough the southern Persian Gulf Sunday.

Speaking with reporters, Iran's Commander of the IRGC's Second Naval Zone, Heidar Honarian Mojarad, stated that "this morning, a foreign vessel with the flag of a country from Oceania was identified with two million liters of smuggled diesel."

The naval Commander said that the vessel was seized by the IRGC "in accordance with a court order off the coast of the southern Iranian port city of Bushehr," adding that 14 crew members, two of whom were from Asian nations, had been detained and arrested by by local Iranian authorities.

Commander Mojarad also told reporters the confiscated vessel had been handed over to Iran's National Iranian Oil Refining and Distribution Company in the Bushehr Province, adding that the Iranian Navy had used state-of-the-art detection tools to monitor all movement through the Persian Gulf.

#source

@WorkerSolidarityNews

[zvaigzdelasas]

When he approved a campaign to reopen shipping in the Red Sea by bombing the Houthi militant group into submission, President Trump wanted to see results within 30 days of the initial strikes two months ago.

By Day 31, Mr. Trump, ever leery of drawn-out military entanglements in the Middle East, demanded a progress report, according to administration officials.

But the results were not there. The United States had not even established air superiority over the Houthis. Instead, what was emerging after 30 days of a stepped-up campaign against the Yemeni group was another expensive but inconclusive American military engagement in the region.

The Houthis shot down several American MQ-9 Reaper drones and continued to fire at naval ships in the Red Sea, including an American aircraft carrier. And the U.S. strikes burned through weapons and munitions at a rate of about $1 billion in the first month alone.

It did not help that two $67 million F/A-18 Super Hornets from America’s flagship aircraft carrier tasked with conducting strikes against the Houthis accidentally tumbled off the carrier into the sea.

By then, Mr. Trump had had enough.

Steve Witkoff, his Middle East envoy, who was already in Omani-mediated nuclear talks with Iran, reported that Omani officials had suggested what could be a perfect offramp for Mr. Trump on the separate issue of the Houthis, according to American and Arab officials. The United States would halt the bombing campaign and the militia would no longer target American ships in the Red Sea, but without any agreement to stop disrupting shipping that the group deemed helpful to Israel.

Announcing the cessation of hostilities, the president sounded almost admiring about the militant Islamist group, despite vowing earlier that it would be “completely annihilated.”

“We hit them very hard and they had a great ability to withstand punishment,” Mr. Trump said. “You could say there was a lot of bravery there.” He added that “they gave us their word that they wouldn’t be shooting at ships anymore, and we honor that.”

Whether that proves to be true remains to be seen. The Houthis fired a ballistic missile at Israel on Friday, triggering air raid sirens that drove people off beaches in Tel Aviv. The missile was intercepted by Israeli air defenses.[...]

Mr. Trump’s new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Dan Caine, was concerned that an extended campaign against the Houthis would drain military resources away from the Asia-Pacific region. His predecessor, Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., shared that view before he was fired in February.

By May 5, Mr. Trump was ready to move on, according to interviews with more than a dozen current and former officials with knowledge of the discussions in the president’s national security circle. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the internal discussions.[...]

General Kurilla had been gunning for the Houthis since November 2023, when the group began attacking ships passing through the Red Sea as a way to target Israel for its invasion of Gaza.

But President Joseph R. Biden Jr. thought that engaging the Houthis in a forceful campaign would elevate their status on the global stage. Instead, he authorized more limited strikes against the group. But that failed to stop the Houthis.

Now General Kurilla had a new commander in chief.

He proposed an eight- to 10-month campaign in which Air Force and Navy warplanes would take out Houthi air defense systems. Then, he said, U.S. forces would mount targeted assassinations modeled on Israel’s recent operation against Hezbollah, three U.S. officials said.

Saudi officials backed General Kurilla’s plan and provided a target list of 12 Houthi senior leaders whose deaths, they said, would cripple the movement. But the United Arab Emirates, another powerful U.S. ally in the region, was not so sure. The Houthis had weathered years of bombings by the Saudis and the Emiratis.

By early March, Mr. Trump had signed off on part of General Kurilla’s plan — airstrikes against Houthi air defense systems and strikes against the group’s leaders. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth named the campaign Operation Rough Rider.

At some point, General Kurilla’s eight- to 10-month campaign was given just 30 days to show results.

In those first 30 days, the Houthis shot down seven American MQ-9 drones (around $30 million each), hampering Central Command’s ability to track and strike the militant group. Several American F-16s and an F-35 fighter jet were nearly struck by Houthi air defenses, making real the possibility of American casualties, multiple U.S. officials said.

That possibility became reality when two pilots and a flight deck crew member were injured in the two episodes involving the F/A-18 Super Hornets, which fell into the Red Sea from the aircraft carrier Harry S. Truman within 10 days of each other.[...]

the cost of the operation was staggering. The Pentagon had deployed two aircraft carriers, additional B-2 bombers and fighter jets, as well as Patriot and THAAD air defenses, to the Middle East, officials acknowledged privately. By the end of the first 30 days of the campaign, the cost had exceeded $1 billion, the officials said.

So many precision munitions were being used, especially advanced long-range ones, that some Pentagon contingency planners were growing increasingly concerned about overall stocks and the implications for any situation in which the United States might have to ward off an attempted invasion of Taiwan by China.

And through it all, the Houthis were still shooting at vessels and drones, fortifying their bunkers and moving weapons stockpiles underground.

The White House began pressing Central Command for metrics of success in the campaign. The command responded by providing data showing the number of munitions dropped. The intelligence community said that there was “some degradation” of Houthi capability, but argued that the group could easily reconstitute, officials said.

Senior national security officials considered two pathways. They could ramp up operations for up to another month and then conduct “freedom of navigation” exercises in the Red Sea using two carrier groups, the Carl Vinson and the Truman. If the Houthis did not fire on the ships, the Trump administration would declare victory.

Or, officials said, the campaign could be extended to give Yemeni government forces time to restart a drive to push the Houthis out of the capital and key ports.

In late April, Mr. Hegseth organized a video call with Saudi and Emirati officials and senior officials from the State Department and the White House in an effort to come up with a sustainable way forward and an achievable state for the campaign that they could present to the president.

The group was not able to reach a consensus, U.S. officials said.[...]

Also skeptical of a longer campaign were Vice President JD Vance; the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard; Secretary of State Marco Rubio; and Mr. Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles. Mr. Hegseth, people with knowledge of the discussions said, went back and forth, arguing both sides.

But Mr. Trump had become the most important skeptic.

On April 28, the Truman was forced to make a hard turn at sea to avoid incoming Houthi fire, several U.S. officials said. The move contributed to the loss of one of the Super Hornets, which was being towed at the time and fell overboard. That same day, dozens of people were killed in a U.S. attack that hit a migrant facility controlled by the Houthis, according to the group and aid officials.

Then on May 4, a Houthi ballistic missile evaded Israel’s aerial defenses and struck near Ben-Gurion International Airport outside Tel Aviv.

On Tuesday, two pilots aboard another Super Hornet, again on the Truman, were forced to eject after their fighter jet failed to catch the steel cable on the carrier deck, sending the plane into the Red Sea.

By then, Mr. Trump had decided to declare the operation a success.

Houthi officials and their supporters swiftly declared victory, too, spreading a social media hashtag that read “Yemen defeats America.”

12 May 25

[afloweroutofstone]

The inevitable downfall of the violent, dictatorial, neoliberal government of Assad is itself a moment worthy of celebration; yet the future of Syria is now up in the air. The hopes of the Syrian people now depend on the answers to many questions that we cannot conclusively predict right now. These unknowns include:

How will HTS function as a national government? Has their signaling towards a more moderate strand of Islamism in recent years been sincere, or was it just a show to allow them to function as the center of power in a rebel movement ranging from jihadists to secular socialists? Are they either motivated to or capable of making good on their promises of reconstruction and national institution-building out of the ashes of what now constitutes Syrian politics? Will they be a theocratic monolith like the House of Saud, a weak pluralist semi-democracy like Lebanon, a diverse semi-autocracy like Turkey, something more reminiscent of Assad’s secular nationalism, something else entirely?

Will HTS be able to establish unified control of the security situation? There is currently a lack of centralized authority, a rapid formation of new organized criminal syndicates trying to either loot or establish control over slivers of territory, and dozens of ideologically-motivated armed rebel groups with only loose loyalties to the HTS government. The Taliban government in Afghanistan is still fighting Islamic State rebels for full territorial control to this day. How long will this fighting last in Syria, and what forms will it take?

If HTS can establish control, will they be willing to be restrained in their monopoly on violence, or will they attempt to rule purely by force? This can often be a make-or-break moment for the evolution of new post-war governments.

How will the interventionist powers with a vested interest in Syria react? Russia owns a naval base and just lost an ally; the US owns a chunk of Syrian territory; Israel is already making offensive moves; Turkey is now the closest ally and sponsor of the new government; and Iran has its own proxy forces in the conflict (not to mention supply lines to other proxies in the Middle East). Is Turkey getting its first puppet state in the region (besides Northern Cyprus)? Will the new Syria be pressed in from all sides? Is it even possible for an independent Syria to emerge from this?

How aggressively will Israel pursue control over the Golan Heights? What has long been a frozen conflict is already turning hot now that Israel's sending troops in to expand its effective lines of control and double down on its (illegitimate, illegal) occupation of the area. What does HTS do in response, and more generally, how do they deal with the fact that they're now neighbors with Israel?

There are already some early signs of refugee inflows returning from the diaspora-- how widespread will this be, how quick will it be, and how it we be distributed geographically? Will states with large refugee populations pressure them into returning? There are perhaps 10-15 million Syrian people living abroad, with more than five million just in the countries immediately surrounding the nation- what happens to all of them?

Will the Kurds be allowed to participate in the post-war political process? This might seem to imply some form of formal break with the PKK in order to appease Turkey enough to participate in the official deliberations on Syria’s future. I'd be interested to hear what kind of arrangement they might pursue- maybe some form of autonomous zone comparable to that of Iraqi Kurdistan?

Will there be retaliatory violence against the Alawite minority who were favored by Assad’s dictatorship? Against any of the other ethno-religious minorities who faced violence by virtually every side of this conflict? Wars of this intensity do not vanish overnight, especially in a nation like Syria which is fractured along ethnic, religious, and political lines. HTS has made a point of noting that they believe in protecting minorities in Syria, but the test will be in how they now treat Kurds, Yazidis, Alawites, Druze, etc., etc.

[stillnaomi]

10 points on the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s Syria from Vijay Prashad

1. The Syrian state had been devastated by the war from 2011 to 2014, and then by the sanctions placed on the country by the United States and its allies. The Syrian Arab Army (the official state army) had never fully recovered in the aftermath of the major fighting and was incapable of taking back the main cities of Hama, Homs, and Aleppo.

2. The Israeli bombardment of Syrian military facilities had weakened the Syrian armed forces’ logistical and ordinance capabilities. These attacks had been sustained and painful for the Syrian armed forces.

3. Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the assassination of Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah had weakened the ability of Hezbollah to operate even within Lebanon’s south, which forced the recent ‘ceasefire’ agreement with Israel. This demonstrated that Hezbollah was not in any position to enter Syria again to defend the Syrian government against any armed incursion on the Hama to Damascus road (highway M5).

4. The attacks on Iranian supply depots and military facilities in Syria as well as the attacks by Israel on Iran had prevented any build up of Iranian forces to defend the Syrian government. The weakening of Hezbollah also weakened Iran’s role in the region.

5. The nearly three years of conflict in Ukraine had certainly denied Syria the ability to call upon further Russian assistance for the protection of Damascus or for the Russian naval base in Latakia.

6. Therefore, Syria’s government no longer had its Iranian and Russian military allies for assistance against the reinforced rebels.

7. The Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, formed in 2017 out of the al-Qaeda formations, drew together various military forces from Turkey to the Uyghurs – with a large number of other al-Qaeda influenced fighters – and built up its forces in Idlib over the past decade. HTS has received aid and support from Turkey, but also covertly from Israel (this information came to me from a highly placed intelligence official in Turkey).

8. What will the new HTS-led government do regarding the many social minorities in Syria? What will the new HTS-led government do regarding the Golan Heights and Israel? How will the new HTS-government regard the Israeli military incursion in Quneitra?

9. This story is not over yet. There will be much further unrest in the country led by ISIS as well as the Kurdish groups in the north; already Turkish-backed groups are in combat against the Kurdish YPG (People’s Defense Units) and PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) forces in Manbij; US forces are already in eastern Syria, where they say that they will remain as a buffer against ISIS (and will therefore retain control of the oil); Israel also announced that it took over the Golan buffer zone. There will be tension between the governments of Turkey and the US regarding what the new HTS-led government must, and must not do.

10. I hope very much that the statements made by Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, that retribution must not be the new culture, will come true. The real fear is regarding the treatment of the minority populations. There is no word yet if the militia groups in Iraq will enter Syria. Much of this depends on what happens to places such as the Sayyida Zaynab shrine in Damascus.

[mariacallous]

Russia—and China—had seemed to benefit from the Houthis’ attacks on shipping in the Red Sea because the militia spared their ships. But it turns out that Moscow has been more than a passive beneficiary. As the Wall Street Journal recently reported, Russia has been providing the Houthis with targeting data for their attacks. Now that Russia has crossed this red line of actively aiding attacks on Western shipping, other hostile states may start sharing military-grade data with proxies of their choice.

One of the U.N. Security Council’s five permanent members is actively supporting attacks on global shipping. It’s a stark violation of the maritime rules, which grant merchant vessels the freedom and right to sail not only on the high seas but also through other countries’ waters and through internationally recognized straits without having to fear, let alone experience, acts of aggression.

The Houthis, you’ll remember, began their campaign against merchant vessels in the Red Sea last November, when they struck a string of vessels linked to Israel, supposedly in support of the people of Gaza. When the United States and Britain, and then the European Union, intervened in support of shipping in the Red Sea by sending naval vessels to protect merchant ships (of all nationalities), the group began attacking ships linked to these countries, too.

And so it has continued. Each month, the group launches a handful of attacks against ships in the Red Sea. Mostly, the Western naval vessels manage to thwart the attacks, but several merchant ships have been struck, and two of them have sunk. But bar a Russian shadow vessel struck—probably accidentally—this May, Russian and Chinese vessels have been spared.

The group has been so successful thanks to missiles and sophisticated drones provided by Iran. Having high-performance weaponry, though, brings little benefit if one strikes the wrong target, and the Houthis lack the technology that would allow them to discern a ship’s coordinates. That’s where, it has now emerged, Russia has turned out to be a most useful ally.

Russian coordinates have thus helped the Houthis keep up their attacks even as Western naval vessels have been trying to foil them. “Targeting covers a wide range of complexity,” said Duncan Potts, a retired vice admiral in the U.K. Royal Navy. “Hitting a static target on land can be as easy as using information on Google Maps. At the other extreme, you have mobile entities like ships at sea. Hitting them requires much higher-grade, precise, real-time targeting data that uses information from different sources. Such targeting is quite complicated even for Western navies.”

Since ships are mobile, the targeting data typically needs real-time information. Though details of the data provided by the Russians are naturally unavailable, it’s highly likely that real-time data is included. Either way, Potts said, “this development is certainly significant and notable, but it doesn’t surprise me.”

The fact that Russia is giving the Houthis specific information about vessels’ exact presence in the Red Sea is making this strategic waterway even more dangerous for Western-linked ships. “If you’re a Western-linked merchant ship traveling through the Red Sea with whatever naval escort is available, you’ll not be signaling your position by using AIS [automatic identification systems, a maritime GPS],” said Nils Christian Wang, a retired rear admiral and former chief of the Danish Navy. “That means the Houthis would struggle to know what ships are arriving and where they are, so this data would be extremely useful.” (Western naval forces in the Red Sea escort vessels regardless of their flag registration and country of ownership.)

It’s not exactly clear what kind of targeting data the Russians have been providing. “The Russians might help the Houthis get the right maritime picture to make sure they don’t hit Russian ships, but they may also be providing data to help the Houthis hit Western targets,” Wang said. “It’s one thing to give data to help protect your own ships, another to give them data that help them attack Western ships.”

Either way, the group’s attacks have already caused a dramatic drop in traffic in the Red Sea and the Suez Canal to the north. Between May 2023 and this May, traffic through the Suez Canal plummeted by 64.3 percent, the Egyptian newspaper Al-Mal reported. The number of ships transiting the canal monthly dropped from 2,396 in May 2023 to 1,111 this May.

Most Western-linked vessels instead sail around the Cape of Good Hope, but this entails an additional 10-12 days’ sailing and a 50 percent cost increase. Only a small number of Western shipping lines and insurers still dare to send their vessels through the Suez Canal and the Red Sea—but Western naval vessels have to remain there to provide some degree of order. In recent months, the Houthis have been attacking these ships, too.

Russia’s provision of targeting data may be followed by yet more support for the Houthis. According to Disruptive Industries (DI), a U.K. technology company that specializes in the closed-source discovery of global risks, there is extensive and unseen Russian activity in Houthi-held parts of Yemen, and there has been for some time. (Full disclosure: I’m a member of DI’s advisory board.)

Sharing targeting data is directly participating in a conflict. That’s why Western nations have refrained from sharing targeting data with Ukraine, a nation defending itself against an invader. In September, Russian President Vladimir Putin himself weighed in on the issue. Western approval for the use of Western-provided long-range missiles that could strike Russia would mean involvement in the conflict because Western military personnel would have to provide the targeting data. “It is a question of deciding whether or not NATO countries are directly involved in a military conflict,” Putin told Russian state television.

By that point, Russia was already sharing targeting data with the Houthis.

“The Houthis’ attacks are certainly in line with Russia’s desire to remove the world’s focus from Ukraine,” Wang said. “One almost gets the suspicion that this is part of a manuscript. It’s so much in Russia’s interest to have these attacks happen.”

Now that the Kremlin has crossed this red line in the Red Sea without being punished for it, it may decide to share targeting data with other nonstate outfits. So may other regimes. Imagine, say, a Chinese-linked militant group in Myanmar or Indonesia targeting merchant vessels in nearby waters aided by targeting data from the People’s Liberation Army Navy. Western governments, shipping companies, and underwriters will need to pay close attention.

For now, the continuing strikes against Western vessels present a massive risk for Western-linked merchant vessels in the Red Sea and the Western naval vessels that are there to protect shipping. And the discovery that Russia is providing targeting data could convince the few remaining Western shipping lines still sending vessels through the Red Sea to give up on it (and the Suez Canal) altogether. One of the oldest routes of modern shipping could be abandoned—until Russia and the Houthis are bought to heel.

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by David Litman

The arrest, detention, and pending deportation of Badar Khan Suri, an “academic” at Georgetown University, illuminate a disturbing reality about modern society. No, not about U.S. immigration policy. Rather, the situation is exposing the mainstream media’s extraordinary failure to perform basic journalism.

Consider the narrative consistently advanced in major western media outlets.

“Having a view of the ongoing conflict is not a crime,” reads one quote at the BBC. “[H]e is being punished because of the suspected views of his wife,” reads another from Politico. “[T]o his defenders, Khan Suri is an accomplished scholar whose research focuses on peacebuilding,” writes CNN. “Suri was detained because of his wife’s Palestinian heritage and the couple’s political beliefs about U.S.-Israel policy,” his lawyer claims in a Washington Post article. His arrest is part of “efforts to expel foreign nationals who participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations,” asserts The Guardian.

The gist? Khan Suri and his wife are being unfairly targeted merely for pro-Palestinian speech.

The problem? Just a few minutes of basic research uncover facts that upend the entire narrative. Yet not one of these major outlets, nor the dozens more covering the story, bothered.

In 2010, Khan Suri’s wife, Mapheze Saleh, was a part of Hamas’s Committee to Break the Siege in Gaza. Yes – Mapheze was herself a member of the internationally designated terrorist organization, providing them with her services, a fact of which she makes no secret in Arabic media outlets. Notably, the committee happened to be chaired by her father, Ahmed Yousef, a senior official in Hamas’s “foreign ministry” and adviser to Hamas’s leader, Ismail Haniyeh.

Mapheze’s role involved at least two tasks. First, she welcomed organized groups of “solidarity convoys” to the Gaza Strip. Second, she was tasked with maintaining communication with members of those convoys so as to continue feeding them Hamas propaganda.

This is how she came to first meet Badar Khan Suri, her future husband.

For context, in January 2009 Israel instituted a naval blockade on the Gaza Strip. The move, made during the first major Israel-Hamas war, came in response to the launching from Gaza of some 5,000 rockets at Israeli communities. By then, Hamas – which had violently taken over the territory in 2007 – had already been amassing an arsenal of weapons smuggled in by actors such as Iran.

With its ability to smuggle in weapons drastically curtailed, Hamas viewed the blockade as an existential threat. Hamas and its supporters thus began organizing “convoys” and “flotillas” to “break the siege.” It was this effort in which Saleh and her father, Yousef, played an important role.

In the following months, numerous ships carrying weapons attempted to break the blockade but were turned back. The most infamous attempt, which involved a flotilla that included the Mavi Marmara in May 2010, resulted in deadly violence when Israeli forces boarded to halt the vessel.

So close were IHH and Hamas that Kaya’s son, Matin, was married to Ahmed Yousef’s other daughter, Mapheze’s sister.

The convoy had been organized by Insan Hak ve Hurriyetleri Vakfi (IHH), a Turkish Islamist organization. In 2008, IHH had been designated by Israel as a terrorist organization due to its provision of material, financial, and propaganda support for Hamas. It is also a part of the Union of the Good, which is designated by the United States as “an organization created by Hamas leadership to transfer funds to the terrorist organization.” In addition to Israeli authorities, even a United Nations panel of inquiry charged with investigating the Mavi Marmara incident expressed doubts about the “true nature and objectives of the flotilla organizers, particularly IHH,” which claimed to be a “humanitarian” organization.  

IHH and Hamas’s collaboration in such efforts was well known. IHH had even established an office in Gaza, headed by a man named Muhammad Kaya, who held meetings with senior Hamas officials about providing aid to the terrorist organization and continuing to send flotillas and convoys. So close were IHH and Hamas that Kaya’s son, Matin, was married to Ahmed Yousef’s other daughter, Mapheze’s sister.

After the Mavi Marmara incident, Hamas and IHH didn’t let up, and both publicly promised to continue organizing convoys and flotillas to break the blockade preventing weapons from entering Gaza.

Among those subsequently organized by IHH was the “Asia 1 Convoy” which departed in late 2010. In addition to members of IHH, Khan Suri was among the participants. His convoy began its trek with a stop in Iran, where they met with Iranian regime officials, including Ayatollah Javadi Amoli and Ayatollah Makarem Shirazi. The convoy continued to Syria, where they were welcomed by Hamas leader abroad Khaled Mashaal, who told them, according to MEMRI: “the [only] option for liberating Palestine is resistance and jihad,” and that “Today, we will break the siege on Gaza, and tomorrow, with your help, we will liberate Palestine.”

Senior Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal speaking to the Asia 1 Convoy. Photo uncovered by MEMRI.

The convoy would also stop in Lebanon, Turkey, and Egypt before making its way into Gaza. This is when Khan Suri met Saleh. But Saleh wasn’t the only Hamas official Khan Suri met.

Publicly available images of the convoy in Gaza show Khan Suri engaging in a celebratory pose with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. Also present at some of the welcoming events for the Asia 1 Convoy were other senior terrorists, including Ahmed Yousef (Saleh’s father), Mohammed al-Hindi, the deputy secretary-general of Islamic Jihad, and Mahmoud Al-Zahar, a senior Hamas political bureau member.

Khan Suri (right) in a celebratory pose with Hamas’s then “prime minister” Ismail Haniyeh (left)

Images posted by local journalists show convoy participants holding images of Ayatollah Khomeini (the former supreme leader of Iran) and Ismail Haniyeh, wearing Hamas headbands, waving the flag of the Iranian regime, and holding posters of “martyrs” (i.e., terrorists). Convoy leaders were quoted by the press as praising the “resistance” and referring to Israel as “the usurping state.” Haniyeh himself praised the convoy as a means to undermine Israel’s blockade. Al-Hindi, the Islamic Jihad official, stressed “the path of jihad” and “resistance” to the visitors.  Zahar instructed the convoy members to “Continue to send convoys until the oppressive siege is lifted.”

This was not, as the BBC claimed, a trip that simply “brought [Khan] Suri closer to the Palestinian cause,” but a mission organized by one terrorist organization (IHH) to aid another terrorist organization (Hamas).

[dostoyevsky-official]

Retreat of Syrian Forces Threatens ‘Saigon Moment’ for Russia

Syria has partly been an ideological project for Putin. The intervention in Syria became a way for Russia to extend its vision of a multipolar world opposed to the Western liberal order, said Nicole Grajewski, fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and author of a coming book on Russia’s relationship with Iran, including in Syria. “To see Russian planes leave Syria as rebel forces move onward towards their air bases, and their assets in Damascus fall, this would be so devastating for the Russian image of itself,” she said. “It would be akin to a Saigon moment for them.” Putin’s assistance was instrumental to Assad’s survival, and showed Moscow’s allies far beyond the Middle East that Russian intervention could help push back popular uprisings, said a former Russian official. African leaders began to invite Russia, and specifically contractors from the Wagner paramilitary group who also played a critical role in Syria, to help stabilize their regimes.  Syria holds significant strategic value for Russia as well. The Khmeimim air base near the coastal city of Latakia serves as a logistical hub for flights to Libya, the Central African Republic, and Sudan, where Russian private contractors and soldiers have operated for years.  A naval base in the port city of Tartus serves as the only replenishment and repair point for the Russian navy in the Mediterranean, where it has brought in goods by bulk through the Black Sea. Tartus has granted Putin access to a warm water port, something Russian rulers for centuries before him sought in the Middle East. The port could also potentially connect Russia to Libya—like Syria, a Soviet-era ally—where it seeks a naval base to extend its reach into sub-Saharan Africa. A rebel takeover of those Syrian coastal positions could jeopardize Russia’s global-power projection. “Syria provided so many advantages at a low cost,” said Anna Borshchevskaya, senior fellow at the Washington Institute think tank and author of a book on Putin’s war in Syria. “Losing Syria would be a big strategic defeat that would reverberate beyond the Middle East. It would have global repercussions.”

[girlactionfigure]

⚫HOUTHI MISSILE, HOUTHIS BLOWING UP, HAMAS SAYS, GAZA AID - Real time from Israel

✡️UPCOMING HOLIDAY of Shavuot, next week Sunday night-Monday (+Tuesday outside Israel) - celebrating the giving of the Torah.

⚠️HEATWAVE WARNING - tomorrow, prepare for another dry desert wind day.

⭕HOUTHI BALLISTIC MISSILE fired at the extended Jerusalem area.  Intercepted.

.. Large missile shrapnel fell in the southern Hebron Hills.

❗️HOUTHIS BLOWING UP - 3 events: explosion of the warehouses where various types of weapons were stored, failed launch of a ballistic surface-to-surface missile, explosion of an underground facility for storing rocket fuel - dozens killed, hundreds injured, dozens of houses were wiped off the face of the earth.

The Houthis are following Hezbollah & Hamas’s method of hiding weapons among civilian homes - as this makes them unacceptable targets due to collateral human damage by Western sensibilities.

Subsequent report: intense explosions in the Hodeidah port area, in the area of ​​the naval base in the Al-Khatib area, west of the port of Hodeidah.

▪️GAZA AID - “Due to logistical delays” it was decided to postpone the opening of humanitarian aid centers in the Gaza Strip by several days. This comes after flour trucks were looted by Gazans in the Khan Yunis area early this morning.  Over the past week, 388 trucks of humanitarian aid entered Gaza, including flour, food, medical equipment, and medicine.

▪️HAMAS SAYS - Senior Hamas official: ''The weapons of resistance are not open to negotiations – we have not dismantled and will not dismantle them.  Resistance – a legitimate right. 'What Netanyahu did not achieve in fighting, he will not achieve in negotiations.’’

♦️GAZA UPDATES - Enemy reports: heavy artillery fire on Khan Yunis (south Gaza) and an attack in Beit Lahiya (north Gaza). Reports also report tank fire in the Khan Yunis area.  Enemy reports say significant attacks are currently underway in Khan Yunis and Jabaliya.

♦️IDF IN SYRIA?  Unofficial report on an Israeli attack on the village of al-Suwayda (south Syria between Damascus and the Golan) in Syria.

🔹SYRIA CLEANING HOUSE?  Senior figures from Palestinian organizations affiliated with Iran left Damascus (Syrian capital) after pressure was applied by Syrian security forces. ( Is Syria getting rid of foreign terrorists, or are they getting rid of Iranian influence in their territory? )

🔹US - IRAN NUCLEAR TALKS - The fifth round of indirect nuclear talks between Iran and the United States ended after 3 hours.

🌎DRONE WARS - Ukraine has reverse engineered the Iranian Shahid 136, building their own 800 km range suicide drone with an 18 kg warhead.  Estimated cost of the Iranian drone is $200,000 each.

🌎UKRAINE OPENS NUCLEAR SHELTERS - and invites residents to enter them.

[dertaglichedan]

US warships shot down around a dozen drones fired by Yemen's Houthi terrorists 'well before' they could pose a threat, a senior defence official revealed just hours after the rebels claimed to have mounted an attack.

American F-16 and F-18 fighter aircraft have shot down 11 drones fired by the terror group since President Donald Trump approved an order for air strikes over Yemen on Saturday night, Fox News reported.

The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the drones did not come close to the Harry S Truman aircraft carrier, which has played a key role in the latest military action.

Tracking also showed at least one Houthi missile failed in flight and splashed down in the waters off Yemen.

The US military took no action because it was not deemed a threat, the official said.

News of the drones being disarmed comes in the wake of Houthi terrorists claiming to have attacked the Harry S Truman aircraft carrier - as well as several American warships - in the Red Sea.

The Iran-backed terror group said, without offering evidence, that they attacked the Truman and its warships with ballistic missiles and drones in response to US attacks.

Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Sarea said on Sunday: 'The armed forces, with the help of God Almighty, carried out a qualitative military operation targeting the American aircraft carrier USS Harry Truman and its accompanying warships in the northern Red Sea, using 18 ballistic and cruise missiles and drones in a joint operation carried out by the missile force, Drone Air Force and the naval forces.'

[awesome-casuallyfamouscollector]

Very Good Morning! Several Large Explosions and Fires are raging at the Port in the Crimean City of Feodosia on the Coast of the Black Sea, following Ukrainian Strikes against what is reported to be Russian and Iran Naval Vessels carrying Munitions; the Ukrainian Air Force is claiming to have Sunk the “Novocherkassk” (BDK-46), a Ropucha-Class Amphibious Landing Ship during the Attack.

P.S. While Trump and other idle talkers cool their mouths by engaging in lies and political demagoguery, Ukraine is effectively destroying - the military resources of the criminal regimes of Russia and Iran....The only way to achieve peace is to completely destroy the Russian army, navy and industrial resources throughout the territory of Russia....

[darkmaga-returns]

This is real. This is a cybersecurity, law, policy, and roles and missions of the Federal Government. This is not a technology issue on how to take them down - that's easy.

Oct 15, 2024

A complex swarm of drones wanders at will over the largest American National Security Joint Base cluster. Langley Air Force Base, Ft. Eustis (now a joint base with Langley), Yorktown Naval Weapons Station, Norfolk Naval Station, Norfolk Naval Air Station, Little Creek Amphibious Base, Oceana Naval Air Station, Dam Neck Annex (Seal Team 6), etc. etc. etc.

This cluster of bases in Virginia is the largest single concentration of U.S. Military resources, units, and equipment. And someone just flew a drone swarm for 17 days as the Department of Defense and the Inter-Agency process went bonkers.

Step 1 on any new, complex, national security issue is answering this question: Who will be the lead Department or Agency to address the developing crisis?

I’m sure the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, the National Security Council, and the National Military Command Center were doing Cheetah Flips and Flap-Exs on steroids to answer this question. Well the threat actor flew for 17 days with no interruption.

Apparently they are inside our OODA-Loop and our inter-agency process is not fast or agile enough to take action.

Not good at all. Was it China or Iran? Likely

[adropofhumanity]

The US military says it has spent about $1 billion in an unsustainable campaign to fight the Ansarallah-led Yemeni Armed Forces in the Red Sea, the Wall Street Journal reported on 15 June.

Since November, Yemeni forces have targeted Israeli-linked commercial ships traveling through the Red Sea, the world's most important commercial sea route, in response to Israel's ongoing genocide in Gaza.

After US and UK naval warships began carrying out attacks on the Yemeni navy and sites in the capital, Sanaa, Yemeni forces began targeting warships as well.

The US Navy has conducted more than 450 strikes and intercepted 200 drones and missiles, in an attempt to contain Yemen's operations, that US officials worry is not sustainable.

"Their supply of weapons from Iran is cheap and highly sustainable, but ours is expensive, our supply chains are crunched, and our logistics tails are long," said Emily Harding of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "We are playing whack-a-mole, and they are playing a long game."

The Wall Street Journal provided details of a Yemeni operation targeting a US naval destroyer on 9 January, one of 80 operations overall, which illustrated the difficulties US personnel face.

"It was just after 9 p.m. when radar operators aboard this U.S. Navy destroyer in the Red Sea spotted a tiny arrow on their screens: a missile hurtling toward them at five times the speed of sound," The Journal reported.

"The crew of the warship with 300 sailors aboard had just seconds to shoot it down. As the projectile closed in, the Laboon launched an interceptor from silos beneath its deck, destroying the incoming missile in flight."

Yemeni forces launched 18 drones and cruise missiles, along with the ballistic missile, at four American destroyers, a US aircraft carrier, and a UK warship throughout the 12-hour battle that day.

[usafphantom2]

A-10 Warthogs Escort Ballistic Missile Submarine USS Wyoming

For the second time in the last few months, A-10C jets escorted an Ohio-class nuclear submarine and also took part in a life fire exercise.

Stefano D'Urso

A-10 submarine

An A-10C Thunderbolt II maneuvers over the ballistic missile submarine USS Wyoming. (Image credit: U.S. Navy)

A formation of A-10C Thunderbolt II close-air support aircraft were employed once again to escort an Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine, the USS Wyoming (SSBN 742). The images, shared on social media by Submarine Group Ten, depict Wyoming and its escorts navigating in an undisclosed location in the United States, with six A-10Cs flying overhead.

The aircraft, assigned to Moody Air Force Base, escorted the submarine and were also involved in a live fire exercise with their GAU-8 30 mm gun and 70 mm rockets. The U.S. Coast Guard Maritime Force Protection Unit Kings Bay, USNS Black Powder (T-AGSE-1), and USNS Westwind (T-AGSE-2) also participated in the escort of the submarine.

The rare sighting is not unprecedented, as earlier this year the USS Nebraska was also escorted by a quartet of A-10 Warthogs while navigating the Strait of San Juan de Fuca. In that occasion, however, the A-10s did not take part in any life fire activity and flew without carrying external ordnance.

“Joint operations, such as this one which involved the Air Force, Coast Guard, and Navy, ensure the U.S. military is ready to meet its security commitments at home and abroad,” mentioned the statements on both occasions. The services did not further elaborate on the extend of the joint operations.

The A-10C and the maritime domain

While no other details were released, it appears the Warthogs practiced overwatch of the extremely high-value strategic asset during one of the most vulnerable phases of its navigation. The live fire exercise might have also been used to simulate the defense of the USS Wyoming from surface threats.

A-10s have been used to target swarms of boats and to strike small naval vessels in previous training exercises, demonstrating the attention that these types of asymmetric threats attracted following recent real word events, such the attacks in the Red Sea or the Black Sea.

Four A-10Cs fly over the USS Wyoming, while two other jets can be seen in the background. (Image credit: U.S. Navy)

The A-10, which was born as a pure Close Air Support and anti-tank platform, has never been employed to large extent in the maritime domain, seeing only limited use. One of the most notable episodes was in 2011 during Operation Unified Protector, when an A-10 and a P-3C Orion engaged together a patrol boat and several small attack craft in the port of Misrata, Libya.

Since the last two couple of years, the Warthog was part of multiple Maritime Surface Warfare exercises and conducted unit defense training. One of the exercises saw, in Sept. 2023, two A-10s engage simulated surface threats in the Gulf of Oman with the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Stethem.

The A-10’s maneuverability at low airspeeds and altitude, highly accurate weapons-delivery capabilities, and extended loiter time are all key attributes that make it highly effective at providing aerial support to American and coalition forces on land and at sea, mentioned the U.S. Air Force after one of these exercises last year.

Asymmetric threats to maritime assets

The events in the Black Sea and Red Sea highlighted once again how asymmetric threats cannot be underestimated. In the past, the U.S. Navy had experience countering small fast attack crafts, especially in the Persian Gulf where Iran regularly harassed U.S. ships in the area.

More recently, Ukraine and the Houthis demonstrated the effectiveness and the danger posed by Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USVs), used in kamikaze attacks against larger ships. The small, unmanned boats, filled with explosives, can exploit their limited dimensions and high maneuverability to avoid detection and interception, with devastating effects on their targets.

An A-10C Thunderbolt II engages a simulated target with its GAU-8 30 mm gun. (Image credit: U.S. Navy)

Highly defended targets could be overwhelmed by coordinated swarms of USVs, challenging the traditional naval strategies. The presence of multiple, fast approaching and maneuvering targets against a limited number of weapon systems on a naval asset could confuse the defenses, which would be forced to prioritize targets as to maximize the hit probability and avoid wasting precious ammo.

And here is where overhead protection from and asset like the A-10C could come in handy, as it provides to naval commanders a number of options both for surveillance and kinetic effects.

About Stefano D'Urso

@TheAviationist.com

Stefano D'Urso is a freelance journalist and contributor to TheAviationist based in Lecce, Italy. A graduate in Industral Engineering he's also studying to achieve a Master Degree in Aerospace Engineering. Electronic Warfare, Loitering Munitions and OSINT techniques applied to the world of military operations and current conflicts are among his areas of expertise.

[mariacallous]

In the five weeks since the Trump administration stepped up attacks on the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen, a few big problems have become apparent, underscoring just how hard it is for U.S. President Donald Trump to turn muscular rhetoric into real-world results.

The operation, famously debated in a Signal chat that mistakenly included a journalist, has failed so far to achieve either of its two stated goals: restoring freedom of navigation in the Red Sea and reestablishing deterrence. 

Shipping through the Red Sea and the adjacent Suez Canal remains as depressed as ever despite a more than $1 billion U.S. onslaught against the Houthis. And the militants remain as defiant as ever, warning over the weekend that Trump has waded into a “quagmire” and intensifying their own attacks on Israel and U.S. warships in the region.

There has also been a glaring lack of transparency about the operation, the biggest exercise of U.S. military power in Trump’s second term. The Defense Department does not hold briefings on the ongoing war, and U.S. Central Command, which oversees operations in the Middle East, merely posts snazzy videos of flight-deck operations on social media, accompanied by the hashtag “#HouthisAreTerrorists.”

More alarmingly, the tempo of U.S. operations, including around-the-clock strikes by two entire U.S. aircraft carrier strike groups, is burning through finite precision munitions that many defense experts say would be best husbanded for any future conflict with China. That’s especially important when it comes to the limited stock of stand-off, air-launched missiles that would be critical to any fight over Taiwan.

“If this is about freedom of navigation, it isn’t working,” said Alessio Patalano, a naval expert at King’s College London. He added: “How can you support the idea that the Indo-Pacific is the priority, and yet absolutely critical components to the Indo-Pacific fight are being pulled for operations in the Middle East?”

The good news, such as it is, is that there is less urgency now to reopen the Red Sea and the Suez Canal to commercial shipping than at any time since the Houthis essentially closed it in November 2023 with a wave of missile and drone attacks on commercial vessels, nominally done in support of Palestinians under Israeli assault. Trump’s trade war has so depressed the outlook for global shipping that rates for container ships are plummeting, and there is little reason for shippers to worry about rerouting their goods the long way around the bottom of Africa. 

When the Houthis first opted to use their strategic position on the shores of one of the world’s critical chokepoints, the Bab el-Mandeb strait, to bring pressure on Israel and the West, the West responded. The United States and the United Kingdom sent naval forces to hammer the Houthis, while the European Union sent its own naval task force to help shepherd commercial ships through what was quickly becoming a no-go zone.

Though the U.S.-U.K. and European missions had slightly different aims—the Anglo-Americans sought to “degrade” Houthi capabilities on land to interdict commercial traffic, while Europe’s operation hewed closer to a traditional freedom-of-navigation operation—both were of little avail. Insurance rates remained sky-high, and traffic through the Suez Canal plunged. 

Enter the new Trump administration, determined to prevail where the outgoing Biden administration had failed. 

“This [is] not about the Houthis,” embattled U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hesgeth wrote in the now-infamous Signal chat he and his colleagues shared with a journalist in the days and hours before and during the March attacks on the Houthis. “I see it as two things: 1) Restoring Freedom of Navigation, a core national interest; and 2) Reestablish deterrence, which [President Joe] Biden cratered,” Hesgeth wrote.

The idea that freedom of navigation was a core U.S. national interest got pushback from Vice President J.D. Vance during the Signal conversation. And everybody on the Trump national security team wanted to ensure that Europe would somehow pay for the unrequested U.S. military adventure. Centcom certainly believes that it is all about the Houthis. 

But the underlying contradictions in U.S. policies and priorities shone through the clumsy text messages. Most especially: What happened to the pivot to Asia?

“The United States Navy is very good at striking targets ashore. But the operational and tactical success cannot hide the fact that the strategic effect remains elusive, if not ill-defined altogether,” Patalano said. “If this is meant to deter the Chinese leadership vis-à-vis Taiwan, I am not sure it is doing it.”

The United States since the days of Thomas Jefferson has fought for freedom of navigation, sometimes in waters not far from the current fight. What is hard to understand right now is why it is spending treasure in a futile attempt to open a sea lane that doesn’t need opening, when there are other, more pressing challenges. Worse yet, the misapplication of sea power could rebound badly—it takes a lot of time and effort to convince democracies to pay vast sums for advanced warships that are needed and that do have great utility, just not this one.

“What I find most troubling is that they are undermining the ultimate utility of sea power,” Patalano said. “In the future, when people say, ‘Why do we need a Navy? We did nothing against the Houthis.’ And they will be right.”

[nicklloydnow]

“The Syrian government fell early Sunday in a stunning end to the 50-year rule of the Assad family after a sudden rebel offensive sprinted across government-held territory and entered the capital in 10 days.

Syrian state television aired a video statement by a group of men saying that President Bashar Assad has been overthrown and all detainees in jails have been set free.

(…)

The statement emerged hours after the head of a Syrian opposition war monitor said Assad had left the country for an undisclosed location, fleeing ahead of insurgents who said they had entered Damascus following the remarkably swift advance across the country.

(…)

It was the first time opposition forces had reached Damascus since 2018, when Syrian troops recaptured areas on the outskirts of the capital following a yearslong siege.

(…)

The night before, opposition forces took the central city of Homs, Syria’s third largest, as government forces abandoned it. The city stands at an important intersection between Damascus, the capital, and Syria’s coastal provinces of Latakia and Tartus — the Syrian leader’s base of support and home to a Russian strategic naval base.

The rebels had already seized the cities of Aleppo and Hama, as well as large parts of the south, in a lightning offensive that began Nov. 27. Analysts said rebel control of Homs would be a game-changer.

(…)

The advances in the past week were by far the largest in recent years by opposition factions, led by a group that has its origins in al-Qaida and is considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. and the United Nations. In their push to overthrow Assad’s government, the insurgents, led by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group, or HTS, have met little resistance from the Syrian army.

(…)

Syrian Prime Minister Mohammad Ghazi al-Jalali said Sunday he does not know where Assad or the defense minister are. He told Saudi television network Al-Arabiyya early Sunday that they lost communication Saturday night.

He has had little, if any, help from his allies. Russia is busy with its war in Ukraine. Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which at one point sent thousands of fighters to shore up Assad’s forces, has been weakened by a yearlong conflict with Israel. Iran has seen its proxies across the region degraded by regular Israeli airstrikes.

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on Saturday posted on social media that the United States should avoid engaging militarily in Syria. Separately, President Joe Biden’s national security adviser said the Biden administration had no intention of intervening there.”

“A fast-advancing rebel offensive in Syria threatens to dislodge Russia from a strategic linchpin that Moscow has used for a decade to project power in the Middle East, in the Mediterranean and into the African continent.

It also challenges Russian President Vladimir Putin’s efforts to portray Moscow as a flag bearer for an alternative global order to rival Western liberalism, and his defense of the Syrian regime as evidence of successful pushback against American dominance in the region.

(…)

Russia intervened in Syria’s civil war in 2015 to prop up President Bashar al-Assad against an armed uprising prompted by the Arab Spring, giving it a role as an influential foreign power in the Middle East. It sought to leverage its relations with rival powers such as Iran and Israel, as well as Turkey and Gulf states, to mediate conflicts and claim status as a regional power broker.

(…)

Syria has partly been an ideological project for Putin. The intervention in Syria became a way for Russia to extend its vision of a multipolar world opposed to the Western liberal order, said Nicole Grajewski, fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and author of a coming book on Russia’s relationship with Iran, including in Syria.

“To see Russian planes leave Syria as rebel forces move onward towards their air bases, and their assets in Damascus fall, this would be so devastating for the Russian image of itself,” she said. “It would be akin to a Saigon moment for them.”

Putin’s assistance was instrumental to Assad’s survival, and showed Moscow’s allies far beyond the Middle East that Russian intervention could help push back popular uprisings, said a former Russian official. African leaders began to invite Russia, and specifically contractors from the Wagner paramilitary group who also played a critical role in Syria, to help stabilize their regimes.

Syria holds significant strategic value for Russia as well. The Khmeimim air base near the coastal city of Latakia serves as a logistical hub for flights to Libya, the Central African Republic, and Sudan, where Russian private contractors and soldiers have operated for years.

A naval base in the port city of Tartus serves as the only replenishment and repair point for the Russian navy in the Mediterranean, where it has brought in goods by bulk through the Black Sea. Tartus has granted Putin access to a warm water port, something Russian rulers for centuries before him sought in the Middle East. The port could also potentially connect Russia to Libya—like Syria, a Soviet-era ally—where it seeks a naval base to extend its reach into sub-Saharan Africa. A rebel takeover of those Syrian coastal positions could jeopardize Russia’s global-power projection.

“Syria provided so many advantages at a low cost,” said Anna Borshchevskaya, senior fellow at the Washington Institute think tank and author of a book on Putin’s war in Syria. “Losing Syria would be a big strategic defeat that would reverberate beyond the Middle East. It would have global repercussions.”

(…)

“One way to see Putin’s ambition in Syria is as part of his larger imperial vision,” said Borshchevskaya. “That’s what Ukraine is, that’s what [the invasion of] Georgia was in 2008, and to some extent that’s what Syria was,” she said. “Now in 2024, Russia finally finds itself overstretched.”

(…)

The Russian intervention in the civil war turned the tide in Assad’s favor and helped Iran consolidate its military foothold all the way to the Israeli border. Western attempts to isolate Moscow and Tehran through sanctions have pushed them closer together.”

“For years, Syria’s complicated battlefields have been populated by shifting groups of militants battling a range of enemies, including each other, and proxies backed by outside powers. Iran and Russia have propped up the autocratic Assad regime for more than a decade, while Turkey and the United States have troops on the ground in areas outside government control, and each support local proxies.

News reports and videos posted on social media indicate U.S.-backed rebels, supported by American airstrikes, may now be battling Syrian government forces as part of renewed fighting in the east.

That U.S. backing means boots on the ground. Around 900 U.S. troops are deployed in Syria alongside private military contractors, in what one expert calls “arguably the most expansive abuse” of the war powers granted to the executive branch in the wake of 9/11 — and those troops have, on average, come under fire multiple times each week since last October, according to new Pentagon statistics obtained by The Intercept.

Since the war in Gaza began last year, U.S. forces have been under sustained attack by Iran-backed militants across the Middle East, with the Pentagon’s Syrian bases being the hardest hit. Since October 18, 2023, there have been at least 127 attacks on U.S. forces in Syria, according to Lt. Cmdr. Patricia Kreuzberger, a Pentagon spokesperson, and information supplied by U.S. Central Command, or CENTCOM. On average, that’s about one attack every three days.

(…)

Brian Finucane, a former State Department lawyer now with the International Crisis Group, said the ongoing bombardment of U.S. bases should prompt hard questions in America’s halls of power. “Why are U.S. troops in Syria? What is the mission? What is the endgame? And is this legally authorized?” are the questions that need answers, he said. “The administration doesn’t want to have that debate. Congress also seems perfectly fine avoiding it. And so, the legislative and executive branches are content to muddle along, avoiding their constitutional responsibilities — the need for congressional authorization — and really debate the merits of this conflict.”

THE U.S. MILITARY has been conducting operations in Syria since 2014. America’s bases there and in neighboring Iraq ostensibly exist to conduct “counter-ISIS missions,” despite the fact that the Pentagon concluded in 2021 that the Islamic State in Syria “probably lacks the capability to target the U.S. homeland.”

Around 900 U.S. troops — including commandos from Combined Special Operations Joint Task Force-Levant — and an undisclosed number of private military contractors are operating in Syria. In 2022, The Intercept revealed the existence of a low-profile 127-echo counterterrorism program in Syria targeting Islamist militants. Under the 127e authority, U.S. Special Operations forces arm, train, and provide intelligence to small groups of elite foreign troops. But unlike traditional foreign assistance programs, which are primarily intended to build local capacity, 127e partners are dispatched on U.S.-directed missions, targeting U.S. enemies to achieve U.S. aims.

The Syrian Democratic Forces, a Kurdish-led militant group based in the country’s northeast is America’s main proxy force in Syria. While the SDF fights Islamist extremists with U.S. support, it also battles Turkey and Turkish-backed militants. Turkey, America’s longtime NATO ally, opposes the SDF due to that group’s ties to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, a Kurdish nationalist militant group that both the Turkish and U.S. governments, among others, have designated a terrorist group.

(…)

The future of America’s escalating war in Syria may face renewed scrutiny early next year. President-elect Donald Trump showed antipathy to the U.S. war in Syria and withdrew U.S. forces from the north of the country in 2019, opening the door to a Turkish invasion.

“When Trump ordered the removal of U.S. forces from Syria in late 2018, there was a scramble within the government to try to figure out what that meant and whether there were ways to walk it back,” said Finucane, the former State Department lawyer. “The Pentagon was fine to pull out U.S. troops from al Tanf because there was really no counter-ISIS mission. But in his memoir, [Trump’s national security adviser] John Bolton said he wanted to keep troops there to counter Iran.”

For four years, experts say the Biden administration has continued this shadow effort aimed at Iran under the guise of a counter-ISIS mission, fending off several congressional efforts to force the removal of U.S. troops from Syria. Last year, a bid by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., to compel the withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Syria within 30 days also failed. “The American people have had enough of endless wars in the Middle East,” Paul told The Intercept at the time. “Yet, 900 U.S. troops remain in Syria with no vital U.S. interest at stake, no definition of victory, no exit strategy, and no congressional authorization to be there.” Those troops may be increasingly drawn into the Syrian civil war in support of their SDF allies.

“This is arguably the most expansive abuse of the 2001 AUMF in the history of the law,” said Erik Sperling of Just Foreign Policy, an advocacy group critical of mainstream Washington foreign policy, referring to the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force, enacted in the wake of the September 11 attacks. “We know from Biden administration leaks that the U.S. presence in Syria was part of an anti-Iran proxy war strategy but after Congress started voting to remove troops, they cracked down on those leaks and they said it’s only about terrorism.”

(…)

U.S. troops have, however, been relentlessly attacked across the Middle East since last October. There have been at least 208 attacks against U.S. forces in the region — two in Jordan, 79 in Iraq, and 127 in Syria — according to Kreuzberger and CENTCOM. In addition to coming under fire about once every other day, U.S. troops have been killed or seriously injured in these attacks. In January, three U.S. soldiers were killed and more than 40 other personnel were injured in an attack on a base in Jordan near the Syrian border. Eight U.S. troops also suffered traumatic brain injuries and smoke inhalation from an August 9 drone attack on the Rumalyn Landing Zone in northeastern Syria.”

“Israeli ground forces advanced beyond the demilitarized zone on the Israel-Syria border over the weekend, marking their first overt entry into Syrian territory since the 1973 October War, according to two Israeli officials speaking anonymously to discuss sensitive developments.

(…)

Israeli forces took control of the mountain summit of Mount Hermon on the Syrian side of the border, as well as several other locations deemed essential for stabilizing control of the area.

Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, the Israeli military chief of staff, appeared to confirm on Saturday night that Israeli forces had gone beyond a demilitarized buffer zone in the Golan Heights, saying Israel had “deployed troops into Syrian territory,” although he did not elaborate further.

(…)

More recently, the Israeli military has been more explicit about striking sites and people there, saying it was targeting Hezbollah’s supply lines. But the deployment of ground troops beyond the demilitarized zone in Syria marks a significant shift in policy as the first overt entry of Israeli military forces into Syrian territory since the 1974 cease-fire agreement that officially ended the last war between Israel and Syria.

The Israeli Air Force over the weekend was also striking targets in Syria to destroy government military assets that could fall into the hands of rebel forces and are considered strategic threats by Israel, the two officials said.

(…)

The targets included small stockpiles of chemical weapons, primarily mustard gas and VX gas, which remained in Syrian possession despite prior agreements to disarm, according to the officials. The Israeli military also targeted radar-equipped batteries and vehicles of Russian-made air defense missiles, as well as stockpiles of Scud missiles, according to the two officials.

(…)

Israel captured the Golan Heights during the Middle East war of 1967 and annexed much of the territory in 1981. The rest is controlled by Syria. Most of the world views this area as Israeli-occupied Syrian territory, though Donald J. Trump recognized Israeli sovereignty there in 2019 during his first term as president.”

[dostoyevsky-official]

What the Fall of Aleppo Means for Russia

For Russia, the loss of regime control in Aleppo reveals deeper vulnerabilities in its Syrian strategy. [...] The naval base in Tartus secures Russia’s access to the Mediterranean, a critical geostrategic asset, while the Khmeimim air base near Latakia enables Moscow to project power across the region and maintain its role as a key player in Syria and beyond. [...] Beyond immediate military concerns, these developments expose Moscow’s growing challenges in preserving its influence in Syria. Since initiating its military intervention in 2015, Moscow’s influence in Syria has rested on several key elements: a partnership with Iran and its network of nonstate actors; coordination with Turkey, with a view to managing competing interests, such as Turkey’s concerns over Kurdish forces and Russia’s support for the Assad regime; a tenuous balancing act with Israel to prevent unintended military clashes and preserve deconfliction agreements; diplomatic outreach to the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC); and efforts to maintain a working deconfliction mechanism with the United States. However, each of these pillars has come under strain not only due to shifting realities in Syria but due to the spillover effects of Ukraine and Lebanon. The Russian-Iranian partnership has been particularly critical to Russia’s objectives in Syria. [...] Russia’s approach to Iran in Syria has shifted dramatically since its invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Moscow previously balanced between Iran and Israel, exemplified by its 2018 commitment to keep Iranian forces away from Israel’s border and its silence during Israeli strikes on Iranian assets. However, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and especially after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, Moscow has aligned more closely with Iran’s so-called Axis of Resistance. Meanwhile, Russia and Turkey have frequently clashed over their competing visions for Syria’s future. [...] Since the start of its war in Ukraine, Russia has sought to maintain close relations with Turkey, a NATO member and critical trade partner for Moscow. This effort, coupled with Russia’s diminished resources across various regions, has positioned Ankara in a place of relative advantage. This dynamic is particularly evident in the South Caucasus, where Turkey, through its support for Azerbaijan against Armenia, has assumed a more active role in shaping regional dynamics. The resurgence of HTS and Turkish-backed rebels will likely force Russia to reach new understandings with Turkey in Syria. While Moscow previously criticized Ankara sharply over rebel activities in Idlib, Russia’s current military constraints and need to maintain Turkish cooperation amid the Ukraine war—specifically for critical trade routes, access through the Bosporus for its naval operations, and to discourage Turkey from supplying Ukraine with advanced arms—have tempered its response. Instead of denouncing Turkey for failing to control HTS, Russian officials have emphasized the Astana format as a mechanism for stability, suggesting that Moscow seeks accommodation rather than confrontation with Ankara. [...] Moscow’s strategy in Syria going forward likely will involve a pragmatic adaptation rather than a withdrawal or a complete overhaul. This may require Russia to reconcile with the reality that its reduced military influence demands greater flexibility with regional powers. Rather than reevaluating its commitment to the Assad regime, Moscow appears determined to preserve its Syrian presence by recalibrating its methods.

2 December 2024