Russia Is Pulling Out Of Syria

By Findalis
Monkey in the Middle

And they are doing it fast.  Very fast.

You know that things are heating up in Syria when longtime ally of Bashar al-Assad's Syria is pulling their troops out of Syria.  Add to that Israel going on high alert, President Obama and his Security Council is not concerned, and one can expect the area to blow up soon.

Shortly after the DEBKA aired a special video on the Syrian war’s widening circle, Moscow announced Wednesday June 26, that the evacuation which had begun Friday of all military and diplomatic personnel from Syria was now complete, including the Russian naval base at Tartus.

“Russia decided to withdraw its personnel because of the risks from the conflict in Syria, as well as the fear of an incident involving the Russian military that could have larger consequences,” said a defense ministry official in Moscow. He stressed that a 16-ship naval task force in the eastern Mediterranean remains on post and arms shipments, including anti-air weapons, would continue to the Syrian government in keeping with former contracts.

In another sign of an impending escalation in Syria, the Israeli Golan brigade staged Wednesday an unannounced war maneuver on the Golan, attended by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and top army chiefs. In London, Prime Minister David Cameron called the government’s National Security Council into session in Downing Street on Syria. Opposition leader Ed Milliband was invited to attend the meeting, a custom observed only when issues of the highest security importance are discussed.

Earlier Wednesday, debkafile carried the following report in its special video presentation under the heading: Putin and Obama cross swords on Syrian. What Next?

The sullen confrontation between Presidents Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama at the G8 Summit in Northern Ireland last week condemned Syria to five months of escalating, unresolved vicious warfare – that is until the two leaders meet again in September.

For now, tempers are heating up between Washington and Moscow on Syria and other things too, notably the elusive American fugitive Edward Snowden.



Click here if the video doesn't load.

US and Israeli intelligence watchers see the Syrian crisis entering seven ominous phases:

1. The Syrian army plus allies and the fully-mobilized opposition will hurl all their manpower and weapons into winning the city.

Military experts don’t expect the rebels to hold out against Assad’s forces beyond late August.

2. Neither side has enough manpower or game-changing weaponry for winning the war outright.

That is, unless Presidents Obama or Putin steps in to retilt the balance.

3. The US and Russia are poised for more military intervention in the conflict up until a point just short of a military clash on Syrian soil – or elsewhere in the Middle East. US intelligence analysts have judged Putin ready to go all the way on Syria against the US - no holds barred.

The Russian president is meanwhile deliberately goading Washington and raising temperatures by playing hide-and-seek over the former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, charged with espionage for stealing and leaking classified intelligence. At home, he is considered variously as a traitor and a brave whistleblower.

For several hours Snowden vanished between Hong Kong and Moscow – until the Russian president admitted he was holed up in the transit area of Moscow airport and would not be extradited by Russia to the United States.

4. Iran, Hizballah and Iraq will likewise ratchet up their battlefield presence.

5. A violent encounter is building up between Middle East Shiites flocking to Syria to save the Assad regime alongside Russia, and the US-backed Sunni-dominated rebel forces.

It could scuttle the secret US-Iranian negotiating track on its nuclear program, which was buoyed up by the election of the pragmatic Hassan Rouhani as President of Iran.

6. The Geneva-2 Conference for a political solution for the Syrian crisis is dead in the water. Moscow and the US are divided by unbridgeable issues of principle, such whether Bashar Assad should stay or go and Iranian representation.

7. So long as the diplomatic remains stuck in the mud, the prospects of a regional war spreading out of the Syrian conflict are rising. Iran, Israel, Jordan and Lebanon may be dragged in at any moment – if they have not already, like Lebanon.

A small mistake by one of the Syrian warring parties in Syria could, for example, touch off Israeli retaliation and a wholesale spillover of violence.

Source

What we are seeing is the product of President Barack Hussein Obama's foreign policy of leading from behind.  Behind truly is.  As we are getting the shaft right up our Ass.

Hamas Suffers and Hizbollah Remains Quiet.

Cross posted by Findalis of Monkey in the Middle




For all its ranting and raving, Hizbollah has kept very quiet these last weeks.

Thousands of supporters of the militant Hezbollah group swarmed Beirut's southern suburbs Friday, demanding Israel lift its blockade of the Gaza Strip.

The Hezbollah's supporters, including black-clad Shiite women with their children, waved flags and carried banners denouncing the Gaza blockade as they marched in the neighborhoods devastated by Israeli airstrikes in the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war.

Chants of "Death to America" and "Israel is the enemy of Muslims" rang out from the crowd.

The protests were in response to a call by Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah to people across the Arab and Muslim world to help end the siege and support the Palestinians in Gaza.

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Yet there hasn't been a repeat of the 2006 War between Israel and Hizbollah. It isn't due to the UN and their fake Resolution 1701. The resolution that Hizbollah has repeatedly violated with UN support and help. It isn't because they now recognize Israel's right to exist. And it isn't because they have no real fighters left.

The real reason that Hizbollah, a group aligned with and funded by Iran, is not attacking Israel is that they might be too overstretched and cannot wage the same war with Israel that they did in 2006.

The Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia has taken root in South America, fostering a well-financed force of Islamist radicals boiling with hatred for the United States and ready to die to prove it, according to militia members, U.S. officials and police agencies across the continent.

From its Western base in a remote region divided by the borders of Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina known as the Tri-border, or the Triple Frontier, Hezbollah has mined the frustrations of many Muslims among about 25,000 Arab residents whose families immigrated mainly from Lebanon in two waves, after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and after the 1985 Lebanese civil war.

An investigation by Telemundo and NBC News has uncovered details of an extensive smuggling network run by Hezbollah, a Shiite Muslim group founded in Lebanon in 1982 that the United States has labeled an international terrorist organization. The operation funnels large sums of money to militia leaders in the Middle East and finances training camps, propaganda operations and bomb attacks in South America, according to U.S. and South American officials.

U.S. officials fear that poorly patrolled borders and rampant corruption in the Tri-border region could make it easy for Hezbollah terrorists to infiltrate the southern U.S. border. From the largely lawless region, it is easy for potential terrorists, without detection, to book passage to the United States through Brazil and then Mexico simply by posing as tourists.

They are men like Mustafa Khalil Meri, a young Arab Muslim whom Telemundo interviewed in Ciudad del Este, Paraguay’s second-largest city and the center of the Tri-border region. There is nothing particularly distinctive about him, but beneath the everyday T-shirt he wears beats the heart of a devoted Hezbollah militiaman.

“If he attacks Iran, in two minutes Bush is dead,” Meri said. “We are Muslims. I am Hezbollah. We are Muslims, and we will defend our countries at any time they are attacked.”

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Iran and through its proxy, Hizbollah, has made it no secret that they have been aiding rebels, Muslims and drug lords in South and Central America in an attempt to disrupt American interests. Take the tractor plant Iran built and has manned in Venezuela.

Iran is pursuing increased political and economic cooperation with Venezuela and Sudan as part of a series of calculated foreign policy moves that looks certain to exacerbate an already tense stand-off with the Bush administration.

Faced by growing pressure from the US, Britain and other European countries over its nuclear activities, Tehran is anxious to win international support for its position. High-level meetings have been held in recent weeks with Russia, China and numerous Arab and Muslim states.

"We have intensified our diplomatic activity to explain the situation to other countries," Hamid-Reza Asefi, the Iranian foreign ministry spokesman, told the Guardian.

But Iranian cooperation and investment in Venezuela, which is led by George Bush's tormentor-in-chief, President Hugo Chávez, and new business ventures with Sudan, where the US has said genocide is taking place, may be viewed as a bridge too far in Washington. It regards all three countries as "rogue" states.

"Our relationship with Venezuela has improved a lot," Mr Asefi said. "We have good cooperation in construction, oil and gas, and in infrastructure projects. Our people are busy there making houses, roads, dams and in transport."

There were about 100 Iranians working in Venezuela, Mr Asefi said, providing "know-how and knowledge". Both countries are significant oil producers and members of Opec. Iranian officials have estimated that actual and planned investment in Venezuela could ultimately total $9bn (£5bn).

Mohsen Shaterzadeh, deputy industries and mines minister, said this week that the two countries had finalised an agreement to build a giant car plant in Venezuela. Iran will have a 51% stake in the project.

Tractors are another of Iran's strengths. Mohsen Khadem Arab-Baghi, who heads the Iran Tractor Manufacturing Company, said the company is expected to make up to 30,000 tractors by March 2007. Though its products are exported to 30 countries, "our greatest target market is Venezuela, which accounts for $85m of our tractor exports," he said.

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Iran is not known for its tractors, on the other hand, one of my South American sources who has lived in that area said about it:

I never could figure out why a huge Iranian tractor factory was in the least agricultural state of Venezuela, but very close to the jungle with it's uranium deposits. They brought in hundreds of Iranians and their families to work there. We were the only non Venezuelans in the town besides the Iranians.

Hundreds not just 100 of Iranian workers in an area with very little agricultural production, near the jungle and more importantly, near uranium deposits. Any guesses on what they really were doing there?

Hizbollah lost between 10,000 and 20,000 fighters in 2006, they are spread through out Europe, Asia, South and Central America, Mexico, Canada and the US. There are hundreds of "sleeper cells" in Europe, Canada and the US alone. And is it any wonder to all why Hizbollah is watching what is happening in Gaza to Hamas, and wondering if it can survive an onslaught from Israel again.