Egyptian President Sisi expects Assad regime in Syria to fall 'at any moment'

 Egypt's President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi inspects honor guards in Beijing. (photo credit:REUTERS)

I think we have to put stock in anything that al-Sisi says about the Middle East and if Assad falls in the next week or so, holy shit are we looking at bedlam.

The story comes from The Jerusalem Post.

Sisi expects Assad regime in Syria to fall 'at any moment'


Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi expects Bashar Assad’s regime in Syria to fall “at any moment,” according to a report that appeared over the weekend in the Lebanese daily Al-Mustaqbal.

The newspaper said that Sisi made the remarks during a meeting with Lebanese Prime Minister Tammam Salam that took place earlier this week in Cairo.

The Egyptian leader told his Lebanese counterpart that his country needed to prepare for the eventuality that Assad would be toppled.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi expects Bashar Assad’s regime in Syria to fall “at any moment,” according to a report that appeared over the weekend in the Lebanese daily Al-Mustaqbal.

The newspaper said that Sisi made the remarks during a meeting with Lebanese Prime Minister Tammam Salam that took place earlier this week in Cairo.

The Egyptian leader told his Lebanese counterpart that his country needed to prepare for the eventuality that Assad would be toppled.

President Vladimir Putin reaffirmed Russia's support for Assad on Friday and said he opposed any use of external force to try to end the Syrian civil war.

Putin showed no sign of wavering in his policy of trying to shield Assad from pressure from the West in a 4 1/2-year-old conflict that has killed more than 200,000 people and displaced millions.

"Our fear is that Syria could plunge into the same situation as Libya and Iraq," Putin said in response to questions at Russia's annual economic forum in St Petersburg.

"We don't want that ... in Syria."

Putin said the US policy to counter Islamic State (IS), which controls large areas of Iraq and Syria, had so far had "lamentable" and "tragic" consequences.

"The United States supports Iraq, supports ... the army. With two or three strikes IS has captured so many arms ... (that) now IS is armed better than the Iraqi army. And all this is happening with the support of the United States," he said.

Washington has backed rebels seeking to oust Assad and is now trying to build a moderate Syrian opposition to fight IS.

Putin reiterated Russia's line that it is up to the Syrian people to decide the fate of Assad, adding Russia would not call on him to step down. But he said Russia would urge Assad to work with a "healthy" opposition on political reforms.

"We are ready to work with the president to ensure a path towards political transition so as to ... move away from an armed confrontation. But that should not be done with the use of force from the outside," he added.

On Iran, Putin said he believed world powers and the Islamic republic would soon sign an agreement curbing Tehran's nuclear program in exchange for easing sanctions.

"I think the signing should take place in the nearest future," he also said, adding implementation of the agreement would take about six months.

Israel Is Supposed To Recognize a "moon god" While No Arab State Will Recognize the Nation of Israel

After well more than half a century, Arab nations got together and have refused to recognize the nation of Israel as a Jewish state.  And these are the clowns that every effing U.S. President has tried to engage in peace talks with over the Middle East the past 30 years?  Fuck these people. Let em eat figs, let em rape their children and murder their women, let em die a slow, agonizing death.

Drill our own damn oil, give money up the kazoo to Israel, starve these Arab nations with ZERO aid, ZERO military aid, and ZERO response of any kind.  Let em dry up and blow away.

The story comes from Times of India.

Arab summit refuses to recognize Israel as 'Jewish state'


KUWAIT CITY: Arab leaders fully back a Palestinian refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, a flashpoint issue which is threatening to derail the US-led peace talks, a final Arab summit statement said on Wednesday.

"We express our total rejection of the call to consider Israel as a Jewish state," said the declaration, issued at the end of the two-day meeting in Kuwait City.

The Palestinians recognised Israel at the start of the peace process in the early 1990s, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has insisted they now acknowledge it as the national homeland of the Jewish people, in a move which would effectively torpedo the "right of return" for Palestinian refugees.

The Arab League had already rejected the demand, in a statement issued from its Cairo headquarters earlier this month.

US Secretary of State John Kerry is facing an uphill battle to keep peace talks on track beyond an April 29 deadline, with the negotiations waylaid over several key issues, including the question of recognition.

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas has made it clear that he will never recognize Israel as a Jewish state.

Netanyahu has placed the recognition dispute at the forefront of the talks, describing Arab rejection of the Jewish state as the "root of the conflict".

For the Palestinians, the issue is intimately entwined with the fate of their refugees who were forced out of their homes or fled in 1948 when Israel became a state. They see Netanyahu's demand as a way to sidestep a negotiated solution to the refugee question.

Jordan's King Abdullah II Basically Admits His Country Wants NOTHING To Do With the Palestinians

I have said for years that there was no country in the entire Middle East that wanted anything to do with the so-called Palestinians let alone give them refuge or a home - Syria didn't want them, Lebanon didn't want them, Egypt didn't want them, Saudi Arabia didn't want them and Jordan didn't want them.  Some of those countries actually DID have them many years ago and threw their asses out.  These Middle Eastern countries all claim to support a "state" for these vermin but the truth is finally coming out that the reason they want this, is to ensure that the scourge of the Middle East doesn't end up in THEIR countries.

King Abdullah II is quoted at the story from Israel National News as damn near freaking out over any talk that the Palestinians should just become part of Jordan.

No one wants this menace to humanity.

Jordan's King: Jordan is Palestine? That's an Illusion


Jordan’s King Abdullah II on Saturday hit out at those on the Israeli right who say that a Palestinian state already exists and that it is located in Jordan, Army Radio reported, citing an interview the King gave to the Al-Hayat newspaper.

The King said that anyone who thinks that Jordan is Palestine is living in an illusion.

"The Israeli extremists are misleading when they say that the Palestinian lands should be emptied and that the Palestinians should be exiled to Jordan," he told the newspaper.

“Over the years, since the signing of the peace treaty with Israel, Jordan has adhered to attitudes and policies that support the Palestinian people and their continued existence in a country of their own,” said King Abdullah.

There have been many calls on Jordan to accept the so-called “Palestinian refugees”, considering that the areas liberated by Israel during the 1967 Six Day War were under Jordanian control.

More importantly, since a majority of Jordanians - which was established in 1947 on 77% of the British Mandate of Palestine - are Palestinian Arabs (some 70%), some have suggested the country should rightfully serve as a Palestinian state.

This idea has been supported by many Israeli nationalists, one example being former MK Aryeh Eldad, who has been advocating for this for years.

The Hashemite Kingdom, however, has rejected these calls. Just last month, King Abdullah told the Jordanian parliament that “Jordan is Jordan and Palestine is Palestine and nothing but that, not in the past or the future.”

As peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority have continued, there has been growing concern in Jordan over U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s proposed framework agreement and what will be its effect on Jordan.

Jordan's government is hoping to be spared by a popular uprising by having the repressed "Palestinians" removed and sent to Israel as part of a future deal.

Jordan’s Foreign Minister, Nasser Judeh, recently reiterated that Jordan will not be an "alternative home for anybody."

The Sick Middle East

From Family Security Matters.

The Sick Middle East
by DANIEL PIPES
January 26, 2014


The recent fall of Fallujah, Iraq, to an Al-Qaeda-linked group provides an unwelcome reminder of the American resources and lives devoted in 2004 to 2007 to control the city - all that effort expended and nothing to show for it. Similarly, outlays of hundreds of billions of dollars to modernize Afghanistan did not prevent the release of 72 prisoners who have attacked Americans.

These two examples point to a larger conclusion: maladies run so deep in the Middle East (minus remarkable Israel) that outside powers cannot remedy them. Here's a fast summary:

Water is running out. A dam going up on the Blue Nile in Ethiopia threatens substantially to cut Egypt's main water supply by devastating amounts for years. Syria and Iraq suffer from water crises because the Euphrates and Tigris rivers are drying up. Growing the narcotic qat plant absorbs so much of Yemen's limited water supplies that Sana'a may be the first modern capital city to be abandoned because of drought. Ill considered wheat-growing schemes in Saudi Arabia depleted aquifers.

On the flip side, the poorly constructed Mosul Dam in Iraq could collapse, drowning half a million immediately and leave many more stranded without electricity or food. Sewage runs rampant in Gaza. Many countries suffer from electricity black-outs, and especially in the oppressive summer heat that routinely reaches 120 degrees.

People are also running out. After experiencing a huge and disruptive youth bulge, the region's birth rate is collapsing. Iran, for example, has undergone the steepest decline in birth rates of any country ever recorded, going from 6.6 births per woman in 1977 to 1.6 births in 2012. This has created what one analyst calls an "apocalyptic panic" that fuels Tehran's aggression.

Poor schools, repressive governments, and archaic social mores assure abysmal rates of economic growth. Starvation haunts Egypt, Syria, Yemen, and Afghanistan.

Vast reserves of oil and gas have distorted nearly every aspect of life. Miniature medieval-like monarchies like Qatar become surreal world powers playing at war in Libya and Syria, indifferent to the lives they break, as a vast underclass of oppressed foreign workers toils away and a princess deploys the largest budget for art purchases in human history. The privileged can indulge their cruel impulses, protected by connections and money. Sex tourism to poor countries like India flourishes.

Efforts at democracy and political participation either wither, as in Egypt, or elevate fanatics who cleverly disguise their purposes, as in Turkey. Efforts to overthrow greedy tyrants lead to yet-worse ideological tyrants (as in Iran in 1979) or to anarchy (as in Libya and Yemen). One commonly roots for both sides to lose. Rule of law remains a fata morgana.

Islamism, currently the most dynamic and threatening political ideology, is summed up by a morbid Hamas declaration to Israelis: "We love death more than you love life." Polygyny, burqas, genital mutilation, and honor killing make Middle Eastern women the world's most oppressed.

Middle Eastern life suffers from acute biases - often official - based on religion, sect, ethnicity, tribe, skin color, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, work, and disability. Slavery remains a scourge.

Conspiracy theories, political zealotry, resentment, repression, anarchy, and aggression rule the region's politics. Modern notions of the individual remain weak in societies where primordial bonds of family, tribe, and clan remain dominant.

The Middle East suffers from an urge to snuff out whole countries. Israel is the best known potential victim but Kuwait actually disappeared for a half year while Lebanon, Jordan, and Bahrain could be swallowed up at any time.

Middle Eastern states spend outsized amounts of their wealth on intelligences services and the military, creating redundant forces to check each other. They venture abroad to buy tank, ship, and plane baubles. They devote inordinate resources to chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons, and the platforms to deliver them. Even terrorist groups such as Al-Qaeda plot to acquire WMD. Cutting-edge methods of terrorism develop in the Middle East.

Economic and political failure creates large bodies of refugees; Afghans have made up the world's largest refugee population since the 1980s; Syrians now threaten to overtake them, sowing poverty and chaos in their lands of refuge. Desperate souls attempt to leave the region altogether for Western countries, with more than a few dying along the way. Those who make it bring their region's maladies to such tidy countries as Sweden and Australia.

Nineteenth-century diplomats dubbed the Ottoman Empire "the Sick Man of Europe." Now, I nominate the whole Middle East the Sick Man of the World. The region's hatreds, extremism, violence, and despotism require many decades to remedy.

While this process perhaps takes place, the outside world is best advised not to expend blood and treasure to redeem the Middle East - a hopeless task - but on protecting itself from the region's manifold threats, from Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) and harems to mega-terrorism and electromagnetic pulse.

U.S. Support for Brotherhood Drives Arab World to Russia

The article over at The Clarion Project tells it all:  " It’s an embarrassing moment in history when the Middle East would rather bring back the Soviet Union than rely on today’s United States."

U.S. Support for Brotherhood Drives Arab World to Russia


It’s an embarrassing moment in history when the Middle East would rather bring back the Soviet Union than rely on today’s United States.


U.S. support for the Muslim Brotherhood and the nuclear deal with Iran is propelling the Arab world into the arms of Russia. The Egyptian government, formerly a U.S. ally, willbuy $2 billion in arms from Russia, signaling a strategic realignment in the Middle East that leaves Putin in control.

Egypt’s open embrace of Russia started immediately after the Obama Administration suspended some military aid to the Egyptian government in response to the overthrow of President Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood. While American aid continued unabated after the Islamists took over, it was cut after they were overthrown.

Saudi Arabia is embarking on a similar course. Saudi officials now openly talk to reporters about how their country will be more independent in reaction to U.S. policy. Reports about the acquisition of Pakistani nuclear weapons are met with non-denials. The Saudis offeredRussia a strategic alliance and major oil partnership if Putin abandons the Assad regime.

“We’ve seen several red lines put forward by the president [Obama], which went along and became pinkish as time grew, and eventually ended up completely white,” said Prince Turki al-Faisal, the former director of Saudi intelligence.

The Royal Family of Bahrain, a foe of Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood, feels the same way. Crown Prince al-Khalifa recently said, “America seems to suffer from schizophrenia when it deals with the Arab world.”

He compared the U.S. unfavorably to Russia; a shocking assessment considering Bahrain’s hostility to Putin.

“The Russians have proved that they are reliable friends,” he explained.

This trend didn’t start after the Arab Spring brought the Muslim Brotherhood to the forefront. It started shortly after President Obama took the oath of office. By June 2010, Egyptian and Jordanian officials were privately fretting about American diplomacy, specifically how the administration was reaching out to Syria.

“Only if you’re tough with America and adopt an anti-U.S. stance will the U.S. have a more flexible attitude and pay you,” an Egyptian official anonymously stated.

Similarly, a Jordanian official said the U.S. “sold out the Christians and Druze in Lebanon, sold out the Kurds in Iraq and abandoned the Hariri probe,” referring to the investigation into the assassination of Lebanon’s former Prime Minister. Syria, Iran and Hezbollah are widely thought to be the perpetrators.

It is mostly forgotten that the Iraqi government was confronting the Syrian regime (and therefore, Iran) back in 2009. The Iraqis were threatening retaliation for Syrian support of terrorism, releasing incriminating intelligence proving Syria’s complicity and trying to rally international support for a U.N. tribunal to prosecute terrorism-supporting Syrian officials.

When the Iraqi government asked for U.S. backing, the administration declaredit would not get involved and that Iraq and Syria should solve their differences diplomatically. An Iraqi official claimed that the U.S. privately fought Iraq’s plans for a tribunal. Iraq is now in Iran’s orbit and is an ally of Bashar Assad.

This is great news for Vladimir Putin, who said in 2005 that “The collapse of the Soviet Union was the biggest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.”

“Today, Russia is returning to a number of regions lost during the 1990s,” Mikhail Margelov, chairman of Russia’s Foreign Affairs Committee, proudlystated when talking about the arms deal with Egypt.

Similar statements are coming from the Egyptian side.

“We want to give a new impetus to our relations and return them to the same high level that used to exist with the Soviet Union,” Foreign Minister Nabil Fahmy said.

The Middle East is now divided into three alliances.

The first alliance is Turkey, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Qatar and Tunisia. The Obama Administration is most favorable to this one, going so far as to use taxpayer money to spread Turkish and Qatari Islamism.

The second alliance is Iran, Hezbollah and Iraq. The administration is trying to build a better relationship with this bloc.

The third alliance is Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Kuwait. The Gulf country of Oman is trying to stay out of the confrontation with Iran. This bloc is the one most favorable to Israel and the one most vocally disappointed with U.S. policy.

The first two alliances are coming together against the third. Turkey and Iran want to achieve a ceasefire in Syria and their senior officials say they want to “join hands” to become the “backbone of regional stability.” Earlier this month, Hamas announced it resumed relations with Iran.

Russia is now in an ideal position where its friendship is craved by both sides in the Middle Eastern power struggle. Putin is the one with the options. He can pick the Iranian/Turkish side, pick the Saudi/Egyptian side, or play them against each other to his benefit.

It’s an embarrassing moment in history when the Middle East would rather bring back the Soviet Union than rely on today’s United States.

British Are All Whacked Because Obama's Messed Up Middle East Security

So, the British have finally discovered what the Patriots in America have known for years...that Barack Hussein Obama, left alone, will destroy the Middle East, that every ally will now be an enemy, that every enemy will now be an ally to the West.

Little slow on the uptake, chaps?

The story comes from The Telegraph.


We must look after our allies east of Suez

It is now more than 40 years since Denis Healey, the Labour defence secretary at the time, ordered the withdrawal of British forces located east of the Suez Canal in a futile attempt to balance the government’s books.

If few could dispute the economic imperative that necessitated a dramatic reduction in Britain’s global presence, the decision came as a particularly cruel blow to the Gulf Arabs, most of whom cherished their long-standing ties with Britain which, in many cases, dated back to the early 19th century.

With London no longer able to protect them, the Americans quickly filled the void, and the arrival of the US 5th Fleet – which today has more warships than the entire Royal Navy – to take over the Bahrain naval base vacated by British forces in 1971 aptly symbolised our humiliating retreat from empire. Until recently, the Pax Americana has admirably served the Gulf region’s interests, whether protecting it from the threat posed by the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein or the more sinister designs of the ayatollahs menacing the Arab regimes from the opposite shores of the Gulf.

But, thanks to the Obama administration’s woeful disregard for the concerns of its erstwhile allies, the entire future of the Western alliance’s relationship with the Gulf region is now under threat.

Looking back, the rot set in nearly three years ago, when President Barack Obama unwisely backed the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak, the ruler of Egypt, despite the fact that Mr Mubarak had been a staunch Western ally for more than three decades. If Mr Obama could blithely turn his back on a trusted ally such as the Egyptian president, then what guarantees did other pro-Western Arab regimes have that Washington would stand by them in their hour of need?

More recently, last month’s interim agreement between the US and Tehran in Geneva over Iran’s controversial nuclear programme has exacerbated tensions further. The result is that many leading Arab states, such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, are now seriously considering whether they should ditch their long-standing ties to Washington, and look elsewhere for more reliable allies, an opportunity Russia’s Vladimir Putin is only too eager to exploit.

This deepening sense of betrayal by the Obama administration was very much in evidence at last weekend’s annual Manama Dialogue regional conference in Bahrain, which is organised by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies. Despite attempts by Chuck Hagel, the US defence secretary, and William Hague to reassure the Gulf states that the West still had their interests at heart, a succession of leading Arab politicians questioned whether they could any longer trust the Americans to support their cause.

This was particularly true of the Bahraini royal family, which, having provided the US Navy with a vital operating base for more than four decades, now finds itself under almost daily assault from Iranian-backed agitators who take their orders from the very same ayatollahs Washington is negotiating with on the nuclear issue.

As Sheikh Khalid bin Hamad al-Khalifa, Bahrain’s foreign minister, explained to me: “You do not need to reassure us; you need to listen to us, because we know Iran well.”

Clearly, Bahrain would welcome any deal that prevents its intimidating neighbour from acquiring an atom bomb. But it has other concerns, too, such as ending Iran’s open support for the terrorist groups that are trying to destabilise the kingdom, as well as many other Arab states, including Saudi Arabia.

Indeed, the Saudis were even more forthright, with Nizar Madani, Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, stating bluntly: “Gulf countries should no longer depend on others to ensure their safety.” There was little doubt who he meant by “others”.

The alarming breakdown in trust between Washington and Arab leaders has certainly not escaped Moscow’s attention, with Russia intensifying its efforts to move into countries that for decades have been stalwart American allies. Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudis’ formidable intelligence chief, has recently made several visits to Moscow, and last week held talks with Mr Putin on resolving the Syrian crisis and the Iranian issue. Last month, meanwhile, Russia sent a high-level delegation to Cairo, where the recently installed military authorities are in no mood to take any more lectures from Mr Obama on how to run their country.

Russia still has much ground to make up if it is seriously to challenge decades of Western hegemony in the region, but the prospect of Mr Putin increasing his control over Europe’s primary source of energy supplies is not a thought that inspires confidence.

Mr Hague, for one, is certainly aware of the pitfalls of this dangerous tilt towards Russia, and spoke eloquently in Bahrain about his determination to deepen Britain’s ties with the Gulf on the basis of “mutual understanding”. Apart from the prospect of negotiating a £20 billion arms deal, plans to revive Britain’s military presence east of Suez, which are currently being given serious consideration by Downing Street, would be a welcome demonstration that Britain, at least, cherishes its historic ties to the Gulf.

Certainly, if the Obama administration is not up to the job of looking after its friends, then Britain should do the job for it.

Obama Administration Tries to Reassure Sunni Arab States That We Won't Let Iran Nuke the Entire Region

I guess the Obama administration thought that EVERY country would be as thrilled with a nuclear-armed Iran as Obama and Kerry are...so now they are back-tracking and making even bigger fools of themselves.  I would like to note that it's pretty hard to impress people with your military power when you've fired every General, you've slashed Defense spending and the reports are you don't have enough battle-ready troops for even one major military action.

The story comes from The Telegraph.

US reassures Gulf states amid Iran nuclear deal fears


Chuck Hagel, the US Defence Secretary, today sought to reassure Gulf states concerned about the recent nuclear deal with Iran by providing an unprecedented breakdown of America’s military presence in the region.

Several leading pro-Western Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, have expressed displeasure about the recent interim agreement reached with Iran in Geneva over its nuclear programme, fearing that it could result in the U.S. abandoning its long-established ties with Gulf states in return for better relations with Tehran.

But speaking at the annual Manama Dialogue international security conference in Bahrain, Mr Hagel went out of his way to stress the formidable amount of American firepower that still remains based in the Gulf region.

Previously, American defence secretaries have been wary about specifying the precise strength of America’s military strength in the region for fear of further inflaming tensions among radical Islamist groups.

But with key American allies seeking assurance of a protective US presence in the wake of the Iran deal, Mr Hagel told the conference, which is organised by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, that the Pentagon had no plans to reduce America’s military presence in the region, and was also planning to strengthen the region’s defensive missile shield to protect the Gulf states from attack by Iran.

The Pentagon “will not make any adjustments to its forces in the region — or to its military planning — as a result of the interim agreement with Iran,” said Mr Hagel. There are currently more than 35,000 troops in the Gulf region, including more than 10,000 forward-deployed soldiers with tanks, artillery and attack helicopters to serve as a “bulwark against aggression,” he said.

Meanwhile 40 U.S. warships have sailed through the Strait of Hormuz — the key waterway at the mouth of the Gulf which Iran threatened to mine in late 2011 — a total of about 50 times in the last six months.

Christianity Becoming Extict In Its Birthplace.

By Findalis of Monkey in the Middle


Hat Tip to Creeping Sharia

MIDDLE EAST historian Tom Holland told a briefing in London last night that the world is watching the effective extinction of Christianity from its birthplace.In an apocalyptic appraisal of the worsening political situation in the region, a panel of experts provided a mass of evidence and statistics for the end of the region’s nation states under the onslaught of militant Islam.‘In terms of the sheer scale of the hatreds and sectarian rivalries, we are witnessing something on the scale of horror of the European Thirty Years War,’ said Holland.‘It is the climax of a process grinding its way through the twentieth century – the effective extinction of Christianity from its birthplace.’The event titled ‘Reporting the Middle East: Why the truth is getting lost’ at the National Liberal Club in Whitehall, sought answers to the ‘anaemic’ coverage of attacks on Egypt’s Christians on 14 August.
Pre-planned destruction of scores of ancient churches, monasteries, schools, orphanages and businesses had gone unreported for days across the West, Nina Shea, Director of the Hudson Institute Religious Freedom Centre in Washington said.

After the Islamists swept multiple elections during the first revolution in 2011, US newspapers asking how it would change Egypt suggested merely that women would be prohibited from wearing skimpy clothes, and Sharm el-Sheikh would close as a tourist destination.

This was ‘utterly trivial’ she said.  Persecution of Copts, who dated their church to Gospel writer St Mark in Alexandria, was at its worst since the fourteenth century, with ‘horrific levels of violence’.
‘It has been the worst persecution in 700 years against the oldest, largest remaining Christian minority in the Middle East.’

The media had failed to ask the most basic questions, she said.  ‘Why were the Copts singled out, what was the significance and purpose of the attacks?’

A fourth-century church dedicated to St Mary – whom Muslims were supposed to revere – and that was a UNESCO World Heritage site, had been destroyed and designated as a Muslim prayer space.
It was 200 years older than the Bamyan Statues in Afghanistan, yet the mainstream media had ignored its demise.

Yet there was enough evidence to show that the violence was part of a plan to ‘drive out the Copts, to terrorize them into leaving’, she added.

Lapido Chief Executive Dr Jenny Taylor who organized the event which was co-hosted with foreign policy think tank Henry Jackson Society, said the media’s job was impeded by ‘secular blinders’.
They tended to report the Middle East’s religions as a ‘variant of a Westminster debate’ with ‘left-wing underdogs versus right-wing overdogs and the Christians getting lumped in with the overdogs if they get mentioned at all.’

Holland said Egypt was not a developing nation, which needed help to emerge as a Western democracy but had been the world’s first state, with a civilization on a level with China and Iran.  In Roman times, it had been the world’s bread basket.

Now it was the single largest importer of wheat anywhere on the planet.

In answer to a question from the floor he agreed there had been what felt like ‘silence’ from Western churches, governments and indeed Western Muslims after the attacks, which belied Islamist propaganda that the West colluded with Christians.

Shea also spoke about Syria.

Christians in Syria were now ‘caught in the middle’, she said.  There was a shadow war against them by rebels, with jihadis and al-Qaeda factions deliberately attacking Christians.

‘When they conquer a town they set up sharia courts and mini sharia states.  The Christians are fleeing.  Given the choice to be killed or to leave, they leave.  If they stay, the jizya tax is imposed, and then raised.  If they cannot pay they are killed.’

She said Christians dared not go to refugee camps run by rebels as they would be recruited to fight.
The so-called Damascus Plan drafted by the Free Syrian Army for after the war ends, included retribution killings against any who did not oppose Assad.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I feel sorry for the Churches of the Middle East.  In every Muslim nation  they are being destroyed.  In Bethlehem, under the Palestinian Authority, Christians have gone from a majority population of 85% to a minority population of 10%.  Pretty soon the only Christians in the city will be the priests, nuns, and tourists.  Already the Palestinian Authority has decided to turn the Church of the Nativity into a mosque.  The Church of the Nativity is one of the holiest sites in the Christian world.  Yet there will be no protests when this happens.

The only place in the Middle East where there is total and free religious liberty is Israel.  Yet the Christian Churches will not praise Israel for this, but condemns the Jewish State instead.

Between 1949 and 1955 every Arab nation forcibly removed most of the Jews from their nations.  They laughed doing so, saying:

First the Saturday people.
Then the Sunday people.

In most of the Arab world there are not enough Jews to satisfy their blood lust.  For instance there are only 9 Jews in Egypt.  (All elderly women.)  So now it is the turn of the Sunday people to leave.  And like with the Jews, the world is remaining silent.

Until Christian and World leaders cry out and demand a stop to the persecution, the murders, the rapes, the torture of their fellow Christians, the Muslims will keep doing what they want and laughing while we just sit back and do nothing.

Imam on Temple Mount: Let America be destroyed!

Oh yeah, these are the clowns that people like Barack Hussein Obama and Hillary Clinton and John Kerry think we should throw the Israelis under the bus in favor of - I got a question - when is the last time you heard an Israeli leader or religious leader calling for the destruction of America?

The story comes from The Clarion Project.

Imam on Temple Mount: Let America be destroyed!


An imam of the Hizb ut-Tahrir organization incited hundreds of Muslims, calling for the destruction of America, France, and Britain.

At a gathering on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem marking the first Friday of the Ramadan, an imam of the Islamist Hizb ut-Tahrir organization incited a crowd of hundreds of Muslims calling for the destruction of America, France, Britain and Rome. The fiery speech was made on July 12, 2013. The original Arabic video was translated by the Clarion Project and can be seen below.

The imam, Ismat Al-Hammouri, said a number of times, with the crowd repeating after him:

“Allah is Greater! Let America be destroyed!”

“The Caliphate is the answer!”

“Listen, Obama, we are a nation that does not bow down, and the Caliphate will return!”

“Listen, Obama. and the Caliphate will return!”

Pakistani Taliban establish 'base' inside Syria

Oh great...let's just fill the Middle East with Asian Islamic terrorists now!  I'm sure the Israelis are going to be thrilled to have Pakistani jihadis on their border now.

The story comes from The Long War Journal.

Pakistani Taliban establish 'base' inside Syria


The Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan has sent "experts in warfare and information technology" to Syria to establish a base and monitor the fighting there. The disclosure of the existence of the Pakistani Taliban's Syrian cell occurred just two days after a group that bears the same name as an al Qaeda unit in Pakistan claimed to have executed an attack on Hezbollah in Beirut.

The Pakistani Taliban sent 12 "experts in warfare and information technology" to Syria in the past two months to aid Syrian jihadists, while the base was established in Syria six months ago, the BBC reported.

The BBC interviewed a senior Pakistani Taliban leader known as Mohammad Amin, who is described as the "coordinator" of the group's efforts in Syria.

"He [Amin] said that the cell has the approval of militant factions both within and outside" of the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan, the BBC noted.

"They were facilitated by our friends in Syria who have previously been fighting in Afghanistan," Amin said. The Pakistani Taliban cell is in Syria to "assess the needs of the Jihad in Syria, and to work out joint operations with our Syrian friends," he continued.

The Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan works closely with the Afghan Taliban, the Haqqani Network, al Qaeda, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, and a host of non-aligned Taliban groups and jihadist organizations in Pakistan. Amin did not disclose which of these groups approved the Pakistani Taliban's establishment of a cell in Syria. Al Qaeda has a strong presence in Syria, and its official affiliate, the Al Nusrah Front, and the rogue Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, control territory throughout the country [see LWJ report, Islamic State of Iraq leader defies Zawahiri in alleged audio message].

The Pakistani Taliban are capable of establishing a cell in Syria even as they are waging jihad against the Pakistani government and fighting in Afghanistan. The Pakistani government has insisted that the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan is weak and fractured due to military operations against the group.

The announcement of the existence of the Pakistani Taliban cell in Syria took place just two days after a group calling itself "313 Brigade" claimed credit for a bombing in a Hezbollah-dominated neighborhood in Beirut, Lebanon. More than 50 people were wounded in the blast. The 313 Brigade blamed Hezbollah, which it calls the "Lebanese Party of Iran," and elements of the Lebanese government for intervening in the Syrian civil war on the side of the Syrian government.

The Syrian 313 Brigade shares the same name as the group that serves as al Qaeda's military organization in Pakistan. There is no direct evidence to link the Pakistani and Syrian groups, but al Qaeda is known to have tasked top operatives and recruits to fight in Syria. Al Qaeda's official affiliate in Syria is known as the Al Nusrah Front for the People of the Levant [see LWJ report, Islamic State of Iraq leader defies Zawahiri in alleged audio message].

Maulana Asim Umar, an al Qaeda ideologue based in Pakistan, claimed in May that some leaders and fighters from the region have been transferred to the Syrian front.

"And now the black flags of East Persia are moving to Syria after Iraq. The Mujahideen have established their centers in Syria ... in order to help establish caliphate," Umar said, according to a translation of his statement that was obtained by The Long War Journal.

"At present, al Qaeda and other Mujahideen of Islam have fully controlled this movement." he continued. "Several lashkars from Afghanistan are also leading in Syria."

The Pakistani Brigade 313 is made up of members from the Taliban and allied jihadist groups. Members of Laskhar-e-Jhangvi, Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI), Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammed, Jundallah (the Karachi-based, al Qaeda-linked group), and several other Pakistani terror groups are known to have merged with al Qaeda in Pakistan, and the group operates under the name of Brigade 313. This group is interlinked with Pakistan's Taliban and also recruits senior members of Pakistan's military and intelligence services, a senior US intelligence official has told The Long War Journal.

Al Qaeda, Barack Hussein Obama, Beirut, Drones, Iran, Lebanon, Middle East, Russia, Syria, US Foreign Policy, US Military,

By Findalis
Monkey in the Middle

Today an US drone was shot at in International Air Space by Iranian Forces.  It was repelled by US fighter Jets which are now flying escort for US drones.

The Syrian High Command issued an ultimatum to the Lebanese government to stop supporting the rebels or they will send their Air Force to strike the convoys and bases.

The Russian Navy decided not to have 3 warships dock at Tartus but diverted them to Beirut.

From Debka:

Middle East tensions are spiraling sharply six days before US President Barack Obama lands in the Middle East. Thursday night, March 14, an Iranian fighter jet tried to bring down a US Predator drone flying over Oman, i.e. the Straits of Hormuz - only to be warned off by flares from its US fighter escort.

This was not the first time a US drone was threatened by Iranian aircraft over the Persian Gulf, but in reporting the incident, the Pentagon revealed that the drones flying in the neighborhood of Iranian shores are now escorted by US jet fighters. A couple of hours earlier that evening, debkafile received an exclusive report from its military sources that the Syrian high command had just issued an ultimatum, on the orders of Bashar Assad, demanding that the Lebanese government put an immediate stop to the passage of armed Sunni fighters from Lebanon into Syria, else the Syrian Air Force would strike the Lebanese intruders’ convoys and also their home bases. Damascus claimed they were coming to fight the government alongside the al Qaeda-linked Jabrat al-Nusra.

Their incursion threatened to engender a major spillover of the Syrian conflict into Lebanon.

The danger of hostilities inching close to the Syrian port of Tartus, where Moscow maintains a naval base, decided the Russian Navy to instruct three warships carrying 700 marines to Tartus to change course and put in at Beirut instead.

The Iranians are openly supporting and fighting for Assad.  Al Qaeda is striving to take the Golan Heights, itching for a fight with Israel.  The Russians don't know which way to turn.  Support Assad or flee from the violence.  The UN peacekeepers on the Syrian-Israeli border have fled to Israel.  A patrol was kidnapped by al Qaeda.

All this on the eve of President Barack Hussein Obama's visit to the region.  A good example of his foreign policy in action.

The One State Solution

By Findalis
Monkey in the Middle

Here is an ideal solution to the Israeli-Palestinian problem:

The One State Solution

Proposed by Andrew Klavan, this just may be the best option for the region.



Click here if the video doesn't load.

In an effort to bring peace to the Middle East, President Barack Obama has proposed that Israel should return to its 1967 borders in exchange for being annihilated by its enemies. PJTV's Andrew Klavan has a better idea.

How the Arrival of Obama Fed the Salafi Crusades in the Middle East

Another brilliant article by Daniel Greenfield from over at Family Security Matters.

Elections have consequences.  Bad consequences.

The Salafi Crusades


Empires leave behind a mess when they leave. And that mess acts as the building blocks of a new empire. One empire falls and another rises in its place. It's an old story and it is what we are seeing in the Middle East.

The Islamist resurgence was fed by the collapse of two world powers, the USSR and the US. The fall of the Soviet Union robbed the Arab Socialist dictatorships of their support. The last of these, Syria, is now under siege, by Sunni Islamist militias after becoming an Iranian Shiite puppet.

Egypt's Sadat had made the move to the American camp early enough to avoid the fate of Syria or Iraq, but instead his successor, Mubarak, encountered the fate of the Shah of Iran. With the fall of Egypt, Syria is the last major Arab Socialist holdout, and if it falls, then the Middle East will have shifted decisively into the Salafi column.

Unlike the Soviet Union, the United States has not actually collapsed, but its international influence is completely gone. Bush was accused of many things, but impotence wasn't one of them. Obama however gave the Taliban a premature victory with a pullout deadline, ineptly waffled over the Iranian and Arab protests, before eventually getting on board with the latter, and allowed the UK and French governments to drag him into a poorly conceived regime change operation in Libya.

The Palestine UN vote, China's South China Sea aggression and Karzai's growing belligerence were just more reminders that no one really cared what the United States thought anymore. America had ceased to matter internationally as a great power. It still dispensed money, but its government had become an inept tail being wagged by Europe and the United Nations.

The loss of American influence was felt most notably in the Middle East, where its former oil patrons took the opportunity to back a series of Salafi crusades, the political Islamist version of which was known as the Arab Spring. The rise of political Islamists in democratic elections was however only one component of a regional strategy that depended as much on armed militias as on the ballot box.

In Egypt, protests followed by elections were enough to allow the Salafis, a category that includes the Muslim Brotherhood, to take over. That was also true in Tunisia. In Libya, a new American client, the government put up a fight, little realizing that Obama wasn't Putin, but a horrible mashup of Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Henry Wallace. Instead of getting American backing, Gaddafi got American bombs, and the Islamist militias, armed and funded by Qatar with Obama's blessing, got Libya. In Benghazi they repaid the help they received from Obama and Stevens by humiliating the former and murdering the latter.

In Syria, the Muslim Brotherhood's militias are racing the Al-Qaeda linked militias to the finish line in Damascus, while Western pundits prattle reassuringly about a moderate and secular Syrian opposition, which is as moderate and secular as Egypt's Morsi.

The regional snapshot of the Arab Spring isn't reform, but a land rush as secular governments affiliated with Russia and the United States fall, to be replaced by believers in an emerging Islamist Caliphate. The Arab Spring isn't 1848; it's 638, the Mohamedan expansion at the expense of the ailing Byzantine Empire, a rampage that eventually ended in the Islamization of the Middle East. For Salafis, this is their opportunity to Re-Islamize the Middle East under the full force of Islamic law.

The Muslim world does not keep time by European progressive calendars. It isn't out to recreate the republican revolutions that secularized and nationalized Europe; rather it is trying to undo the secondhand European effects of those revolutions on the Middle East. The left is celebrating this as a triumph for anti-imperialism, but it's just a matter of replacing one empire with another.

Muslim imperialism and colonialism were far more brutal and ruthless, as the Indians could tell you, and if the Salafis have their way, and they are having their way for the moment, it will be the beginning of a new wave of global conquests, with old sheiks using oil money from the decadent West to outfit militias of young men with top quality American and Russian weapons before sending them off to die, while they wait for news of the new caliphate and bed down with their eight wife.

This isn't an entirely new game. Bin Laden was playing it for decades and Salafi crusaders have been fighting the Ottoman Empire and massacring Shiites for centuries. The notion of them extending their power into Cairo would have been absurd, but for the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the backlash from the efforts to modernize its former major cities which created a modernized Islamist movement inspired by Nazi politics and funded by Nazi money. A movement that we know as the Muslim Brotherhood. It took the Brotherhood a good 80 years, but they finally took Cairo.

The notion of the Salafis threatening the Middle East and the whole world would have been even more absurd if American oil companies hadn't rewarded their tribal allies with inconceivable wealth while turning a blind eye to their ambitions. And the notion that the Salafi crusade would ever extend to Europe would have been even more absurd, if not for the jet plane and the liberal immigration policies of Socialist governments with aging populations looking for a tax base and a voting base.

The Salafis, despite their feigned obsession with the purity of the desert, have piggybacked their conquests entirely on Western technologies and policies, from the wire transfer to the jet plane to the cell phone to liberal political correctness and Third Worldism. The Salafi crusades were never any match for 19th Century policies and weapons, except in the occasional brief conflict. But they are a match for 21st Century policies and the accompanying unwillingness to use the full force of modern weaponry on people that a century ago would have been considered bloody savages, but today are considered potential peace partners.

Declining empires want stability without war and they are willing to cut a deal with anyone on the way up who has a large enough army and will promise to keep the peace. In that way, the imperialism of the Post-American politician is a good deal like Eisenhower's foreign policy. The difference is that a British Prime Minister in the 1930s or an American President in the 1950s picked their battles, while their contemporary successors allow their battles to pick them and then surrender preemptively.

Carter's Green Belt strategy hoped to build a wall of Islamist governments to keep the Soviet Union out of the Middle East. The Soviet Union is dead but the Green Belt strategy has been revived by Obama in the hopes of using political Salafis willing to run for office to hold down the Salafist militias willing to kill everything that moves. It's hard to imagine a more decadent strategy than trying to outsource your defense policy to the least evil of your enemies, but variations on that theme have been the American defense strategy since the Salafi terror attacks of September 11.

After a decade of trying to divide the Islamist sheep from the Islamist goats, feeding billions to Pakistan to fight terror, extraditing Gitmo terrorists to revolving door rehabilitation programs run by Saudi Arabia, setting up a Palestinian state, making nice to Muslim Brotherhood front groups at home and then setting up the Muslim Brotherhood with a few choice countries of their own in the Middle East; the United States is less secure than ever for trying to appease its way out of the Salafi crusade.

Handing over Egypt and Tunisia to the Islamists earned us a new wave of attacks on September 11, 2012. What handing over Syria to the Muslim Brotherhood will get us, assuming that "our" Salafis will even be able to beat out the other Salafis who want to skip elections and move straight to the hand-and-head-chopping and Christian genocide, can only be imagined.

But Western leaders have a long history of misreading the Muslim world by assuming that Muslim leaders want what good European and American liberals do. Instead Muslim leaders want the sort of things that even few European right wingers want anymore.

Understanding the Salafi crusades means imagining a society where Anders Behring Breivik wasn't a deluded madman fantasizing about an international network of knights waiting to carry out acts of terror in a war to seize control of Europe and murder millions, but where he and his ideas were mainstream enough that billionaires would fund them and tens of thousands of young men would go to carry them out while television shows and preachers cheered them as martyrs.

Europeans, of course, shudder at the idea, but they have brought those tens of thousands of Breiviks into their own societies through Muslim immigration and Saudi and Iranian mosques. And they have turned over the Middle East to the sort of men who make Breivik look like a schoolboy.

One of the men pardoned by Morsi, the new Muslim Brotherhood president of Egypt, was Mostafa Hamza, the head of The Islamic Group, an organization that was responsible for the Luxor Massacre of foreign tourists. The Luxor Massacre consisted of an hour of torture, mutilation and murder that would have sickened even Breivik. But what is an incomprehensible atrocity to the Western mind is an act of courage and bravery to the Muslim mind. And it is on such atrocities that the Salafi crusades build their caliphate of blood and bone.

The Salafi crusades follow those rules and we saw them in action on September 11. We can see them in action in Nigeria where Boko Haram terrorists blow up churches and in Mali where Salafi fighters chop off the hands of thieves and give teenage girls 100 lashes for talking to boys on the street. We can see them in action in Aleppo where the bodies of tortured priests turn up and in Israel where their terrorists fire rockets from the shade of schools and hospitals.

The Salafi political victories, militia victories and terror attacks are all part of the same phenomenon, and it is about time that we confronted it for what it is. War is politics by other means and politics is war by other means. To the Salafis seizing power, by the bullet or the ballot, the one are one and the same so long as the road leads to the Islamic empire of the Caliphate. Obama's forced decline of America has led to a new wave of Salafi conquests and the war for civilization has begun in earnest.

The Gates of Jerusalem Are the New Gates of Vienna

The story comes from Family Security Matters.

The Gates of Jerusalem


The endless wars with Israel are not really about the Jewish State. Nor are the wars about the Arabs living in the territories that Israel lost in 1948 to Jordan and Egypt and recaptured from them in 1967. The rest of the Muslim world cares no more about them than Hitler cared about the Sudeten Germans or Japan really believed in the rights of Chinese and Koreans.

Israel is a sideline in a regional struggle by fractured populations, divided by ethnicity and religion, by language and natural resources, to unite into a single commonality. It is a natural target because its population consists of a people who are members of a different religious and ethnic group than the dominant religious and ethnic groups of the region.

Unlike the Persians and Turks, the Jews are not Muslims, not even Shiites, and unlike the Christian Arabs, the Jews are not even of the same ethnicity as the regional majority. Jews are neither Muslims nor Arabs and that makes them unique and alien in a region where every country is dominated by either an Arab or Muslim identity. Or both.

To the Arab Nationalist, the Persian and Turk is an alien, but the Christian Arab is a brother. To the Islamist, the Christian Arab is a Dhimmi or an infidel, but the Turk is a brother in faith. But to both, the Jew and the Jewish State are an alien presence in the region that must be removed for their own version of regional unity to flourish.

The Post-Colonial contest in the Middle East has been over how to unite the fractured ethnic minorities and the religious splits together into a single region. What do the tribal oil monarchies have in common with the former colonies ruled by military strongmen? What do any of them have in common with the Persians and the Turks?

Uniting behind something is difficult, as even the Islamists must admit. Islam split over issues of succession not too long after Mohammed's death. But uniting against something is fairly easy. The Jews are the most alien of all the groups in the region. Unable to unite on love, the Middle East unites on hate and hating Israel gives everyone in the region a feeling of having something in common.

Israel is however only a sideline in the larger struggle between Islamists and Nationalists, Sunnis and Shiites, in a region struggling to define itself around the supremacy of a single defining identity, rather than a harmony between different identities.

Terrorism against Israel is not a continuous enduring phenomenon. The enemies that Israel faced were defined by the political and religious trends of the region, from an early PLO committed to fighting to incorporate Israel into a Greater Syria to the latter day Hamas which is fighting for its own Islamist superstate in the form of the Caliphate.

Rather than an ongoing resistance by an oppressed people, the terrorists have actually been defined by ideological opportunism.

To the Arab Nationalists, it was nationalism that defined a nation and their terrorists constructed a mythical Palestinian identity to indoctrinate generations into becoming eager soldiers in the endless war being promoted by their Arab Nationalist backers in Egypt and Syria. And so Palestinian nationalism was born, not at all troubled by the lack of any actual national history to go with all the flags and bloody poems about dying for a homeland that had never existed and whose population consisted of economic migrants from Syria, Egypt and Jordan.

To the Islamists, nationalism is at best suspect and at worst, idolatrous. Hamas has never been able to disavow Palestinian nationalism, but its leaders waver between invoking the Palestinian nation and tossing it aside for their true goal of a regional Islamist unity.

The Arab Nationalists needed a national history and identity to lay claim to Israel. The Islamists has no need for such trinkets. To the Islamist, Israel is a Muslim possession by right of conquest. Once Muslims capture a place, whether it is Spain or Israel, it becomes Muslim land in perpetuity. There is no need for a national mythology linking a people to a specific place to allow a Muslim to lay claim to a territory that was once ruled by Muslims.

Hamas, like the rest of the Muslim Brotherhood, and other Islamist organizations, is transnational. It isn't completely divorced from ethnic hierarchies and national identities, but they are secondary to its larger agenda of replacing national identity with Islamic identity.

The Arab Nationalists and their terrorist groups, such as the PLO, were at war with Israel for ethnic reasons. The Islamists are at war with Israel for religious reasons. From the perspective of the people being shot at, it doesn't make much of a difference whether the people trying to kill you are doing it for racial or for religious reasons. But it does help us predict the future trends of such violence.

Hamas rose as part of a regional trend away from Arab Nationalism and toward Islamism. Egypt, once the great hope of Arab Nationalists has been overtaken by the Muslim Brotherhood. Iraq and Syria have tumbled away from their old Baath Socialism and are now defined by sectarian Shiite Islamist politics. Even among the region's non-Arab powers, Iran is a Shiite Islamist stronghold and Turkey has become a Sunni Islamist power. With the fall of Tunisia and Libya, Arab Nationalism is as good as dead. Islamism is the future.

At the level of the Arab Street, what people want from Arab Nationalism or Islamism is economic prosperity and an end to the ubiquitous corruption that makes daily life so frustrating and difficult. The Arab Nationalists could not deliver on their economic promises, no more than their Asian and Slavic counterparts could. The Islamists, despite their free market posturing, are no more able to reform a system based on bribe infrastructures, monopolies and subsidies. Their ingenuity only extends as far as Islamizing it and financing the whole mess with Western democracy subsidies.

The Islamists may not be able to deliver on their promises, but it's much harder to pry them out of office, once they get in, as the example of Iran shows us. Islamists dig deeper than your average Socialist dictator and there's no prying them loose without a bloody civil war.

For Israel that means counting on the Islamists of Egypt or Turkey to fall on their own is a false hope. Neither the Turkish nor the Egyptian military has the will or the strength to remove the AKP and the Muslim Brotherhood. If Syria falls, then Israel will be surrounded by a coalition of Sunni Islamist enemies on all sides. And Hamas is only their catspaw, much as the PLO was for the Arab Nationalists of Syria and Egypt.

Until now Israel has had to cope with a region where it was hated primarily based on race. Now it will have to survive in a region where it is hated based on religion. In some ways this will not be so different, but in other ways it will be.

The rise of the suicide bomber was one of the early forecasts of the cult of martyrdom. It is also a reminder that Israel serves as the canary in the coal mine for wider developments in the Middle East. Before the Muslim Brotherhood took power by winning an election in Egypt, Hamas took power by winning an election. The Arab Spring came to Israel years earlier, but as the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire, the Arab Spring was neither Arab nor a Spring; only an Islamist winter.

In its ancient history, Israel has often found itself in the path of conquering empires whose goals went far beyond the small land and minute number of people that they were confronted with. The Romans expected that sorting out Judea would be a minor matter. Instead it became a bloody series of wars that went on for centuries. The Roman Empire's goal was not Judea, it was to control the region, and the pesky Jews were just in the way.

Islam aspires to be an empire once again and the Jews are once again in the way. The war against Israel, whether carried on by the Arab Nationalists or their Islamist successors, was always about the ambitions of men who wanted to build empires, rather than about the narrow strip of land that is of little use to anyone but the small number of people who inhabit it.

Arab Nationalism came up against what should have been an easy target in several wars and lost. Its leaders never entirely recovered from those defeats. Their dreams of uniting the region died when they were unable to defeat a single small country with an army that lacked the training and officers of the Jordanian or Egyptian forces. When the Arab Nationalists reconciled themselves to Israel, they lost the only thing that they had to offer their people besides economic failure.

The Islamists know all this and intend to succeed where the Arab Nationalist dictators failed. As with Rome, the pesky Jews have gone from being a nuisance to a humiliating obstacle to their bigger plans for the region.

Islamist imperialism has come to revolve around the old problem of destroying Israel. The ideology of Islamism says that only Islamic unity can allow the peoples of the Muslim world to tackle great challenges. To establish the Caliphate and build a regional empire, the Islamists must do what the Arab Nationalists could not do. They must destroy Israel. And if they cannot do that, their reign will end in humiliation and failure.

The Gates of Jerusalem are the new Gates of Vienna.

The Future of Syria

I was emailed this latest entry written by a friend, Chicagodudewhotrades, and thought that he's done an excellent job of framing up the disaster that has become Syria.

I wanted to share it with all of you as today, another 8 Syrians were killed in the fighting in that country.

The Future of Syria: Poor, Nasty, Brutish and Short


On 26 January 2011, the 'Arab Spring' arrived in Syria. The result so far has been bloody. I fear that the future there could also be bloody for years and maybe even decades. I do not see a winner of this struggle for possibly years. I also believe that the uprising against the Assad regime could even spread across borders and engulf the entire region in bloodshed.


People should be paying attention to the Syrian uprising for a couple important reasons. First, if the uprising does spread to other parts of the region, then the already tragic loss of life could multiply many times. If this conflict does indeed become regional, then there could be a serious negative effect on the American economy in the form of much higher energy prices. Lastly, I believe the regime could be in possession of chemical weapons that may have been secretly moved out of Saddam Hussein's Iraq before the 2003 invasion. If the Assad regime finds itself with it's back to the wall, these weapons (if the regime does possess them) could be used in a last ditch attempt to stay in power. If this ever happens, then I believe that the world will HAVE to respond with military force against the regime.


If the regime manages to hang on to power and squash the uprising, then the retribution against anyone who dared to stand up against it will be ghastly. The late Hafez al-Assad (the father of the current dictator Bashir) ordered the Syrian army to conduct a brutal crackdown against the town of Hama in 1982 in order to put down a rebellion. This massacre is estimated to have killed anywhere from 10,000 to 40,000 Syrians.


Assad will NOT step down from power voluntarily. Look up ' Gaddafi, Muammar ' for a possibility on how this ends. When Assad falls from power, I think the payback against the minority Alawites and anyone connected with the ruling Ba'ath Party for the over 40 years of dictatorial rule will also be bloody and could last for years. This does NOT mean that I am a regime supporter. The Assad regime has committed unspeakable crimes against the country and must be held accountable for this. All I am pointing out is that the 'solution' could involve much bloodshed too.



A problem with dictatorships is that the guy at the top is paranoid about threats against him so he will eliminate any potential rivals, this means when he does fall there is usually no one left to fill the power vacuum and anarchy reigns. This is what happened in Libya last year. This could easily become Syria's fate as well.


A reason this uprising could spread across the region, or at the very least become a prolonged civil war is because a lot more countries then just Syria have stakes in this conflict.


Russia has been a strong supporter of the Assad regime for decades. It's only port located outside the Russian Federation's borders is at Tartus Syria. This port is Russia's ONLY year long warm water port. The port facilities there help support Russian naval deployments into the Mediterranean Sea. This port is a HUGE matter of geo-political importance to Russia. Because of this, I think they would be willing to do nearly everything short of openly committing their own ground forces to prop up the regime. But as this link suggests I may already be wrong:

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/03/19/russian-troops-reportedly-enter-syria/


Another country with a huge stake in preserving the Syrian status quo are the Iranians. Iran and the Syrian regime are close allies. Iran uses Syria as a transit channel to ship weapons to their Hezbollah proxies in Lebanon. If Syria is lost as a ally, then the easy transport routes from Iran to Lebanon are lost as well. Unlike the Russians, I believe the Iranians would be willing to go 'all in' to preserve the regime. However, what exactly that could mean is hard to tell.


A quick look at the past is another reason why I believe this struggle could be incredibly bloody and last for years. The Lebanese Civil War which happened literally next door to Syria lasted 15 years and claimed anywhere from 150,000 to 230,000 deaths. That averages out to 10,000-15,000 deaths per year. So far, around 8,000 deaths have been reported since this began in Syria one year ago.




Below are some estimates of how the Syrian rebellion may turn out:


The regime manages to hold on to power in it's current form: Less then 5%
I believe the regime is too damaged to continue on the way things have been. The myth of the Assad regime being invincible to opposition has been shattered forever.

The Alawite minority continues to hold on but without Assad at the top: Less then 10%
Maybe something can be worked out where the Alawites continue to run the country in exchange for peace and the handing over of Bashir Assad to the opposition to stand trial but I doubt it. I think too much blood has be already spilled for this to be a workable idea.

Assad gets deposed by a military coup: Less then 10%
This is also a bit far-fetched. Since it is the military doing the killing, I don't see a deal worked out on this either.

Regime falls, and everyone fights a civil war over whatever is left: 60% or greater
Given the history of the region and what is at stake, I really think this is the most likely outcome. The opposition to the regime is unified on getting rid of Assad, but after that.... they are pretty splintered on what they want next for Syria. This isn't a good sign. To quote a movie title: "There will be blood'. Just how many lives are lost, how long this goes, and who else gets dragged down into this are really the only questions left.

As you can see, I am very pessimistic about Syria's future. I just don't see any real good news on the horizon. Even some of the best outcomes still mean plenty of killing as decades-old scores are finally settled. The truly worst-case scenario would be this uprising spreading across borders, causing instability across the region and triggering a full-scale conventional war in response, This is why this conflict needs to be watched closely. I hope I am wrong, but I doubt it.

The Ultimatum That Netanyahu Will Give To Obama

Last year Iran test-fired surface-to-surface missiles capable of reaching Israel Photo: EPA

The upcoming meeting between Israel's leader Netanyahu and President Obama is shaping up to be more like a showdown at the OK Corral - it is being reported that Netanyahu is going to simply give Obama an ultimatum in regards to Iran.

From the report at The Telegraph:

When the two men meet in Washington on Monday, Mr Obama will find his guest once more at his most combative. But this time, perhaps as never before, it is the Israeli who has the upper hand.

Exuding confidence, Mr Netanyahu effectively brings with him an ultimatum, demanding that unless the president makes a firm pledge to use US military force to prevent Iran acquiring a nuclear bomb, Israel may well take matters into its own hands within months.

The threat is not an idle one. According to sources close to the Israeli security establishment, military planners have concluded that never before has the timing for a unilateral military strike against Iran's nuclear facilities been so auspicious.

Now, there isn't a soul in the Obama administration that actually believes that there is anything that sanctions or negotiations will do to stop the Iranians from getting nuclear weapons. Israel knows the same thing. But what we see here is the dance - Obama doesn't want to have to pull the trigger on an Iranian attack because it will damage him with his anti-war base and at the same time, Netanyahu is facing a very real attack on his homeland. The fly in the ointment is that Obama, unlike any preceding U.S. President, doesn't care about the security or longevity or even existence of Israel.

Now, Obama isn't stupid so he knows he simply can't wash his hands of the situation but I believe he will try to set this all up as Israel going against his wishes - and if the result of an Israeli attack is successful, then Obama will back pedal on his objections but if it goes poorly, Obama will say "I told you so."

Israel delivers ultimatum to Obama on Iran's nuclear plans


Their relationship, almost from the outset, has been frostier than not, a mutual antipathy palpable in many of their previous encounters.

Two years ago, Barack Obama reportedly left Benjamin Netanyahu to kick his heels in a White House anteroom, a snub delivered to show the president's irritation over Israel's settlement policy in the West Bank. In May, the Israeli prime minister struck back, publicly scolding his purse-lipped host for the borders he proposed of a future Palestinian state.

When the two men meet in Washington on Monday, Mr Obama will find his guest once more at his most combative. But this time, perhaps as never before, it is the Israeli who has the upper hand.

Exuding confidence, Mr Netanyahu effectively brings with him an ultimatum, demanding that unless the president makes a firm pledge to use US military force to prevent Iran acquiring a nuclear bomb, Israel may well take matters into its own hands within months.

The threat is not an idle one. According to sources close to the Israeli security establishment, military planners have concluded that never before has the timing for a unilateral military strike against Iran's nuclear facilities been so auspicious.

It is an assessment based on the unforeseen consequences of the Arab Spring, particularly in Syria, which has had the result of significantly weakening Iran's clout in the region.

Israel has always known that there would be an enormous cost in launching an attack on Iran, with the Islamist state able to retaliate through its proxy militant groups Hamas and Hizbollah, based in Gaza and Lebanon respectively, and its ally Syria.

Each is capable of launching massive rocket strikes at Israel's cities, a price that some senior intelligence and military officials said was too much to bear.

But with Syria preoccupied by a near civil war and Hamas in recent weeks choosing to leave Iran's orbit and realign itself with Egypt, Iran's options suddenly look considerably more limited, boosting the case for war.

"Iran's deterrent has been significantly defanged," a source close to Israel's defence chiefs said. "As a result some of those opposed to military action have changed their minds. They sense a golden opportunity to strike Iran at a significantly reduced cost." Not that there would be no cost at all. With the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Hamas has chosen to throw its lot in with its closest ideological ally and forsake Iran and its funding, but it could still be forced to make a token show of force if smaller groups in Gaza that are still backed by Tehran unleash their own rockets.

Likewise, Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, could seek to reunite his fractured country with military action against Israel.

Iran would almost certainly launch its long-range ballistic missiles at Israel, while Hizbollah, with an estimated arsenal of 50,000 rockets, would see an opportunity to repair its image in the Middle East, battered as a result of its decision to side with Mr Assad.

Even so, it is not the "doomsday scenario" that some feared, and a growing number in the security establishment are willing to take on the risk if it means preventing the rise of a nuclear power that has spoken repeatedly of Israel's destruction.

"It won't be easy," said a former senior official in Israel's defence ministry. "Rockets will be fired at cities, including Tel Aviv, but at the same time the doomsday scenario that some have talked of is unlikely to happen. I don't think we will have all out war." In itself, the loss of two of Iran's deterrent assets would probably not be enough to prompt Israel to launch unilateral military action.

The real urgency comes from the fact that Israeli intelligence has concluded that it has only between six and nine months before Iran's nuclear facilities are immune from a unilateral military strike.

After that, Iran enters what officials here call a "zone of immunity", the point at which Israel would no longer be able, by itself, to prevent Tehran from becoming a nuclear power.

By then, Israel assesses, Iran will have acquired sufficient technological expertise to build a nuclear weapon. More importantly, it will be able to do so at its Fordow enrichment plant, buried so deep within a mountain that it is almost certainly beyond the range of Israel's US-provided GBU-28 and GBU-27 "bunker busting" bombs.

It is with this deadline in mind that Mr Netanyahu comes to Washington. Mr Obama's administration has little doubt that their visitor's intent is serious. Leon Panetta, the US defence secretary, stated last month that there was a "strong likelihood" of Israel launching an attack between April and June this year.

Senior US officials have, unusually, warned in public that such a step would be unwise and premature, a sentiment echoed by William Hague, the Foreign Secretary.

Mr Obama is determined that beefed up US and EU sanctions targeting Iran's central bank and energy sector be given the chance to work and is desperate to dissuade Israel from upsetting his strategy.

But to give sanctions a chance, Mr Netanyahu would effectively have to give up Israel's ability to strike Iran and leave the country's fate in the hands of the United States – which is why he is demanding a clear sign of commitment from the American president.

"This is the dilemma facing Israel," the former senior military officer said. "If Iran enters a zone of immunity from Israeli attack can Israel rely on the United States to prevent Iran going nuclear?"

Mr Netanyahu's chief demand will be that Washington recognises Israel's "red lines". This would involve the Barack administration shifting from a position of threatening military action if Iran acquired a nuclear weapon to one of warning of the use of force if Tehran acquired the capability of being able to build one.

Mr Obama will be reluctant to make such a commitment in public, though he might do so in private by pledging action if Iran were to expel UN weapons inspectors or begin enriching uranium towards the levels needed to build a bomb, according to Matthew Kroenig, a special adviser to the Pentagon on Iran until last year.

"Israel is facing the situation of either taking military action now or trusting the US to take action down the road," Mr Kroenig, an advocate of US military strikes against Iran, said. "What Netanyahu wants to get out of the meeting are clear assurances that the US will take military action if necessary." The American president may regard Mr Netanyahu as an ally who has done more to undermine his Middle East policy of trying to project soft power in the Arab world than may of his foes in the region.

But, on this occasion at least, he will have to suppress his irritation.

Mr Netanyahu is well aware that his host is vulnerable to charges from both Congress and his Republican challengers for the presidency that he is weak on Iran, and will seek to exploit this as much as possible.

Tellingly, Palestinian issues, the principal source of contention between the two, will be sidelined and Mr Obama has already been forced to step up his rhetoric on Iran beyond a degree with which he is probably comfortable.

Last week, in a notable hardening of tone, he declared his seriousness about using military force to prevent Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon, saying: "I do not bluff." Yet whatever commitments he might give to Mr Netanyahu it is far from clear that it will be enough to dissuade Israel from taking unilateral action.

Among the Israeli public, there is a sense of growing sense that a confrontation with Iran is inevitable. Overheard conversations in bars and restaurants frequently turn to the subject, with a growing popular paranoia fed by the escalation in bomb shelter construction, air raid siren testing and exercises simulating civilian preparedness for rocket strikes.

Last week, Israeli newspapers fretted that the government was running short of gas masks, even though more than four million have already been doled out.

But while the growing drumbeat of war is unmistakable, it is unclear whether or not Mr Netanyahu, for all his bellicose rhetoric, has yet fully committed himself to the cause.

Ostensibly, a decision for war has to be approved by Mr Netanyahu's inner cabinet. But everyone in Israel agrees that the decision ultimately rests with Ehud Barak, the defence minister who is unabashedly in favour of military action, and, most importantly, the prime minister.

"Netanyahu is a much more ambiguous and complex character," said Jonathan Spyer, a prominent Israeli political analyst. "We know where Barak stands but with Netanyahu it is less clear.

"Netanyahu is not a man who likes military adventures. His two terms as prime minister have been among the quietest in recent Israeli history. Behind the Churchillian character he likes to project is a very much more cautious and vacillating figure."

Were Mr Netanyahu to overcome his indecisiveness, as many observers suspect he will, real questions remain about how effective an Israeli unilateral strike would be.

With its US-supplied bunker busters, Israel's fleet of F-15i and F-16i fighter jets, and its recently improved in-air refuelling capabilities, Israel could probably cause significant damage to the bulk of Iran's nuclear facilities, including the Natanz enrichment plant.

But the second enrichment plant at Fordow, buried beneath more than 200 feet of reinforced concrete, could prove a challenge too far.

"Natanz yes, but I don't think they could take out Fordow," said Mark Fitzpatrick, an Iran expert at the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London. "They could take out the entrance ramps but not the facility itself."

With its Massive Ordnance Penetrator bunker busters, each weighing almost 14 tonnes, the United States stands a much better chance of striking Fordow successfully, thus disrupting Iran's nuclear programme for far longer than the one to three years delay an Israeli attack is estimated to cause.

But whether Israeli is prepared to leave its fate in American hands is another matter.

"Israelis are psychologically such that they prefer to rely on themselves and not on others, given their history," the Israeli former senior defence ministry official said. "We feel we have relied