ANALYSIS: Russian Offensive Robs Israel of Ability to Strike Iranian Forces

Friday, June 29, 2018 |  Yochanan Visser

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A Russian-Iranian led offensive in southwest Syria is complicating Israel’s operational abilities against the growing Iranian threat from the country.

The offensive by the pro-Assad coalition started early last week and aims to drive the various rebel groups out of the region along the Jordanian and Israeli border.

To make things even more complicated for Israel the Russian air force joined the offensive which spelled the end of the so-called de-escalation zones agreement between the U.S., Russia and Jordan from July 2017.

Russian and Syrian airplanes are currently bombing rebel positions in the Daraa Province which borders the Kuneitra Province along the Israeli border.

The offensive has already made between 45,000 and 120,000 civilians homeless, the United Nations and Emad Batin, the vice president of the opposition’s Daraa Provincial Council,reported on Thursday.

The displaced Syrians first tried to flee in the direction of the Jordanian border but after the Hashemite Kingdom, which is already home to more than 1.3 million Syrian refugees closed its borders, the region along the Israeli border became a last resort for the Daraa residents.

Apparently the displaced persons hope Israel will open its border with Syria or that the Syrian army will not dare to launch attacks so close to the Israeli border.

Israeli intervention to stop the Iranian Russian-backed pro-Assad coalition from taking over the border region on the Golan Heights is increasingly becoming unlikely since the Russian air force joined the offensive.

Russian and Syrian warplanes carried out more than 84 airstrikes in Daraa on Thursday morning alone while the Islamist rebels in the Yarmouk Basin region used suicide attacks in an attempt to derail the offensive.

Heavy fighting was also reported in the eastern countryside of Daraa while the Long War Journal (LWJ)revealed at least one Iranian backed Shiite militia from Iraq is fighting along Assad’s army.

According to  LWJ the Iraqi Shia militia Liwa Zulfiqar advertised its presence in the offensive via videos and photos which it posted on its Facebook page.

Liwa Zulfiqar took part in the battle for Busra al Harir a strategically important town in eastern Daraa and claimed rebels had tried to assassinate its commander.

During the offensive in Daraa at least three hospitals were bombed leaving residents of the province, where the uprising against Assad started in 2011, without medical care local media reported.

The pro-Assad coalition is now approaching the Israeli border and bombed the Free Syrian Army in the town of Nawa which is located less than twelve kilometers from the Golan Heights.

Russian and Syrian warplanes are targeting the Islamic State affiliate Jaish Khalid bin al-Walid which is controlling most of the Yarmouk Basin area.

The United States, meanwhile, has made clear it has no intention to help the rebels in southeast Syria while the Trump Administration has set up a meeting to discuss the Iranian presence in Syria with Russian president Vladimir Putin.

Putin and Trump are expected to meet in Europe after a NATO conference in Helsinki, Finland which will take place in another two weeks.

Israel, meanwhile, continues to strike Iranian weapon transports to Syria but seems to be robbed of its military options by Russia to stop the Iran-dominated pro-Assad coalition from taking over the region adjacent to the Israeli Syrian border on the Golan Heights.

The presence of Russian airplanes in Syrian airspace above the Quneitra and Daraa provinces will most likely tie the hands of the Israeli air force whenever the offensive reaches the Golan Heights

The pro-Assad coalition, on the other hand, seems also very cautious in its efforts to take over the Golan Heights.

Most of the fighting since the beginning of the offensive has taken place in Daraa, not Kuneitra.

While Arab media claimed a Syrian offensive on the Golan Heights would lead to Israeli airstrikes or even an IDF ground operation in Syria, the most likely path the pro-Assad coalition will follow is to close a ‘reconciliation’ deal with the Islamist rebels on the Golan Heights.

Such deals ended other stand-offs with Islamist rebel groups across Syria and would include the forced transfer of the Islamist rebels along the Israeli and Jordanian border to Sunni dominated areas in northern and eastern Syria.

ANALYSIS: Has Iran's Multi-Front War Against Israel Already Begun?

Thursday, June 21, 2018 |  Yochanan Visser

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That Israel is fighting a two-front, and perhaps even three-front, war with Iran became apparent following events in Syria and Gaza this week.

Let’s first take a look at what’s going on in Gaza, where Iran is funding Hamas’ latest terror campaign against Israel.

What began as an organized Palestinian mass protests against the ‘Israeli siege’ has now become a new type of warfare where Hamas and Islamic Jihad (both are funded and trained by the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC)) are using incendiary kites and explosives-laden helium balloons to terrorize southern Israel.

This campaign has already caused more than 450 fires that destroyed 25,000 dunams of forests and agricultural fields, resulting in millions of dollars in damages.

Last weekend, the Israeli military started to treat the ‘Kite Jihad’ as a terror campaign, and introduced a tit-for-tat strategy that includes airstrikes on Hamas and Islamic Jihad targets in Gaza, as well as attacks on cells that are responsible for organizing and carrying out the kite terror.

However, Israel has been unable to halt the ‘Kite Jihad,’ and Hamas has vowed to extend the campaign into next summer, claiming that the incendiary devices could eventually reach targets as far as 40 kilometers from the Gaza border.

On Tuesday night, the sides came close to all-out war when 45 rockets and mortar shells were fired into southern Israel after the IAF struck 25 terror-related targets in Gaza.

The IDF has said it is ready to enter Gaza whenever the Israeli government decides to put an end to the ‘Kite Jihad’ and the renewed rocket attacks on Israel.

An unnamed IDF official told the Israeli news site Ynet that Hamas is misreading the situation due to a perceived focus on the situation along the northern border. “They misunderstand us, and this could lead to a deterioration, at the end of which we would be back inside the Gaza Strip and they would realize they had made a mistake,” the source told Ynet.

IDF officers think that if Hamas continues its current escalation, the Israeli government would have no other choice than to call up reserve soldiers and order the army to move into Gaza. On Wednesday evening, Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu seemed to confirm he could give a green light for a major IDF operation against the Iranian proxies in the coastal enclave.

"I do not intend to go into detail about what we are planning vis-a-vis Gaza.The intensity will be stepped up as necessary. We are prepared for any scenario and our enemies would do well to understand this – now," Netanyahu said.

Hamas, for its part, made clear it is dead-set on “setting the rules of engagement the way it sees fit,” according to Palestinian media. “The resistance will not allow the Israeli occupation to isolate the Palestinian people or impose any new equations,” Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum told Ma’an News in Bethlehem.

In Syria, meanwhile, Israel is continuing its efforts to halt the Iranian military build-up by launching airstrikes on Iran-related targets as far away as the Iraqi border. At the same time, the Netanyahu government has launched a diplomatic offensive to keep Iran and its proxies away from the Israeli border.

This past Monday, the IAF reportedly struck the Iranian-backed Kata’ib Hezbollah militia near the town of Qaim in the vicinity of the Albu Kamal border crossing on the Syrian-Iraqi border. The attack killed 52 members of the Iraqi militia, which is part of the Hashd al-Shaabi umbrella organization of Iraqi Shiite militias, and which takes its orders from Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the Quds Force of the IRGC.

Kata’ib Hezbollah is led by Qais al-Khazali, who was spotted touring the Lebanese-Israeli border seven months ago. His appearance there was seen is a signal to Israel that Iran would use multiple fronts in any future attempt to destroy the Jewish state.

Netanyahu's diplomatic efforts to curb Iranian ambitions have included leveraging his good relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump. On Monday, Netanyahu visited Jordanian King Abdullah II in Amman and dispatched his national security adviser, Meir Ben Shabbat, to Moscow to discuss the situation.

It remains to be seen, however, if the diplomatic offensive will bear fruit, and if the increasing IAF strikes on Iran-related targets throughout Syria will deter Tehran from establishing the final stretch of the their land corridor to the Israeli border.

Hezbollah terrorists and members of other Iranian-backed Shiite militias have been spotted wearing Syrian army uniforms to disguise their presence near the Israeli border, while on Tuesday night the Syrian army finally started the long-anticipated offensive against rebels in the Daara province.

This happened despite repeated American warnings to the Assad regime and its allies to not breach the de-escalation agreement in southwest Syria, a move that could trigger an Israeli reaction.

In southern Lebanon, meanwhile, Hamas and Hezbollah are increasing cooperation and are training thousands of fighters while building new missile facilities in preparation for the future multi-front war with Israel.

ANALYSIS: Changing Saudi Attitudes Toward Israel

ANALYSIS: Changing Saudi Attitudes Toward Israel
Tuesday, June 05, 2018 |  Yochanan Visser

http://www.israeltoday.co.il/NewsItem/tabid/178/nid/34153/Default.aspx

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Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman is known for his out of the box thinking and his ambitious sweeping reforms in Saudi Arabia where he has made many enemies during a purge which robbed elites, including members of the royal family, of their illegally obtained wealth last year.

The Saudi leader – he's expected to become king soon because his ailing father Salman is suffering from Alzheimer decease- has also radically changed his country’s attitude toward Israel which is no longer considered an outcast or illegal implant in the Middle East by the Saudis.

According to the Emirati newspaper Khaleej Times MBS –as he’s called by much of the media- recently arranged for a series of meetings between top Saudi officials and their Israeli counterparts during his visit to Cairo, Egypt in March.

Officially the meetings officially dealt with MBS’ ambitious plan to build a megacity called Neom which will partly build in Jordan and Egypt as well, but also addressed the upcoming American plan to solve the Palestinian Israeli conflict.

The $500 billion plan for the construction of Neom, a city of 26,500 square kilometers (the size of Belgium), includes hydro-agriculture projects which will be reportedly realized with Israeli help.

MBS has also called for religious freedom in Saudi Arabia, recently visited the heads of the Coptic Church in Egypt and the Anglo-Catholic Church in the United Kingdom and signed a deal with the Vatican to build churches in the ultra-conservative Muslim country.

Bin Salman, furthermore, works with Jason Greenblatt and Jared Kushner, Trump’s Jewish point men for the Middle East and Israel, on an out-of-the-box solution for the Palestinian Israeli conflict which reportedly includes the establishment of a Palestinian state ‘minus’.

The Palestinian mini-state would not have east-Jerusalem as its capital but Abu Dis according to media reports while Israel would retain security control over the Jordan Valley and large areas in Judea and Samaria.

The plan drew the ire of Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas who was summoned to Saudi Arabia in January where was updated about Trump’s ‘deal of the century’ by MBS accordingto the Israeli TV Channel Kan.

Abbas returned to Ramallah in total shock and later declared the plan “the slap of the century”.

During a two-hour during speech given to the Palestinian Central Council on January 15, 2018, the Palestinian leader repeatedly cursed president Trump and vowed the Palestinian Authority would “slap back.”

MBS later met with a delegation of Jewish American leaders while being on a long trip in the United States where he again held talks with Kushner and Greenblatt.

Details of the meeting with the Jewish delegation were later leaked to the media and suggested the Saudi Crown Prince had “castigated” Abbas and other Palestinian leaders for spurning every opportunity to reach a peace agreement with Israel.

The Palestinian Arabs should accept the Trump peace plan or “simply shut up” MBS reportedly told the Jewish leaders.

The changing Saudi attitude toward Israel inspired by Crown Prince has also been reflected in recent publications by intellectuals, commentators, and journalists in the oil-rich Kingdom.

Saudi writers “have been increasingly expressing open support for Israel, approving of its policy towards Iran and even calling to normalize relations and make peace with it,” the Middle East Media Research Institute reported last week.

For example, during the so-called “Great March of Return” the Hamas-organized violent weekly protests on the Gaza-Israeli border, some Saudi commentators blamed Hamas and Iran for the deadly turmoil and said, Hamas and Iran “were promoting their interests at the expense of the children of Gaza.”

Iran has clearly replaced Israel as Saudi-Arabia’s biggest foe a fact that is also prominently featuring in many articles and commentaries published in the country recently.

“Today, the Arabs have no choice but to reconcile with Israel, and to sign a comprehensive peace agreement (with it), in order to free themselves up for confronting the great Iranian plan in the region, and (Iran's) nuclear program, and to end (Iran's) intervention in Arab affairs,” Ahmad Al-Jumay'a, the former deputy editor of the Saudi daily Al-Riyadh wrote last month.

'If war breaks out between Israel and Iran, aimed at eliminating the foreign militias Iran has brought into Syria, who will you support?!'... (My) answer, which does not take a lot of courage to utter openly in the paper, is that I will side with Israel,” Ali Sa'd Al-Moussa, a columnist for the government daily Al-Watan later exclaimed.

ANALYSIS: Understanding Iran's Plan for Israel and the Middle East

Wednesday, May 30, 2018 |  Yochanan Visser

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US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo last week announced a new policy that aims to roll back Iran’s hegemonistic drive in the Middle East and to prevent the Islamic Republic from attaining a nuclear weapon.

Ever since, there has been a lot of criticism, mostly by backers of the Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action (JCPOA) that the Obama Administration brokered with Iran in 2015.

The goals of US President Donald Trump’s new Iran policy were ‘unrealistic’ or even a ‘recipe for war,’ some of the critics said, while others claimed the plan was doomed to fail since it required the help of much of the world.

Let’s focus on the part of Pompeo’s list that dealt with Iran’s imperialistic agenda for the Middle East.

Here’s what the new secretary of state outlined during his speech at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, DC on May 21:

“Iran must end support to Middle East terrorist groups, including Lebanese Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Iran must respect the sovereignty of the Iraqi Government and permit the disarming, demobilization, and reintegration of Shia militias.

Iran must also end its military support for the Houthi militia and work towards a peaceful political settlement in Yemen.

Iran must withdraw all forces under Iranian command throughout the entirety of Syria.

Iran, too, must end support for the Taliban and other terrorists in Afghanistan and the region, and cease harboring senior al-Qaida leaders.

Iran, too, must end the IRG Quds Force’s support for terrorists and militant partners around the world.

And, too, Iran must end its threatening behavior against its neighbors – many of whom are US allies. This certainly includes its threats to destroy Israel, and its firing of missiles into Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. It also includes threats to international shipping and destructive cyber-attacks.”

Pompeo explained that these requirements are “very basic,” and that the length of the list was “simply a scope of the malign behavior of Iran.”

A closer look at the list reveals something that is crucial to understanding what is currently happening in the battle against the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), which is mainly conducted by the US Army, Israel and Saudi Arabia’s coalition of Sunni Muslim countries.

In recent years, Iran has been executing a plan for the Middle East that is based on the so-called Mahdi doctrine.

According to this Shia end-of-days vision, the active participation of the pious in the creation of mayhem and war in the world could actually lead to a hastened return of the Mahdi.

Mahdi is the Shiite messiah, the hidden twelfth Imam who will return after an Islamic uprising that will spread all over the world, and will cause mayhem in specific Arab countries, in particular.

Israel is also playing a central part in this doctrine, which says the Jewish state will have to confront “extra forces which will arrive from Iraq.”

The Iranian plan for the Middle East and the Mahdi doctrine were explained in a regime-produced documentary from 2011 titled “The Coming (of Mahdi) is Upon Us.”

The (Shiite) soldiers of Mahdi will enter Saudi Arabia and the Muslim holy places via Yemen after a bloody battle that involves the Ansar Allah militia in Yemen (Houthis), an Arab legion, the US and Israel, according to the documentary.

The Mahdi doctrine requires the rise of Iran in the Middle East and Iranian dominance over Iraq, which will in the future house the capital of Mahdi’s Imperium (Baghdad).

At the end of a bloody battle that precedes the return of Mahdi, Iranian-led forces will attack Israel.

“The annihilation of the Zionist regime and the conquering of ‘Beitol Moghadas’ (Jerusalem) is one of the most important events in the age of the Coming,” according to the voiceover in the documentary.

If we now return to Pompeo’s list of requirements, we understand that the new American strategy against Iran is (finally) based on an understanding of Iran’s underlying strategy in the Middle East, which is the Mahdi doctrine.

As a result, the US is now working with Israel to prevent an Iranian takeover of Syria, where Iran has stationed more than 50,000 Shiite fighters.

The US military and its ally in the Syrian Democratic Forces are acting against Iranian-backed Shiite militias in (eastern) Syria, where the SDF controls 30 percent of the territory, while Israel has recently stepped up its military campaign against the Quds Force and almost every day launches attacks against Iranian targets in western Syria.

In Yemen, the US is working with a Saudi coalition of Muslim countries against the Iranian-backed Ansar Allah (Houthi) militia, which regularly lobs missiles at Saudi Arabia, but has been prevented from reaching the strategically-important waterway Bab el-Mandeb, through which an estimated 4.8 million barrels of oil flow each day.

Iraq is a more difficult problem for Iran’s enemies in the Middle East. 

The Iranians are currently trying to prevent the formation of an anti-Iran coalition after Iraq's elections on May 12. 

The Iranian regime immediately dispatched Qassem Soleimaini, the commander of the IRGC’s Quds Force, to Baghdad after the Iraqi cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who hates the Iranians, won the parliamentary elections. 

The Saudis have recently tried to increase their clout over Iraq by pouring lots of money into the war-torn country, and have invited al-Sadr to Riyadh. But it remains to be seen if they will be successful in rolling back Iran’s influence over the country. 

It is clear, however, that the current US Administration is acting according to a plan, which is finally based on understanding the enemy and the new Middle East.