Archive for the ‘Iran’ Category

Israel Mocks Iran’s First Strike on ISIS in Syria As ‘A Flop’ – Newsweek

Israels military and Israeli defense analysts have mocked Irans first strike on the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) in Syria, arguing that many of the missiles Tehran used in the raid missed their targets.

Irans Revolutionary Guard said it fired as many as seven missiles at an ISIS compound in Deir Ezzor while Iranian media cited sources who said that the strikes killed 360 militants on Sunday.

It marked the first time Tehran has fired into Syria from Iranian territory, using bases in Kermanshah and Kurdistan.

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The strikes were retaliation for the ISIS-claimed suicide bomb and gun attacks in Tehran on the countrys parliament and shrine of the founder of the Islamic Republic Ayatollah Khomenei that left 18 dead on June 7.

But Israeli military chief Gadi Eisenkot said Tehran was lying about the strike: Their achievement was less than what was reported in the media. The strike manifested something, but it was far from a direct hit or what they have said, Eisenkot told the Herzliya policy conference on Tuesday.

Israeli Chief of Staff General Gadi Eisenkot attends an official memorial ceremony marking the tenth anniversary of the 2006 war between Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah movement, at the military cemetery of Mount Herzl in Jerusalem on July 19, 2016. On Tuesday, he mocked Iran's first strike against ISIS in Syria. Thomas Coex/AFP/Getty

He said Iran was attempting to get more accurate rockets in its push for hegemony in the Middle Eastbut it was not there yet.

At least three of the seven ballistic missiles did not reach their intended targets, Israeli sources said in the Hebrew-language media, The Times of Israel reported.

Read more: America created ISIS, says Iran's Supreme Leader

If the Iranians were trying to show their capabilities and to signal to Israel and to the Americans that these missiles are operational, the result was rather different, analyst for Israels Channel 2 broadcaster Ehud Yaari said. It was a flop, he added, a failure.

ISIS has not acknowledged the strikes and Syrian activists said at least two of the rockets caused no casualties.

It is likely that the strike was not only intended to hit ISIS but to send a message to Irans adversaries, particularly the U.S., whose air force is operating in Syria in support of a Kurdish-Arab alliance besieging the eastern city of Raqqa, and Saudi Arabia.

The Saudis and Americans are especially receivers of this message, Gen. Ramazan Sharif of Irans Revolutionary Guard told state television. Obviously and clearly, some reactionary countries of the region, especially Saudi Arabia, had announced that they are trying to bring insecurity into Iran.

Iran is supporting the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad with ground forces and advisors in coordination with Russia. After the Iranian military pointed to the strike as a wider warning in the region, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hit back on Monday. I have one message for Iran: Dont threaten Israel.

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Israel Mocks Iran's First Strike on ISIS in Syria As 'A Flop' - Newsweek

Opinion: The US and Iran are headed for a collision in Syria – MarketWatch

Iran and its proxies have already begun to shape post-ISIS Syria, and eastern Syria is the most important theater. Yet recent events show that Iranian-backed forces advancing there will inevitability collide with two hostile forces, and compete with one of them.

The first lies south in the al-Tanf border area, where U.S. special forces and their Arab partners continue to take ground from the Islamic State (known as ISIS, ISIL, or Daesh). The second force lies to the north, where the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, or the SDF, could follow their current Raqqa offensive with an attack on ISIS in Deir Ezzor. Iran will come under great pressure to try to counter these advances.

If it and the United States stay the course in the current atmosphere of strategic confusion, it is difficult to see how they can avoid a conflict, and it is still unclear whether U.S. policy is ready for one.

Sporadic U.S. airstrikes and Iranian-backed ground maneuvers may look like haphazard tactics in a desert wasteland, yet there is in fact much at stake in these territories for Iran, Hezbollah, and the Syrian regime. Iran must prevent the control of eastern Syria by U.S.-backed forces in order to protects its dominance in Iraq, the survival of the Syrian regime and Hezbollahs strategic depth. Additionally, while analysts continue to highlight that the regime is too weak to control all of Syria, the regime itself appears to disagree. It has its sights set on the water and oil resources of eastern Syria, without which it would struggle to survive. The regime has every interest in preventing U.S.-backed Arab or Kurdish forces from securing this territory.

The regime itself seems too weak and preoccupied to threaten the U.S.-led coalition in al-Tanf. However, Iran is far more capable, with large reserves of (proxy) manpower and little tolerance for a U.S.-backed de facto statelet in its Syrian clients territory. It is more likely that Iran, acting through its local proxies, would test the coalitions resolve through increasing provocations. If so, it would calculate that the United States would back down to avoid serious escalation, thereby curtailing its territorial advances.

Whether that is a sound calculation depends on the United States ultimate goals in eastern Syria and the importance it places on them in the face of the likely array of Iranian threats.

On May 17, the IRCG-affiliated Fars News reported that Hezbollah had deployed 3,000 forces in the eastern Syrian desert, most of which were redeployed from the highly strategic Zabadani, Madhaya and Serghaya regions near Damascus and the Lebanon border. It is unclear which Hezbollah units were deployed, but if indeed they were taken from those key areas, they may be the elite Radwan units, apparently deployed among pro-regime militias. Radwan forces specialize in raids and small-unit tactics, and were critical to the regimes tactical counteroffensives during the battle of Aleppo.

Hezbollahs desert deployment is likely aimed at constraining the coalitions operations by leaving as large a military footprint as possible before an imminent large-scale operation against ISIS in Central Syria, according to pro-Iranian regime news outlet ABNA. In principle, these deployments seem aimed at preempting and complicating U.S.-led operations, rather than seeking a direct confrontation, and while expanding Iran and Assads control in central Syria. The militias would lose a direct confrontation with U.S. forces, but the question is whether the United States is willing to take them on.

If the U.S. chooses not to take them head on, the weaker forces can indeed make things difficult. For example, last week regime forces managed to preempt U.S.-backed fighters expansion north of al-Tanf simply by taking the ISIS territory itself first. The U.S. can either force them to withdraw, or call off its mission. Neither option is especially attractive: one carries the risk of war, the other of humiliation if not complication of the counter-ISIS mission.

In the north, Iranian-backed efforts are less obvious. In Iraq, Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) have made steady gains against ISIS to secure the Iraq-Syria border in Operation Mohammed Rasullah the Second. For these Shia-dominated forces, the goal is at a minimum to cut ISIS cross border supply lines.

However, the missions limits are unclear, particularly given Irans influence over the PMF. Certain pro-Iranian elements may go on to disrupt the U.S.-backed SDFs anti-ISIS advances in eastern Syria, perhaps under the pretext of (and indeed through) fighting ISIS, and through more pre-emptive land grabs, for example. In fact, factions like Liwa Abu al-Fadl al-Abbas are already operating across the border despite U.S. threats.

PMF Deputy Commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis rejected these threats, affirming that there has to be a road linking the two countries. Last week, activists reported that PMF units had seized two villages in southern Hasakah in Syria, a province north of Deir Ezzor. And most recently, a Syrian Army delegation is holding talks in Baghdad to discuss border security.

The most confusing actor in all this is the United States itself. Its official mission in Syria remains defeating ISIS. Its aggressive actions against Iran in the eastern desert, such as attacking Iranian-backed forces and deploying long-range artillery, could merely be measures taken by field commanders to protect U.S. forces conducting anti-ISIS missions. On the other hand, the Trump administration is deeply hostile to Iran, and key members of its national security team favor a more robust, long-term, U.S.-military presence in Syria to contain Iran. Either theory could explain U.S. action.

If the United States itself has no clear policy, Iran is left testing its limits or acting without any idea of its constraints and therefore dangerously. The administration has not explained how it plans to tackle the inevitable Iranian obstacle on the U.S. advance into eastern Syria, so Iran cannot reliably gauge the scope and intensity of U.S. commitment to this race. This makes an escalation, intentional or otherwise, much more likely. Escalation itself is not necessarily undesirable, but the Trump administration has not presented a clear case for it, and neither friend nor foe seem to know whether it has adopted it.

Faysal Itani is a senior fellow with the Atlantic Councils Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East. Ali Marhoon is an intern at the Atlantic Council Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East. This first appeared on the Atlantic Councils blog The Perilous Race for Post-ISIS Syria.

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Opinion: The US and Iran are headed for a collision in Syria - MarketWatch

Iran Has Drone Base Near US Troops in Syria – NBCNews.com

Iranian drone Shahed-129 is displayed by armed forces in a rally commemorating the 37th anniversary of the Islamic revolution February 11, 2016 in Tehran. Ebrahim Noroozi / AP File

The Iranians have been basing Shahed-129 drones at the airfield, according to the officials. The Iranian-made drones can be armed or used for reconnaissance. Neither official could say for sure whether either of the two drones that

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The U.S. has established

On June 8, the U.S. shot down a drone that had fired on coalition forces near At Tanf. A second armed drone was shot down by a U.S. jet on Tuesday as it approached coalition forces in the same area. The U.S. also downed a Syrian government warplane earlier this week in northern Syria.

Neither official would speculate on who is operating the drones that have tried to attack U.S. and coalition assets, but both said the Iranians have been training the Syrians how to use them.

U.S. special forces have been training Syrian opposition fighters at the At Tanf base for more than a year.

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Iran Has Drone Base Near US Troops in Syria - NBCNews.com

‘If Hezbollah fires rockets on Israel, IDF should hit Iran’s infrastructure’ – The Jerusalem Post


The Jerusalem Post
'If Hezbollah fires rockets on Israel, IDF should hit Iran's infrastructure'
The Jerusalem Post
If Hezbollah fires on Israel the IDF should strike Iran's infrastructure in response, former deputy defense minister Ephraim Sneh said on Wednesday, urging that Israel should target the Shi'ite terror organization's sponsor and great supporter Iran ...

and more »

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'If Hezbollah fires rockets on Israel, IDF should hit Iran's infrastructure' - The Jerusalem Post

The Growing US-Iran Proxy Fight in Syria – The Atlantic

On Sunday evening, a U.S. warplane shot down a Syrian jet after it bombed American-backed rebels in northern Syria. This marked the first time the United States has downed a Syrian warplane since the start of the countrys civil war in 2011. On Tuesday, the Pentagon announced that the United States had shot down an Iranian-made drone in the countrys southeast, where American personnel have been training anti-Islamic State fighters.

Since President Donald Trump took office, the U.S. military has struck the Syrian regime or its allies at least five times, in most cases to protect U.S.-backed rebels and their American advisers. Even if the Pentagon may not want to directly engage Syrian forces or their Russian and Iranian-backed allies, theres a danger of accidental escalation, especially as various forces continue to converge on eastern and southern Syria to reclaim strategic territory from ISIS. Russia, for its part, angrily condemned the U.S. action and threatened on Monday to treat all coalition planes in Syria as potential targets.

What Is Putin Up To in Syria?

But the dangers are perhaps particularly acute when it comes to Iran, which made dramatic battlefield moves of its own on Sunday, when it launched several missiles from inside Iran against ISIS targets in eastern Syria. Officially, Irans Revolutionary Guards said the volley of missiles fired at Deir Ezzor province was a response to a pair of attacks by ISIS in Tehran on June 7, which killed 18 people and wounded dozens; the attacks marked the first time that ISIS had struck inside Iran. But the Iranian regime had several less-dramatic means to exact revenge against ISIS targets in Syriaafter all, theres no shortage of Iranian allies operating in the war-ravaged country.

Instead, Irans fiery act of vengeance seemed to be a message aimed at both the Trump administration and Saudi Arabia. (The six ballistic missiles used by Tehran against ISIS, with a range of 700 kilometers, could reach major Saudi cities.) The kingdom has become emboldened regionally and escalated its anti-Iran rhetoric thanks, in part, to Trumps message of seemingly unconditional support.

At the same time, Trumps apparent willingness to use military force against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his chief supporters risks sparking a widening confrontation, while distracting from what he insists is his top priority: defeating ISIS in Iraq and Syria. This, from a president who campaigned, in part, on a pledge to avoid direct U.S. involvement in the Syrian conflict. Now, Trump has become a major player in an exploding regional proxy war that could determine the Middle Easts post-war dynamics.

Sundays events place the danger of escalation and the staggering complexities of the phalanx of alliances in Syria into stark relief. The confrontation began when U.S.-allied fighters with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a coalition of Kurdish, Sunni Arab, Christian, and Turkmen rebel groups anchored by the largely Kurdish Peoples Protection Units (YPG), came under attack from pro-Syrian regime forces in a town south of Tabqa, the site of a strategic dam that had been under ISIS control for several years until the SDF captured it in May. (Over the past year, the SDF and YPG had largely avoided confrontation with Syrian forcesa modus operandi that may be changing as Assad and his allies grow bolder in the race for control of southeastern Syria.) The Pentagon coordinates its activities in Syria with Russian forces, and U.S. officials said they contacted their counterparts on a de-confliction phone line asking them to intervene with Syrian forces to stop the attacks. But two hours later, the Pentagon said, a Syrian-regime jet dropped bombs near SDF fighters, and it was shot down by a U.S. Navy plane.

Afterwards, the Pentagon said it would protect the Syrian rebels it has been training and arming for more than year to launch the assault on ISIS in Raqqa. The coalitions mission is to defeat ISIS in Iraq and Syria, the U.S. statement said. The coalition does not seek to fight [the] Syrian regime, Russian, or pro-regime forces partnered with them, but will not hesitate to defend coalition or partner forces from any threat.

And foremost among those threats, in the eyes of the Trump administration, is Iran. While Trump has changed his mind on a number of foreign-policy questions since taking office, he has been consistent in his belief that Iran, the worlds main state sponsor of terrorism, poses the greatest threat to U.S. interests in the Middle East. Hes surrounded himself with advisers like Defense Secretary James Mattis and National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, battle-hardened former military commanders who want to take an aggressive approach to contain Iran.

Nowhere is Iran projecting its regional power more extensively than Syria. Since the war started, Tehran has sent billions of dollars in aid and thousands of troops and Shiite volunteers to support Assads men. Over the past two years, Russia and Iran, along with Hezbollah and several Iraqi Shiite militias, helped Assad consolidate control and regain territory he lost to Syrian rebels and foreign jihadists. In December, with intensive Russian airstrikes and Iranian ground support, Assads forces recaptured the rebel-held sections of Aleppo, Syrias largest city. It was Assads biggest victory since the war began.

The next prize for the Syrian government and its allies is the eastern province of Deir Ezzor, home to the countrys modest oil fields. Most of this region was lost to the Assad regime by late 2013, although the Syrian military remains in control of parts of Deir Ezzor city, where about 200,000 people are besieged by ISIS. This desert expanse includes several border crossings between Syria, Iraq, and Jordanand the strategic highway connecting Damascus and Baghdad. In recent weeks, Syrian troops, along with Hezbollah and other Shiite militias, have been moving to consolidate control over the area and to connect with Iranian-backed militias who are fighting to dislodge ISIS from the Iraqi side of the border.

What worries the Trump administration: that with these gains, Iran and its allies will carve out a Shiite crescent extending from Iran, through Iraq and Syria, and into Lebanon, where Hezbollah is the most powerful political and military force. Such a prospect looms large not only for the Trump administration, but also its allies in the Arab world, especially the Saudis.

Since taking office, Trump and his top advisers have shifted their rhetoric to reflect more explicit support for Saudi Arabia and its Sunni Arab allies, and, in turn, a harsher view of Iran. The shift was cemented during Trumps much-hyped visit last month to the kingdom, which he chose as the first stop on his maiden overseas trip as president. Like his Saudi hosts, Trump framed the problems of the Middle East as due solely to Irans belligerence and terrorism by Islamic extremist groups, despite the kingdoms destabilizing activities across the Middle East, including its ongoing catastrophic war in Yemen and blockade of Qatar.

Meanwhile, Iranian officials are growing increasingly frustrated at the Trump administrations constant attacks on the July 2015 agreement Tehran signed with the United States and five other world powers to limit its nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of international sanctions. Perhaps still smarting from Trumps speech in Saudi Arabia, in which he castigated Iran for stoking the fires of sectarian conflict and terror, Irans supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, also stepped up his anti-Trump rhetoric on Sunday, calling him an inexperienced thug.

In truth, the United States has already been making risky bets and forging fragile alliances that threaten only to heighten the complex conflicts underlying Syrias war. Under the Obama administration, U.S. policy in Syria was focused on containing ISIS, largely ignoring Assad, and keeping Americas allies from fighting each other. Today, Trump is abandoning that ambiguity, whether by trying to blunt the ambitions of Iran and the Assad regime in southern Syria, or by backing a Pentagon plan to arm the Syrian Kurds over the objections of Turkey. In May, his administration approved the Pentagons plan to provide heavy weapons to the SDF-led rebels fighting to expel ISIS from Raqqa, capital of its self-proclaimed caliphate. The decision pitted two main U.S. allies in the Syrian war, Turkey and the Syrian Kurds, against each other.

While the Pentagon is eager to portray its latest actions as a defensive measure, Assads regime and its Iranian allies view it as an aggression, noting that Washington shot down a Syrian jet in Syrian airspace. And by flexing their military reach in Syria with Sundays missile launch, Irans Revolutionary Guards and other regime hardliners risk inflaming more tension with the Trump administrationtension that could boil over in the coming war for dominance of southern Syria. One danger, among many, is that Assad and Tehran, which both have a history of testing their adversaries boundaries, could overreach and provoke a confrontation that spirals out of control.

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The Growing US-Iran Proxy Fight in Syria - The Atlantic