.@statedeptspox says US has "no information at this time to support" #Iran opposition group's report yesterday of a secret #nuclear program
This response is based on the recent story that was "leaked" about a possible secret Iranian ongoing nuclear program.
Prudent individuals.
Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/orig...#ixzz3Srd4wqY2With the help of coalition airstrikes, Kurdish forces have reclaimed most of the area they lost to IS in August 2014, driving the militants out of 15,000 square km (9,300 square miles) they consider historically their own. But the peshmerga forces have neither the will nor the means to advance much further into Sunni Arab areas.
A scrimmage in a Border Station
A canter down some dark defile
Two thousand pounds of education
Drops to a ten-rupee jezail
http://i.imgur.com/IPT1uLH.jpg
Moqtada al-Sadr recently withdrew his militias from the frontline after prominent Sunni sheikh from Babil was killed. Sunni parties boycotted govt afterward. Sadr wanted to show support for parties while telling them not to pull out of the govt. Same time attacked other militias as trying to undermine the govt, which was a swipe at his rivals such as Asaib Ahl Al-Haq. Shows Sadr's nationalist politicking but also the divisions within the militia forces. Read more here.
Just released my security report for Iraq in Feb 2015. Despite continued large scale IS operations violence went down in Feb. For a short period looked like IS was picking up its attacks as they rose in Dec & Jan for a new year offensive but that proved temporary. Overall attacks and casualties have both been going down slowly but surely since the summer. Read more here.
Just published article on alleged death of IS #2 leader Abu Muslim Turkmani is in charge of IS ops in Iraq. Was said to have been killed by Coalition air strike in Anbar on Feb 26. Problem is he was said to have been killed in Dec by another missile hit as well. Also no martyr posts by IS. Makes it impossible to determine his fate. Read more here.
Human Rights Watch found evidence that Kurdish forces have been limiting freedom of movement for Arabs, destroying their homes, and carrying out warrantless arrests in Ninewa. Major motivation seems to be revenge against people they see as supporters of the Islamic State. Also changing demographics helps with Kurds' plans to annex the disputed territories. Read more here.
A Iraqi SWAT HQ in Ramadi before and after an IS attack. pic.twitter.com/gqIsnpxoVu
...and IRGC's (not Iranian Army's) T-72s in Iraq, here.
BTW, except for deploying at least one of its armoured battalions to Iraq, the IRGC recently donated - on direct order from Khamenei - 10 ex-Iraqi Su-22s to Syria too. These were partially overhauled in Iran, partially in Syria, and are now flown by SyAAF.
Wonder if the WH/NSC fully understands just what the Kerry comment is actually supporting--the belief that Khomeinism will die in 10 or less years is a figment of imagination:
Published: 16/03/2015 03:12 PM
“Throw off Arabism,” Iran
news agency tells Iraq
An op-ed from the semi-official Mehr news agency follows on the heals of Iranian officials' rhetoric on Tehran's expansionary role in the region.The controversial op-ed comes amid Tehran’s increasingly confident proclamations of its influence in the Middle East, after Iranian-backed Houthis took control of Yemen’s government in February while Iran has helped coordinate the Iraqi government’s new offensives against ISIS.BEIRUT – One of Iran’s leading news agencies has called on the Iraqi people to “throw off Arabism,” in a vitriolic editorial calling for the war-torn country to move into Iran's orbit.
“The time has come for the Iraqi people to say their final word. [They must] choose between false Arabism and true Islam, and brush the dust of Arab humiliation off their clothes,” the semi-official Mehr news agency wrote over the weekend.
“The Iraqi people—the Iraqi parliament to be precise—must move towards unity with their true friends [Iran] and throw off the garments of false Arabism.”
The news agency also argued that “there can be no doubt that Iranians and Iraqis share religious and historical bonds that connect the two peoples over history.”
Last week, one of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s advisors said that “all of the Middle East is Iranian,” while a top Revolutionary Guards officer touted that Iran was playing the leading military role to prop up the Syrian regime.
The op-ed also flattered Revolutionary Guards Qods Force chief Qassem Soleimani, who has been the subject of a media campaign as he visits the front lines near Tikrit, where Iraqi forces in the past two weeks have waged a battle to seize the city from ISIS.The Mehr news agency editorial echoed these comments, saying that “Iranian commanders have rushed to save the Iraqi people” while “Arab generals are in the cabarets of Las Vegas not caring what happens in Iraq.”
“A well-known Iranian general has [risked his own] life and gone to the most dangerous place in the world to put his combat experience at the service of the Iraqi army and the Popular Mobilization [forces] in Tikrit.”
Mehr also called on the Iraqi leaders to adopt a political solution “close to the demographic and confessional reality in Iraq,” in reference to the Shiite majority in the country.
After replacing Nouri al-Maliki as premier, Haidar al-Abadi has worked toward enlisting disaffected Sunni tribes to help the government in its fight to reclaim lost territory from ISIS.
Instead of supporting such efforts, Mehr slammed the tribal culture in Iraq, implicitly calling it “racist.”
“Iraq needs a new solution, far from ‘the kufiya, the agal and the dishdasha’, [traditional tribal Arab garments] that heads for a new culture,” it said.
“All the sorrows of Iraq are caused by the presence of the Araban [desert Bedouin tribes] who stalk the Iraqi people and wish them no good.”
Last edited by davidbfpo; 03-16-2015 at 09:59 PM. Reason: Quote marks added, hopefully in right places!
...and this comes from the very same regime that's 'Arabizing' everything in Iran it only can...
It just keeps getting worse:Originally Posted by OUTLAW 09
Before #Iran began a nuke program they were fighting #Iraq just to survive. Today they OWN Lebanon, Yemen, Syria AND Iraq #WellPlayed
Upcoming UN report confirms that ISF&militias conducted extrajudicial killings pic.twitter.com/XC6kai3MhS
If the #Iraq army still looks as sectarian as it does in #Tikrit now I'm sure many #Mosul residents will stay and fight alongside #ISIS
...which makes one wonder:
- if 'simple, everyday people' can draw few, 'rather simple' conclusions about consequences of letting Iran conquer Iraq....
Allowing Iran to Conquer Iraq Will NOT help defeat the Islamic State...
- and the people in question can support their conclusions with a plethora of dependable evidence,
- why to hell is it so hard to draw similar conclusions in the DC?
Crowbat---an excellent question and one I keep on asking on say the Ukraine.
DC issues a red line in the sand on the use of chemical weapons by Assad forces against civilians and then nothing...........except more talking THEN this occurs after a series of chlorine barrel bombs have been increasingly dropped in the last weeks--notice again silence out of DC......
Then we will talk with Assad and THEN:
Breaking: Hundreds of Suffocation Cases due To poisonous Gases reported in Sarmin #Syria
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovPKtOjOx7g …
I wonder which will get the most attention, ISIS using chlorine or Assad using chlorine, hmmmmm
#Assad is attacking town of #Sarmin with chlorine gas
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujb9...e_gdata_player
One wonders if there are any "adults" with a defined set of personal values anywhere in DC these days.
Who is Azrael, nemisis of ISIS?
Temporary separate thread for maximum visibility.
Speicher Base (Iraq) (AFP) - Abu Azrael -- Father of the Angel of Death -- is the black-bearded, blade-wielding embodiment of the retribution many Iraqis want against brutal jihadists who seized swathes of their country.
A Facebook page dedicated to the fighter in the Imam Ali Brigades Shiite militia lists him as a "public figure" and has been "liked" more than 280,000 times."I swear to God, I am not merciful to them," Abu Azrael, whose real name is Ayyub Faleh al-Rubaie, told AFP at the Speicher military base near Tikrit, a city that Iraqi forces and allied paramilitaries are battling to retake.
"I never have any leniency for them," he said, referring to IS members.http://news.yahoo.com/abu-azrael-ira...133311351.htmlAbu Azrael listed half a dozen places where he took part in battles against IS, but said he was a fighter before the current conflict began.
He said he gained military experience with the Mahdi Army -- Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's militia that battled US forces in Iraq -- and also fought in the Damascus area against rebels seeking to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Short video http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=079_1426548102
A scrimmage in a Border Station
A canter down some dark defile
Two thousand pounds of education
Drops to a ten-rupee jezail
http://i.imgur.com/IPT1uLH.jpg
And you think this is a good thing??
If this was a Sunni cult figure rising up against those exploiting popular grievance with extremist perspectives, yes. But the emergence of a Shia hero is a whole new brand of escalatory trouble.
Robert C. Jones
Intellectus Supra Scientia
(Understanding is more important than Knowledge)
"The modern COIN mindset is when one arrogantly goes to some foreign land and attempts to make those who live there a lesser version of one's self. The FID mindset is when one humbly goes to some foreign land and seeks first to understand, and then to help in some small way for those who live there to be the best version of their own self." Colonel Robert C. Jones, US Army Special Forces (Retired)
Guess we need Dayuhan to explain us the logic of this - in his usual, most illogical, and entirely-unrelated-to-reality, but 'truly American' fashion.
Good to see the forum back up and running. Done a lot of writing since it went down. Won't provide individual links because that would be too many. Just some highlights. Did an interview with Columbia's David Phillips on the future of Kurdistan. Did a summary of Financial Action Task Force report on IS financing. Wrote a piece on how the Tikrit op is a game changer in US vs Iranian influence in Iraq. Couple of weekly summaries of security situation in Iraq. Obit on the death of Harith Dhari the head of the Association of Muslim Scholars and spiritual leader to the insurgency. Today's piece was on how IS destruction of historic sites in Iraq is just for propaganda, its true purpose is to loot all of these sites to sell their antiquities on the black market for funding. Here's a general link to Musings On Iraq for anyone interested in reading the pieces.
New article today about how the militias/Hashd al-Shaabi might be a political threat to the established Shiite parties in Iraq. All are based upon political Islam and many of the militias if they haven't already will want to capitalize upon their fighting in the war which will probably lead to politics to get a piece of the oil pie. That will cut into the base of parties like the Sadrists and Supreme Council who have begun verbally criticizing and attacking the Hashd for their excesses trying to make them look illegitimate. Here's a link.
"All we have to rely on is our eyes." Bomb-disposal specialists are dying often in Iraq as ISIS deploys 1000s of IEDs http://www.buzzfeed.com/mikegiglio/t...raq#.jnpAPOb5Z …
This is 'in response' to WP's complaints about a loss of US-supplied arms and equipment worth about US$400 Million (+) in Yemen 'to Iranians' (see my post in Yemen thread)...
Since most of that is going to be taken up by Houthis, not by 'Iranians', IMHO, that's of lesser concern in comparison with fact that IRGC-QF is meanwhile playing with Iraqi M1 Abrams' (see photo below)...
Perhaps Obama could make it official that arms sales to Iran have been re-launched?
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