Excerpts: Saudi Gazette Editorial re Iran. Random Palestinian attacks on
Israelis continue. Israel deports 2 flotilla participants. Turkey re border
security. Assad cannot defend all of Syria June 30, 2015
+++SOURCE: Saudi Gazette 30 June ’15:”Editorial: Time to call time on
Tehran”
SUBJECT: Saudi Gazette Editorial re Iran
QUOTE:”The driving force behind the whole exercise was Barak Obama’s
fixation of achieving at least one Middle Eastern foreign policy win.”
FULL TEXT:It is surely time to ring down the curtain on the endless talks
about Iran’s nuclear program. The deadline for a successful conclusion is
tomorrow (Tuesday) and yet again, it is going to be missed.
The latest nonsense to come out of the negotiations in Vienna is that Iran’s
chief negotiator, Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif told US Secretary of
State John Kerry Saturday[27 June] that he needed to fly back to Tehran to
consult with the government there on two key issues — the extent of
international inspections of Iranian nuclear facilities and the timing of
the removal of worldwide sanctions that have crippled the Iranian economy.
There are two crucial points here that it seems, in its eagerness to cut a
deal, the Obama administration is willfully choosing to overlook.
The first and most glaring is that Iran’s obligations on inspections of any
part of its nuclear program are already laid down clearly in the Nuclear
Nonproliferation Treaty to which it is a signatory.
Though the small print has yet to be revealed, it looks very much as if
Washington is prepared to make a special case of the Iranians.
This runs counter to all good sense, because if a special case can be made
for Iran, then the whole point of the hard-won NPT will have been destroyed.
Other states will surely choose to ignore the treaty’s provisions and, in
time, the world will see a new nuclear arms’ race with an extra set of
players.
Iran has a clear duty under an important international treaty into which it
entered freely. That it choses to flout those obligations is a complete
scandal.
Sanctions were entirely the correct response. And those sanctions should
have stayed in place until the Iranian government agreed to the inspections
by the International Atomic Energy Agency to which all other nuclear states,
including Russia, China and the US are subject.
There should be no ifs and buts about this. If Tehran continues to duck its
clearly defined responsibilities under the NPT, then punishment, in the form
of swingeing economic sanctions must follow.
And here is the second point. Those sanctions, which have brought Iran to
its economic knees, should only be lifted when Tehran accepts the IAEA
inspections to which it signed up.
Why should this country be rewarded for refusing to honor its commitments to
the international community? Parlaying the speed with which sanctions should
be removed is a joke.
They should be lifted not a moment earlier than when IAEA inspectors can go
wherever they want and see whatever they wish to see of Iran’s nuclear
program.
In effect, this long drawn-out negotiating dance has been a pointless effort
from the get-go. The driving force behind the whole exercise was Barack
Obama’s fixation on achieving at least one Middle Eastern foreign policy
win.
Yet all the while that the US president has been set upon a deal over Iran,
the other regional menace Israel, already armed with nuclear weaponry,
thanks to technology given or stolen from the US, has been allowed free rein
to sabotage what is left of the Palestinian Peace Process.
If sanctions were right for Iran, they were equally due on Israel. But of
course, that is not the way that Capitol Hill works and Obama knew from the
outset that he had no chance of changing this.
+++SOURCE: Naharnet (Lebanon) 30 June ’15:”Shooting Wounds Four Israelis
near West Bank Settlement”, Agence France Presse
SUBJECT: Unisex Palestinian attacks continue
A shooting near a Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank wounded four
Israelis, sparking a manhunt Tuesday[30 June], in the latest such violence
during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
The Israelis' car came under fire late on Monday29 June] near the Shvut
Rachel settlement, the army said, adding that it was unclear whether it was
a drive-by shooting or a sniper attack.
The wounded, all men in their 20s, were taken to Israeli hospitals, where
one was in a serious condition.
A spokeswoman for the Jerusalem hospital treating the seriously wounded man
told Agence France Presse on Tuesday[30 June] he had been operated on but
his condition remained grave.
The shots were fired at a crossroads near the settlement in the northern
West Bank, and, despite the army's setting up of roadblocks, the perpetrator
or perpetrators got away.
Army spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner told AFP it was not yet
possible to determine whether the shooting was carried out by a lone
attacker or small group, or was the work of a larger network.
West Bank settlements are considered illegal under international law and
Israelis have been attacked previously in and around them, as well as in
annexed east Jerusalem.
Monday's[29 June] shooting was the latest in a string of attacks since the
start of Ramadan.
Earlier on Monday[29 June], a Palestinian woman stabbed a female Israeli
soldier in the neck at a checkpoint between Jerusalem and West Bank city
Bethlehem. The soldier was in moderate condition and the attacker was
detained at the scene.
On Friday[26 June], a Palestinian opened fire on Israeli soldiers at a West
Bank checkpoint before being shot dead.
On June 21, a Palestinian from the West Bank stabbed an Israeli policeman
near Jerusalem's Old City before being shot. Both were seriously wounded.
Two days earlier, on the first Friday[19 June] of Ramadan, a Palestinian
shot dead an Israeli hiker near the West Bank city of Ramallah.
Israel has eased some restrictions on Palestinian movement from the occupied
West Bank to Jerusalem during Ramadan.
In response to the June 21 stabbing, however, it revoked entry permits to
residents of the attacker's village and cancelled permission for 500 West
Bank Palestinians to fly from Israel's Ben Gurion airport.
SourceAgence France Presse
+++SOURCE: Naharnet (Lebanon) 30 June ’15:”Israel Deports Tunisia
Ex-President after Gaza Flotilla”, Naharnet Newsdesk
SUBJECT:Israel deports 2 flotilla participants
QUOTE :” Israel says the blockade is necessary to prevent weapons from
arriving in the Gaza Strip by sea”
EXCERPTS:Israel deported Tunisian ex-president Moncef Marzouki and European
parliament member Ana Miranda on Tuesday[30 June] after they took part in a
flotilla seeking to defy its Gaza blockade, an official said.
"The (former) president of Tunisia and the Spanish lawmaker flew this
morning. There are another 14 who have begun the expulsion process," a
spokeswoman for Israel's immigration authority told Agence France Presse.
Israel had on Monday129 June] commandeered the Swedish-flagged Marianne of
Gothenburg, part of the so-called Freedom Flotilla III, and accompanied it
to the port of Ashdod.
Sixteen foreign nationals were on board along with two Israelis, Arab
lawmaker Basel Ghattas and a television reporter. The two Israelis have been
released, though Ghattas could face a parliamentary hearing on whether he
should face sanctions.
The Marianne was part of a four-boat flotilla of pro-Palestinian activists
who had been seeking to reach the Gaza Strip to highlight the Israeli
blockade of the territory that they called "inhumane and illegal".
The three other boats had turned back before the Marianne was boarded by the
Israeli navy in an operation that took place without the deadly force that
marred a raid to stop a similar bid in 2010.
Speaking after being released from brief police custody Monday[28 June]
night, Ghattas condemned Israel's "illegal" commandeering of the ship, which
took place in international waters.
"In the end, we see the Freedom Flotilla III achieved its main goal –- to
draw local and global attention to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, which is
a result of Israel’s siege of the Strip," he said.
Ghattas said he believed the attempt and Israeli operation to stop it would
spur "activists from around the world to bring flotilla after flotilla,
until the blockade on Gaza is removed." ……………………… .
+++SOURCE: Jordan Times 30 June ’15:”Turkey to take ‘necessary measures’on
border security –PM Davutoglu”,by Reuters
SUBJECT: Turkey re border security
QUOTE:”Ankara was considering military steps to counter security risks from
Syria”
FULL TEXT: ANKARA — Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said Turkey was prepared
for all necessary measures to tackle security threats along its borders,
highlighting Ankara's growing anxiety about conflict near its southern
frontier in Syria.The National Security Council, chaired by President Recep
Tayyip Erdogan, expressed concern about a threat of "terrorism" from the
Syrian border as local media reported Ankara was considering military steps
to counter security risks from Syria.
A statement from the council following its meeting also said Turkey was
worried about demographic changes in the region, in an apparent reference to
the displacement of Arab and Turkmen Syrians following fighting in recent
weeks.
Syrian Kurdish forces continued to make military advances against Daesh
militants with Ankara fearing the creation of an autonomous Kurdish state in
Syrian territory that would further embolden Turkey's own 14 million Kurds.
Erdogan said on Saturday[27 June] Turkey would never allow the formation of
a Kurdish state along its southern border.Syrian Kurdish forces secured the
town of Kobani next to the border over the weekend, beating back Daesh
militants.
“If any harm is to come to Turkey’s border security, if Turkey reaches the
conclusion that this garden of peace is being threatened, it is prepared for
any eventuality,” Davutoglu said in comments broadcast late on Sunday[28
June].
“We will take the necessary measures to reduce the risks related to
cross-border security.”
The pro-government Star newspaper said a possible cross-border operation
would be considered at the national security council meeting, citing unnamed
sources.
One option that could be considered was the creation of a 110km “secure
zone” within Syria, the newspaper said.
Rules of engagement: Saban Disli, an adviser to Davutoglu, told Reuters the
meeting was likely to bring a change in the military’s rules of engagement,
describing advances of both Kurdish forces and Daesh militants as
“dangerous”.
He did not say how the rules could be changed. However, the pro-government
Sabah newspaper said policy could be altered to allow Turkish forces to
attack Daesh fighters near the border. Currently, Turkish forces retaliate
in kind against any attack from Syrian territory.
“Turkey will not take any unilateral step on the Syrian side independent of
the international coalition,” a senior government official told Reuters.
“But we have our sensitivity on border gates not coming under the control of
ISIL [Daesh] or the PYD [Kurdish forces].”
The National Security Council statement gave no detail about what was
discussed or what, if any, decisions were taken.
Military action could anger Turkey’s Kurdish minority at a time when the
peace process between Ankara and the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK)
has stalled.
A senior PKK commander, Murat Karayilan, told a Kurdish news website the
group would retaliate if the military intervened in Kurdish areas of Syria.
The PKK is considered a terrorist organisation by Ankara, the European Union
and the United States.
Brokerage Finansbank said in a note to clients that given Turkey’s current
political uncertainty — Davutoglu’s AK Party still needs to find a junior
partner to form a government following its election setback this month — any
intervention would likely be limited.“We remain doubtful that a ‘lame duck’
government could undertake anything more than a ‘targeted’ operation that
would be limited in both scale and scope,” it said.
:
+++SOURCE: Jordan Times 30 June ’15:”Syrian insurgents carve out fiefdoms in
de-facto partitions”, By Reuters
SUBJECT:Assad cannot defend all of Syria
QUOTE:”the main blocks of insurgents…are carving out their own fiefdoms in
what looks like the defacto partition of Syria
BEIRUT — Four years into a war that has killed more than 220,000 people,
Syrian President Bashar Assad can no longer defend the whole country or hope
to regain lost territory and his forces are retreating and fortifying their
core strongholds, from the capital Damascus up to the coastal strip in
north-western Syria.
At the same time, the main blocs of insurgents, Daesh terror group in the
east, a rival Islamist alliance in the northwest, nationalist rebels in the
south and Kurds in the north are carving out their own fiefdoms in what
looks like the de facto partition of Syria.
While few things are certain in the chaos of Syria's civil war, few experts
who study the conflict are in any doubt that the blood-spattered pieces of
the puzzle are rearranging themselves into a new pattern — of arenas ruled
by warlords.
"Syria is in the stage of undeclared partition," said Rami Abdulrahman, head
of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, whose networks have provided
usually accurate reports on areas to which foreign officials and journalists
have little access.
"The regime is trying to minimise its deployment on many frontlines to focus
its forces in limited areas of strategic importance," London-based
Abdulrahman told Reuters.
He said authorities are trying to fortify the coastal area by setting up a
Coastal Shield Brigade, whose mission is to defend villages which are
predominantly Alawite, the minority sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, to
which Assad belongs.
"They are enrolling volunteers now. Syrian officers from the [elite]
Republican Guard are conducting the training with Iranian officers and
[Lebanese militant movement] Hezbollah."
De facto partition
Since March, Assad has steadily lost more territory and his shrunken army
and militia, reinforced over the past months by Iranian forces and Shiite
allies like the Lebanese Hizbollah paramilitaries, are withdrawing to more
defensible lines.
The first sign the war was changing shape came with the fall of Idlib city
in the northwest in March, followed by Jisr Al Shughour, a strategic town
that opens the road to Latakia and the coast, heartland of the Assad
family's Alawite sect.
These two victories were won by Jaish Al Fatah, or Army of Conquest, the
recently formed coalition between Al Nusra Front the Al Qaeda affiliate in
Syria, and Ahrar Al Sham, a Salafist militia, and other groups using an
arsenal including modern anti-tank weapons diplomats say arrived through
Turkey.
Operating from a new command and control centre in Idlib, Jaish Al Fatah is
now pressing toward the Assad-held western side of the northern city of
Aleppo — Syria's famous trading capital, much of it razed by government
artillery and bombing.
Daesh, meanwhile, which declared its “caliphate” in Syria and Iraq a year
ago, has pushed out of its stronghold of Raqqa, which neither the Syrian air
force or the US-led coalition carrying out air strikes against the Sunni
jihadis in both countries seemed able to stop.
Daesh captured the Syrian stronghold from which it surged into Iraq last
June from other groups, but last month it took Palmyra in central Syria,
known for its Roman-era ruins, as Assad forces pulled back westwards.
In the south, after a failed offensive led by Iran's Revolutionary Guards
and Hezbollah to root out insurgents threatening the road to Damascus, the
city of Deraa, where the revolt against Assad's rule began in 2011, may be
about to fall to the Southern Front.
In the northeast, Syrian Kurdish fighters have managed to link up a long
swathe of land seized from Daesh near the Turkish border, first at Kobani
and then, this month, at Tel Abyad, cutting supply lines from Turkey down to
its capital at Raqqa.
Old Syria no longer: Fawaz Gerges, professor of international relations at
the London School of Economics, says "The old Syria, the nation state, the
state itself, is no longer; what we have now is warring, rival... tribes,
non-state actors, warlords."
"It will be extremely difficult to glue Syria back together as one country,
the social fabric, the thick ties that bind it together have been
dismantled," says Gerges, an expert on Syria.
"Assad rule is really an area that corresponds more or less with a core
identity area, yes there are many Sunnis and Christians living there but
they see themselves as part of this core — the middle-class, upper-class
Sunnis and Christians."
The Assad government is only now, under pressure from its main allies, Iran
and Russia, coming to terms with its basic weakness: It is a minority rule
which has a growing shortage of manpower fighting Sunni Jihadis and rebels
in Sunni areas.
Abdulrahman says "The defeat in Idlib was a shock to the regime because one
of their commanders practically didn't fight [and] at Palmyra the regime
didn't have the ability to defend it because it cannot replace each and
every soldier it is losing." The government lost 300 troops in Palmyra, he
says.
The Syrian government and Hizbollah say the recent setbacks are part of the
normal ebb and flow of a conflict where they have lost and regained
territory in the past.
Assad's air force still gives the military an important edge over its
enemies. After losing Idlib, the army appears to be fighting hard to
maintain its foothold in cities including Deraa — the focus of a new rebel
offensive — and Hasaka, where Daesh has launched an attack on government
forces.
From mid-May, thousands of Iranian-organised reinforcements have arrived in
the coastal northwest and around Damascus, Abdulrahman and diplomats who
follow Syria say.
"It is over," Abdulrahman says. "From now on the minority will not rule the
majority. Bashar is not convinced but the Alawites, who sustained
[proportionally] the biggest losses in Syria, are. More than 80,000 Alawites
from the army and militias have been killed according to registered [death]
certificates but the real figures are estimated at 120,000 dead."
A long war?: Sarkis Naoum, a leading commentator, said there was a
conviction among Russia, Iran and Hizbollah that Assad has lost the war or
the prospect of regaining control of all of Syria.
"We will see under the plan B what he will retain," he told Reuters. "It
might be impossible for him in the long term to retain Damascus, Aleppo or
Hama. He will have the coastal area including Homs."
However much Syria fragments, its ultimate fate could depend on the regional
contest between Shiite Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia, analysts say, meaning
the war could go on for years.
For now, the most hardline strain of Sunni jihadism, Daesh, controls eastern
Syria and much of western Iraq, and incites its followers to commit attacks
such as last Friday's[26 J une] attacks in France, Kuwait and Tunisia.
At the same time, Shiite Iran is trying to consolidate another stronghold on
the Syrian Mediterranean alongside its Hizbollah bastion in Lebanon.
Yet, warns Abdulrahman, the new frontlines in Syria remain every bit as
menacing, with minorities in particular at the mercy of jihadi
militants."Even if the regime collapses tomorrow there won't be a solution
in Syria before 10 years. There are tens of thousands of Alawite fighters
who will find it impossible to hand over their weapons because they will be
massacred. Who will get rid of the more than 50,000 jihadis who entered
Syria?"
================
Sue Lerner - Associate, IMRA
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