; "US Gen. John Allen to lead war on ISIS")
Sep 13, 2014, 3:12 PM (IDT)
“We’re going to build the kind of coalition that allows us to lead, but also isn’t entirely dependent on what we do,” said President Barack Obama at a fundraiser in Baltimore Friday, Sept. 12. That was exactly the kind of ambiguous comment which the governments America is wooing to join the coalition find so off-putting. And so, US Gen. John Allen, appointed Friday, Sept 12, to lead the coalition, learned that 10 Arab and Muslim leaders were just as equivocal when Secretary of State John Kerry’s asked them for combat troops.
More>
Turkey inflicted a stunning blow Thursday, Sept. 11 at President Barack Obama’s strategy for a broad US-led coalition for tackling and defeating the Islamic State, refusing to take part in combat against the jihadists.
More>
Shortly before President Barack Obama was to unveil his strategy for tackling ISIS in Iraq and Syria Wednesday, Sept. 10, US and Syrian officers held secret talks for coordinating their military efforts in Syria against the common foe, DEBKAfile reveals exclusively.
More>; "Islamist Nusra Front fighters near Israeli Golan")
Israeli government has radically changed tack on Syria, reversing a policy and military strategy geared to opposing Syrian President Bashar Assad, and turning to block the risng number of Islamists deployed on its Golan border.
More>
The tale of Israel spy satellite imagery from Iraq being passed to Washington was drummed up as bait to draw leading Arab powers into Barack Obama's coalition for fighting the Islamic State.
More>
US weapons and Iranian Al Qods officers join the Iraqi army in a major anti-al-Qaeda offensive to foil Al Qaeda’s plan for its first caliphate across the Syrian-Iraqi frontier - but also to buttress the pro-Iranian Shiite crescent arching over the region.
More...Top US soldier Gen. Martin Dempsey has just inaugurated Centcom’s Forward Command in Jordan manned by 273 US officers. It is linked to US, Israel, Jordanian and Saudi air commands ready for an order from President Barack Obama to impose a partial no-fly zone over Syria.
More...Shortly after DEBKA aired a special video on the Syrian war’s widening circle, Moscow announced Wednesday June 26, the evacuation beginning Friday of all Russian military and diplomatic personnel from Syria was complete, including its naval base at Tartus.
More...Tamerlan Tsarnaev established links with al Qaeda’s Caucasian networks for terrorist attacks in America, starting with the Boston bombings. In 2011, Russian intelligence notified the FBI that he was on their watch list and it remains the most promising source of further intelligence
More...; "Hamas threatens rocket fire for Rosh Hashanah")
The Netanyahu government is caught in the crossfire of two conflicts: Hamas' Ismail Haniyeh threatens to revive rocket fire on Sept. 25, the first day of the Jewish New Year Festival, unless the Gaza blockade is lifted by then. This would sorely embarrass Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon, who defended the ceasefire by maintaining that Hamas would never shoot another rocket after enduring 50 days of relentless Israeli assaults. Netanyahu and Ya’alon have also launched the highly-charged process of choosing the next IDF chief of staff.
Hizballah's sophisticated hi-tech optical fiber communications network links its command centers, units, rocket launchers, senior officials’ homes and intelligence branches. Those communications are also ciphered and hard to intercept and decode. Planting an eavesdropping device sophisticated enough to interface with this network is risky and calls for high technological resources and expertise. Iranian experts, determined to hunt down and dissect one such spying device were thwarted Friday, Sept. 5, when their prize self-destructed and killed a Hizballah operative.
Pressed to do something about the brutal Islamic State, US President Barack Obama threw together a mix of US air strikes, strengthening moderate Syrian rebel groups and enlisting friendly regional governments, at the NATO summit which ended Friday, Sept. 5 in Wales. A “core coalition” of nine governments was assembled, their leaders told that no boots on the ground were needed. debkafile: This recipe lacked the vital ingredient for the fight “to degrade and ultimately defeat ISIL”: Military muscle capable of driving IS from the 144,000 sq, km of seized land.
;)
At least 18 foreign ISIS fighters, including Americans and Europeans, were killed in a Syrian air raid Thursday, Sept. 4, over their Raqqa HQ. A second Syrian air raid killed or injured another group of high ISIS officers at Abu Kamal near the Iraqi border. A day earlier, US jets struck an IS base in the northern Iraqi town of Tal Afar, killing its commander, Abu Hajar Al-Sufi, and two top lieutenants of ISIS chief Abu Baker Al-Baghdadi. All these actions owed their success to deepening US-Iranian military and intelligence cooperation. Is this Obama's unadmitted strategy?
 | ||||||||||||||||
|
|
 |
 |
|
||||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
