[Breitbart] U.S. Special Envoy for Yemen Tim Lenderking said on Thursday that leaders of the Iran-backed Houthi terrorists in Yemen have decided to keep lower profiles following the devastation of Iran’s other regional proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas, at the hands of Israel, followed by the overthrow of Iran’s client Bashar Assad in Syria by a Sunni Islamist insurgency.
“Houthi leaders have lowered their profiles, at least physically. There’s a fear of being targeted like other leaders in the region,” Lenderking told the Doha Forum, an annual diplomatic conference in Qatar.
“I think that that’s a reflection of the reality that’s going on in the region, but it hasn’t tempered their ability and their willingness and their determination to fire at ships,” he said.
“Since Hezbollah’s decline and Hamas’ decline, the Houthis have kept right up, kept a steady drumbeat of reckless, indiscriminate attacks. But they would do well to pay heed to what’s happening in the region when it comes to their own security and position,” he advised.
“Look what’s happening to their comrades in Hezbollah, Hamas, Syria. Most Yemenis don’t really like the Houthis. Pressure is building on the Houthis to change course,” he said.
The Houthis look like the most secure of Iran’s regional proxies at the moment, which is not really saying much. The savages of Hamas started a war that brought them to the brink of collapse by attacking Israel on October 7. Hezbollah in Lebanon jumped in to assist Hamas with rocket attacks but was decimated by Israel in return, with much of its leadership eliminated.
Iran’s bought-and-paid-for foot soldiers in the Shiite militia gangs of Iraq decided not to get involve in the Syrian insurgency after sending a few hundred fighters across the border. Assad was toppled after less than two weeks of fighting, his army collapsing into dust without heavy backing from Russia and Iran, neither of which could afford to provide any more support.
That leaves the Houthis, who have been attacking global shipping through the Red Sea for the past year, ostensibly to punish Israel for its war effort in Gaza. The Houthis have also launched a few missiles and drones at Israel.
As Lenderking noted, the Houthis continued to attack civilian ships despite punitive airstrikes from the U.S. and its allies. The Israelis have also bombed Houthi targets in Yemen.
U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) said on Tuesday that the Houthis launched another swarm of missiles and drones at merchant vessels, but the attack was repelled by U.S. Navy destroyers escorting the civilian ships.
CENTCOM said it was the second Houthi attack this month to be intercepted by the Navy. The first took place on the evening of November 30. No injuries or damage were reported from either attack.
Lenderking said he hoped the fall of Assad could bring change to Yemen, implicitly because many civilians in Houthi-controlled areas are tired of being ruled by the Shiite Islamist extremists. He said his latest visit to the region “reflects growing frustration with the strong refusal of the Houthis to really put out any sort of signals that they’re interested in de-escalation.”
Lenderking said the U.S. is working with its allies to block weapons smuggling to the Houthis, but he also acknowledged the Yemeni extremists have become more self-sufficient than Iran’s other proxies, able to manufacture a fair amount of their own weapons.
The U.S. envoy said the Houthis have a list of “very specific things they want from us” before they ease off attacking ships in the Red Sea, including the U.S. withdrawing ships from the area, increased foreign aid to Yemen, and lifting the Houthis’ designation as a terrorist organization.
“Even if we get to a pause in the Red Sea attacks, however it’s achieved, we still have a long-term Houthi-Red Sea problem,” he said.
The New York Times (NYT) reported on Wednesday that massive disruptions to the shipping industry from the Houthi attacks are still costing the world billions of dollars.
Houthi harassment has forced most international shipping to sail around Africa, effectively erasing the Suez Canal. This has increased shipping costs by more than 200 percent over the past year, increased the strain on crews, and forced ships to burn much more fuel. Meanwhile, receipts for the Suez Canal are down 60 percent, a massive financial blow to the Egyptian government.
Israel Hayom on Thursday quoted Israel Defense Forces (IDF) analysts who warned the fall of Assad could inspire the Houthis to increase their attacks, because they see an opportunity to seize “a leading role in attacks against Israel.”
[Breitbart] President of PanamaJosé Raúl Mulino on Thursday urged President-elect Donald Trump to maintain an U.S.-funded deportation flight agreement that his administration signed this year with the outgoing administration of U.S. President Joe Biden.
Mulino issued his request to President-elect Trump in remarks given as part of his weekly press conference. The Panamanian president stated that, while he has yet to engage in formal conversations with the incoming U.S. administration, he believes, based on his “political intuition,” that immigration is a subject on which he and Trump could engage in fruitful conversations.
“We are still implementing the repatriations program based on the memorandum of understanding that we signed on July 1 with President Biden’s administration and that, unless there is a better detail, I believe should be maintained with the Trump administration,” Mulino told reporters.
The Panamanian president reminded reporters that he has previously stated that the “new U.S. border” is located at the Darién Gap, a dangerous jungle trail that Panama shares with Colombia and that has been used by hundreds of thousands of migrants from South America and other regions to reach the U.S. southern border in recent years. Mulino asserted that immigration is an issue that Trump and his new administration “cannot avoid, as President Biden’s administration did not.”
Mulino, who took office on July 1, signed an active agreement with the United States on his first day in office in which the U.S. Department of State provide $6 million in financial aid to Panama for the funding of deportation flights of U.S.-bound illegal migrants caught passing through the Darién Gap.
Panama reportedly conducted its first U.S.-funded deportation flights in late August and, according to statements Mulino gave to local media on Thursday morning, 36 such deportation flights have taken place as of this week.
While Venezuelan nationals represent the overwhelming majority of migrants passing through the Darién Gap, Mulino pointed out to local media that no Venezuelans have been deported on U.S.-funded flights, as Panama does not have a flight connection with Venezuela after socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro abruptly cut ties with Panama and other countries that questioned the dictator’s fraudulent July 28 presidential election, which Maduro claims he “won.”
Mulino repeatedly vowed that his government would curb illegal migration passing through the Darién Gap, which experienced record-high numbers prior to the start of his administration in July. Since then, the Panamanian government has implemented several measures to crack down on illegal migration such as imposing steep fines on migrants, the installation of barbed wire fences on some of the Darién’s commonly used routes, and the dismantling of “VIP” route services used by U.S.-bound Chinese migrants, among others.
Mulino’s policies preceded a noticeable reduction in the number of migrants passing through the Darién Gap jungle trail. According to statistical information from Panama’s Migrant Authority released this week, 11,144 migrants were recorded passing through the Darién jungle trail in November, 51.37 percent down from the 22,914 registered during October.
Panamanian authorities further stated this week that, in total, 206,368 migrants crossed through the country by the start of December, down from the 505,809 migrants registered at the start of December 2023.
Panama’s Migrant Authority recorded a record-breaking number of 520,085 migrants passing through the Darién Gap during 2023, 248,284 in 2022, 133,726 in 2021, and 6,465 in 2020. Between 2010 and 2019, Panamanian authorities registered a combined total of 109,293 migrants that passed through the Darién gap jungle trail.
[IsraelTimes] German Chancellor Olaf Scholz says that well-integrated Syrian refugees are welcome to stay, as far-right and conservative politicians called for them to return to their home country after the overthrow of Bashir al-Assad.
"Those who work here, who are well integrated, remain welcome in Germany. That’s obvious," the social-democrat leader says in a post on X, noting that "some declarations these past days have deeply destabilized our fellow citizens of Syrian origin."
#Austria’s conservative-led government says it is offering Syrian refugees a “return bonus” of 1,000 euros ($1,050) to move back to their home country after the fall of Bashar al-Assad.#Syriahttps://t.co/jtPSWjQZML
[FreePress] For Sarah Rugheimer, a professor of astronomy at York University in Toronto, the first sign of the virulent strain of antisemitism now embedded in Justin Trudeau ...hereditary prime minister of the Great White North... ’s Canada appeared on a lamppost.
It was a few weeks after the Hamas ..not a terrorist organization, even though it kidnaps people, holds hostages, and tries to negotiate by executing them,... massacre of last October 7. Rugheimer, 41, was walking in a park near her home in the city’s quiet Cedarvale neighborhood when she saw a poster of the Israeli hostage Elad Katzir, a 47-year-old farmer from Kibbutz Nir Oz, covered with swastikas.
In the days that followed, as the war raged in Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response... , swastikas turned up all over Cedarvale. They also started appearing on the York campus, where Rugheimer serves as the Allan I. Carswell Chair for the Public Understanding of Astronomy. As fall turned to winter, a swastika showed up in the snow outside the campus building where she works.
An astrophysicist with a particular interest in the origins of life on Earth and the possibility of life on other planets, Rugheimer tended to confine her worldly concerns to scientific matters. So the swastikas came as a shock. But worse was to come.
She grew up in Montana, and her academic career took her around the world—from a PhD in astronomy and astrophysics at Harvard University to Scotland, England, and now Canada. But until taking up her post at York University two years ago, Rugheimer said she’d never encountered any overt antisemitism. Nor had she given much thought to her identity as a Zionist: Like the vast majority of Jews around the world, Rugheimer believes in Israel’s right to exist.
Jew-hatred was a phenomenon of the fringes, she reckoned. "It wasn’t on my radar," she told me. Now, it’s everywhere. "Every week there is a major incident in Canada, and multiple minor ones every day in my neighborhood."
It was what was happening inside her university that disturbed her the most.
York’s student unions issued a declaration just after the attack calling the barbarism of October 7 a "justified and necessary" act of resistance against settler colonialism, genocide, and apartheid. The student groups found widespread support among York’s professors—some of whom Rugheimer considered friends.
A politics department faculty committee demanded the university enforce a definition of "anti-Paleostinian racism" that encompassed any expression of sympathy for the right of Israelis to exist within their own state: "Zionism is a settler colonial project and ethno-religious ideology in service of a system of Western imperialism that upholds global white supremacy
...the pernicious doctrine that laws were intended to be obeyed, that society works better when people don't pour shreiking from their places of worship every Friday for a weekend of rioting over insults real or imagined; and that cannibalism, beastiality, incest, murder, theft, rape, and similar activities are bad. A Dead White European (which invalidates his opinion) philosopher once opined that societies thrive when a person's word can be relied upon, and that a society which puts individual happiness first will invariably fail. Strangely enough, other successful societies, such as China, Japan, Korea, and those kinds of places could also be lumped with white supremacist societies, since they push the same values... She was shocked by the declarations, and the defaced posters, and the swastikas. But for Rugheimer there was something worse. "The denial is what’s painful," Rugheimer said. The denial of the rapes and savagery of October 7, 2023. The denial of the pervasive antisemitism in "anti-Zionist" polemics. The denial of Jewish history itself. "Reasonable people can disagree about what to do in an intractable conflict, but the denying of what should be uncontroversial facts makes it impossible to have hope."
This sort of despair has become a feature of everyday life for Jews across Canada who are experiencing open hatred—and yet are living under a government that appears either blind to it, paralyzed by it, or indifferent to it. Law enforcement in Canada is not blind. Quite the opposite. Officers want to do their jobs. What they say is that they lack the moral support from the political class to enforce the law. And that they cannot keep up with the volume of hate crimes—crimes that arise from a widespread ideology that has normalized the idea that "Zionists" anywhere are a fair target for attack.
Perhaps nothing captured Canada’s dark new reality better than a split-screen story from late last month.
On November 22 in Montreal, at the 70th annual session of the NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Originally it was a mutual defense pact directed against an expansionist Soviet Union. In later years it evolved into a mechanism for picking the American pocket while criticizing the cut of the American pants... parliamentary assembly, rioters organized by the organizations Divest for Paleostine and the Convergence of Anti-Capitalist Struggles wreaked havoc on the city. They ignited smoke bombs, threw metal barriers into the street, and smashed windows of businesses and the convention center where the NATO delegates were meeting. The rioters torched cars. They also burned an effigy of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
While Montreal burned, Trudeau was dancing and handing out friendship bracelets at a Taylor Swift concert in Toronto. It took 24 hours for him to weigh in with a single tweet.
’IT WAS LIKE A DAM BURST’
The impression that the violence unfolding around them is somehow invisible to the state responsible for their protection has overwhelmed not only relative newcomers to Canada like Rugheimer, but also Jews who have lived in Canada for decades. People like Robert Krell, 84, the former director of postgraduate education in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of British Columbia.
A pioneer of Holocaust education in Canada and a specialist in survivor trauma, Krell immigrated to Canada at the age of 11, after having been hidden by a Catholic family during the Nazi occupation of Holland. Krell was not as shocked by the unspeakable barbarism of the Hamas massacre of October 7 last year as by the jubilation the atrocities elicited from within the "progressive" milieu across Canada—and by the total silence from the "social justice" scene.
THE EXPLOSION OF JEW-HATE IN CANADA
On Sunday, October 8, activists affiliated with the terrorist-designated Popular Front for the Liberation of Paleostine were already shouting their happiness into megaphones to a crowd at the steps of the Vancouver Art Gallery, only a few minutes’ drive from Krell’s home. "We are calling on those in so-called Vancouver to uplift and honor the resistance," they said. "Show solidarity and celebrate the steps towards liberation!"
Scenes like these repeated themselves in cities across Canada—all the way to St. John’s, Newfoundland.
"On October 7 I was horrified," Krell told me. "I was shocked to the core by the cruelty, the rapes, the mutilations, the killing of children, the gouging of eyes . . . but I could believe it."
What he found impossible to fathom was what he saw on October 8, and in all the days that followed.
"It was like a dam burst. I can’t describe the emotional blow. I guess I thought there would be a cry of outrage about what happened, you know, from the human rights One man's rights are another man's existential threat. people, Black Lives Matter people, the MeToo people. I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I just couldn’t grasp the concept, that when people heard and saw what had been done to those Jews, there was nothing except celebrations of Hamas as liberators."
Americans are familiar with the pattern that has been repeated at dozens of Canadian university and college campuses—the "pro-Paleostinian" occupations, encampments, manifestos, disturbances, and explicit celebrations of the October 7 "resistance." In Canada, however, the sociopathology that shocked Rugheimer and Krell is by no means confined to the extremes of campus politics or the rantings of far-left activist groups.
Rather than discovering how torn the fabric of their society has become, Canadian Jews are being forced to come to terms with just how deeply antisemitism has been woven into it.
This is not a matter of anecdote or impression.
Stories about the usual Jew hatred we’ve seen reports of at home and abroad, but then this paragraph, followed by statistics and the determination of dear, dear Justin Trudeau to remake Canada in his own image:
Almost none of these verbal or physical assaults are coming from white supremacists or antisemites of the right-wing variety. They are being carried out by self-described progressives, Arabs, and, often, recent immigrants who are operating inside an ideological framework of “settler colonialism,” which casts Canada, the United States, Australia, and, most of all, Israel, as irredeemably illegitimate constructs of imperialism, capitalism, genocide, and racism. It’s an ideology that has found a comfortable home in Trudeau’s Canada.
[Rudaw] The United States Department of Justice on Thursday said the former director of a central Damascus prison has been charged with torture by a federal grand jury in Los Angeles.
"Samir Alsheikh is charged with torturing political dissidents and other prisoners to deter opposition to the regime of then-Syrian President Bashir al-Assad," said Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Nicole Argentieri, head of the justice department’s Criminal Division.
Samir Ousman al-Sheikh, 72, was chief of Adra prison 2005 until 2008. The justice department said that he "allegedly ordered subordinates to inflict and was sometimes personally involved in inflicting severe physical and mental pain and suffering on political and other prisoners."
In addition to running the prison, Sheikh has held many roles within the then-ruling Baathist party and was appointed governor of Deir ez-Zor by Assad in 2011.
The indictment said that he immigrated to the US in 2020 and applied for citizenship in 2023.
"Alsheikh later allegedly lied about his crimes to obtain a U.S. green card," according to Argentieri.
If convicted, Sheikh could face decades in prison.
"The allegations in this superseding indictment reveal unconscionable crimes and a clear violation of human rights When they're defined by the state or an NGO they don't mean much... ," said Assistant Director Chad Yarbrough of the FBI Criminal Investigative Division.
Celebrations this week across Syria, sparked by the fall of the regime, were overshadowed by chilling stories that began to emerge from the country’s prisons, especially Sednaya in Damascus. Inmates released from decades of detention and torture told stories that provided a disturbing look into how the Assad family brutally treated dissidents during their long rule.
[FoxNews] The former officer says the Venezuelan government has used TdA to inflict crippling crime waves in surrounding countries, thus helping usher in a slate of socialist-friendly governments.
A former high-ranking Venezuelan military officer is sounding the alarm about the migrant gang Tren de Aragua (TdA) being used as a tool of the Venezuelan government to sow violence and discord throughout the United States.
Tren de Aragua, which means "Train from Aragua," is a massive criminal and terrorist organization that originated a decade ago in a Venezuelan prison and is already present in more than 30 major U.S. cities.
José Gustavo Arocha, a former lieutenant colonel in the Venezuelan army, told Fox News Digital that socialist Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro is behind much of TdA’s growth and rapid expansion, first in Latin America and now in the U.S.
Arocha fled Venezuela to the United States in 2015 after being imprisoned by the Maduro regime for eight months. Since then, he said the situation has only worsened with Maduro asserting ever more control over the region. This year, Maduro retained control of the country by prevailing in a hotly contested election that was widely believed to be fraudulent.
"We have to understand also something of the Tren de Aragua, the TdA. It's a state-sponsored Maduro regime organization," he said. "The real boss of the Tren de Aragua is in Caracas, Venezuela. It is the Maduro regime, because they created TdA, and they use the TdA as a blackmail [tool] for any situation."
Arocha said the Maduro dictatorship’s counterintelligence agency – the Directorate of Military Counterintelligence, also known as "DGCIM" – has been using TdA as an asymmetrical warfare tool, giving itself "plausible deniability."
Tren de Aragua first burst onto the scene in the U.S. when several members of the gang violently took control of an apartment building in the Denver suburb of Aurora, Colorado. Since then, the gang has been responsible for a steady stream of violent attacks and gang-related crimes, including the high-profile murder of nursing student Laken Riley in Georgia.
While some media reports have portrayed TdA as a simple gang, Arocha said the group has been trained and enabled by the Venezuelan government and DGCIM to advance a specific agenda and criminal ideology. Even the name "train from Aragua," he said, evidences the group’s intent to transport its ideology throughout the Western Hemisphere.
Arocha said the Venezuelan government has already used TdA to inflict crippling crime waves in surrounding countries, helping to usher in a slate of socialist-friendly governments in Colombia, Peru and Chile.
"They want to create all sorts of chaos in countries in order to shape the contours of the borders and also to create a sensation of instability [and] criminality," he said. "This kind of culture they are exporting outside from Venezuela, first of all [to] Latin America, and right now the U.S."
According to Arocha, the Venezuelan government has seized on the historic migrant crisis under the Biden administration as a "big opportunity" to "create roots" in the U.S. The administration further worsened the situation by temporarily lifting key oil sanctions previously in place against Maduro.
"Just imagine, there are more or less 8 million Venezuelan migrants. It’s a huge number," he said. "If you look at that, it's like a wall where it's spreading all over the states. And when you take into consideration the bussing of the migrants from Texas to other states, they are spreading like a disease, like a virus, all over the country."
With President-elect Donald Trump soon to replace Biden, Arocha said Trump must put the destruction of Tren de Aragua at the "top" of the list of day-one priorities. While acknowledging that it's crucial to close the southern border, Arocha said Tren de Aragua will simply return if the U.S. does not "contain" Maduro.
"Just imagine that, OK, you take all of Tren de Aragua and send [them] to Venezuela or whatever country. It's going to come back. That’s not going to finish the disease," he said. "You have to combat the cause of TdA. The cause of the TdA is the behavior of the Maduro regime that is trying to hurt the American people by using this asymmetrical tool."
"The rule is to not give Maduro the ability to continue in Venezuela," Arocha said. "What I mean is that if you let Maduro to have oil revenues, have the access to resources, you have to have TdA here in the United States."
[IsraelTimes] US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan says that "for many months, Hamas ..a contraction of the Arabic words for "frothing at the mouth",... has not been prepared to even do the basic things of coming to the table with the names of hostages."
The comments in an interview with Channel 13 come amid reports earlier in the week that the terror group has passed along a list of hostages it is prepared to release in the first stage to the mediators.
An Arab diplomat denied a Wall Street Journal report claiming as much.
Sullivan spoke in the present tense, saying "has" and not "had," but it wasn’t entirely clear whether he was revealing that Hamas has still yet to provide names of the hostages to date or whether he was referring to previous months before talks were jumpstarted last week.
Pressed on whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been an obstacle in the talks, as Arab mediators have told The Times of Israel, Sullivan gives a diplomatic answer.
"Israel negotiated hard to defend and justify its position in this negotiation," he says.
He is less generous regarding Hamas, asserting that the terror group "has been deeply intransigent,"
"We have seen Hamas repeatedly, time and again, when the opportunity was there to do something, not be prepared to step up and do it," Sullivan says.
"But we have also seen Israel and the Israeli government choose to drive a negotiation where it had its perspective on what was required in order to get the hostages home and ensure Israel’s security," he adds, without elaborating what he means by that.
Asked whether Donald Trump ...So far he's been unkillable, and they've tried.... ’s election and the threat that the president-elect issued to those holding hostages in the Middle East are the reasons why there has been renewed optimism regarding the chances for a deal, Sullivan disagrees.
The top Biden aide points to the fall of the Assad regime, the ceasefire in Leb ...an Iranian satrapy until recently ruled by Hassan Nasrallah situated on the eastern Mediterranean, conveniently adjacent to Israel. Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects. The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years and produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozen flavors of Christians, plus Armenians, Georgians, and who knows what else? It is the home of the original Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade. The Lebs have the curious habit of periodically murdering their heads of state or prime ministers... and Israel’s killing of Hamas leaders. "My view on why we are in [this] position... is not about American politics or the outcome of the election... It’s about the regional situation here."
"My conviction is that because of developments in the region, the moment is ripe; and it is my job to seize that moment to bring these people home, including American citizens, who have been away from their families for too long."
As for the call from some hostage families to have a one-phase deal that sees all 100 captives released at once, Sullivan says the US still believes that the three-phase framework that it has been pushing since Israel proposed it in May will be the most effective.
"Our judgment is that trying to proceed in phases and getting this thing started so people start coming out — that is the best way to get to the end of the process," he says.
"We will obviously test that... and we will see what happens. But it’s the judgment of the US and of the mediators that operating in this way is the most likely method of getting everyone home safely to their loved ones in the shortest possible time."
[LegalInsurrection] Video: Druze Demand to be Annexed by Israel as Jihadi Groups Consolidate Power in Syria. Druze leader: We want “to live with freedom and dignity like our people are living” in Israel.
As the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) moves to secure a buffer zone on the Syrian border, the local Druze community in the area is demanding to be annexed by Israel.
In a video posted on X, a Druze leader is seen addressing a community gathering, urging Israel to exert its sovereignty over the territory.
“We asked to be annexed to the Golan to preserve our dignity,” the Druze speaker said. He feared that resurgent Islamist fighters “might take our women, might take our daughters, they might take our houses.”
Residents of the Druze village of Hatcher in Syria demand annexation to Israel
The Druze residents declared during the well-attended gathering that they prefer to be part of the State of Israel out of fear of what could happen to the village following the rise of Sunni rebels to… pic.twitter.com/lQIJhemHRt
“We ask in the name of all the surrounding area to join our people in the Golan, and to live with freedom and dignity like our people are living (in Israel),” he urged.
The video highlights that the Druze, who follow an Abrahamic religion separate from Islam, would prefer to live under Israeli law instead of under the rule of jihadi groups vying for power in Syria after the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
The Times of Israel reported Friday:
An unverified video circulating on social media purports to show a member of the Druze community in the southern Syrian village of Hader calling for the community to be annexed to the Israeli side of the Golan Heights.
Although the speech is in Arabic, a version of the video was posted on X with English captions.
Speaking to a large crowd, the man tells them to consider what they want their future to look like following the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime earlier this week.
“If we have to choose, we will choose the lesser evil,” he says. “And even if it’s considered evil to ask to be annexed to the [Israeli] Golan, it’s a much lesser evil than the evil coming our way.”
He appears to be referring to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the largest of Syria’s rebel groups, which has its roots in al-Qaeda (…).
“That evil might take our women, might take our daughters, they might take our houses,” he says, according to the captions.
“Bashar al-Assad left,” he continues. “What do we have left? Nothing.”
“We asked to be annexed to the Golan to preserve our dignity,” he says, adding that he speaks for the Druze community across the surrounding area of the Quneitra Governorate.
“We ask in the name of all the surrounding area to join our people in the Golan, and to live with freedom and dignity like our people are living [in Israel].
He calls for the Syrian Druze to be freed from the “injustice and oppression” that was first imposed on them by the Assad regime, and which they fear will soon be imposed on them again by the Islamist rebel groups.
The Druze population, largely Arabic-speaking, is concentrated around the Golan Heights region — divided between Syria and Israel. Israel is home to around 140,000 Druze, many of them living in the Golan region.
Members of this small minority, which make up less than two percent of the Israeli population, have distinguished themselves in the Jewish State’s military, social, and cultural life.
🚨🛑**A leader of a Druze town called Sweda in southern Syria states that "the rebels" and their leader are the same as Osma Bin Laden and are ISIS. 👉His town refuses to accept their rule and requests of Benyamin Netanyahu that his town and his people become a part of Israel.… pic.twitter.com/uuXjXdblIX
[NavalNews] Press Release by Israel’s Ministry of Defense
After more than 20 years, the Israeli Ministry of Defense and the IDF are resuming the production of combat ships in Israel.
The Ministry of Defense will purchase five advanced Sa’ar ships of the “Reshef” model from Israel Shipyards at a cost of 2.8 billion NIS (about $780 million). This is one of the largest “Blue and White” procurement deals signed in recent years, as part of the Ministry of Defense’s policy to enhance production independence. The deal was approved by the Ministerial Procurement Committee and the Joint Committee of Defense Budget in the Knesset.
The Reshef will be the Navy’s newest and most advanced Sa’ar vessel. It is a multi-mission ship developed in collaboration with the Navy, incorporating the finest advanced weapons systems of the Israeli defense industry. These ships feature cutting-edge technologies that will provide exceptional capabilities and naval superiority for the IDF. The Reshef vessels will replace the aging “Nirit” (Sa’ar 4.5) ships, which have been in service for four decades.
Under the agreement with the Ministry of Defense, Israel Shipyards will manufacture and deliver five Reshef ships to the Navy over approximately six years, with an option to produce additional ships in the future. The local production of these ships will bolster national security and ensure consistent support for the IDF amid evolving challenges.
Somebody over there doesn’t trust their suppliers continue being a trustworthy source of supply.
[IsraelTimes] Iran has agreed to additional monitoring measures by the UN nuclear watchdog at its Fordo enrichment plant after it voiced plans to significantly increase its production of highly enriched uranium at the site, the agency says in a report seen by AFP.
The International Atomic Energy Agency said last week that Iran had revamped its Fordo enrichment plant, south of Tehran.
The changes would “significantly increase the rate of production of uranium enriched up to 60 percent”, the agency said — close to the 90 percent needed to make a nuclear weapon.
The rate of production will jump to more than 34 kilograms of highly enriched uranium per month, compared to 4.7 kilograms previously, it added.
The IAEA called on Iran to implement inspections urgently, while European powers pressed Tehran to “immediately halt its nuclear escalation.”
“Iran agreed to the Agency’s request to increase the frequency and intensity of the implementation of safeguard measures at FFEP,” the IAEA says in a confidential report seen by AFP.
Iran insists on its right to nuclear energy for peaceful purposes and has denied any ambition of developing weapons capability.
However, US intelligence agencies and the IAEA say Iran had an organized military nuclear program up until 2003, and continued to develop its nuclear program beyond civilian necessity.
Israel contends that the Islamic Republic never truly abandoned its nuclear weapons program and many of its nuclear sites are buried under heavily fortified mountains.
[IsraelTimes] Ousted Syrian president kept officials and relatives, including his own brother, in dark about his exit plan; hunted for outside help to maintain his rule before eventually fleeing
Bashir al-Assad confided in almost no one about his plans to flee Syria as his reign collapsed. Instead, aides, officials and even relatives were deceived or kept in the dark, more than a dozen people with knowledge of the events told Rooters.
Hours before he escaped for Moscow, Assad assured a meeting of about 30 army and security chiefs at the defense ministry on Saturday that Russian military support was on its way and urged ground forces to hold out, according to a commander who was present and requested anonymity to speak about the briefing.
Civilian staff were none the wiser, too.
Assad told his presidential office manager on Saturday when he finished work he was going home but instead headed to the airport, according to an aide in his inner circle.
He also called his media adviser, Buthaina Shaaban, and asked her to come to his home to write him a speech, the aide said. She arrived to find no one was there.
"Assad didn’t even make a last stand. He didn’t even rally his own troops," said Nadim Houri, executive director of the Arab Reform Initiative regional think tank. "He let his supporters face their own fate."
Rooters was unable to contact Assad in Moscow, where he has been granted political asylum. Interviews with 14 people familiar with his final days and hours in power paint a picture of a leader casting around for outside help to extend his 24-year rule before leaning on deception and stealth to plot his exit from Syria in the early hours of Sunday.
Most of the sources, who include aides in the former president’s inner circle, regional diplomats and security sources and senior Iranian officials, asked for their names to be withheld to freely discuss sensitive matters.
Assad didn’t even inform his younger brother, Maher, commander of the Army’s elite 4th Armored Division, about his exit plan, according to three aides. Maher flew a helicopter to Iraq and then to Russia, one of the people said.
Assad’s maternal cousins, Ehab and Eyad Makhlouf, were similarly left behind as Damascus fell to the rebels, according to a Syrian aide and Lebanese security official. The pair tried to flee by car to Leb ...an Iranian satrapy until recently ruled by Hassan Nasrallah situated on the eastern Mediterranean, conveniently adjacent to Israel. Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects. The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years and produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozen flavors of Christians, plus Armenians, Georgians, and who knows what else? It is the home of the original Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade. The Lebs have the curious habit of periodically murdering their heads of state or prime ministers... but were ambushed on the way by rebels who shot Ehab dead and maimed Eyad, they said. There was no official confirmation of the death and Rooters was unable to independently verify the incident.
Assad himself fled Damascus by plane on Sunday, Dec. 8, flying under the radar with the aircraft’s transponder switched off, two regional diplomats said, escaping the clutches of rebels storming the capital. The dramatic exit ended his 24 years of rule and his family’s half a century of unbroken power, and brought the 13-year civil war to an abrupt halt.
He flew to Russia’s Hmeimim airbase in the Syrian coastal city of Latakia, and from there on to Moscow.
Assad’s immediate family, wife Asma and their three children, were already waiting for him in the Russian capital, according to three former close aides and a senior regional official.
Videos of Assad’s home, taken by rebels and citizens who thronged the presidential complex following his flight and posted on social media, suggest he made a hasty exit, showing cooked food left on the stove and several personal belongings left behind, such as family photo albums.
RUSSIA AND IRAN: NO MILITARY RESCUE
There would be no military rescue from Russia, whose intervention in 2015 had helped turn the tide of the civil war in favor of Assad, or from his other staunch ally Iran.
This had been made clear to the Syrian leader in the days leading up to his exit, when he sought aid from various quarters in a desperate race to cling to power and secure his safety, according to the people interviewed by Rooters.
Assad visited Moscow on Nov. 28, a day after Syrian rebel forces attacked the northern province of Aleppo and in a lightning drive across the country, but his pleas for military intervention fell on deaf ears in the Kremlin which was unwilling to intervene, three regional diplomats said.
Hadi al-Bahra, the head of Syria’s main opposition abroad, said that Assad didn’t convey the reality of the situation to aides back home, citing a source within Assad’s close circle and a regional official.
"He told his commanders and associates after his Moscow trip that military support was coming," Bahra added. "He was lying to them. The message he received from Moscow was negative."
Kremlin front man Dmitry Peskov told news hounds on Wednesday that Russia had spent a lot of effort in helping stabilize Syria in the past but its priority now was the conflict in Ukraine.
Four days after that trip, on Dec. 2, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi met with Assad in Damascus. By that time, the rebels from the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, formerly al-Nusra, before that it was called something else ...al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate, from which sprang the Islamic State... (HTS) Islamist group had taken control of Syria’s second-largest city Aleppo and were sweeping southwards as government forces crumbled.
Assad was visibly distressed during the meeting, and conceded that his army was too weakened to mount an effective resistance, a senior Iranian diplomat told Rooters.
Assad never requested that Tehran deploy forces in Syria though, according to two senior Iranian officials who said he understood that Israel could use any such intervention as a reason to target Iranian forces in Syria or even Iran ...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for spontaneously taking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet militias to extend the regime's influence. The word Iran is a cognate form of Aryan. The abbreviation IRGC is the same idea as Stürmabteilung (or SA). The term Supreme Guide is a the modern version form of either Duce or Führer or maybe both. They hate JewsZionists Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol... itself.
The Kremlin and Russian foreign ministry declined to comment for this article, while the Iranian foreign ministry was not immediately available to comment.
ASSAD CONFRONTS OWN DOWNFALL
After exhausting his options, Assad finally accepted the inevitability of his downfall and resolved to leave the country, ending his family’s dynastic rule which dates back to 1971.
Three members of Assad’s inner circle said he initially wanted to seek refuge in the United Arab Emirates, as rebels seized Aleppo and Homs and were advancing towards Damascus.
They said he was rebuffed by the Emiratis who feared an international backlash for harboring a figure subject to US and European sanctions for allegedly using chemical weapons
...have not been used since WWI except for in Iraq, by the late, unlamented Saddam Hussein and in Syria, but really, honest, not by the Syrian government. And in Germany in WWII, but that was against civilians. Lots of them, just one of many reasons Hitler's also late and unlamented... in a crackdown on Death Eaters, accusations that Assad has rejected as a fabrication.
The UAE government didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Yet Moscow, while unwilling to intervene militarily, was not prepared to abandon Assad, according to a Russian diplomatic source who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, attending the Doha forum in Qatar ...an emirate on the east coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It sits on some really productive gas and oil deposits, which produces the highest per capita income in the world. They piss it all away on religion, financing the Moslem Brotherhood and several al-Qaeda affiliates. Home of nutbag holy manYusuf al-Qaradawi... on Saturday and Sunday, spearheaded the diplomatic effort to secure the safety of Assad, engaging The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire... and Qatar to leverage their connections to HTS to secure Assad’s safe exit to Russia, two regional officials said.
One Western security source said that Lavrov did "whatever he could" to secure Assad’s safe departure.
Qatar and Turkey made arrangements with HTS to facilitate Assad’s exit, three of the sources said, despite official claim by both countries that they had no contacts with HTS, which is designated by the US and the UN as a terrorist organization.
Moscow also coordinated with neighboring states to ensure that a Russian plane leaving Syrian airspace with Assad on board would not be intercepted or targeted, three of the sources said.
Qatar’s foreign ministry didn’t immediately respond to queries about Assad’s exit, while Rooters was unable to reach HTS for comment. A Ottoman Turkish government official said there was no Russian request to use Ottoman Turkish airspace for Assad’s flight, though didn’t address whether Ankara worked with HTS to facilitate the escape.
Assad’s last prime minister, Mohammed Jalali, said he spoke to his then-president on the phone on Saturday at 10:30 p.m.
"In our last call, I told him how difficult the situation was and that there was huge displacement (of people) from Homs toward Latakia ... that there was panic and horror in the streets," he told Saudi-owned Al Arabiya TV this week.
"He replied: ’Tomorrow, we will see’," Jalali added. "’Tomorrow, tomorrow’, was the last thing he told me."
Jalali said he tried to call Assad again as dawn broke on Sunday, but there was no response.
[IsraelTimes] Some Syrian regime officials believed to have entered Lebanon with fake identification; ousted president and brother most likely in Russia
After bully boyz toppled Syrian President Bashir al-Assad this month, many bigwigs and members of his dreaded intelligence and security services appear to have melted away. Activists say some of them have managed to flee the country while others went to hide in their hometowns.
For more than five decades, the Assad family has ruled Syria with an iron grip, locking up those who dared question their power in the country’s notorious prisons, where rights groups say inmates were regularly tortured or killed.
The leader of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, formerly al-Nusra, before that it was called something else ...al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate, from which sprang the Islamic State... murderous Moslem group — which led anti-government fighters who forced Assad from power — has vowed to bring those who carried out such abuses to justice.
"We will go after them in our country," said HTS leader Ahmad al-Sharaa, who was previously known as Abu Mohammed al-Golani. He added that the group will also ask foreign countries to hand over any suspects.
But finding those responsible for abuses could prove difficult.
Some 8,000 Syrian citizens have entered Leb ...an Iranian satrapy until recently ruled by Hassan Nasrallah situated on the eastern Mediterranean, conveniently adjacent to Israel. Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects. The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years and produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozen flavors of Christians, plus Armenians, Georgians, and who knows what else? It is the home of the original Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade. The Lebs have the curious habit of periodically murdering their heads of state or prime ministers... through the Masnaa border crossing in recent days, according to two Lebanese security officials and a judicial official, and about 5,000 have left the neighboring country through Beirut’s international airport. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information.
Most of those are presumed to be regular people, and Lebanon’s Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi said earlier this week that no Syrian official entered Lebanon through a legal border crossing.
In an apparent effort to prevent members of Assad’s government from escaping, the security officials said a Lebanese officer who was in charge of Masnaa was ordered to go on vacation because of his links to Assad’s brother.
But Rami Abdurrhaman, who heads the Britannia-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, says several senior officers have nonetheless made it to neighboring Lebanon using travel documents with fake names.
Here’s a look at al-Assad and some of the officials in his inner circle.
Bashir al-Assad
The Western-educated ophthalmologist initially raised hopes that he would be unlike his strongman father, Hafez, when he took power in 2000, including freeing political prisoners and allowing for a more open discourse.
But when protests of his rule erupted in March 2011, Assad turned to brutal tactics to crush dissent. As the uprising became an outright civil war, he unleashed his military to blast opposition-held cities, with support from allies Iran ...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for spontaneously taking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet militias to extend the regime's influence. The word Iran is a cognate form of Aryan. The abbreviation IRGC is the same idea as Stürmabteilung (or SA). The term Supreme Guide is a the modern version form of either Duce or Führer or maybe both. They hate JewsZionists Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol... and Russia.
He has fled to Moscow, according to Russian state media.
Maher al-Assad
The younger brother of the ousted president was the commander of the 4th Armored Division, which Syrian opposition activists have accused of killings, torture, extortion and drug trafficking, in addition to running its own detention centers. He is under US and European sanctions. He disappeared over the weekend, and Abdurrhaman said he made it to Russia.
Last year, French authorities issued an international arrest warrant for Maher Assad, along with his brother and two army generals, for alleged complicity in war crimes and crimes against humanity, including in a 2013 chemical attack on rebel-held Damascus suburbs.
Maj. Gen. Ali Mamlouk
Mamlouk was a security adviser to Assad and former head of the intelligence services. He is wanted in Lebanon for two explosions in the northern city of Tripoli ...a confusing city, one end of which is located in Lebanon and the other end of which is the capital of Libya. Its chief distinction is being mentioned in the Marine Hymn... in 2012 that killed and maimed dozens.
Mamlouk is also wanted in La Belle France after a court convicted him and others in absentia of complicity in war crimes and sentenced them to life in prison. The trial focused on the officials’ role in the 2013 arrest in Damascus of a Franco-Syrian man and his son and their subsequent torture and killing.
Abdurrahman said Mamlouk fled to Lebanon, and it is not clear if he is still in the country under the protection of Hezbollah.
Brig. Gen. Suheil al-Hassan
Al-Hassan was the commander of the 25th Special Missions Forces Division and later became the head of the Syrian Special Forces, which were key to many of the government’s battlefield victories in the long-running civil war, including in Aleppo and the eastern suburbs of Damascus that long-held off Assad’s troops.
Al-Hassan is known to have close ties to Russia and was praised by Russian President Vladimir Putin ...President-for-Life of Russia. He gets along well with other presidents for life. He is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from poisoning by polonium or other interesting substance. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to him. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead from poisoning by polonium or other interesting substances... during one of his visits to Syria. al-Hassan’s whereabouts are not known.
Maj. Gen. Hussam Luka
Luka, head of the General Security Directorate intelligence service, is not well known among the wider public but has played a major role in the crackdown against the opposition, mainly in the central city of Homs which was dubbed the "capital of the Syrian revolt."
Luka has been sanctioned by the US and Britannia for his role in the crackdown. It is not clear where he is.
Maj. Gen. Qahtan Khalil
Khalil, whose whereabouts are also unknown, was head of the Air Force intelligence service and is widely known as the "Butcher of Daraya" for allegedly leading a 2012 attack on a Damascus suburb of the same name that killed hundreds of people.
Other Officials
Retired Maj. Gen. Jamil Hassan, former head of the Air Force Intelligence Service, is also suspected of bearing responsibility for the attack in Daraya. Hassan was among those convicted in La Belle France this year along with Mamlouk.
Defense Minister Lt. Gen. Ali Abbas and Maj. Gen. Bassam Merhej al-Hassan, head of Bashir al-Assad’s office and the man in charge of his security, are accused of human rights When they're defined by the state or an NGO they don't mean much... violations.
[IsraelTimes] As Syrians celebrate first Friday since Assad’s downfall, US and Turkey agree to keep ensuring Islamic State won’t ‘rear its head again,’ amid international gestures to rebel leader
Defense Minister Israel Katz said Friday that he had ordered the military to prepare to stay atop the Syrian side of Mount Hermon during the coming winter months as Israel aims to prevent the border region from falling into the wrong hands following the ouster of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad on Sunday.
Katz’s announcement came as top diplomats of Turkey and the United States, which back warring rebel factions in Syria, met to discuss their joint effort to prevent Islamic State from resurging after Assad’s downfall, amid international efforts to gauge Syria’s new leadership.
Meanwhile, Damascus celebrated its first Friday prayers since Assad’s ouster, with rebel leader Abu Mohammed al-Golani calling on Syrians “to go to the streets to express their joy” at the “victory of the blessed revolution.” Thousands attended prayers at Damascus’s landmark Umayyad mosque.
Al-Golani, whose Islamist Hayat Tahrir a-Sham originated in Al-Qaeda and has since broken with it, has remained largely mum as Israel struck what remained of Assad’s military equipment and entered the Syrian buffer zone delineated in a 1974 agreement.
The area includes Syrian-controlled sections of the Golan Heights and Mount Hermon — Syria’s highest peak, which has long boasted a UN observation post at the summit.
The Foreign Ministry on Thursday pushed back on international criticism of the takeover, saying the move was a temporary measure to prevent the border region from falling into extremists’ hands.
In a statement Friday, Katz said that “due to what is happening in Syria, there is a huge security importance to our holding of the Hermon peak and everything must be done to ensure the IDF’s preparations in the area, to allow the troops to stay there in the difficult weather conditions.”
Katz ordered the move during an assessment he held on Thursday with IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi and other top officers.
Israel captured most of the Golan Heights from Syria during the Six Day War in 1967. It held onto the territory during the 1973 Yom Kippur War and in 1981 annexed the area in a move since recognized by the United States.
An unverified video circulating on social media purported to show a man from the Druze village of Hader — in the Syrian buffer zone — asking to be annexed to the Israeli side of the Golan Heights.
In front of a large crowd, the man said Israel was the “lesser evil” facing the community — with the greater evil apparently being the Islamist rebels led by al-Golani.
BLINKEN AND FIDAN DISCUSS ISLAMIC STATE, RIVAL ALLIES IN SYRIA
At a meeting in Ankara Friday, meanwhile, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken discussed with his Turkish counterpart Hakan Fidan the two countries’ “imperative” to continue yearslong work “to ensure the elimination of the territorial caliphate of ISIS [and] to ensure that threat doesn’t rear its head again,” according to a statement from Washington.
ISIS, or Islamic State, controlled up to a third of Syria, mainly in the northeast, in a reign of terror that was defeated in 2019 by a coalition including the US and Turkey.
Fidan said he discussed with Blinken Turkey’s aim “to prevent terrorism from gaining ground [in Syria] and to prevent Islamic State and the PKK from dominating there,” referring to the Kurdistan Workers Party, which is considered a terror group by both Ankara and Washington.
NATO allies Washington and Ankara supported Syrian rebels during the 13-year civil war, but their interests clashed when it came to one of the rebel factions — the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces.
The SDF is the main ally in the international coalition against the Islamic State. It is spearheaded by the People’s Protection Units (YPG), which Ankara sees as an extension of PKK, whose activists have fought for independence against Turkey for the past 40 years.
Earlier this week, Turkish-backed forces seized the northern city of Manbij from the SDF, which then headed east of the Euphrates River.
A Syrian opposition source told Reuters that the US and Turkey had reached an agreement on the withdrawal. Neither Blinken nor Fidan made any reference to any agreement between Turkey-backed Syrian forces and the SDF.
Blinken, whose term will end in January, is in Turkey on his 12th trip to the Middle East since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages, sparking the war in Gaza. As part of his meeting with Fidan on Friday, Blinken also discussed efforts to bring home the remaining 100 hostages.
On Thursday, Blinken also met with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and said that there was broad agreement on what Turkey and the US would like to see in Syria after Assad’s fall.
The meeting with Erdogan came amid news that Ankara would reopen its embassy in Damascus, as regional powers began to adapt to the new reality there.
According to Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency, Burhan Koroglu, the Turkish ambassador in Mauritania, was named as temporary charge d’affaires to lead the reopening.
The embassy in Damascus had suspended operations in 2012 due to the escalating security problems during the Syrian civil war and embassy staff and their families were recalled to Turkey.
On Thursday, Jordan’s foreign ministry said it would host a summit “to discuss developments in Syria,” with the foreign ministers of Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar and Turkey, as well as their US and EU counterparts and the UN envoy for Syria.
Bahrain’s King Hamad said in a letter to the rebel leader al-Golani — whom he addressed by his real name, Ahmed al-Sharaa — that Bahrain was ready to “continue consultations and coordination with Syria,” Bahrain’s official BNA news agency reported Friday.
[IsraelTimes] Newspaper opposed to terror group bemoans cost to Lebanon, risk of Israeli strikes; analyst says Israel apparently refrained from shooting down 4,000 evacuating Iranian troops
An anti-Hezbollah Lebanese newspaper reported that the terror group helped hundreds of Syrian intelligence officers flee to Leb ...an Iranian satrapy until recently ruled by Hassan Nasrallah situated on the eastern Mediterranean, conveniently adjacent to Israel. Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects. The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years and produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozen flavors of Christians, plus Armenians, Georgians, and who knows what else? It is the home of the original Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade. The Lebs have the curious habit of periodically murdering their heads of state or prime ministers... in the days before forces opposed to Syria’s strongman Bashir al-Assad captured Damascus on Sunday.
The Nidaa al-Watan newspaper this week seethed at the price Lebanon was paying to keep some of the brass hats safe, and expressed fears that the presence of Assad’s allies in Lebanon could draw Israeli strikes.
Some Lebanese leaders also expressed concern over the report, which followed the discovery of a large secret tunnel in Syria’s Qalamoun Mountains, a Hezbollah stronghold near Damascus and the border with Lebanon, apparently used to store and transfer arms. However,
some people cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go... the officers who escaped to Lebanon were said to travel via overland border crossings.
Citing two security officials — whose nationality was unclear — Nidaa al-Watan on Monday reported that Hezbollah had given Lebanese license plates to Assad officials who entered Lebanon via the Masnaa border crossing. The newspaper also said that thousands of Syrian security officials were estimated to have crossed into Lebanon illegally via the Hermel crossing, farther north.
ِAccording to the officials cited in the report, the smuggling of Syrian officers was facilitated by bribes to members of Lebanon’s General Security Directorate. Among the latter, the newspaper singled out Hezbollah ally Ahmed Nakad, a senior Directorate border patrol officer said to have close ties with Ali Mamlouk, head of the National Security Bureau of Assad’s Ba’ath party.
Nidaa al-Watan said Mamlouk, whom Lebanon has accused of carrying out "terrorist acts" against two mosques in the country, was in hiding in Hezbollah’s stronghold in Beirut’s southern Dahiyeh suburb. Video circulating on social media, which could not be independently verified, purported to show Mamlouk fleeing Syria on a rubber boat.
WATCH⚡️
The dramatic escape of Ali Mamlouk, head of Syria’s secret service and security advisor to President Assad. Just a rubber boat, a suitcase, and a getaway…
Also said to be in Beirut — reportedly at the five-star Phonecia Hotel — was Ghada Adib Mhanna, Assad’s aunt by marriage and mother of his close ally, telecom magnate Rami Makhlouf; and — in the Movenpick, another luxury hotel — Firas Issa Shaleesh, nephew of Dhu al-Himma Shalish, Assad’s late cousin and presidential security chief who had been implicated in massacres carried out under Assad’s father and predecessor, Hafez.
Khaled Qaddour, a Syrian businessman under US sanctions for his ties to Maher al-Assad, the dictator’s brother, was also reportedly staying at the Movenpick Hotel.
According to Nidaa al-Watan, both luxury hotels were being patrolled by Lebanese state security.
The newspaper editorialized that Lebanon, which Hafez and Basher al-Assad’s forces occupied for some three decades until 2005, would end up "bearing the cost of facilitating the hiding of those wanted by the Lebanese state."
They could all join dear Bashar al Assad and the fam in Moscow. He reportedly made off with a good chunk of the treasury…
"Also, the presence of Assad’s lackeys in the suburbs and Beirut exposes the capital to the risk of Israeli strikes," the newspaper said.
A similar warning was voiced by Lebanon’s Progressive Socialist Party, which is led by the Jumblat family, a prominent Druze clan that is generally aligned with Hezbollah. Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati said Tuesday that he was working with the judiciary and the General Security Directorate to address the issue in a manner that would "serve Lebanon’s interests and maintain relations with the Syrian people."
Iran ...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for spontaneously taking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet militias to extend the regime's influence. The word Iran is a cognate form of Aryan. The abbreviation IRGC is the same idea as Stürmabteilung (or SA). The term Supreme Guide is a the modern version form of either Duce or Führer or maybe both. They hate JewsZionists Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol... said this week that it had evacuated some 4,000 of its own troops from Syria following Assad’s ouster.
Channel 12 Arab affairs analyst Ehud Yaari, who on Thursday cited the Assad officials’ reported escape to Lebanon, noted that Israel had apparently refrained from shooting down the Iranian air convoy.
As long as they’re off the playing board, who cares what they do?
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
..not a terrorist organization, even though it kidnaps people, holds hostages, and tries to negotiate by executing them,...
...an Iranian satrapy until recently ruled by Hassan Nasrallah situated on the eastern Mediterranean, conveniently adjacent to Israel. Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects. The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years and produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozen flavors of Christians, plus Armenians, Georgians, and who knows what else? It is the home of the original Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade. The Lebs have the curious habit of periodically murdering their heads of state or prime ministers...
...an Iranian satrapy until recently ruled by Hassan Nasrallah situated on the eastern Mediterranean, conveniently adjacent to Israel. Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects. The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years and produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozen flavors of Christians, plus Armenians, Georgians, and who knows what else? It is the home of the original Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade. The Lebs have the curious habit of periodically murdering their heads of state or prime ministers...
