Iran masses troops for controlling Iraqi-Syrian routes. Soleimani hits defiant Iraqi Shiite militia

 

While the US and Israel confer on a military offensive against Iran in Syria, Iran’s Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani is busy with preemptive steps – in Iraq, DEBKAfile reports.

The big Mosul offensive is stuck, halted by ISIS

Less than a day after its launch, the big Mosul offensive prepared for more than a year by the US, the Iraqi army, Kurdish forces and others, ground to a halt Tuesday Oct. 17, debkafile’s military sources report – although none of the parties admitted as much.  Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar Al-Abadi said his troops were busy opening up corridors for some million civilians to escape, while US sources suggested that the Islamic State would use primitive chemical weapons against the advancing Iraqi and Kurdish forces.

Both had the ring of cover stories to account for the spearhead forces, the Iraq army’s 9^th Armored Division and the Federal Police special anti-terror units, being thrown back Tuesday on their way to Mosul from the east and the south, while still 10-15km short of the city. They sustained heavy losses in lives and hardware.

The 9^th Division and its newly-supplied heavy US Abrahams tanks were stopped at al-Hamdaniyah outside Mosul and retreated, recalling a previous defeat at ISIS hands in June 2014, when troops of the same division fled under Islamist attack, leaving their tanks behind.

Matt Drudge: ‘America has been arming ISIS’

If you’ve been following Global Geopolitics for the last two years or so, this would be a no-brainer. The good news is that the mainstream picked up on it.

 

 

Rare tweet by media giant alludes to sinister Obama policy

Matt Drudge’s first tweet in months came with a cryptic message: “A shocking truth is unfolding: America has been arming ISIS.”

The Obama administration has been plagued for weeks over news U.S. weapons supplied to Syrian rebels were inadvertently winding up in the hands of terror groups. The media giant’s tweet on Tuesday alludes to something far more sinister.

Iraq to Washington: We Don’t Want Your Troops

“We won’t hold back from supporting capable partners in opportunistic attacks against ISIL (ISIS),” he told the Committee. The new strategy would consist of “three R’s,” he said: more US action, including on the ground, with Syrian opposition partners to take the ISIS stronghold in Raqqa, Syria; more intense cooperation with the Iraqi army including with US-embedded soldiers to retake Ramadi from ISIS in Iraq; and the beginning of US military raids, “whether by strikes from the air or direct action on the ground.”

That was news to the Iraqis, it turns out. And it wasn’t very good news at that. Today Sa’ad al-Hadithi, spokesman for Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, said “thanks but no thanks” to a third US invasion of his country. “We have enough soldiers on the ground,” he said.

Iraq turns to Russia to fill void left by “unserious” Obama

What’s been warned about here time after time is coming to fruition. First it’s the Middle East, then eventually it will be Europe where America will be kicked out. The ‘mistakes’ being made by the current administration are too huge to be mistakes.

 

The Washington Post reports that Iraq plans to set up a joint-intelligence-sharing hub with Syria, Iran, and Russia to fight ISIS. The center is expected to be operational within a matter of weeks, according to a spokesman for the Iraqi Defense Ministry.

The Post’s Loveday Morris explains the meaning of this move:

The deal is the latest indication of expanding Russian influence in the region as Moscow embarks on a major buildup of troops and military assets along the Syrian coast. A larger role in Iraq could come at the expense of U.S. clout, with Washington struggling to compete with Iran for influence on the battlefield.

In the absence of a U.S. ‘strategy’, Middle East braces for ‘the big war’

The most dangerous U.S. President in history has changed the world forever, and the worst is yet to come. Furthermore, the politicians of any respective country are a direct reflection of the hearts and minds of the people. Voters made a large mistake in 2008 by voting their first modern Egyptian pharaoh who will continue to rule like an unchecked tyrant. You cannot undo the last six years in America. Switching from Democrats to Republicans will not fix the solution as both parties are on the same side, as in Russia today.

If you were to ask when America will collapse, the smart answer would be 2008. And rightly so, all the blame also does not fall squarely on Obama. Since then, America has been in free-fall and 95% of the public will never notice until it hits bottom, mistaking that for the actual crash.

As you cannot legislate morality in hopes of bringing America back, the only hope for the once great nation is a return to God by its people. If the nation as a whole fully repents, there will be peace. Until then, His judgement is in full motion as we speak and will only continue to accelerate.

 

U.S. President Barack Obama referred early last year to Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL) as a JV team.

ISIL’s subsequent rampage through Iraq and Syria proved Obama wrong, but analysts cited by a McClatchyDC report think the worst has yet to come.

“The conditions are very much like 1914,” said Michael Stephens of the Royal United Service Institute in London. “All it will take is one little spark, and Iran and Saudi Arabia will go at each other, believing they are fighting a defensive war.”

Iraqi Kurdish commentator Hiwa Osman believes “the whole region is braced for the big war, the war that has not yet happened, the Shiite-Sunni war.”

Bashar Assad: The Beginning of the End

“Based on current trend lines, it is time to start thinking about a post-Assad Syria.” That was the estimate of a United States intelligence official, based on events that occurred in Syria in May.

On May 21, the Islamic State captured the ancient city of Palmyra in central Syria—four days after the same terrorists seized the city of Ramadi in central Iraq. With the capture of both of these cities, the Islamic State gained control of the vast region between them, ensuring the group’s supply routes for weapons.

Obama admits US lacks ‘complete strategy’ in Iraq

President acknowledges military setbacks in fight against IS, urges Baghdad to allow more Sunnis in campaign against terror group

ELMAU, Germany (AP) — Acknowledging military setbacks, President Barack Obama said Monday the United States still lacks a “complete strategy” for training Iraqi forces to fight the Islamic State. He urged Iraq’s government to allow more of the nation’s Sunnis to join the campaign against the violent militants.

Nearly one year after American troops started returning to Iraq to assist local forces, Obama said the Islamic State remains “nimble, aggressive and opportunistic.” He touted “significant progress” in areas where the US has trained Iraqis to fight but said forces without US assistance are often ill-equipped and suffer from poor morale.

The Iraqi Army No Longer Exists

ISIS’s victory in Ramadi reveals that containment is the best the U.S. can do for now.

The fog of war lies thick over the battlefields of Iraq and Syria. Deliberate enemy deception, willful self-deception, and the complexity of large-scale combat ensure that the truth about war is almost always obscured by a kind of fog. Occasionally a major event parts the clouds and reveals a few fragments of truth, only to have the fog close in again. The collapse of Iraqi defenses in Ramadi is one such event. But we must look quickly to learn anything at all.

Iraqi officials fear Islamic State ‘water war’

Jihadists close gates of Ramadi city dam, drying Euphrates river and cutting supplies to strategic communities

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Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said after the May 17 fall of Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, that his men would take it back within days but operations are moving slowly.

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As they edge towards Ramadi, officials said Iraqi forces risked coming under attack because IS had closed the gates of a dam in the city to dry up the Euphrates.

The move will enable IS fighters to cross the river more easily and to infiltrate more territory.

Analysis: Having taken Ramadi and Palmyra, ISIS is now unstoppable

The capture by Islamic State forces of the Iraqi city of Ramadi, on May 17, has given the organization a fortified urban base less than an hour’s drive from Baghdad. Its near-simultaneous takeover of the central Syrian city of Palmyra, points to the organization’s permanence and demonstrates its widening operational span, which now ranges from Western Libya to the Iranian border. Without an all-out war effort by outside forces, such as Iran, or the United States, it is difficult to see how the Islamic State could be stopped from permanently establishing itself as a major actor in the region. However, such an eventuality is extremely improbable, as no outside force appears willing to confront ISIS in a symmetrical way.

No army in Mid East is challenging ISIS. Iran regroups to defend S. Iraqi Shiites, Assad to save Damascus

Hassan Nasrallah Saturday, May 23, called his Lebanese Shiite Hizballah movement to the flag, because “we are faced with an existential crisis” from the rising belligerence of the Islamist State of Iraq and the Levant. His deputy, Sheik Naim Qssem, sounded even more desperate: “The Middle East is at the risk of partition” in a war with no end in sight, he said. “Solutions for Syria are suspended. We must now see what happens in Iraq.”

The price Iran’s Lebanese proxy has paid for fighting alongside Bashar Assad’s army for four years is cruel: some 1,000 dead and many times that number of wounded. Its leaders now understood that their sacrifice was in vain. ISIS has brought the Syrian civil war to a new dead end.

ISIS advances on Baghdad, faces little resistance

The Islamic State continued its push toward Baghdad and on other fronts. Saturday, the group took the Iraq-Syrian town of Husaybah on the Tigris, rounding off its control of the border and the river and gaining an easy and rapid route for transferring reinforcements between the two countries.

Iraq again abandons major U.S. weapons platforms fleeing Ramadi

The Iraqi military abandoned more that  100 vehicles and weapons systems as it fled Ramadi, including several U.S.-origin platforms.

Keeping the military vehicles out of Islamic State of Iraq and Levant’s (ISIL’s) hands is vital, Pentagon spokesman Col. Steve Warren said.