U.S. lawmakers say Iran eyes military base near Syria-Israel border

Iran military leaders. Teheran wants to establish a military base in Syria near the Jordan or Israel border, U.S. lawmakers said. / Fars via AFP

 

Iran is looking to establish a permanent military presence in Syria and is eyeing a potential base near the Syrian border with Israel or Jordan, two U.S. lawmakers said.

“A permanent Iranian military base in Syria … would increase Iran’s operational capacity to inflict serious damage against two of our closest allies in the region,” Rep. Peter Roskam, Illinois Republican, and Rep. Ted Deutch, Florida Democrat, wrote in a letter to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

The lawmakers’ warning comes as a Senate panel on May 25 approved new U.S. sanctions targeting Iran’s support for international terrorism and its ballistic missile program, the first move to punish Teheran since the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear accord went into effect.

Drone Images Expose Major US, Jordan Military Build-up On Syrian Border

 

The US and Jordanian military forces may be prepping a massive invasion of Syria, if intelligence reports gathered from surveillance drones suggest.

Nuclear Weapons Being Moved from Incirlik Air Base to Romania: Sources

It’s either move the nukes out, or allow Turkey to try to muscle its way in and steal them in one way or another — if they haven’t been trying in some way already.

 

TRUNEWS has learned through several media sources that nuclear missiles that are housed at the Incirlik Air Base in Ankara, Turkey, may be in the process of being moved from there to a base in Romania.

Two independent sources told EurActiv.com that the US has started transferring nuclear weapons stationed in Turkey to Romania, against the background of worsening relations between Washington and Ankara.

Eyewitnesses say ISIS being treated in Turkish hospitals

As reported here last year in both July and August, Turkey continues supporting ISIS. See the following posts for more information:

Turkey Uses ISIS as Excuse to Attack Kurds

Erdoğan’s game plan as Turkey enters war

 

Islamic State militants are frequently transported across the Syrian border to Turkish hospitals for treatment, according to eyewitness accounts collected by RT on the ground. Their crossing was allegedly ensured by Turkish officials.

Both Islamic State (IS, previously ISIS/ISIL) and Free Syrian Army fighters were able to cross the border from Syria into Turkey en masse and receive medical help – only to then be allowed to go back to resume fighting in Syria, the head of a local doctors’ association told RT’s Lizzie Phelan.

Phelan visited Gaziantep, a city in south-central Turkey some 60 kilometers from the Syrian border. Eyewitnesses and doctors told the RT correspondent that most of the IS fighters were treated in the border city of Kilis south of Gaziantep.

Russia to keep S-400 in Syria until Saudi warplanes leave Turkey

The highly-advanced S-400 air defense missiles will also eventually be evacuated from Syria, said high-ranking officials in Moscow on Wednesday, March 17, according to an exclusive debkafile report. But their presence for now is crucial in view of the continuing Saudi buildup of warplanes in Turkey, close to the Syrian border.

Our military sources disclose that the initial Saudi deployment of four warplanes to the Turkish air base of Incirlik earlier this month, has been expanded to sixteen, while Saudi officials declare that Riyadh and Ankara are preparing to intervene jointly in the Syrian conflict.

According to our sources, Turkish armored and infantry troops have already crossed the border and set up positions in the northern Syrian province of Idlib, just a few hundred meters inside the border.

Putin warns Turkey there will be ‘serious consequences’ for ‘stabbing Russia in the back’ by shooting down one of its jets… as video emerges of rebels chanting ‘Allahu Akbar’ over the body of dead pilot

Conflicting stories: Turkey claims they shot the plane down as it was violating the country’s airspace after the pilots ignored ‘ten warnings in the space of five minutes’, but Russia says the jet was in Syrian airspace

 

 

• Turkish army has shot down a Russian Sukhoi Su-24 war plane near its Syrian border, officials confirm
• The Russian jet had violated Turkish air space and ignored ten warnings in five minutes, army says
• Putin called Turkey’s decision to shoot down the plane a ‘stab in the back by the terrorists’ accomplices’
• Russia claims the jet, which crashed in Syria’s Turkomen Mountains, had been in Syrian airspace when it was hit
• In response, Turkish army released flight tracking data showing where the jet violated its airspace
• One pilot dead, the other reportedly captured by Turkmen – ethnic Turks subjected to Russian airstrikes this week

Turkey’s military have today shot down a Russian war plane near its border with Syria after the jet violated Turkish air space.

The Russian Sukhoi Su-24 jet was shot down by Turkish F-16 fighter planes after ignoring nearly a dozen warnings, Turkish army officials said.

President Vladimir Putin called Turkey’s decision to down the plane a ‘stab in the back by the terrorists’ accomplices’, as his Defence Ministry still claims the jet was in Syrian airspace.

‘The loss we suffered today came from a stab in the back delivered by accomplices of the terrorists,’ President Putin said, speaking at a meeting with King Abdullah II of Jordan in Sochi, Russia, on Thursday afternoon.

Turkey Downs `Drone’ on Syria Border Amid Russia Tensions

The nationality of the craft is unknown, according to a statement by the military. It had violated Turkish airspace before it was warned and then shot down, the military said. The Anadolu Agency posted pictures of soldiers inspecting a crashed drone and Haberturk television also reported that it was an unmanned aircraft, without saying how it got the information. It said the drone fell inside the Turkish border near the town of Kilis. The military declined to comment on the reports.

US Upgrades Nuclear Weapon Sites in Europe: Report

 

Commercial satellite imagery shows the work underway at the Incirlik Air Base in Turkey and Aviano Air Base in Italy, according to a report Thursday from the Federation of American Scientists, a nonprofit based in Washington, D.C., which opposes the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

Turkey bombs Islamic State targets in Syria

Turkey’s government says it has bombed Islamic State (IS) targets in Syria.

A day earlier the two sides exchanged fire near the border, with one soldier killed and two more injured.

Turkey is to let the US carry out air strikes against the Islamic State group from a key military base near the Syrian border, US officials have said.

Turkish police also launched raids to arrest suspect IS militants on Friday morning in 140 locations in Istanbul.

Iranian Rev Guards ready to intervene in Syria to save Assad. Soleimani: Expect major events in Syria

Please see the article source for the video.

 

Tehran is believed to be preparing to dispatch a substantial Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) special operations unit to Syria to tackle the separate rebel and ISIS advances closing in on the Assad regime, Western and Arab intelligence sources report. They say the Syrian army is already setting aside an area in northern Syria for the Iranian troops to take up position.

If this happens, debkafile’s military sources note that it would be the Revolutionary Guards first direct intervention in the nearly five-year Syrian war. Up until now, Tehran has carefully avoided putting Iranian boots on the ground in both Syria and Iraq. The only place where Iranian forces are directly engaged in battle is at Iraq’s main refinery town of Baiji, where small infantry and artillery units have been trying – without success thus far – to dislodge ISIS forces from the refinery complex.

Turkish President Declares Lawrence of Arabia a Bigger Enemy than ISIS

In a stunning speech, Erdogan railed against Western “spies” and journalists and seemed to endorse the ISIS plan to redraw the region’s borders.

GAZIANTEP, Turkey — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan took on the iconic Lawrence of Arabia Monday in a furious anti-Western diatribe.  The Turkish president compared the outside meddling in the region now to the role the renowned British army officer played during the Arab Revolt against the Ottomans during World War I. And Western diplomats here say the tirade bears a rather striking resemblance to some of the propaganda that has come out of the so-called Islamic State, widely known by the acronym ISIS or ISIL.

Last week, stung by Western criticism of Turkey’s conspicuous absence from the U.S.-led air combat against the terror organization, and the refusal of the Turkish government to rescue the besieged town of Kobani, just across the Syrian border, Erdoğan insisted he had no sympathy for the jihadists.

Epic US-Iran military cooperation in Iraq coincides with Israel’s war on Tehran’s Palestinian ally, Hamas

The US and Iran took the first steps for their military cooperation in Iraq on June 16, at the same time as Israel declared war on Tehran’s Palestinian ally, Hamas, in the wake of a fruitless four-day sweep of the West Bank Hebron region for the three Israeli teenagers kidnapped on June 12, and the detention of hundreds of Hamas activists – which Israel leaders said was just the beginning.

…

Overnight, President Obama informed Congress that up to 275 troops could be sent to Iraq to provide support and security for US personnel and the American Embassy in Baghdad,which with a staff of 5,000 is the largest in the world. About 170 of those forces are already in Iraq.

debkafile: That is only the first step, to be followed by more. US naval, air and Marine forces are assembling in the Persian Gulf ready to go in.

Turkey starts to build new military base near Syria

ANKARA, Sept. 8 (Xinhua) — The Turkish army started to build a new military base on the top of Kel Mountain, which is located near the Syrian coastal city of Latakia, Turkish Daily News reported on Sunday.

Trucks carrying with military equipment from southern Hatay province were heading to the Kel Mountain, the report said, adding that soldiers have started to assemble the equipment on the top of the mountain.

Jordan wargames: Patriot batteries, F-16s and 4,500 US troops near Syrian border

Multinational military exercise ‘Eager Lion’ has been launched in Jordan amid condemnation from neighboring Syria and its ally Russia. The US brings Patriot missile batteries to the Syrian border, which could remain deployed afterwards.

The exercises will last for 12 days, bringing together about 8,000 personnel from 19 countries, mostly Arabic, but also including the US and Europe. The maneuvers will also involve some 3,000 Jordanian and 500 British troops. 

Large US Marine force lands in Aqaba to deploy on Jordanian-Syrian border

A large American military force disembarked Tuesday, June 4, at the southern Jordanian port of Aqaba – ready for deployment on the kingdom’s Syrian border, debkafile’s exclusive military sources report. The force made its way north along the Aqaba-Jerash-Ajilon mountain road bisecting Jordan from south to north, under heavy Jordanian military escort.

Our sources disclose that this American force numbers 1,000 troops, the largest to land in Jordan since the Syrian civil war erupted in March 2012. They are members of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Force carried aboard the USS Kearsage amphibious assault ship, which has been anchored off neighboring Israeli Eilat since mid-May. Upon landing, the marines took to the road in a convoy of armored vehicles including Hummers.