War with Iran’s proxies could be ‘weeks’ away, Israel’s US envoy warns

A poster bearing an image of Syrian President Bashar Assad (R) and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah is seen in Damascus on September 7, 2017. (AFP/Louai Beshara)

 

Ron Dermer cautions that Tehran’s growing influence is likely to lead to military conflict, says regional peace deal is likely

Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Ron Dermer, said Monday that his country is closer to a full-blown military conflict along its northern border than people think.

In a wide-ranging interview with US news site Politico, Dermer reiterated Israel’s assertion that it will not tolerate the presence of Iranian proxies in Syria.

Iran extends reach with fight for land link to Mediterranean

In this Nov. 22, 2013 file photo, Iraqi and Lebanese Shiite fighters from a group called the Hussein Brigade use a helmet to draw sniper fire, during clashes with the Sunni-dominated Free Syrian Army, in the town of Hejeira, near Damascus, Syria. (AP Photo/Jaber al-Helo, File)

 

Islamic Republic’s regional expansion raises concern in Jerusalem of Tehran’s efforts ‘to entrench itself militarily on Israel’s border’

BEIRUT (AP) — Thousands of Iranian-backed fighters in Syria’s central desert region are advancing east, bringing Tehran closer to its goal of securing a corridor from its border, through Iraq and all the way to the Mediterranean and providing it unhindered land access to its allies in Syria and Lebanon for the first time.

The land route would be the biggest prize yet for Iran in its involvement in Syria’s six-year-old civil war.

In a Beijing ballroom, Kushner family pushes $500,000 ‘investor visa’ to wealthy Chinese

The event was hosted by the Chinese company Qiaowai, which connects U.S. companies with Chinese investors. (Emily Rauhala/The Washington Post)

 

BEIJING — The Kushner family came to the United States as refugees, worked hard and made it big — and if you invest in Kushner properties, so can you.

That was the message delivered Saturday by White House senior adviser Jared Kushner’s sister Nicole Kushner Meyer to a ballroom full of wealthy Chinese investors in Beijing.

Over several hours of slide shows and presentations, representatives from the Kushner family business urged Chinese citizens gathered at a Ritz-Carlton hotel to consider investing hundreds of thousands of dollars in a New Jersey luxury apartment complex that would help them secure what’s known as an investor visa.

The potential investors were advised to invest sooner rather than later in case visa rules change under the Trump administration. “Invest early, and you will invest under the old rules,” one speaker said.

White House Prepares For Trade War, Warns US “Will Not Be Bound By WTO Decisions”

In the latest warning from the White House that it is set to unleash trade policy that will be in sharp conflict with generally accepted trade norms, most likely a reference to some form of Border Adjustment Tax, the Trump administration has warned that the U.S. isn’t and won’t bound by decisions made at the World Trade Organization, in outlining a new trade agenda that “promises to root out unfair practices by foreign countries” and to escalate what are already simmering trade conflicts.

Entertainment Industry is Leading Charge to Civil War

 

The constant protests by the Entertainment industry against Trump will not subside. There is only one way this is going to end and that is blood in the streets. The riots will only escalate and the left ALWAYS becomes violent. They would not even allow the education secretary to enter a school. The Grammy show was reduced to hurried political statements, A Tribe Called Quest delivered a vigorous rebuke of Trump during a tribute to Phife Dawg, who died in March 2016. The group said the performance of We the People was also in honor of protesters.

The CIA is going after the most important man in the Trump Administration

A second poison pill, this time hard hitting:

 

Central Intelligence Agency STILL targeting key Trump allies

(INTELLIHUB) — In the months after the stunning election of Donald Trump, the CIA, with help from other intelligence services, waged a public battle against the president-elect through the anonymous release of disinformation to the establishment backed mainstream media.

Now, almost a month into the Trump presidency, these attacks are apparently continuing with the target being one of the most important people in the entire Trump Administration.

HE’S FIRED! Trump administration tells Border Patrol chief to pack his bags one day after the president ordered Homeland Security to build his wall

Mark Morgan, chief of the US Border Patrol, is on his way out after the Trump administration told him to step aside

 

• U.S. Border Patrol chief Mark Morgan is out, just a few months after taking over the agency as an Obama White House appointee
• He clashed with the rank-and-file officers’ union, which saw him as an outsider appointed for political purposes
• Morgan told employees on Wednesday that the Trump administration asked him to step down
• President Trump gave the order hours later to build a wall on America’s southern border, and said he would hire an additional 5,000 border patrol officers

The Department of Homeland Security has asked U.S. Border Patrol Chief Mark Morgan, a former longtime Federal Bureau of Investigation agent, to step down from his post.

Why Trump and US intel clash over Russia

 

America’s intelligence chiefs may have been singing their swan’s song Thursday and Friday (Jan. 5-6) when they hurled allegations of election-meddling “ordered at the highest Kremlin level” against Russia at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing in Washington. The committee’s chair John McCain picked up the ball and declared that Russian hacking was “an act of war,” after hearing grim testimony from the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and the National Security Agency head Adm. Michael Rogers.

…

The furious clamor keeping the alleged Russian hacking scandal on the boil is being orchestrated by the outgoing president and his intelligence chiefs to ramp up US-Russian friction to an eve-of-cold war pitch.

DEBKAfile’s Washington and intelligence sources find that the campaign is prompted by five motives:

1. The president-elect not only proposes to put relations with Moscow on a new and different footing, his transition teams are already at work with Putin’s advisers to chart areas of cooperation between the two powers, ready for the Trump administration to go forward when he moves into the White House on Jan. 20.