A study published by the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) at Tel Aviv University has reviewed the history of arms deals between China, some Arab countries and Iran.

China’s arms exports to the Middle East began in the mid-1970s, and by 2017 it reached $12.73bn. Most of the Chinese arms sales in this area, which amounted to $8.8bn in total value, took place in the 1980s, during which China sold arms to both sides of the Iran-Iraq war. In the 1990s, after the end of the Cold War, China’s weapon exports to the Middle East fell to $1.8bn, mostly directed to Iran. This decline continued in the first decade of the 21st century, reaching $1.4bn, with a majority of exports to Iran and Egypt.

The value of Chinese arms exports between 2010 and 2017 reached $468mn, accounting for 3.7 per cent of China’s total military exports to the world, which reached $12.5bn. Thus, Russian and US weapon exports to the Middle East during this period amounted to $6.1bn and $30.1bn, respectively.

Chinese arms deal with Middle East countries

China signed the first security deal with a country in the Middle East, Egypt, in 1975. In the 1980s, the Egyptian authorities bought naval, items including submarines, missile boats and bombers Xi’an G-6 as well as fighter jets. At the turn of the 21st century, Egyptian military deals with China were focused on uncrewed aerial vehicles and the transfer of technology to manufacture such aircraft in Egypt. The two countries also signed an agreement to launch a second Egyptian satellite for surveillance.

Sino-Iraqi relations in the security field have begun in the 1980s, including deals where the Iraqi side bought fighter jets. This was done in parallel with other Chinese-Iranian deals, under which Iranian authorities also bought fighter jets during the Iran-Iraq war. The contracts also included Iraq’s purchase of anti-aircraft launchers and missiles. In contrast, the Iranian state focused its investments on rockets. After the war, Iraq bought drones from China; while, Iran has exported Chinese technology to develop its missile industry. During the Second Lebanon War in 2006, a Hezbollah-launched sea-to-sea missile (SSM) hit the Israeli corvette, INS Ahi-Hanit, which Israel said was developed by Iran by Chinese C-802 missile technology. According to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), China has provided Iran with the necessary expertise in the manufacture of chemical weapons and chemical warheads for missiles, in addition to offering nuclear expertise.

Even though Turkey is a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), China has also supplied arms to the Turkish authorities since the 1980s, including missile launchers and 200 short-range ballistic missiles. In 2013, a Chinese company won a Turkish tender for the purchase of missile defence systems. The deal provoked a wave of anger among NATO member countries, and since then, there were no reports of other arms deals between Turkey and China.

China has made deals with Saudi Arabia, supplying it with missiles with a range of thousands of kilometres, mobile gun systems and uncrewed aerial vehicles.

The development of Chinese security industries

The study said that “the security industries in China are now working to improve the quality of their products in all fields, as well as their ability to produce, and are gradually equating them with the Russian and even Western countries’ industries in certain areas.” According to a Pentagon report, China’s production of ballistic missiles, guided missiles, surface-to-air missiles and air-to-air missiles for its military use and export has improved significantly in recent years. Most of China’s ballistic and guided missiles are close regarding performance to parallel products made by Western countries and Russia, some of which are destined for export.

China’s commercial and military air industries have developed in recent years, according to the study, and are manufacturing large cargo planes and fighter jets of the fourth and fifth generation, modern uncrewed aircraft for reconnaissance and attack, and helicopters.

China has also developed its naval industrial capabilities, including the construction of submarines, missile carriers, naval aviation and other maritime means through the development and expansion of shipyards. According to the US Department of Defence, China is the world’s largest ship manufacturer. Its warships are equipped with advanced anti-aircraft and anti-submarine protection, and it is developing offensive capabilities in this field.

According to a report by the US Department of Defence, China’s production capacity continues to progress in all areas of ground armies’ weapons, including modern tanks and artillery, but sometimes at the expense of its quality.

The study indicated that China’s interest in the Middle East is increasing, and its interests are expanding by energy considerations and the removal of terrorism from its borders, which means the expansion of its political and economic benefits. The Middle East is China’s primary energy source, as it is supplied with oil from Saudi Arabia and Iran. Also, the Middle East is a critical crossroads for the export of its goods.

Conflicts in the Middle East, following the “Arab Spring” and the conflict between Iran and Arab countries, have increased the demand for security imports. At the same time, the United States has begun to withdraw from the region, since President Barack Obama. The study said that this situation will increase the volume of China’s security exports to the Middle East in parallel with the amount of Chinese trade and investment in the region, and that even China can compete with the United States, Russia and the West in certain areas, especially following Western countries’ reluctance to sell weapons in anticipation of war crimes committed using these arms, and China has replaced them.

Israeli fears

The study considered that the expansion of China’s security export to the Middle East would gradually pose an increasing challenge for Israel and the Israeli army for the following reasons:

First, China supplies weapons to Iran, which is an enemy state for Israel. Iran transfers that weapon or the weapon it develops by Chinese experience to Hezbollah, Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which constitute resistance movements against Israel.

Second, most of the Chinese weapons that reach the region are used by the Chinese army mainly, and not widely deployed in the world. Therefore, “there is a challenge in identifying and responding to their technical, technological and performance capabilities.”

Third, unlike the US arms sales to countries in the region, China does not have the necessary legislation to maintain Israel’s qualitative military edge. China and Israel have no regular channel of dialogue on this issue.

Fourth, a growing Chinese export in areas where there is relative Israeli superiority, such as drones, increases competition for such an Israeli export to the world, including “pragmatic Sunni states.”The study concluded that “China’s arms production and security trade trends indicate that there is a possibility of change in this area and it requires increased Israeli follow-up. “The Israeli government should strive to open channels of dialogue with the Chinese government on the issue of security exports to the Middle East, through which it will be able to express its point of view and concern about the subject and try to reduce the risk that it might face. At the same time, the Israeli government and the Israel Security Agency should include this issue in the strategic dialogue with the United States, and reach common understandings on the development of these trends and the inevitability of its influence on the interests of the two countries, and the coordination of the actors of their policies regarding this subject.”

The research institute published the transactions in a book entitled Sino-Israel Relations: Opportunities and Challenges. The data attached to the study is based on information released by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

Source: https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20190111-israeli-concerns-about-chinese-weapons-in-middle-east/

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President Donald Trump’s national security adviser John Bolton was in Jerusalem for a three-day-visit this week.

The discussions between Prime Minister Netanyahu and Bolton mainly focused on Syria and on Iran’s entrenchment in the war-torn country.

Bolton revealed that Russia’s president Vladimir Putin had told president Trump he would be content if Iranian regular and irregular forces would be withdrawn from Syria but that he was not able “to do it himself.”

Trump’s envoy suggested the U.S. would work together with the Russian military to achieve the goal of a complete Iranian withdrawal from Syria and said he would bring up the issue with his Russian counterpart Nikolai Patrushev during a meeting in Geneva on Wednesday.

“So the point was that perhaps joint US-Russian efforts might be sufficient. Now I don’t know if that is right either, but it is certainly one of the subjects I will be talking about with my Russian counterpart in Geneva tomorrow,” said during a press conference in Jerusalem on Tuesday.

Bolton made clear that after the defeat of ISIS in Syria eliminating Iran’s presence in Syria was now the cornerstone of Trump’s Middle East policy.

The US military has thousands of Special Forces in areas controlled by the Kurdish-led  Syrian Democratic Forces in northeastern Syria and in the al-Tanf area in the vicinity of the Iraqi border in the eastern Syrian desert.

Those territories make up 30 percent of Syria’s landmass and the fact that the Iranian-backed pro-Assad coalition hasn’t tried to ‘liberate’ those areas up till now is due to the American presence there.

Maintaining control over the Kurdish canton’s in north and north east Syria as well as keeping a foothold in eastern Syria is vital for the new US strategy for Syria and important for Israel which is very concerned about the Iranian activities in Syria.

At the beginning of August Iran finalized the creation of a land bridge which stretches from the Iranian border in the Nineve province, Iraq, via Syria all the way up to the Israeli border on the Golan Heights.

This happened after the pro-Assad coalition finished off the last pockets of mainly Islamist resistance along the Jordanian and Israeli border in southern Syria.

“Hezbollah and other Iranian-backed Shiite militias reportedly played a key role in re-capturing the region along the border despite Russian assurances they would be kept away from the Israeli border and denials by the Assad regime the Iranian trained and funded forces were taking part in the battle,” we reported at the time.

This was later confirmed by Orit Perlov of the Institute for National Security Studies who wrote in a recent research paper how the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps has transformed the Syrian military and is calling the shots in every major battle against rebels.

“Iran, not Russia, is the dominant actor in Syria,” Perlov wrote, while adding that the Islamic Republic “controls the Syria- Iraq and Syria-Lebanon border crossings, and tailors the re-organization of areas and communities based on an ethnic element.”

Iran has built the Syrian National Defense Forces which today have 90,000 Shiite and Alawite fighters at their disposal.

Qassem Soleimani, the shrewd commander of the IRGC’s Quds Force who is in charge with expanding the Islamic revolution in the Middle East also brought Shiite militias from Pakistan, Iraq and Afghanistan into the Syrian fray while the Quds Force has approximately 5,000 fighters in Syria.

Perlov reported that Shiite militias in Syria – among them Hezbollah – simply changed uniforms after the Russians, Americans and Israel demanded they would stay out of the fighting along the Israeli border.

The INSS researcher thinks Israel currently prefers to ignore the Iranian built-up along its northern border an instead focuses on the prevention of “the consolidation of substantial Iranian military capabilities in Syria.”

Bolton addressed the Israel military activity against Iran in Syria during the press conference in Jerusalem.

The Israeli air force acted “everytime Iran has brought missiles or other threatening weapons into Syria,” Bolton said while adding he saw those strikes as “a legitimate act of self-defense.”

After the return of Assad’s forces to the area along the Israeli border became a fact Israel appears to have changed its strategy in Syria and is now appparently targeting commanders who are working with Soleimani on preparations for a future war against the Jewish state.

On August 18, the head of Ahmad Issa Habib, a high ranking Syrian officer who was in charge of Assad’s ‘Palestine Department’ was assassinated in his car while driving in the Hama region in northwest Syria.

Unnamed Syrian sources told Israel’s army radio ‘Galatz’ Habib was Assad’s point man for the struggle against Israel.

Habib’s assassination came two weeks after the Mossad reportedly killed Syria’s top missile scientist  Aziz Asbar who died when a bomb in his car exploded.

Asbar  had “free access to the highest levels of the Syrian and Iranian governments, and his own security detail. He led a top-secret weapons-development unit called Sector 4 and was hard at work building an underground weapons factory,” Ronen Bergman one of Israel’s top investigative reporters wrote in the New York Times on August 6.

Iran, meanwhile, threatened to attack Israel again whenever the Trump Administration decides to embark on a military campaign against the Islamic Republic and continues building up forces which have to consolidate its foothold in both Iraq and Syria.

The Iranian-found Hashd al-Shaabi umbrella organization of predominantly Shiite militias in Iraq has now seized the west of the Anbar province in Iraq which borders on Syria and the main routes to Syria while purging the area of anti-Iranian elements.

The new Hash al-Shaabi operation in Iraq is overseen by Suleimani who last week vowed Iran would crush the United States and was responsible for the founding of a new Syrian force dubbed the “Golan Liberation Brigade”.

Source: http://www.israeltoday.co.il/Default.aspx?tabid=178&nid=34685

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iStock  – Flags of Iran and Syria

As the Iranian-Russian-backed pro-Assad coalition in Syria is gearing up for the long-anticipated offensive against Sunni Islamist rebels in the northwestern province of Idlib another decisive battle seems be in the making which could possibly involve the US military.

After having regained control over southern Syria where the Iranian-led pro-Assad coalition seized the last pockets of Islamist resistance at the beginning of August, Assad’s forces are now amassing in northern Latakia, northeastern Hama and the southwestern countryside of the Aleppo province.

The Syrian and Russian air force have already begun bombing positions of Hayat Tahrir a-Sham a large coalition of Sunni Islamist militias dominated by Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, the former Al Qaeda branch in Syria which was previously known under the name Jabhat al-Nusra.

Pro-Assad media in Syria reported on Wednesday that the force which will launch the ground assault on Idlib will be three times stronger than the coalition of pro-regime militias which ‘liberated’ the Daraa and Quneitra provinces in southern Syria.

Once the ground offensive in Idlib begins “the Syrian army will deliver blows unprecedented in the history of the Syrian crisis to the positions and fortifications of the militants,” according to the Syrian Observer.

The same outlet said Turkey should withdraw its forces from Idlib and warned Ankara to remember the fate of the allegedly US-backed rebels in Ghouta and Daraa in southern Syria who were deported to Idlib under so-called reconciliation deals with the Assad regime.

The Trump administration on Wednesday issued a clear warning to the Assad regime not to use chemical weapons during the Idlib offensive or face another devastating American attack with Tomahawk cruise missiles and other precision weapons.

“Just so there’s no confusion here: if the Syrian regime uses chemical weapons, we will respond very strongly, and they really ought to think about this a long time,” Trump’s national security adviser John Bolton said during a press conference in Jerusalem.

The last time Assad used chemical weapons against the Syrian population was in Ghouta in August 2017 when the regime reportedly used the agent Sarin to break the resistance of the Islamist rebels.

Two other areas where Assad still hasn’t succeeded to restore his rule are the al-Tanf area along the Syrian Iraqi border where the U.S. military is working with tribal groups in order to prevent a de-facto Iranian take-over of the border region and the territories held by US-ally the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

These areas make up 30 percent of Syria’s land mass and Assad has already issued an ultimatum to the SDF: negotiate (a surrender deal) or face the (Syrian) military.

The Kurds, however, are interested in reaching a ‘political solution’ and rightly point out that they’ve never attacked the pro-Assad coalition and are only interested in consolidating their autonomy.

“We have never attacked the regime, so what excuse does the regime have to attack us?” asked Ilham Ahmad a member of the Syrian Democratic Council, the political arm of the SDF.

The survival of the independent Kurdish cantons along the border with Turkey and Iraq in Syria is now dependent on the United States which has an estimated 4,000 Special Forces in what is called Rojava, the Kurdish autonomous region in northern Syria.

If Trump would have made good on his earlier promise to withdraw the US military from Syria the Kurds would have been left with no other option than negotiate a ‘reconciliation deal’ with the Assad regime.

In an about-face the U.S. this week finally made crystal clear that after the partial defeat of ISIS – the Jihadist terror group has lost its ‘caliphate’ but is still operating in both Syria and Iraq- preventing Iran from gaining a permanent foothold in Syria and elsewhere will be the new cornerstone of Trump’s Middle East policy.

If this is indeed the new US strategy in the Middle East, the US military should begin by retaining its foothold in eastern and northern Syria because that’s where Iran is trying to finalize its so-called land bridge from the Iranian border in the Nineveh province in Iraq all the way up to the Israeli border on the Golan Heights.

SDF spokesman Nuri Mahmoud is confident this is precisely what will now happen.

“We have been in a coalition with the US since the Kobani battle. There has been media speculation regarding imminent withdrawal. Putin also once said that his forces were leaving, but the opposite took place,” Mahmoud told Middle East expert Jonathan Spyer.

“Syria today is a place of international confrontation in which all forces seek to strengthen their allies on the ground. The US will not leave Syria without stability on the ground. We see no evidence of imminent withdrawal,” the SDF spokesman added.

Trump has reportedly told Russian president Vladimir Putin US troops will remain in Syria until the Iranians fully withdraw from the devastated country.

Putin told Trump in July that “that he would be content to see Iranian forces all sent back to Iran,” but could not do it “by himself,” an indication the Russian president would condone Israeli and American strikes against the ‘Syrian army’ which has been transformed into another Iranian proxy force.

Iran, meanwhile, continues to work on its contiguous land corridor to the Israeli border on the Golan Heights.

“Iran, not Russia, is the dominant actor in Syria,” Orit Perlov of the Institute for National Security Studies wrote in a recent research paper.

Perlov described how the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps deceived Israel, the Russians and the United States by using Shiite militias disguised as Syrian army soldiers during the offensive which brought Assad back in control of the Israeli and Jordanian border.

In Iraq too, Iran is also working to finalize its land bridge to the Israeli border.

The Hashd al-Shaabi umbrella organization of predominantly Shiite militias in the country this week seized large swaths of territory adjacent to the Syrian border while carrying out a purge against anti-Iranian Sunni rebel groups.

Israel has now gotten a formal green light by the Trump administration to continue its military actions against the Iranian entrenchment in Syria.

While in Jerusalem, Bolton called the Israeli airstrikes against Iranian targets in Syria “a legitimate act of self-defense.”

Source: https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/250990

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