An Arabic language Twitter account associated with Iran on Sunday published an image that threatens to eliminate Israel in 2022.

The image, posted to the @iraninarabic_ir Twitter account, shows Israel made up of nails and matches. A book of matches is shown as well, with the words “Ballistic matchstick” and an Iranian regime flag on it.

The text which accompanied the image reads, in both English and Hebrew “Just try and you will see.”

The threatening tweet comes days after the front page of the Tehran Times newspaper threatened Israel with an attack.

Under the heading “Just one wrong move”, the front of the newspaper showed a map of Israel marked with “targets” which Iran supposedly could hit.

“An intensification of the Israeli military threats against Iran seems to suggest that the Zionist regime has forgotten that Iran is more than capable of hitting them from anywhere,” the article said.

Last week, the Israel Hayom newspaper reported that the IDF has begun preparing for a general war against Iran, including but not limited to an attack on that country’s nuclear facilities.

The new operational plans include the option of an “exchange of blows” – both direct and indirect – of varying strengths between the two countries.

In late November, Brigadier General Abolfazl Shekarchi, a top-level spokesperson for Iran’s armed forces, called for the destruction of Israel.

“We will not back off from the annihilation of Israel, even one millimeter,” he said, adding, “We want to destroy Zionism in the world.”

Previously, the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s aerospace forces, Amir Ali Hajizadeh, said that Israel was “doomed to disappear” and that any action by Israel against the Islamic Republic would hasten that disappearance.

Before that, Iran’s Foreign Minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, spoke at the United Nations Durban IV conference, where he said his nation’s “willpower is dedicated” to the elimination of Zionism.

Source: https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/318908

The post Iranian Twitter account threatens Israel first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

• An uptick in Iranian nuclear and naval activity since December 31 risks provoking a response in the region, including from the US.
• The activity is part of an effort by Iran to increase the cost of maintaining sanctions to the US and its allies and ensure the Biden administration prioritizes negotiations with Tehran upon taking office.

Security risks, including threats to tanker traffic, in the Persian Gulf and Iraq, will remain heightened after US President-elect Joe Biden takes office, despite his intent to enter negotiations with Tehran.

The uptick in Iranian nuclear and naval activity since December 31 risks provoking a military response in the region from foreign actors, including a potential US strike on Iranian soil.

• On January 3, Acting US Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller announced that the USS Nimitz would forgo its redeployment away from the Middle East due to “recent threats issued by Iranian leaders against President Trump and other US government officials.”
• Although the Pentagon did not specify what Miller was alluding to, the comments come after a December 31 statement made by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani was initially translated as saying Trump would be ousted from “life.” Iranian officials have since this was a mistranslation, specifying that Rouhani was referring to Trump’s “political life.”

The reversal of the USS Nimitz’s plans comes amid a series of recent Iranian acts of aggression:

• December 31: A suspicious object suspected to be a limpet mine was found on a tanker near Iraq’s Al Basrah Oil Terminal (ABOT). Iran is believed to have been behind the incident.
• January 1: Iran notified the International Atomic Energy Organization (IAEA) that it planned to begin boosting uranium enrichment levels to 20 percent at the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant. The IAEA confirmed on January 4 that Iran had begun the process.
• January 4: Iran ostensibly detained the South Korea-flagged Hankuk Chemi tanker, which was transiting the Persian Gulf en route to the United Arab Emirates, for allegedly polluting the waters.
• January 5-6: Iran’s army is planning to hold two-days military exercises involving multiple unarmed aerial vehicles.

A South Korean-flagged tanker vessel that was seized by Iran is seen in the Persian Gulf, January 4, 2021. IRGC/West Asia News Agency via REUTERS

The tanker incidents signal that Iran remains willing to restart attacks against oil and gas infrastructure if the Biden administration does not include sanctions relief in negotiations.

In doing so, Iran hopes to increase the cost of maintaining sanctions to the United States and its allies. By forcing both a security and nuclear crisis, Iran’s leaders are seeking to ensure the busy Biden administration prioritizes negotiations with Tehran upon taking office.

If such pressure successfully yields sanctions relief, Iran’s conservatives and hardliners will then reap the political benefits in the upcoming June 18 presidential election — granting them more say in future talks with the West, as well as any potential economic and political reforms accompanying the relaxation of sanctions that could threaten their interests.

• Boosting enrichment to 20% is one of the steps mandated under a new law the Iranian parliament recently passed that aims to ramp up Iran’s nuclear program over the next six months.
• In 2019, Iran launched several attacks against tankers in the Persian Gulf and Saudi Arabian oil infrastructure. The last significant attack occurred in September 2019, against Saudi Arabia’s Abqaiq and Khurais oil processing facilities.

Iran’s high-risk/high-reward strategy will increasingly threaten the physical security of targets in its immediate periphery by raising the risk of punitive strikes from the United States and Israel.

Washington and Israel will view the increase in uranium enrichment levels to 20% as particularly worrisome, as stockpiling of uranium enriched to that level would substantially reduce the time needed to make a weapon. In his remaining few weeks in office, Trump appears to be more willing to conduct a physical strike against Iran than his successor.

Any actions that directly target US interests or result in American casualties in the coming days — such as the harassment of US vessels transiting the Persian Gulf, or the deaths of US soldiers in Iranian-backed militia attacks in Iraq or Syria — are most likely to prompt a response from the outgoing Trump administration. Even after Biden takes office, Israel will also still consider unilateral action against continued Iranian acts of aggression, particularly against Iran’s nuclear program.

• Maritime traffic will face an increased risk of being targeted over the next few months, particularly tanker traffic linked to Western countries or countries viewed as backing the US position against Iran. Specific threats would include unsafe approaches by Iranian vessels, armed boardings to detain crewmembers, and the use of limpet mines.
• Iran is less willing to directly carry out frequent attacks onshore Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates for fear of further weakening Iran’s fraught negotiating capital with those states, as well as emboldening US demands that Iran’s missile and drone program be included in talks. But infrequent attacks against these neighboring countries akin to those seen in 2019 remain possible.
• Iran will also likely bolster its capacity to carry out cyberattacks in the region, including against both commercial and government targets. Less frequent, Iran-backed hacks against targets beyond the Middle East also cannot be ruled out.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. Office of the Iranian Presidency/AP

Iran’s aggressive strategy may initially unlock some sanctions relief, though it will come at the cost of hardening the international community’s position against Tehran in longer-term negotiations.

Over the last two years, Iran has demonstrated that it is willing to use its missile and drone capabilities to target commercial interests in the region. The continued use of such tactics will push European countries into broader alignment with the United States on the need for broader ongoing talks with Iran in order to ink a new nuclear deal, as well as discuss other concerns beyond just Tehran’s nuclear program.

This desire to include other issues in talks will make full normalization between the West and Iran difficult to achieve without a significant change in policy. Iran is hoping that the fear about broader conflict and its nuclear ambitions will at least keep the United States and European countries’ most effective countermeasure — broad sanctions — reserved for Tehran’s nuclear program in order to avoid having to make more significant concessions on other parts of its national security.

The post How Iran is pursuing a high-risk/high-reward strategy to gain an edge in talks with Biden first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

The post Sessions: MS-13 gang, drug cartels among top threats to US first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

While Russian and Iranian-backed Bashar al-Assad’s regime is consolidating its grip on most areas once controlled by various rebel groups in Syria, Iran’s involvement and military footprints in the country have some experts and U.S. lawmakers concerned that Tehran might be in the process of establishing long-term presence in Syria in an effort to project regional power in the long term.

“These countries [Russia and Iran] are digging into Syria preparing for the long haul, and the implications for the U.S. interests and those of our partners are still coming into focus,” Republican Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, Chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, said during a recent congressional hearing on U.S policy in Syria.

Lehtinen added that U.S. needs a “coherent” and “comprehensive” strategy to prevent Iran’s growing influence in the region.

“After signing a deal for additional military cooperation with Assad last month, Iran is showing no signs of leaving Syria anytime soon. The U.S. needs a comprehensive and coherent strategy for Syria that rolls back Iranian influence in the Middle East,” she said.

Some analysts such as Majid Rafizadeh, president of International American Council on the Middle East, echo Lehtinen’s concerns and call for measures to stop Iran’s encroachment in Syria and the region.

“Iran is solidifying its presence in Syria in three different approaches: militarily, economically and politically. Tehran is sealing long-term deals and agreements with the weak Syrian state to ‘reconstruct the Syrian military industry,'” Rafizadeh told VOA.

“This will give the IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp], the Quds Force and Iran’s intelligence the perfect excuse to remain in Syria, set up more military bases, and further infiltrate Syria’s security apparatuses,” Rafizadeh added.

Indefinite stay

Iran’s engagement in Syria began gradually since the start of the country’s civil war in 2011, initially in the form of providing military advisers to the Syrian regime. The engagement later morphed into a full-scale military intervention where the regime sent its forces and employed its proxies to fight alongside Assad to crack down on the various Syrian rebel groups in the country.

Last August, Amir Hatami, Iran’s minister of defense, made a two-day visit to Syria to meet with Assad. During the visit, Hatami agreed to a defense cooperation agreement with his Syrian counterpart, Ali Abdullah Ayoub.

Following Hatami’s visit, Iran’s military attache in Damascus, Abolghasem Alinejad, was quoted by an Iranian state news agency that Iranian advisers would remain in Syria indefinitely.

“The continued presence of Iran’s advisers in Syria is one of the areas covered in the defensive-technical agreement between Tehran and Damascus,” Alinejad told Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) last year.

$16 billion

Iran reportedly has been spending billions of dollars in the Middle East to gain influence and prop up regimes.

According to a report published by the U.S. Department of State earlier this month, Iran has spent about $16 billion to destabilize the Middle East by funding proxies in different countries including Yemen, Iraq and Syria.

“Since 2012, Iran has spent over $16 billion propping up the Assad regime and supporting its other partners and proxies in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen,” the report said.

Sunni Shi’ite dynamics

Some experts are also charging that Tehran is trying to take advantage of the demographic changes and displacements of people in Syria by seeking to increase the dominance of the country’s Shi’ites at the expense of marginalizing Sunnis.

“Iran brought the families of its [Shi’ite] militias from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq to live in the properties that used to belong to the Sunni communities before displacing the Sunnis to other areas. Iran was also behind issuing decree No. 10 in Syria,” Hanin Ghaddar, an expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told VOA.

Ghaddar was referring to what is known as Law No. 10 in Syria, which is a decree, issued by the Syrian president in April to plan the reconstruction of areas destroyed by war.

The law seizes the properties of displaced Syrians unless they prove the ownership of their properties in 30 days, which many analysts say is almost impossible because of the scale of the destruction and the fear of potential persecution by the Syrian regime.

U.S. policy

U.S. officials repeatedly urged Iran to remove its forces from Syria, but Iranian officials maintain that their presence in the country is legitimate under the request of the government in Damascus.

Last week, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned that Syria will not receive U.S aid for reconstruction if Iran continues to have troops inside the country.

“If Syria doesn’t ensure the total withdrawal of Iranian-backed troops, it will not receive one single dollar from the United States for reconstruction,” Pompeo said in his keynote address at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, a pro-Israel group.

Pompeo also said the U.S. would focus on initiating a peaceful political process and the removal of all Iranian troops and proxies from Syria.

But some analysts charge that Iran’s total exit from Syria might take time, but there are steps that could be taken to contain Iran’s influence.

“There can be many steps taken to contain Iran at this point. The demographic changes need to be countered, the refugees return, containing Hezbollah in Lebanon, working with local allies, working with local tribes, cutting the land bridge,” Ghaddar, of the Washington Institute, said.

Ghaddar believes that a political change in Syria will also be an effective tool to limit Iran’s presence in Syria.

“A political change in Syria will limit Iran’s presence depending on what kind of political change we are talking about,” Ghaddar said.

“If we are talking about transitional period where Assad regime goes, which does not seem like it at this point, and we look at a new power, new people and a new elections then, yes, this will contain Iran’s power in Syria because at the end of the day they are considered a foreign legion,” she added.

Source: https://www.voanews.com/a/iran-growing-influence-in-syria-has-many-concerned/4615242.html

The post Iran’s Growing Influence in Syria Sparks Concern first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

The rumblings of an open conflict between Israel and Iran in Syria are growing louder. When President Trump launched yet another one-off missile salvo against the Syrian regime, it came on the heels of a suspected April 9 Israeli strike on an Iranian facility at a Syrian air base, which drew howls of condemnation from the regime’s patrons in Moscow and Tehran.

Though Israel didn’t acknowledge responsibility for the attack, it fit a familiar pattern. Since 2012, the Israelis are believed to have launched more than 100 strikes on suspected Iranian-linked positions in Syria. Israeli officials privately argue that these measures are necessary to prevent a permanent Iranian threat on their borders and stymie the flow of weaponry to Iran’s Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah.

“No matter the price, we will not allow a noose to form around us,” Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman told Israel Radio over the weekend. But he cautioned against talk of outright hostilities. “I hope not,” he said when asked whether war was imminent. “I think that our primary role is to prevent war, and that requires concrete, real deterrence as well as readiness to act.”

Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif made similar appeals for calm in a Sunday interview with CBS News, though he accused the Israelis of escalating “tension by violating Syrian airspace.”

“I do not believe that we are headed towards regional war. But I do believe that, unfortunately, Israel has continued its violations with international law, hoping to be able to do it with impunity because of the U.S. support and trying to find smokescreens to hide behind,” Zarif said.

Still, Zarif warned that Israel was playing a risky game. “They should expect that if they continue to violate territorial integrity of other states, there’ll be consequences,” he said. “The easiest answer would be to stop — to stop these acts of aggression, to stop these incursions.”

But the Israelis have made clear that an entrenched Iranian presence in Syria marks a new red line. They point to the new threat of Iranian drones, potentially armed with explosives, entering Israeli airspace, as well as the old threat of rockets launched from southern Lebanon. The April 9 strike, according to one account, was Israel’s first direct attack on Iranian equipment and personnel and killed a senior Iranian drone commander.

Last week, the Israeli military leaked details and satellite images of the existence of an Iranian “air force” in Syria, including civilian planes they claimed were ferrying shipments of arms. The leak was supposed to signal to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, the powerful military organization that dominates Iran’s foreign policy decisions, that Israel had new targets already in sight should the Iranians or their proxies attack.

From the Iranian perspective, their presence in Syria is a legitimate defense of their beleaguered ally, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. And they see their capacity to threaten Israel from next door as a potential deterrent against a long-standing regional foe.

“Israeli leaders frequently threaten to bomb Iran, so having strong military proxies near Israel’s borders gives Iran some protection,” wrote Ben Hubbard and David Halbfinger of the New York Times. “If Israel attacks Iran, the thinking goes, it knows it can expect a painful response from Hezbollah in Lebanon, and perhaps from other militias now operating in Syria.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu holds up what he claimed was a piece of an Iranian drone shot down over Israel while speaking at the Munich Security Conference on Feb. 18. (Lennart Preiss/Munich Security Conference /Agence France-Presse)

The deepening tensions come at a time of growing discontent within the Islamic Republic. A tanking economy has blown the lid on popular frustration with the regime and even prompted Zarif’s putative boss, President Hassan Rouhani, to complain about the costly war effort in Syria. But the prospect of broader confrontation with Israel — and the likely upcoming drama over Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers — may persuade regime hard-liners that now is the time to circle the wagons.

“The shadow war has come to light after the decision by the Iranian leadership to proceed with the IRGC’s plans to establish permanent bases in Syria. This was not a unanimous decision,” wrote Anshel Pfeffer in the Times of London. “The faction in Tehran led by the country’s president, Hassan Rouhani, is in favor of investing in Iran’s domestic economy the huge amounts of money these bases will cost. But the IRGC has the ear of the nation’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, and it is keen to capitalize on the investment it has made in propping up the Assad regime for the past seven years.”

The way forward is treacherous. “Iran is determined to entrench its positions in Syria, and Israel is determined to prevent them,” said Amos Yadlin, a former commander of Israeli military intelligence, to Pfeffer.

He suggested that Russia, whose forces help prop up the regime’s air defenses and whose diplomats are key interlocutors to both the Iranians and the Israelis, will play a critical role. “Conflict is inevitable unless Putin steps in to prevent it,” Yadlin said. But recent events suggest that the Russians have limited influence over Iran and are more concerned about reinforcing the Syrian regime.

At the same time, some foreign policy figures in Washington seem keen on letting Israel continue its covert campaign against the Iranians. They see Israeli strikes as necessary at a time when President Trump wants to disengage from the Syrian conflict and outsource the stabilization of the country to Iran’s Sunni Arab rivals.

But other experts contend that this does not amount to a real strategy. “There is a pathway to containing and deterring Iran in Syria … but it requires more than just Israel’s itchy trigger finger and cheerleading from the sidelines by Arab autocracies,” wrote Suzanne Maloney of the Brookings Institution, who argued for more robust diplomatic engagement from the Trump administration and cautioned against alienating allies by pulling out of the nuclear deal.

In February, the International Crisis Group issued a report warning that the current atmosphere of tensions made “miscalculation more likely” in Syria. Since then, the risks of an escalation have only intensified.

The post The shadow war between Israel and Iran takes center stage first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.