Lt. Gen. Erik Kurilla also told the Senate Armed Services Committee that China is expanding its power and spending in the Central Command region, including in countries needed by the U.S. to gather intelligence on extremist activities in Afghanistan.

“The United States faces a new era of strategic competition with China and Russia that is not confined to one geographical region and extends into the (Central Command) area of responsibility,” said Kurilla during the committee’s hearing on his nomination. “As the United States rightfully prioritizes competition with China, we must remain engaged in the Middle East and Central and South Asia.”

Kurilla, a combat-hardened officer with extensive experience in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, got a friendly reception from the panel and was told he would probably be confirmed.

If he gets the job, Kurilla would take over as the Pentagon continues to try to shift its focus to the Indo-Pacific and counter a rising China, and to bolster defenses against Russia in Europe. But Iran and Tehran-backed proxies have kept up a steady drumbeat of attacks on U.S. and allied forces across the Middle East, often hindering plans to shift more troops out of the region.

Kurilla would replace Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie, who is retiring after three years leading the command. McKenzie has overseen a tumultuous time in the region, with America’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, the dismantling of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, and escalating threats from Iran and its proxies as they launch more attacks against Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and ships at sea.

Kurilla, who is currently the commander of the 18th Airborne Corps, told the committee that after the hearing he was deploying to Germany as part of the U.S. effort to reassure allies concerned about Russia’s military build-up along Ukraine’s borders.

Asked about the potential for repercussions in the Middle East of a potential Russian invasion of Ukraine, Kurilla said he believes that it could spill over into Syria, where Russia already has a military base and troops.

“If Russia does invade Ukraine they would not hesitate to be able to act as a spoiler in Syria as well,” said Kurilla, who previously served as a deputy at Central Command.

He added that the U.S. doesn’t believe Russia wants to go to war with the United States.

On China, Kurilla said 18 of the 21 countries in the Central Command region have signed strategic agreements with Beijing, which has increased its development in the Middle East. The U.S., he said, has to be able to counter China there.

Senators quizzed Kurilla on efforts to monitor al-Qaida and Islamic State extremists in Afghanistan, now that there are no longer U.S. forces in the country. He said efforts continue to work with surrounding nations to set up “over-the-horizon” capabilities.

The U.S., which left Afghanistan at the end of August, has been struggling to negotiate with a number of countries in the region to allow overflights, basing or other intelligence gathering from within their borders. Military leaders say it is difficult to monitor extremist groups from afar because doing so requires long drone flights that allow limited surveillance time.

Asked about working with the Taliban, Kurilla said the U.S. should take a pragmatic approach. He said the Taliban also views the Islamic State group as an enemy, so that may be a potential area of agreement. He also said the U.S. must find ways to deal with the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, and that may involve Taliban help with food deliveries.

Kurilla graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1988, and has served multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, commanding conventional and special operations forces. He commanded a Stryker battalion in Iraq in 2004, and was shot and wounded.

Source: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/us-general-says-russia-turmoil-could-spill-to-middle-east/ar-AATCKqt

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State TV reported that the missile has solid fuel and a range of 1450km.

It is called the Khaibar-buster, a reference to a Jewish castle overrun by Muslim warriors in the early days of Islam.

It said the missile has high accuracy, is manufactured completely domestically, and can defeat missile shield systems. The information has not been independently verified.

Israel’s closest point to Iran is some 1000km away.

The report comes as negotiations continue in Vienna to revive Tehran’s tattered nuclear deal with world powers. Iran, which has long said it does not seek nuclear weapons and insists its missile program is only a deterrent.

Earlier in January Iran tested an engine for a solid-fuel rocket designed to launch satellites.

Source:  https://au.news.yahoo.com/iran-unveils-long-range-missile-092200642.html

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Defense Minister says Israel is updating its plans to strike Iranian nuclear sites and Hezbollah terror targets in Lebanon.

Defense Minister Benny Gantz warned Thursday that Israel’s military is updating plans to strike Iranian nuclear sites and is prepared to act independently.

In an interview with Fox News from his office in Jerusalem, Gantz said Israel has identified numerous targets inside Iran that would hurt its ability to develop a nuclear bomb.

“If the world stops them before, it’s very much good. But if not, we must stand independently and we must defend ourselves by ourselves,” Gantz said.

Gantz also warned that Israel is paying close attention to the Hezbollah terror group in Lebanon, which is financed and armed by Tehran, after intelligence assessments determined that Iran may choose to attack Israel during 2021 using its proxy militias in Lebanon and Syria.

The defense minister showed Fox a classified map of targets in Lebanon showing how many of Hezbollah’s estimated arsenal of almost 200,000 rockets and missiles are placed in the middle of civilians in Lebanon. Hezbollah is known to use the Lebanese population as both as a shield for its weaponry and as an excuse if there are casualties from any Israeli military retaliation against the rockets.

“This is a target map. Each one of them has been checked legally, operationally, intelligence-wise and we are ready to fight,” Gantz said.

In a surprise simulation last month, the Israel Air Force carried out a three-day military exercise simulating a war with Hezbollah in which the Israeli military hit 3,000 simulated Hezbollah targets a day.

Over the past several years Israel has been repeatedly intercepting shipments of advanced weaponry from Iran to Hezbollah by attacking the shipments as they pass through Syria. Since the start of 2020, Israel hit more than 500 Iranian-linked sites in Syria with airstrikes, the Fox report noted.

Both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Gantz have warned U.S. President Biden against returned to the Iran Nuclear Deal without changing it to eliminate Iran’s repeated threats to annihilate Israel, including restrictions on Tehran’s ballistic missile program that is widely believed to be the delivery system for nuclear weapons and reigning in Iran’s military aggression in the region through the proxy terror groups it supports.

Speaking to Vice-President Kamala Harris by phone Thursday evening, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated Israel’s determination to stop the Islamic Republic from obtaining nuclear weapons.

Gantz said the Americans had their own interests to look after, but so does Israel.

“The American policy should be American policy, and Israeli policy should stay Israeli policy,” he said.

Source: https://worldisraelnews.com/gantz-idf-updating-preparations-to-strike-iran-ready-to-fight/

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As tensions remain high between Iran and the US, the Islamic Republic appears to have constructed a new mock-up of an aircraft carrier off its southern coast for potential live-fire drills, The Associated Press reported on Tuesday.

The faux foe, seen in satellite photographs obtained by AP, resembles the Nimitz-class carriers that the US Navy routinely sails into the Persian Gulf from the Strait of Hormuz, the passageway where 20% of all the world’s oil passes through.

While not yet acknowledged by Iranian officials, the replica’s appearance in the port city of Bandar Abbas suggests Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard is preparing an encore of a similar mock-sinking it conducted in 2015.

It also comes as Iran announced Tuesday it will execute a man it accused of sharing details on the movements of the Guard’s Gen. Qassem Soleimani, whom the US eliminated in a January drone strike in Baghdad.

The move follows continued tensions between the US and Iran. The US Navy recently issued a warning to mariners in the Gulf to stay 100 meters away from US warships or risk being “interpreted as a threat and subject to lawful defensive measures”.

While no mention was made of Iran in the notice, it follows US President Donald Trump’s threat last month to fire on any Iranian ships that harass Navy vessels.

Trump’s warning followed a tense encounter between US and Iranian ships in the Persian Gulf.

The US military said at the time that 11 Revolutionary Guards naval vessels from the Guards navy came close to US Navy and coast guard ships in the Gulf, calling the moves “dangerous and provocative”.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard acknowledged that the incident had taken place, but also claimed that it was American forces who sparked the incident.

The replica built by Iran carries 16 mock-ups of fighter jets on its deck, according to satellite photos taken by Maxar Technologies. The vessel appears to be some 200 meters (650 feet) long and 50 meters (160 feet) wide. A real Nimitz is over 300 meters (980 feet) long and 75 meters (245 feet) wide.

The fake carrier sits just a short distance away from the parking lot in which the Guard unveiled over 100 new speedboats in May, the kind it routinely employs in tense encounters between Iranian sailors and the US Navy. Those boats carry both mounted machine guns and missiles.

The US Navy’s Bahrain-based 5th Fleet, which patrols Mideast waters, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/281623

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Instead of firing missiles, Iran’s weird holy man has taken to lobbing insults.  His murderous regime, responsible for creating and funding mayhem all over the Middle East and elsewhere, after gunning down hundreds if not thousands of ticked Iranian citizens, is calling us names.  That’s rich.  But that’s the BIG news.  The Supreme Leader fights back!  Verbally.  Guess they showed us.

It turns out the reports of no injuries in their missile attacks on U. S. installations in Iraq may have been premature.  Now we’re hearing of concussion injuries that weren’t immediately apparent, and we hope none are serious.  For everyone’s sake, it’s a good thing those attacks didn’t kill any Americans.  Otherwise, we might all be in a completely different situation.

We couldn’t have imagined that taking out one of the world’s bloodthirstiest terrorists would be construed by the mainstream as a big disaster, possibly igniting World War III.  The mainstream and the entrenched bureaucracy wrung its hands over the prospects of massive retaliation and a war that would envelop not only the Middle East, but all of human civilization.  They were wrong. The people of Iran have taken to the streets in numbers never seen before, in support of freedom, something no one under the age of 40 over there has ever known.

One of the foremost proponents of impeachment, and one of the reliable Trump accusers on network TV (David Gergen), has actually gone to worrying aloud over the prospect that the Islamic regime in Iran might collapse.  That would be his, and all the bobbing heads’ worst nightmare.  There would be no stopping the incumbent President if that were to happen, he said.

Unless of course, their impeachment charade turns out to be successful, and they could realize their nightly dream of removing him from office.  The troupe of impeachment managers ceremoniously brought their articles of impeachment to the Senate two by two, taking little half steps as they shuffled down the aisle.  It looked like a funeral without the casket.  If any justice remains to be had, it will be their own.  But if you consume the mainstream media, you see what we’ve seen for three years now.  They think they’ve almost got him.  Any minute now the bombshell they’ve promised every day for what seems like a lifetime will chase him from public view, and they can get back on the track of the previous eight years.  Smugly calling us all a bunch of racist, bigoted homophobes and regulating our consumption of water and production of carbon.

They could save the human race if they could just create the enforcement mechanisms to make us comply with every detail of their socialist Utopian dream, the Green New Deal, and the long and growing list of words and phrases we must not utter.  And they’re not shy.  One billionaire candidate runs ads saying, “We’ll save the world, and we’ll do it together.”  Unfortunately, saving the world means the destruction of Western civilization and the revocation of the freedoms with which we’ve been abundantly blessed.

There is a realization that is really quite stunning, yet entirely plausible in this developing circumstance.  We’ve all watched as everything the President supports has become intolerable to those who hate everything about him.  This has come to include support of Israel.  The last president treated that country like an ugly stepchild and sought to undermine Prime Minister Netanyahu and get him defeated.  With the miraculous advent of the Trump Presidency, we’ve seen a total revival of the traditional friendship and alliance that we’ve grown to expect over the decades.  But neither the media nor the President’s rivals can accept anything he says or does without finding fault.  We’ve seen them find fault with everything, including taking out Iran’s foremost plotter of terror.  They shook their heads in bewilderment when the U. S. embassy was moved to Jerusalem, concerned that it would just make all parties in the region (save for Israel) hate us all the more.  They already want everybody dead, so how much more could they hate us?  It’s hard to digest how uninformed, or ill-informed millions of people are, but most all of big media and the social media giants are working overtime to ensure that is the case.

If and when the would-be socialists (come communists) ever get control again, will the U. S. still support Israel financially and militarily?  The Bible foretells a time when armies will surround Jerusalem as a harbinger of end-time events, and alludes to a power in Europe that will enslave all mankind.  No doubt the media and the D. C. swamp would prefer that situation to the one they face.  That time is not yet, and we can praise God for that.

Mark

PS The fire disaster in Australia is not over, but there is word that it is raining in Sydney and points North of there. Last week they told us that there was no rain in the forecast.  You don’t suppose that our prayers and no doubt those of millions of Australians have something to do with it?  Don’t stop now.

Source: http://www.intercontinentalcog.org/fridayupdates.php

[Disclaimer]

The post Weekly Update by Mark Armstrong – 17 January 2020 first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Last week, international politics was consumed with the potential for all-out war between the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran, or the possibility of a protracted asymmetric conflict, in response to the killing of the Iranian general Qasem Soleimani. In the Middle East, the United States was caught unsteady, with the (temporary?) cessation of anti-ISIS operations in Iraq and Syria, the prospect of a withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq and silence from U.S. regional allies who are usually vocal in pushing back against Iran.

It’s hard to remember that late last year, it was Iran that was knocked back on its feet in the region. It faced significant protests at home as well as in Iraq and Lebanon, where thousands rallied against Tehran’s regional hegemony. Iran found itself facing tremendous bottom-up pressure, with potentially devastating consequences to its regional influence and even domestic stability…

The remainder of this commentary is available at berggruen.org.

Jordan Reimer is a policy analyst at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation.

This commentary originally appeared on The World Post on January 16, 2020. Commentary gives RAND researchers a platform to convey insights based on their professional expertise and often on their peer-reviewed research and analysis.

Source: https://www.rand.org/blog/2020/01/iran-claws-back-its-regional-influence.html

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