Trump also addressed U.S. policy on Iran, advances in the denuclearization of North Korea and his administration’s trade war with China during his opening statement.

Seated at the center of an arc-shaped table, Trump immediately uttered tough words against Iran, saying that a government with Iran’s track record “must never be allowed to obtain” a nuclear weapon.

At the same time, he thanked Iran, Russia and Syria for slowing their attack on Idlib province in Syria. Last week, Russia and Turkey reached a deal to avert an offensive against Idlib, the last major rebel-held stronghold in Syria.

Speaking of Bashar Assad’s regime use of chemical weapons against Syrian civilians during clashes with rebel forces, Trump said “Syria’s butchery is enabled by Russia and Iran.”

Trump also said many things are happening “behind the scenes” in North Korea, and that good news would be coming in the coming months and years. Trump also commended Kim Jong Un for reaffirming his commitment to denuclearization, properity and peace for the peninsula.

Trump also claimed China has been attempting to interfere with the upcoming U.S. midterm elections, but provided no further details.

“Regrettably, we found that China has been attempting to interfere in our upcoming 2018 election,” he said.

U.S. intelligence officials have said previously that other nations could opt to try and copy Russia’s playbook of meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. But Trump’s comments Wednesday seem to confirm that China is actively interfering now.

Trump said Beijing doesn’t want him or the Republicans “to win because I am the first president ever to challenge China on trade.”

This is Trump’s first experience in leading a session of the UN’s most powerful body, where the U.S. currently holds the rotating presidency — a perch it is using to double down on its criticism of Iran.

While Wednesday’s meeting of the council is addressing the issue of nonproliferation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, Trump himself has left little doubt that it’ll be another chance to target Tehran.

>> UN General Assembly can laugh at Trump, but they’re impotent as Trumpism spreads

On Tuesday, during an unabashedly “America First” speech, Trump said Iranian leaders “sow chaos, death and destruction” and “spread mayhem across the Middle East and far beyond.” His national security adviser, John Bolton, warned that there would be “hell to pay” if Tehran crossed the U.S., its allies or their partners.

Iranian President Hassan Rohani responded by accusing the Trump administration of violating the rules of international law and “state obligations” by withdrawing from the 2015 nuclear deal that Iran signed with the U.S. and five other major powers.

Rohani is almost certain not to attend the Security Council meeting that will test Trump’s ability to maintain diplomatic decorum and interact with representatives of rival nations.

The council is populated by five permanent members — the U.S., China, Russia, Britain and France — and 10 other member states, who occupy a council seat for two-year terms. Iran is not among them.

Business will continue Wednesday at the General Assembly, where for a second day, 193 UN members take turns to speak out on pressing world issues and their national priorities in world affairs.

Among those tentatively scheduled to speak are the leaders of Panama, Iraq, Colombia, Afghanistan and Cuba.

This year, 133 world leaders have signed up to attend this year’s assembly session, which ends Oct. 1, a significant increase from the 114 leaders last year.

However, America’s go-it-alone attitude and growing divisions among key world powers risk eroding the UN’s ability to bring positive change in global affairs and end conflicts in Syria, Yemen, and elsewhere.

Source: https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/world-braces-as-trump-to-take-on-iran-again-in-another-un-first-1.6510872

When Brig. General Uri Oron spoke with Haaretz earlier this week, nobody could have foretold events, though Syria and especially the Russian aerial presence there were central to the conversation with the Israel Air Force’s head of intelligence.

Asked when he started the job, Oron answered, “With Putin.” Which means the summer of 2015, shortly after which the Russian president sent two squadrons to Syria. Back then Syrian President Bashar Assad seemed headed for defeat, but the Russian jets would later sway the civil war in Syria in his regime’s favor.

The Russian return to the region, two and a half decades after they had been perhaps present in spirit but missing in action because of the collapse of the Eastern Bloc, changed the rules of the game on Israel’s northern front. In contrast to some of the earlier forecasts, published here too, Russia did not severely constrain action by the IAF. They did, however, demand that Israel not imperil Russian planes in the area, or its people on the ground. Russia and Israel consolidated an agreement to minimize friction, under which Israel would provide early warning to the Russian air force about its attacks in Syria, and in general would avoid flying near, let alone bombing near, Russian interests.

>> Israel strikes Syria, Russia gets hit: A crisis with Moscow could reach all the way to Iran | Analysis ■ In rush to blame Israel for downed plane near Latakia, Russia may be conducting face-saving op | Analysis ■ Putin has little choice but to allow Israel to continue operating in Syria | Analysis

When Moscow felt that Israel was nearing its line in the sand, it protested publicly, for instance in March 2017, February 2018 and just now, when the Syrian aerial defense shot down a Russian Ilyushin plane without meaning to, following an Israeli air raid in northwest Syria.

“Russia’s aerial involvement in Syria decided the war in Assad’s favor, categorically,” Oron told Haaretz. “In the summer of 2015 everyone was sure that ISIS was about to roll over Damascus too. The Russians’ arrival in Syria was one of the strongest things to shape reality in the area in recent years, together with the superpowers’ nuclear agreement with Iran. Does the Russian presence constrain the IAF’s activity? It challenges us. We have to be very precise. [But] that doesn’t mean that the IAF only flies in Israeli skies.”

According to statistics the Israeli army provided on the eve of Rosh Hashana, the IAF has attacked Syria more than 200 times since the beginning of 2017. There were dozens of attacks during the preceding five years (during which the civil war went on). At first Israel’s moves focused on preventing advanced weapons, mainly guided ones, from being smuggled through Syria to Hezbollah.

In the last 18 months this effort has expanded: Now a significant part of it is invested in curbing Iran’s attempt to establish itself in Syria. The military outposts of the Revolutionary Guards have been attacked, as have weapons systems, and the bases of Shi’ite militias financed by Tehran. What the army calls “the battle between the wars” has become the key mission of the IAF, as the main executor of the policy in recent years.

“This is a struggle over hegemony,” says Oron. “Iran isn’t monolithic. It isn’t that the entire Iranian public supports it, or even the whole system. But they do aspire to establish military abilities to enable themselves to establish a sort of hegemony in Syria, not an attempt to make Syria Shi’ite. It is a huge challenge and we are trying to prevent this process. It isn’t our mission to ensure that no Iranian flags fly over any Syrian settlement.”

The IAF is an effective tool in this struggle, Oron explains, and it is the job of IAF intel to analyze and describe the fight: Bottlenecks, points of influence. “The first months were different,” he says. “For the first time, we met Iranian forces in Syria.”

The first incident happened on February 10, 2018, when the IAF downed an armed Iranian drone that had penetrated Israeli airspace, and then, in reaction, bombed the Syrian air base called T-4, by the city of Homs. Syria’s air defense in turn shot down an Israeli F-16 that had participated in the assault, over Israeli soil. The pilot and navigator ejected and were hurt.

Oron dismisses the notion that the drone had been a planned Iranian-Syrian ambush, explaining, “The battle is a complex one in a non-sterile environment. The reality has changed. He [the Assad regime] is trying to confront us face-to-face. The Iranians, too, are trying to give Syria aerial defense systems and drones. We cannot accept harm to our freedom of movement. I have been saying for two years now: Look what’s happening in Yemen. Houthi rebels are doing much the same: Receiving and using weapons that originate in Iran.”

Four different elements are operating on Israel’s northern front, Oron says: Russia, Iran, the Assad regime and Hezbollah, at varying levels of coordination and sometime with discrepancies in their interests.

“The dynamics are changing. I have to assume constant change and describe it in real time. What I saw in May I won’t see in December,” Oron says. And the major change in recent months is the regime regaining sovereignty over broader swaths of Syria. “In south Syria, the story is over,” Oron says. “The regime is back.”

Israel’s last major confrontation with Iran happened on May 10. The Revolutionary Guards shot missiles from Syrian territory at the Israeli side of the Golan border, in retaliation for attacks on Iranian fighters and Shi’ite militias beforehand. Most of the Iranian missiles landed in Syrian territory and four were intercepted by the Iron Dome system. Israel reacted with a massive attack on Iranian targets and Syrian anti-aircraft batteries.

Oron says that the map of Iranian presence in Syria constantly changes.

It isn’t that the Iranians are devoting less effort to their establishment, but on May 10 Israel demonstrated grit and ability, Oron says, and the neighborhood noticed. “But we never thought that this one action would lead to regional peace. Our situation is better than in May, but the attacks didn’t end Iran’s wish to establish itself in Syria.”

Iran has also been placing ground-to-ground missiles in Syria and recently in Iraq as well, and Israel is within their range. Oron confirms that Israel keeps a constant watch on Iran’s abilities, and Iraq has to stay in sight too. “A year ago we weren’t watching Iraq at all,” he says.

“The Iranians will try to bring more measures into Syria that could influence Israel from there. They understand the power of high-trajectory missiles,” he adds, referring not just to missiles but also to rockets. “We also see Iranian involvement in missile production sites in Syria and Lebanon.”

Much of the Israeli effort devoted to thwarting arms smuggling and damaging production sites targeted Hezbollah’s project to integrate navigation systems into its arsenal of rockets. Oron suspects the organization hasn’t reached the maximal level of accuracy: “They aren’t where they’d like to be.”

Kibbutz kid

Oron, 51, is the son of former Meretz chairman Haim Oron. He grew up on Kibbutz Lahav in the Negev. His younger brother is also in the IAF. This, Oron’s first interview, was given ahead of his retirement from active service in October.

Drafted in 1986, Oron was a combat pilot for years, among other things commanding an F-16 squadron during the Second Lebanon War, and commanding the air force base in Hatzor.

“I fully believe that the success of the air force depends on its ability to operate as a relevant, effective aerial power, which relies on accurate intelligence,” Oron says. “We have to bring intelligence that enables us to overcome the enemy, to understand the rival system at the closest level. We can do it. We brought intelligence that will enable resolution. There are not a few places where I say: It works. The purpose is to cause accurate damage without major collateral damage. You see around us, in recent years, various attitudes towards using aerial force. I don’t want to judge others. It isn’t only a matter of the IAF intelligence but also of army intelligence. We cooperate day by day, minute by minute. It wasn’t like that in the past.”

The pace of events and their consequences require the IAF intelligence to have a grasp of strategic significance as well, Oron explains. “These are complex systems,” he says, and the IAF can’t just be tapped to bomb things. “Our unique quality is, after all, the ability to translate this information into precise information to bomb targets.”

From his personal perspective too, the world is different now, he says. As a young pilot 25 years ago he was taught how to attack missile launchers based on intelligence that would pinpoint the location; the pilots would locate where the enemy was managing its fire, say a missile battery, and they’d take it out. “The final processing was in my head,” he says. “Today a critical component can be hidden inside a container or a house. I have to bring the pilot accurate intel. The good news is we’re managing to do it,” Oron says, thanks to a combination of visual and cyber information, and other sources.

Can the IAF maintain its aerial superiority? It can, says Oron.

“The number of antiaircraft missiles shot at us in Syria in the May attack – we hadn’t seen a thing like that since the Yom Kippur War,” he says. The IAF counted 170 of them. “But I think we are managing to maintain our freedom of action and aerial superiority, to take action when and where necessary. Our challenge is to develop combat systems that change at the same pace as the software system on your cellphone.” True, it will be harder and take more effort, he admits.

He keeps a copy of the reprinted list of targets the IAF gave its pilots at the start if the Six-Day War, which destroyed most of Egypt’s and Syria’s fighter jets on the ground. Noting that the intelligence available today is more detailed and accurate, espionage remains the same now as then – deciphering what the enemy is up to. “They worked on it for 11 years. They started the day after the [1956] Sinai campaign.”

In the summer four years ago, at the height of Operation Protective Edge, Meretz head MK Haim Oron talked with Haaretz. Both his sons and other family members were participating in the mission; his grandson Zamri, Uri’s nephew, who was in an elite military engineering unit, was badly wounded. “I reject and am outraged by the idea that left-wingers need to declare loyalty [to the state],” Haim Oron told Haaretz correspondent Gidi Weitz. “I absolutely refuse to allow anyone to put me in that position. I refuse to be a party to the horrific manipulation … [and] to hold up a ‘Let the IDF win’ banner.”

Once when he was addressing the Knesset plenum, Haim Oron said in the interview, and he spoke heatedly about the code of purity of arms, he got heckled, he thinks by Miri Regev (today the culture minister), who shouted that he was stabbing the soldiers in the back. “It’s insulting that I need some kind of character reference in the form of a fighting son or grandson,” he said.

Uri Oron says the family context is there in the background for him: “I can’t say it isn’t. When my family and people dear to me are attacked and sullied, it’s less gratifying. But the separation of powers with us is very clear. My father deals with it by himself, well. People who know what his boys do keep things in proportion. I never took it to rage and anger. I think it would make my father angry, to stand on the dais and be accused of treachery – I assume it’s not pleasant.”

Do they talk about values in warfare in the house? They do, says Oron, like in a lot of homes in Israel. “The dialogue at home was always very businesslike. Even when I had to explain, I explained the same things at home and to officers. I am talking about two aspects of values: decision-making processes and faith in commanders. When you trust both, you can take action.”

>> Casualties reported in alleged Israeli strike on Damascus overnight; Syria denies

The events of the past days in Syria have one thing in common: as the war in Syria is entering its final stages, a new battle is emerging. Both Russia and Iran, who supported the Assad regime throughout the civil war, are expecting to reap the benefits of Assad’s victory. While the two countries have long been allies in the Syrian arena, their interests sometimes diverge, especially as both are eyeing the financial rewards of Syria’s upcoming reconstruction process.

The tensions in Syria escalated on Tuesday when Russia moved naval forces towards the Syrian coast and NATO criticized Moscow for its aggressive moves. Russian media called the deployment Moscow’s largest naval buildup since it entered the Syrian conflict in 2015. The reinforcement comes as Russia’s ally, Syrian President Bashar Assad, is believed to be considering an assault on the last big rebel-held enclave, Idlib in the north.

The Russian naval force was sent to the region at the same time that the Syrian regime announced the signing of a new security agreement with Iran, following a visit by Iran’s Defense Minister to Damascus earlier this week. As part of the agreement, Iran will help rebuild Syria’s military and defense industries.

Israel believes the Iranians are sending a message: we are here to stay. The rehabilitation of the Syrian army, which is in very poor condition after the war, is not high on the list of threats that concern Israel.

The Russian Navy’s frigate Pytlivy, followed by landing ship Nikolai Filchenkov, sails in the Bosphorus, on its way to the Mediterranean Sea, in Istanbul, Turkey, August 24, 2018. YORUK ISIK/Reuters

Russia and Iran have both supported Assad over the past seven years. During this time, they did not directly clash with each other in Syria, but Israeli officials believe the two countries are at odds on some issues related to Syria’s future. The contracts for Syria’s reconstruction, for which both countries are vying, will likely include some of Syria’s oil reserves – at least those that have survived the war. A behind-the-scenes battle over who will control the Assad regime in the “new Syria” is now already under way.

>> Analysis: Everyone wants to get Iran out of Syria. But no one knows how to do it

One country that is likely going to stay out of the infighting over the reconstruction process is the United States. The Trump administration has no clear policy on the “day after” in Syria, except for one principle: No American money will be spent on it.

The American ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, made that point clear at a speech she gave on Tuesday in Washington, explaining that Russia and the Assad regime “own” Syria now. “You broke it, you own it,” Haley said at a summit organized by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Haley added that perhaps Russia and Assad expect the United States to lead the reconstruction process of Syria, but “we are going to stay out of it.” Russia and the Assad regime, she said, “now own a great pile of rubble” in Syria.

The concern is that without any American involvement, the “great pile of rubble” could turn into a future source of income for Iran, exactly at the same time that its economy is being put under pressure because of U.S. sanctions. In Damascus, the Iranian Defense Minister spoke about Iran’s commitment to Syria’s reconstruction, hinting at such a calculation.

One of Tehran’s goals is to take over Syria’s telecom industry, which was damaged during the war, but not completely destroyed. Matthew Brodsky, a Middle East analyst in Washington, recently published a review of the Assad regime’s financial situation, in which he mentioned telecom agreements between Iran and Syria that have already been signed, explaining that “the telecommunications sector is clearly important to Iran not only for the financial return but for eavesdropping on the population. Hezbollah’s telecommunications contracts in Lebanon have paid enormous dividends in this regard.”

Brodsky, who is a senior fellow at the Security Studies Group think-tank, also mentioned a deal between Iran and Syria that will allow Iran to develop phosphate mines in Syria, although it is not clear if Iran will have exclusive rights to those mines or have to share them with Russia. In addition, he wrote about leases between Iran and the Syrian regime involving some 12,000 acres of land in Homs and Tartous provinces, which could be used for building oil and gas terminals.

Another financial benefit for Iran that could emerge from the reconstruction process is the transfer of agricultural lands in Syria, which were left behind by Syrian citizens turned refugees over the last seven years, into Iranian hands. Brodsky wrote about the Assad regime’s “repopulation schemes” that would turn some of those lands over to members of the pro-Iranian Shi’ite militias, as a means of helping them entrench their presence in Syria. Some in Israel believe these lands will also, at some point, host new construction projects, which will be built by Iranian companies.

Two weeks ago, Ariane Tabatabai, an expert on Iran and a political scientist at the Rand Corporation, told Haaretz that Israel’s goal of getting Iran out of Syria is unrealistic, in light of the Islamic Republic’s expectation to make profits from the reconstruction process. “It’s hard to see them going anywhere,” she said. “The Russians don’t have the will to take Iran completely out of Syria. The Iranians have a significant presence in Syria, and Russia has no incentive to try and force them out, something they may not even be able to achieve.” The American sanctions only increase Iran’s interest in carving out whatever profits it can from Syria’s reconstruction, she added.

In order to see the benefits it hopes to get, however, Iran will also need other countries – mostly China, Europe and the Gulf countries – to invest in Syria’s reconstruction. Over the last few days, there have been calls from human rights groups and former European officials not to invest in Syria’s reconstruction as long as Assad continues to commit massive human rights violations.

Carl Bildt, a former Swedish Foreign Minister, tweeted this week that “we should not listen to Russian pleas for money to rebuild what they bombed in Syria. All signs point at Assad blocking returns [of Syrian refugees] and wanting to profit from reconstruction.”

Ken Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, expressed a similar view, writing in the British newspaper The Independent: “Long before any talk of providing reconstruction assistance for Syria, which in any event would require lifting separate targeted sanctions, European governments should call out Russia’s complicity in Syria’s war crimes and vigorously press the Kremlin to end these atrocities and stop underwriting Syria’s repression.”

It was the deployment of the Russian air force three years ago that tilted the scales of the war in favor of Assad, who at that time controlled only a quarter of the country’s territory. Even today, Russia maintains its military presence in Syria to ensure the regime’s upper hand. But it has other strategic interests, primarily maintaining access to the Mediterranean through the port under its control in Tartous in northern Syria.

Last month, the Assad regime completed its takeover of the Syrian Golan Heights, and after Russia agreed with Iran that Iranian forces would be kept at a distance of 85 kilometers from Israel’s border with one notable exception: Iranians are still present in and around Damascus.

In Israel, meanwhile, tension has been noted even within the close alliance of Iran and the Assad regime. In recent weeks, there were two incidents in the eastern part of Syria, close to the border with Iraq, in which the Syrian military attacked Shi’ite militias associated with Iran. These attacks appear to be part of a local, internal fight over dominance in that specific region, which is critical for Iran’s plans of creating a “land bridge” to the Mediterranean through Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.

The same area was the site of an air strike two months ago, which some media outlets reported was conducted by Israel.

The bottom line is that the war in Syria has already been won by Assad. But now the fight over the “day after” is beginning, and it will include power struggles between all the different parties active in the Syrian arena.

Source: https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/.premium-after-idlib-iran-russia-prepare-to-battle-each-other-over-control-of-post-war-syria-1.6429740