Persian Gulf & Middle East Military News, Reports, Data, etc.

Iran troops to join Syria war, Russia bombs group trained by CIA

Hundreds of Iranian troops have arrived in Syria to join a major ground offensive in support of President Bashar al-Assad's government, Lebanese sources said on Thursday, a sign the civil war is turning still more regional and global in scope.

Russian warplanes, in a second day of strikes, bombed a camp run by rebels trained by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, the group's commander said, putting Moscow and Washington on opposing sides in a Middle East conflict for the first time since the Cold War.

Senior U.S. and Russian officials spoke for just over an hour by secure video conference on Thursday, focusing on ways to keep air crews safe, the Pentagon said, as the two militaries carry out parallel campaigns with competing objectives.

"We made crystal clear that, at a minimum, the priority here should be the safe operation of the air crews over Syria," Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said.

Two Lebanese sources told Reuters hundreds of Iranian troops had reached Syria in the past 10 days with weapons to mount a major ground offensive. They would also be backed by Assad's Lebanese Hezbollah allies and by Shi'ite militia fighters from Iraq, while Russia would provide air support.

"The vanguard of Iranian ground forces began arriving in Syria -soldiers and officers specifically to participate in this battle. They are not advisers ... we mean hundreds with equipment and weapons. They will be followed by more," one of the sources said.

So far, direct Iranian military support for Assad has come mostly in the form of military advisers. Iran has also mobilized Shi'ite militia fighters, including Iraqis and some Afghans, to fight alongside Syrian government forces.

Moscow said it had hit Islamic State positions, but the areas it struck near the cities of Hama and Homs are mostly held by a rival insurgent alliance, which unlike Islamic State is supported by U.S. allies including Arab states and Turkey.

Hassan Haj Ali, head of the Liwa Suqour al-Jabal rebel group that is part of the Free Syrian Army, told Reuters one of the targets was his group's base in Idlib province, struck by about 20 missiles in two separate raids. His fighters had been trained by the CIA in Qatar and Saudi Arabia, part of a program Washington says is aimed at supporting groups that oppose both Islamic State and Assad.

"Russia is challenging everyone and saying there is no alternative to Bashar," Haj Ali said. He said the Russian jets had been identified by members of his group who once served as Syrian air force pilots.

The group is one of at least three foreign-backed FSA rebel factions to say they had been hit by the Russians in the last two days.

At the United Nations, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told a news conference Moscow was targeting Islamic State. He did not specifically deny that Russian planes had attacked Free Syrian Army facilities but said Russia did not view it as a terrorist group and viewed it as part of a political solution in Syria.

Assad allies, including Iranians, prepare ground attack in Syria: sources

Syria's President Bashar al-Assad answers questions during an interview with al-Manar's

Hundreds of Iranian troops have arrived in Syria in the last 10 days and will soon join government forces and their Lebanese Hezbollah allies in a major ground offensive backed by Russian air strikes, two Lebanese sources told Reuters.

"The (Russian) air strikes will in the near future be accompanied by ground advances by the Syrian army and its allies," said one of the sources familiar with political and military developments in the conflict.

"It is possible that the coming land operations will be focused in the Idlib and Hama countryside," the source added.

The two sources said the operation would be aimed at recapturing territory lost by President Bashar al-Assad's government to rebels.


It points to an emerging military alliance between Russia and Assad's other main allies - Iran and Hezbollah - focused on recapturing areas of northwestern Syria that were seized by insurgents in rapid advances earlier this year.

"The vanguard of Iranian ground forces began arriving in Syria: soldiers and officers specifically to participate in this battle. They are not advisors ... we mean hundreds with equipment and weapons. They will be followed by more," the second source said. Iraqis would also take part in the operation, the source said.

Thus far, direct Iranian military support for Assad has come mostly in the form of military advisors. Iran has also mobilized Shi'ite militia fighters, including Iraqis and some Afghans, to fight alongside Syrian government forces.

Lebanon's Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran, has been fighting alongside the Syrian army since early in the conflict.


The Russian air force began air strikes in Syria on Wednesday, targeting areas near the cities of Homs and Hama in the west of the country, where Assad's forces are fighting an array of insurgent groups, though not Islamic State, which is based mostly in the north and east.

An alliance of insurgent groups including the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front and powerful Ahrar al-Sham made rapid gains in Idlib province earlier this year, completely expelling the government from the area bordering Turkey.

Syrian rebels call for regional alliance against Russia and Iran

More than 40 Syrian insurgent groups including the powerful Islamist faction Ahrar al-Sham have called on regional states to forge an alliance against Russia and Iran in Syria, accusing Moscow of occupying the country and targeting civilians.

The insurgents, including rebel groups under the umbrella of the Free Syria Army, said such regional cooperation was needed to counter "the Russian-Iranian alliance occupying Syria".

Last week Russian jets based in western Syria launched air strikes against targets Moscow has identified as bases of the hardline Islamic State group, but which President Bashar al-Assad's opponents say disproportionately hit rival, foreign-backed insurgents.

The joint rebel statement criticized what it described as the "Russian military aggression in Syria and the blatant occupation of the country" as well as the targeting of civilians with air strikes in the Homs countryside in western Syria.

"Civilians have been directly targeted in a manner that reminds us of the scorched earth policy pursued by Russia in its past wars," the statement said, without specifying.

The statement, sent to Reuters by Ahrar al-Sham, did not name which regional states it was addressing but Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar have backed the insurgency against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The 41 groups which signed the statement did not include Islamic State or al Qaeda's Syria wing Nusra Front, which is in an insurgent coalition with Ahrar al-Sham that captured most of Idlib province in the northwest.

Insurgents have renewed calls for their Arab backers to supply them with more powerful weapons such as anti-aircraft systems in light of the Russian intervention in the war but Monday's statement appeared to be the most concerted rebel call for action against Russia's move.

Dozens of Islamist Saudi Arabian clerics, not affiliated with the government, earlier called on Arab and Muslim countries to "give all moral, material, political and military" support to what they term a jihad, or holy war, against Syria's government and its Iranian and Russian backers.

plawolf said:

Of course the UN would never do it, its become a pointless waste of money. I was saying that's what the UN should be for.

As for America, well IIRC, the withdraw was already planned and agreed by the Bush administration before Obama took office.

I see Obama getting way more than his fair share of the blame. But in this instance, he was merely following the roadmap set out and agreed upon by his predecessor. This move was also overwhelmingly popular amongst the American people.

Shouldn't really pin this one on Obama when all he was doing was uphold agreements already in place and execute the wishes of the majority of the American people.

Every time you loose a war, you always have people coming out of the woodworks afterwards (who never actually fought themselves) lamenting how the war would have been won had they been doing the leading (never the fighting amusingly enough).

All this blame-the-weak-willing-Obama is just a manifestation of that. With the implication the US could somehow have held everything together had another president "with balls" had been behind the desk, when in fact, any president would likely have done exactly the same thing, grand direction wise, because that was what the American people overwhelmingly wanted.

You are correct that history is being repeated, but what the American people and the world should blame the Obama administration for is its meddling in countries like Libya, Syria and Ukraine.

Even after the US pulled out of Iraq in earnest, Al-Q was a spent force and a threat even the Iraqi army could have handled.

It was the western back challenge financing, training and arming of "moderate" rebels in Libya and then Syria which created a new recruiting, training, proving ground and safe heaven for Global Jihadists Terrorists.

Many of the people the US would and probably should have been liquidating with drone strikes and special forces raids in Iraq and Afghanistan instead were given CIA money, weapons and training when they crossed into Libya and Syria. In effect, the CIA created a terrorist wonderland in Libya and much of Syria.

After the fall of Libya, many of these now well-trained, well-funded, well-connected and battle hardened hardcore Jihadists went back to Iraq and promptly wiped the floor with the Iraqi army and seized vast quantities of money, weapons and territory, which gave them the foundation on which to build ISIS.

Click to expand...

The US and the "West" get disproportionately blamed as well, let's not forget the likes of Saudi Arabia, other Gulf monarchies, Turkey, and Israel, among others who sponsor terrorists, commit state terrorism, but seldom get called out never mind punished because they and their sympathizers wield significant economic, political, and media influence in the US and the "West".

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Posted: 06 Oct 2015 04:32 PM PDT

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Navy has unveiled a torpedo-armed watercraft which is capable of operating both on and under water.
The domestically-manufactured submersible watercraft, dubbed Zolfaqar, was showcased for the first time at a public exhibition on Saturday, Fars news agency reports.
The 17-meter-long military equipment weighs about 22 tonnes and has a speed of 40 knots (more than 70 kilometers) per hour on the sea surface.
Zolfaqar also employs a four-meter-long torpedo which can target aircraft carriers, vessels weighing up to 200 tonnes, oil platforms as well as loading and unloading docks.

Click to expand...

To terrorize aircraft carriers?
To attack vessels weighing up to 200 tonnes unless they are aircraft carriers when that limit doesn't aply?

Its a semisubmersible. Similar vehicles are used by Narcotics smugglers. The point of the craft is to submerge like a WW1 U-boats. But where Narcos are just trying to avoid detection theses things are meant to submerge then stalk and attack. Its basically the same thing the Iranians have been doing with small attack boats. Since there Naval surface warfare capacity is more or less stagnant. The Iranians are focusing on harassment by small craft to keep large threat craft off there shores.
But with the recent additions of LCS and Navy patrol boats armed with Hellfire missiles and Griffin missiles surface going small craft face a system designed just for them.
A semisubmerable though can keep under the waves avoid detection until ready to strike. Would need submarine hunting gear to find them.

TerraN_EmpirE said:

Its a semisubmersible. Similar vehicles are used by Narcotics smugglers. The point of the craft is to submerge like a WW1 U-boats. But where Narcos are just trying to avoid detection theses things are meant to submerge then stalk and attack. Its basically the same thing the Iranians have been doing with small attack boats. Since there Naval surface warfare capacity is more or less stagnant. The Iranians are focusing on harassment by small craft to keep large threat craft off there shores.
But with the recent additions of LCS and Navy patrol boats armed with Hellfire missiles and Griffin missiles surface going small craft face a system designed just for them.
A semisubmerable though can keep under the waves avoid detection until ready to strike. Would need submarine hunting gear to find them.

Click to expand...

I know. And the craft had already been presented by ShahryarHedayat. It's just that I thought the text to be written particularly incompetently, especially the notion that it might terrorize aircraft carriers.

Well if that craft are armed with Torpedoes they could in theory damage disable or potentially destroy a CVN. Its the same as the swarm tactics the Iranians practiced against the dummy carrier. Harassment and threat.

How Iranian general plotted out Syrian assault in Moscow

Iranian Revolutionary Guard Commander Qassem Soleimani (L) stands at the frontline during offensive operations against Islamic State militants in the town of Tal Ksaiba in Salahuddin province March 8, 2015.
REUTERS/STRINGER


At a meeting in Moscow in July, a top Iranian general unfurled a map of

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

to explain to his Russian hosts how a series of defeats for President Bashar al-Assad could be turned into victory - with Russia's help.

Major General Qassem Soleimani's visit to Moscow was the first step in planning for a Russian military intervention that has reshaped the Syrian war and forged a new Iranian-Russian alliance in support of Assad.

As Russian warplanes bomb rebels from above, the arrival of Iranian special forces for ground operations underscores several months of planning between Assad's two most important allies, driven by panic at rapid insurgent gains.



Soleimani is the commander of the Quds Force, the elite extra-territorial special forces arm of Iran's Revolutionary Guards, and reports directly to Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Senior regional sources say he has already been overseeing ground operations against insurgents in Syria and is now at the heart of planning for the new Russian- and Iranian-backed offensive.

That expands his regional role as the battlefield commander who has also steered the fight in neighboring Iraq by Iranian-backed Shi'ite militia against Islamic State.

His Moscow meeting outlined the deteriorating situation in Syria, where rebel advances toward the coast were posing a danger to the heartland of Assad's Alawite sect, where

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

maintains its only Mediterranean naval base in Tartous.

"Soleimani put the map of Syria on the table. The Russians were very alarmed, and felt matters were in steep decline and that there were real dangers to the regime. The Iranians assured them there is still the possibility to reclaim the initiative," a senior regional official said. "At that time, Soleimani played a role in assuring them that we haven't lost all the cards."



"SEND SOLEIMANI"

Three senior officials in the region say Soleimani's July trip was preceded by high-level Russian-Iranian contacts that produced political agreement on the need to pump in new support for Assad as his losses accelerated.

Their accounts suggest planning for the intervention began to germinate several months earlier. It means Tehran and Moscow had been discussing ways to prop up Assad by force even as Western officials were describing what they believed was new flexibility in Moscow's stance on his future.

Before the latest moves, Iran had aided Assad militarily by mobilizing Shi'ite militias to fight alongside the Syrian army, and dispatching Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps officers as advisors. A number of them have been killed.

Russia, an ally of Damascus since the Cold War, had supplied weapons to the Syrian army and shielded Damascus diplomatically from Western attempts to sanction Assad at the

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

.

Their support did not prevent rebels - some of them backed by Assad's regional foes - from reducing Assad's control of Syria to around one fifth of its territory in a four-year-long war estimated to have killed 250,000 people.

The decision for a joint Iranian-Russian military effort in Syria was taken at a meeting between Russia's foreign minister and Khamenei a few months ago, said a senior official of a country in the region, involved in security matters.

"Soleimani, assigned by Khamenei to run the Iranian side of the operation, traveled to Moscow to discuss details. And he also traveled to Syria several times since then," the official said.

The Russian government says its Syria deployment came as the result of a formal request from Assad, who himself laid out the problems facing the Syrian military in stark terms in July, saying it faced a manpower problem.

Khamenei also sent a senior envoy to Moscow to meet President Vladimir Putin, another senior regional official said. "Putin told him 'Okay we will intervene. Send Qassem Soleimani'. He went to explain the map of the theater."


RESIDENT IN DAMASCUS

Russian warplanes, deployed at an airfield in Latakia, began mounting air strikes against rebels in Syria last week.

Moscow says it is targeting Islamic State, but many of Russia's air strikes have hit other insurgents, including groups backed by Assad's foreign enemies, notably in the northwest where rebels seized strategically important towns including Jisr al-Shughour earlier this year.

In the biggest deployment of Iranian forces yet, sources told Reuters last week that hundreds of troops have arrived since late September to take part in a major ground offensive planned in the west and northwest.

Around 3,000 fighters from the Iranian-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah have also mobilized for the battle, along with Syrian army troops, said one of the senior regional sources.

The military intervention in Syria is set out in an agreement between Moscow and Tehran that says Russian air strikes will support ground operations by Iranian, Syrian and Lebanese Hezbollah forces, said one of the senior regional sources.

The agreement also included the provision of more sophisticated Russian weapons to the Syrian army, and the establishment of joint operations rooms that would bring those allies together, along with the government of

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

, which is allied both to Iran and the United States.

One of the operations rooms is in Damascus and another is in Baghdad.

"Soleimani is almost resident in Damascus, or let's say he goes there a lot and you can find him between meetings with President Assad and visits to the theater of operations like any other soldier," said one of the senior regional officials.

Syria's foreign minister said on Monday that the Russian air strikes had been planned for months.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Gen. Campbell: providing money, weapons to to fight in western


Poor general....