Saudi Intelligence Chief Meets US, Israeli Officials for Terrorist Operations in Syria, Lebanon
TEHRAN (FNA)- US, Saudi and Israeli top security officials have agreed in their secret meetings to strike several targets in Lebanon and Syria, media reports disclosed on Wednesday.
Prince Bandar Bin Sultan, the Saudi National Security Council Secretary and Head of the Saudi Intelligence who is Riyadh’s man for forming, arming and orchestrating terrorist groups in the region, had a meeting with top US security officials in Washington a few weeks ago, Palestinian weekly al-Manar quoted informed sources as saying.
The sources told al-Manar that Bandar Bin Sultan held talks with US vice-presidents during his visit to Washington asking them to let Saudi Arabia supervise operations in Syria and Lebanon. (Read more…)
America’s Alliance With Egypt Is on Verge of Collapse
Four years ago Obama made his infamous Cairo speech
McCain and Graham sent packing
McCain and Graham sent packing
?America’s intricate alliance with Egypt, woven over four decades, is standing on the verge of collapse over the failure of the Obama administration to comprehend the revolution that ousted the Muslim Brotherhood from power in Cairo.
In a cascade of mutual recriminations over the past three days, President Mansour and his prime minister, Hazem Biblawi, described two senior American senators, sent as emissaries of President Barak Obama, as “delusional” and “liars.”
The two senators arrived with demands to release all Muslim Brotherhood leaders being held under arrest and to integrate the party into the new revolutionary government. Otherwise, they warned, the Obama administration will cutoff all financial and military aid to Egypt.
(Read more…)
(Read more…)
Turkey softens stance on Syria’s emboldened Kurds
We also read that Iran is letting Iranian Kurds join the fight in Syria. Assad is trying to woo the Kurds into an alliance also. Ted Belman
ANKARA: After embarking on a peace process with Kurdish rebels in Turkey, Ankara is now softening its position on the increasingly autonomous Kurdish minority in war-torn neighboring Syria, analysts say. The Turkish government has long kept a wary eye on Kurdish ambitions in Syria, fearing the creation of a Kurdish state there could serve as a magnet for Turkey’s own Kurdish population.
Ankara’s unease only increased after Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces last year withdrew from majority Kurdish areas in the north of the embattled country and entrusted the security there to Kurdish militia.
(Read more…)
(Read more…)
Steinitz: Iran’s nuclear program can be destroyed with a few hours of airstrikes
Iran’s new president Hasan Rouhani is “charming, he is cunning, and he will smile all the way to the bomb,” Minister for International, Intelligence and Strategic Affairs Yuval Steinitz said in an interview with The Washington Post, published on Thursday. Israel believes the United States and others in the West are being misled by the moderate cleric’s recent election to the presidency. Steinitz told the Post that rather than negotiating with Tehran, the U.S. and the international community should tighten the economic sanctions against Iran’s already stagnating economy.
The Israeli intelligence minister told The Washington Post that Tehran should hear from the U.S. and the international community that it has only two choices: voluntarily shutter its uranium enrichment program or “see it destroyed with brute force,” which he envisioned as “a few hours of airstrikes, no more.”
(Read more…)
(Read more…)
878 New Yesha Homes Approved
These units are outside the settlement blocs. Many more approvals are necessary before construction can begin. Although Netanyahu has taken the position that it is better to release prisoners than agree to a settlement freeze, but according to Shalom, Bibi offered a freeze before agreeing to prisoner release. Another point of note, although Bibi keep rejecting preconditions his actions belie this. There is a freeze and a prisoner release. Ted Belman
The Civil Administration on Wednesday authorized construction of 878 housing units in Judea and Samaria. The units were approved for towns in the Binyamin region, the Jordan Valley, and Gush Etzion, Ha’aretz reported Thursday.
The approvals had been set to be issued several weeks ago, but were postponed due to the efforts to restart negotiations with the Palestinian Authority. Those talks hinged on the release of Arab terrorists from Israeli prisons, government minister Silvan Shalom said in an interview on Israel Radio Sunday.
According to Shalom, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was prepared to offer them a building freeze in Judea and Samaria – but the PA rejected that offer, demanding that the terrorists be released instead. The first group of terrorists is set to be released next week, as talks between Israeli and PA officials get underway in Washington.
(Read more…)
(Read more…)
The Mosque: Center of Religion, Politics and Dominance
- Islamic-style authoritarianism is the dominant characteristic shared by both the military and the Muslim Brotherhood, theocrats and non-theocrats: one or the other must be dominant. The cannot share power. One side or the other must come out on top. Both of these conflicts, in Syria and Egypt, are, at their base, about the inseparability of Mosque and State in Islam, and the burning zeal of those believers who have no tolerance for Arab and Muslim regimes they see as allowing the two to function apart.
News reports out of Syria are airing graphic footage of extensive interior damage to the historic Khalid Ibn Al-Walid Mosque in Homs. Syrian government troops, backed by Hizballah fighters, captured the mosque from Free Syrian Army (FSA) forces on July 27, 2013 in heavy fighting that has engulfed the northern Homs neighborhood of Khaldiyeh.
(Read more…)
(Read more…)
Does Obama want Egypt to choose between aid and freedom?
by Raymond Stock, Fox News
On Friday, the chief of Egypt’s military, General Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, has urged all Egyptians to come out on the street to give him a “public mandate to face up to terror” in confronting the Muslim Brotherhood and its Salafi allies.
A military source told Cairo’s ahramonline that these demonstrations will be “as big almost” as the fifteen-to-thirty million thought to have marched against President Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood on June 30.
(Read more…)
(Read more…)
Ted Belman
Jerusalem, Israel
Posts
