Hamas-Fatah fired two rockets from Southern Sinai into the Eshkol Regional Council in southern Israel Sunday evening.
The two rockets landed in open areas.
Following this evening’s rocket launch at the Eshkol Regional Council, one of the rockets was found in an open area SE of Gaza City. pic.twitter.com/xl1ZkyyH7L
The IDF believes that the rocket attack and increasing tensions on the border near Gaza are a direct result from the Hamas-Fatah unity pact signed last week. This pact sees the PA take control of the Rafah crossing while Hamas remains in charge of its own militias in the strip. They will essentially remain an Iranian proxy.
This set up has been described as very similar to the way Iran and the Shiite Hashd al-Shaabi work with one another.
Israel’s security assessment sees a possible uptick in direct hostilities both in and around Gaza and from Lebanon as the crisis between Kurdistan and Iran escalates.
The Shiite Hashd al-Shaabi, which is an Iranian proxy in Iraq has been reportedly moving in on Kirkuk as of Friday. The group, backed by the Iraqi military gave the Peshmerga and Kirkuk governor a list of demands.
Rudaw reports: “Peshmerga officials, including Sheikh Jaafar Mustafa, head of the 70 Force, confirmed on Friday that the Hashd al-Shaabi demanded the Peshmerga leave their posts south and west of Kirkuk in order to allow for their forces and the Iraqi army to move in on Thursday night.”
The Iraqi government has given the Kurds until 2am on Sunday to vacate all the land it has acquired in fighting ISIS. Most of our sources in Kurdistan have confirmed this and clearly stated that the Peshmerga has no attention of pulling back.
Furthermore, these sources have confirmed that the Peshmerga, in anticipation of a wider conflict with Iranian proxies and the Iraqi military have closed the main road between Mosul and Erbil.
Iranian Revolutionary guards are reportedly already blended in with their Iraqi counterparts.
“The Iraqi army and the Hashd al-Shaabi are not the only state that are attacking us. We have intelligence with 100 percent accuracy that there are also the Iranian army and the Revolutionary Guards among them,” Shwan Shamerani, commander of the Peshmerga second brigade said.
The Iranian calculus is clear. The regime in Tehran views Trump’s move to decertify the Iranian Nuclear Accord as well as placing the Revolutionary Guard on a terror group list and the rise of an independent Kurdistan as interwoven events. The Iranian regime can waste no time in taking on a rising Kurdistan.
With the Kurdish Peshmerga ready to hold onto its territory, the first big test for an independent Kurdistan is set to get underway. With Trump’s move against Iran in the geo-political arena still fresh, the question remains whether this will translate into support for Kurdish independence on the ground. Eitherway, the coming Iranian Kurdish conflict maybe the opening shot in a wider war.
President Donald Trump is vigorously going after pillars of global “stability” at a lightning fast pace. The State Department first rocked the international community this week when it would announce that the US would be quitting UNESCO by 2019 due to its inherent anti-Israel bias.
Second,the President himself gave a frank speech in which he announced is decision not to recertify the Iran nuke deal, punting the final decision to Congress.
These two decisions are the first shot across the bow of a rapidly changing Middle East that was allowed to plunge into chaos under the Obama Administration. The Trump team understands that the Islamic decision to rewrite history using UNESCO in order to disconnect the Jewish nation from its own homeland is not just absurd but dangerous to America’s own sense of purpose. A world not governed by truth is one that is essentially filled with chaos.
This chaos has been used to allow Iran and Russia to essentially steer the future of the Middle East. Trump’s removal of the US from UNESCO, which gave Israel the confidence to do the same is built around the message that globalism is not superior to moral clarity. With all of the USA’s faults, it has still been viewed upon as a beacon freedom. Trump is sending a message that those countries that stand with the US get first priority and in the Middle East, Trump is learning that Israel may be the most reliable.
President Trump’s decision not to recertify the Iran nuclear accord known as the JCPOA sends a serious message that Iran and its backers are scrambling to find a way to retaliate against. Trump has now designated the Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist entity which places them within the bounds of the US military’s sights.
Trump said the following in part of his televised speech:
“The Iranian regime has committed multiple violations of the agreement, for example on two speared occasions they have exceeded the limit of 130 metric tons of heavy water, until recently, the Iranian regime has also failed to meet our expectation in its operation of advanced centrifuges. The Iranian regime has also intimidated international inspectors into not using the full inspection authorities that the agreement calls for. Iranian officials and military leaders have repeatedly claimed they will not allow inspectors onto military sites, even though the international community suspects some of those sites were part of Iran’s clandestine nuclear weapons program; there are also many people who believe that Iran is dealing with North Korea. I am going to instruct our intelligence agencies to do thorough analyses and report back their findings beyond what they have already reviewed. By its own terms the Iran deal was supposed to contribute to regional and international peace and security. And yet, while the U.S adheres to our commitment under the deal the Iranian regime continues to fuel conflict, terror and turmoil throughout the Middle East and beyond.”
Watch the full speech below:
Deputy commander of the Qods Force Ismail Ghaani told the Tanzim news agency:
“We are not a country that likes war, but any military threatening us will regret it. Trump is hurting America- we’ve buried many like him and we know how to fight the United States.”
Does this mean there will be war tomorrow? Not necessarily, but Iran and Russia will not allow this to go quietly. As for the Trump administration they understand that it is better to push back now than when Iran, backed by Russia and in partnership with Turkey finalizes its take over of the Middle East. That would leave Israel surrounded and the USA locked out of a strategic region.
The globalists were hoping that President Trump would back off and toe the line, but it is clear that his foreign policy is built around America First, for better or worse. This makes for a rocky couple of next weeks that may see both the Middle East explode and the North Korean standoff break out into a full-blown war.
Yet, this multi-sphere conflict was set in motion the moment Obama decided to lower America and its allies stature within the world’s geopolitical arena. Trump may seem like he is shaking the world, but he is heading off the ascendance of regimes that are totalitarian from do far more damage down the line.
President Donald Trump said the following in a Tweet Storm Saturday morning:
“Presidents and their administrations have been talking to North Korea for 25 years, agreements made and massive amounts of money paid hasn’t worked, agreements violated before the ink was dry, makings fools of U.S. negotiators. Sorry, but only one thing will work!”
While there maybe a desire to play this sort of verbage down, the prevailing opinion is that the comments portend to a direct conflict between North Korea and the USA coming very soon.
To complicate matters even more, rumors from within the White House make it clear that President Trump is seriously considering pulling out of the nuclear treaty with Iran. None of this is disconnected as it may seems. Most observers agree that Iran and North Korea are in nuclear symbiotic relationship where the latter develops weapons in exchange for needed money.
The above facts point to a two front war between the USA and Iran and North Korea at the same time. Considering that any conflict in this arena risks bringing in both China and Russia, the stakes are consitantly growing higher. Trump and Washington are losing ground in both the Pacific and the Middle East as Saudi Arabia is making serious agreements with Russia’s Putin.
In order to hold Saudi Arabia within the US network, a more robust policy is necessary against its arch-enemy Iran. Given the fact that Russia appears to have taken large areas of the Middle East as well as funding the North Korean regime, Trump has no choice but to push back.
It appears that the USA is at a breaking point in terms of holding to a non-poractive foregin policy. Trump is now willing to change that, but it could be too little, too late.
For all the negativity surrounding the agreement forged between the USA and Russia at the G20 summit in July to impose a ceasefire agreement for the Southwestern part of Syria close to the Israeli border, it has accomplished a few things that had been left in the shadows to ferment.
The first is that the agreement exposed the lie that both the US and Russia were sort of passive players in a chaotic conflict both were just trying to manage. The very fact that both super powers had the power to actually enforce such an agreement makes it clear that the two were behind the maelstrom of fighting from the beginning.
The second is that the control over the Quneitra and Daraa provinces given over to Russia and defacto Syria, Hezbollah, and Iran means that Israel’s ability to stay out of open conflict with Iran is over. The Israeli government has been content up until in now to use local rebels in battling regime forces, Hezbollah, and Iranian militias, but with the Russians in the neighborhood this strategy has been effectively terminated.
This means that Israel must take on Iran in Syria or risk becoming isolated while the Persians strengthen their hold over the region. The air attacks on various Iranian and Hezbollah installations in Syria make it apparent that Israel is willing to increase its operations there. Yet, there are significant factors that will mean that an Iranian counter-strike could be more imminent than thought.
The first is the Israel-US backed Kurdish independent state in Southern Kurdistan (situated in the KRG area of Northern Iraq). Iran sees this as a dagger pointed directly at the regime in Tehran as it not only breaks up its direct control of the region, but inspires the 15 million Iranian Kurds to agitate for independence.
The second is the increasing ease the Israeli airforce has in attacking Iranian targets in the Levant. While Putin may not be in agreement with Israel on the need to remove Iran from Syria, he appears to be willing to allow the IAF to attack when it feels necessary.
Therefore, Iran will not wait much longer to make a move against Israel or at the very least attempt to solidify its stranglehold over the Southern corridor in Syria as well as push Iraq into a direct war with the Kurdish Peshmerga. Iran has benefitted from the six years of instability in the region. With Israel’s ascendancy and Kurdish independence the Mullahs are looking to throw more chaos into the mix to ensure they can finish their solidification as the regions superpower.
In order to ensure this does not happen Israel must be willing to strike hard in Syria as well as push Washington to bolster a young but strategic Kurdistan.
