Regional geopolitics

[Vrej1915]

Re: Regional geopolitics

The battles in N. Syria will determine the fate of the peace process
debka
21/12/2015

The US-Russian plan, approved by the UN Security Council as the lever for activating a political process towards ending the five-year Syrian war, can only go so far towards its objectives. The process is not capable of halting the fighting or removing Bashar Assad from power; just the reverse: progress in the talks is heavily dependent on the state of play on the battlefields of the north while the Syrian dictator’s ouster is a fading issue.
The limitations and obstacles facing the UN-endorsed US-Russian plan are summed up here by DEBKAfile’s analysts:
1. The understanding reached by the Obama administration and the Kremlin in the past month was first conceived as a stopgap measure. It was never intended to bring the calamitous Syrian war to an end or remove Assad, but rather to provide a pretext to account for the expansion of Russia’s ground operation and gloss over America’s military deficiencies in the Syrian conflict. Taking it as carte blanche from Washington, President Vladimir Putin felt able to announce Saturday, Dec. 19, that “the Russian armed forces have not employed all of their capability in Syria and may use more military means there if necessary.”
2. President Barack Obama has stopped calling for Assad’s removal as the condition for ending the war and is silent on the expanding Russian military intervention. Obama and Putin have in fact developed a working arrangement whereby Putin goes ahead with military operations and Obama backs him up..
3. Almost unnoticed, on Dec. 17, the day before the Security Council passed its resolution for Syria, all the 12 US warplanes that were deployed a month earlier at the Turkish air base of Incirlik for air strikes in Syria were evacuated. This happened at around the same time as Russia deployed to Syria its Buk-M2-SA-17 Grizzly antiaircraft missile systems. The presence of this system would have endangered American pilots had US air strikes over Syria not been halted. The upshot of the two evidently coordinated moves was the US withdrawal of most of its military resources for striking the Islamic State forces in Syria and the handover of the arena to the Russian army and air force.
4. In another related development, Friday, Dec. 18 the German intelligence service, BND, leaked news that it had renewed its contacts with the Assad regime’s intelligence services and German agents were now visiting Damascus regularly. The import of this change is that Berlin no longer relies on US intelligence briefings from Syria and, rather than turn to Moscow, it prefers to tap its own sources in the Syrian capital.
5. Washington and Moscow are still far apart on the shape of the transitional government mandated by the Security Council resolution
The Obama administration wants Assad to hand presidential powers over the military and of all security-related and intelligence bodies to the transitional government, which is to be charged with calling general and presidential elections from which Assad will be barred.
Putin won’t hear of this process. He insists on a transitional government being put in place and proving it can function before embarking on any discussion of its powers and areas of authority.
The two presidents agree that the transition will need at least two years, overlapping the Obama presidency by about a year and dropping the issue in the lap of his successor in the White House.
6. The US and Russia don’t see to eye to eye either on which Syrian opposition organizations should be represented in the transitional government and which portfolios to assign them. On this question, both Washington and Moscow are at odds with the Persian Gulf states, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE, which back some of the organizations labeled as terrorist by Moscow.
7. But it is abundantly clear that the Obama administration is ready to wash its hands of the Syrian rebel movement and most of all, abandon Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan to give the Russians an open remit.
On Saturday, Dec. 19, Putin turned the screw again on Erdogan when he said he had no problem with the Turkish people, adding, “As for the current Turkish leadership, nothing is eternal.”
In support of Moscow, Obama meanwhile leaned hard on the Turkish president in a telephone conversation, to remove Turkish forces from northern Iraq. Ankara responded that Putin’s comment was not worth a response and denied hearing of any such US request.
Ankara may be feigning ignorance but it must realize by now that Moscow and Washington have joined forces to pus the Turkish military out of any involvement in northern Syria and Iraq.
8. This US-Russia collaboration against Turkey is having a dramatic effect on the war in northern Syria along the Turkish border. DEBKAfile’s military and intelligence sources report it opened the door to the secret deal between Washington and Moscow to divide the areas of influence in northern Syria between them – essentially assigning the Kurdish enclaves north of the Euphrates river and bordering on Iraq to American influence (see map), and the areas west of the Euphrates up to the Mediterranean to Russian control. This deal (first revealed by DEBKA Weekly 688 on Dec. 4) effectively squeezes Turkey out of any role in the Syrian conflict.
9. The ongoing battles in northern Syria near the Turkish border will have a greater impact in shaping the future of Syria and its unending conflict than any UN resolution. Participating in the fighting at present is a very big mixed cast: Russia, the Kurdish YPG militia, most of the important rebel groups, including radical Sunni organizations tied to Al Qaeda, such as the Nusra Front and Ahram al-Sham, Iran and Shiite Hizballah, and the Islamic State.
It is only when one of these forces gains the upper hand in this free-for-all, that there will be progress toward a political solution on ending the war.

[Vrej1915]

Re: Regional geopolitics

[Vrej1915]

Re: Regional geopolitics

US-Iranian-Russian-Iraqi offensive launched to recover Ramadi from ISIS
debka


Ramadi, the capital of the vast Anbar Province, was the second major Iraqi city to fall to the Islamic State after the devastating loss of Mosul. The importance of the offensive launched Tuesday, Dec. 22 for its recapture from ISIS lies chiefly in the makeup of the assault force, which is unique in contemporary Syrian and Iraqi conflicts.
DEBKAfile’s military sources name its partners as US and Russian army and air force elements, two varieties of Iraqi militia – Shiites under Iranian command and Sunnis, as well as the regular Iraqi army.
The Iraqi army is depicted as leading the assault. But this is only a sop to its lost honor for letting this Sunni city fall in the first place. The real command is in the hands of US Special Operations officers alongside Iraqi troops, and the Russian officers posted at the operational command center they established last month in Baghdad.
This Russian war room is in communication with US military headquarters in the Iraqi capital. It is from the Russian war room that the top commanders of the pro-Iranian militias send their orders. The most prominent is Abu Mahadi al-Muhandis, who heads the largest Iraqi Shiite militia known as the Popular Mobilization Committee.
Noting another first, our military sources disclose that Iranian officers liaise between the Americans and Russians on the front against ISIS. If this combination works for Ramadi, it will not doubt be transposed to the Syrian front and eventually, perhaps next summer, serve as the format for the general offensive the Americans are planning for wresting Mosul from the Islamic State.
When US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter was in Baghdad last week to review the final preparations for the Ramadi operation, US officials were still insisting that the Iraqi army was fit for the heavy lifting after being trained by American instructors.
By Tuesday, US sources were admitting that pro-Iranian militias were also part of the operation.
DEBKAfile’s military sources report on the division of tasks as follows:
Iraqi army forces are attacking the Ramadi city center from the north; Shiite militias from the south. The US air force is pounding ISIS targets inside the town in order to cripple its ability to fight off the oncoming forces. The Russian air force is standing by, ready to destroy any ISIS reinforcements attempting to cross in from Syria to aid their comrades in beleaguered Ramadi.
Experts keeping track of the offensive have no doubt that it will end in success. The jihadists holding Ramadi are few in number – 400-500 fighters at most. However, cleansing the town after victory will presents a daunting difficulty. In Tikrit and the refinery town of Baiji, ISIS split its defense structure into two levels - one on the surface and the second hidden underground.
The top level was thinly manned by fighting strength, but crawling with mines, booby-trapped trucks and IEDs detonated by remote control.
The lower level, consisting of deeply-dug interconnected tunnel systems, was where ISIS fighters hid out and jump out at night for attacks. According to the experience gained in other Iraqi battle arenas against ISIS, neither the Iraqi army nor local Shiite militias have been able to plumb and destroy these tunnel systems. And so they could never really purge the Islamic State from “liberated” towns.
Ramadi will face the same quandary.

[londontsi]

Re: Regional geopolitics

Anonymous declares cyber war on Turkey over ‘supporting ISIS’

https://www.rt.com/news/326853-anonymous-war-turkey-isis/

The Anonymous hacktivist group has taken responsibility for a powerful cyber-attack on the Turkish sector of the internet last week. It promised to continue waging cyber warfare on .tr domains until Ankara stops the “insanity” of supporting Islamic State.

The massive Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack on Turkish websites last week, initially attributed to spooky “Russian hackers,” has been clarified with Anonymous issuing a video claiming responsibility and declaring cyber war on Turkey for supporting terrorists of Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL).

The DDoS attack (measured in gigabits per second, or plainly how much traffic is being sent to a site) on Turkish DNS servers reached 40 Gbps, quite enough to shut down altogether any domain.

The attack began on December 14, and came to a halt only a week later, on December 21. Turkish media alleged that 400,000 .tr domains were forced offline.

The affected websites were able to return online only after Turkey’s leading National Response Center for Cyber Events cut off all incoming international traffic to the .tr websites, thus shutting down national “internet borders,” completely and denying “anybody outside the country access to Turkish websites,” Anonymous pointed out.

“This mass cyber-attack is known to be the biggest so far with the intensity of slowing down the websites,” ODTÜ Computer Engineering Professor Attila Özgit said as cited by Hurriyet Daily News.

The hacktivists claim the attack on Turkey was conducted within the framework of the counterterrorist cyber operation #OpISIS. The basic message behind the attack is that Turkey’s woes with the internet are set to repeat unless Ankara revises its policies towards Islamic extremists.

“We won’t accept that [President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan, the leader of Turkey, will help ISIS any longer. The news media has already stated that Turkey’s internet has been the victim of massive DDOS attacks,” SAID a cloaked figure in the video wearing a Guy Fawkes mask.

“Turkey is supporting Daesh [Arabic pejorative for Islamic State] by buying oil from them, and hospitalizing their fighters," the hacktivist in the video said. “If you don’t stop supporting ISIS, we will continue attacking your internet, your root DNS, your banks and take your government sites down. After the root DNS we will start to hit your airports, military assets and private state connections.

‘We will destroy your critical banking infrastructure. Stop this insanity now, Turkey. Your fate is in your own hands.”

In early December, Russia presented proof that Turkey is deeply involved in illegal oil trafficking and trade. Ankara has consistently denied this, despite the presented video evidence made by Russian drones and warplanes.



‘More devastating than any nuclear war’: John McAfee on the coming cyber war with ISIS

https://www.rt.com/usa/326181-world-war-cyber-attacks-mcafee/

[Haykakan]

Re: Regional geopolitics

A captured IS fighter spills the beans http://www.groong.org/news/msg560724.html

[Vrej1915]

Re: Regional geopolitics

Turkey: Is Russia Ready to Play the Kurdish Card?

http://www.eurasianet.org/node/76621

Amid the free-fall in Russian-Turkish relations, Moscow seems ready to exploit Turkey’s historical Achilles heel: its restive Kurdish minority.

After Russian President Vladimir Putin pledged no rapprochement with Turkey’s current political leadership, Russian officials have extended an invitation to the leader of Turkey’s main pro-Kurdish party to visit Moscow.

Selahattin Demirtaş, head of the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party, is due in Moscow on December 24. Demirtaş has expressed a desire to open a party office in the Russian capital during his visit, which will be hosted by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

The visit will likely raise more than a few eyebrows in Ankara, stoking fears that Russian support could extend beyond Turkey’s legal Kurdish movement to Kurdistan Workers’ Party, the PKK.

“The PKK had an office in Russia and from time to time it received assistance and support from Russia in the 1990s; Russia never considered PKK as a terrorist organization,” said retired Turkish diplomat Murat Bilhan, who served in Moscow.

The collapse in bilateral relations following late November’s downing of a Russian military jet by Turkish fighters coincides with the collapse in Ankara’s peace process with the PKK. In Turkey’s predominantly Kurdish southeast, Turkish security forces are now carrying out the biggest security crackdown in more than a decade against the PKK. Many towns and cities across the region are under curfew with over 10,000 security troops deployed and supported by tanks. On December 17, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan promised to “annihilate” the PKK rebels in their homes.

“According to Turkish sources, the PKK is requesting heavy weaponry from Russia to broaden the insurgency in Turkey, I don't know what the Russian response was,” said Atilla Yeşilada, political consultant of Global Source Partners. Russia’s Kornet anti-tank missiles are likely to be at the top of the PKK wish list.

Moscow is likely unwilling to take such a step at present, Turkish analysts believe. A more likely option for Russia is providing arms to the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), a group that operates in Syria and which is closely connected to the PKK. Turkish officials characterize the PYD as an affiliate of the PKK and a terrorist organization.

The PYD’s armed militia controls much of the Turkish-Syrian border. “The PYD gets support from western countries, but it may also look for support from Russia as well. Russia is very active in the region, but if Moscow supports the PYD, it would bring a very negative reaction from Turkey,” said Bilhan.

Ankara appears for now to have little appetite for ratcheting up further tensions with Moscow. “Ankara has been taking insults and pressure and reacting very calmly, which they would not put up with from any other county. If they [Russia] do send arms, I don't think there is much they [Turkish officials] can do,” noted international relations expert Soli Özel of Istanbul’s Kadir Has University.

A step too far for Ankara may be the 98-kilometer (roughly 60-mile) strip of the Syrian border that divides the last remaining Syrian-Kurdish canton of Afrin from the rest of Syrian Kurdistan. “It's a red line for Ankara, if the PYG crosses west of the Euphrates, Ankara has declared it would intervene,” said Sinan Ülgen, a visiting scholar at Carnegie Europe.

Why is Ankara so sensitive? Such a move would give Syrian Kurds control of nearly all of the Turkish-Syrian border, denying an important supply route not only to Islamic State but also to Syrian rebel groups that Ankara is supporting.

A priority for Russian forces in Syria is to seal off Turkish supply routes for Syrian rebels. But Washington could yet thwart Moscow’s courting of the Syrian Kurds. “There are over 30 US special forces members in the Jazira canton under the PYD’s control,” observed retired diplomat Aydın Selcen who opened Turkey’s consulate in the Iraqi Kurdish regional capital of Erbil. “I would not expect them to forsake that very valuable partnership for Russia; it is too valuable to have the US as a partner.”

Ankara is not without cards to play. Languishing in a Turkish jail is Abdullah Öcalan, the leader of the PKK. Until July’s collapse of the peace process, Öcalan was in talks with Turkish leaders. In a potential effort to defuse the Kurdish issue, and thus prevent Moscow from exploiting it, Ankara could opt to revive the peace process. “Let’s build rational relations with Syrian Kurds, with whoever represents them, and let’s go back to the peace process in Turkey,” urged Selcen, the retired Turkish diplomat.

But with Turkish tanks operating in towns and cities in Turkey’s Kurdish region, the idea of revived negotiations seems to be a reach at this time. “Turkey’s policy of demonizing Kurds in Turkey and Syria could backfire seriously, and anyone, in particular Iran and Russia, who wish to do harm to Turkey is very certain to use the PYD and PKK,” said Yeşilada, the political consultant.

“So far, the PYD has listened to American advice, but it could change sides anytime,” Yeşilada added.

Editor's note: Dorian Jones is a freelance reporter based in Istanbul.

[Vrej1915]

Re: Regional geopolitics

Russia-Turkey Row Claims Another Victim: Pan-Turkic Song Contest

http://www.eurasianet.org/node/76641

A Kyrgyz in a Mongol warrior princess getup won the Turkvision song contest in the third iteration of the event that brings together Turkic peoples from across Eurasia in a musical celebration of a shared culture.

But this year’s contest, held in Istanbul on Saturday, was held without Tatars, Yakuts, Tuvans, or Bashkirs, as Moscow forbade Russia’s Turkic peoples from taking part in the contest amid the country’s ongoing row with Ankara. Russian-Turkish relations remain caught in a downward spiral since Turkish military jets shot down a Russian fighter in late November.

There was little information released about the Russian ban; the conference organizers and Turksoy, the Ankara-based Turkic cultural organization under whose auspices Turkvision operates, did not respond to EurasiaNet’s requests for comment.

At least eleven Turkic regions of Russia had declared an intention to perform this year, according to an accounting by the website Eurovoix: the republics of Altai, Bashkortostan, Crimea, Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachay-Cherkessia (represented by a joint entry), Khakassia, Tatarstan, Tuva, and Yakutia; Stavropol Krai; and entries representing Moscow and the Kumyk minority of Dagestan.

The downing of the Russian Su-24 in late November, however, prompted a host of retaliatory measures by Russia against Turkey, and Turkvision was not spared. Three days after the incident, Russia’s Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinsky sent a telegram to the Russian regions that wanted to participate in Turksoy recommending that they “immediately suspend contacts with that international organization and not participate in its events.” The Russian Ministry of Culture press service did not respond to a request from EurasiaNet for comment.

While the Culture Ministry statement did not mention Turkvision, all the Russian regions announced in the following days that they would not be participating in the contest. The last to drop out was Tatarstan whose entrant, the all-female vocal pop group Yamle Qizlar, said they found out they could not go on December 3.

“For five days or so we had known that we probably wouldn’t be going, but we knew that all the regions except Tatarstan had dropped out, and we hoped that something would change,” said one group member, Gulnaz Battalova, in an interview with local news website Realnoe Vremya. “No one forbade us, but the Tatarstan government advised us not to go – you never know what sort of consequences there could be. We don’t want any problems for Tatarstan.”

“Until the end we believed we had a chance to fight to win this prestigious contest,” said Aigul Akhmadeeva, one of the contest organizers in the republic of Bashkortostan, in an interview with local news website proufu.ru. “After Medinsky’s announcement all our hopes were dashed. This is the only contest in which we can tell the world about ourselves. Now we’re hurt and annoyed, but we hope we’ll be able to compete next year... We, the Turkic people, should be in contact with one another in spite of the political situation.”

Turkvision was not free of politics. While the Russians’ absence was not mentioned during the show, the contest did for the first time have an entrant from Syria, Adil San, a member of the Turkmen minority that has been at the center of the Turkey-Russia conflict. Russia’s bombing of Turkmen militia groups in northwestern Syria has been a cause celebre in Turkey, which likely played a significant role in Turkey’s decision to shoot down the Russian jet. After his performance, San gave a short speech: “Good evening, Turkic world, greetings from the Syrian Turkmens who are fighting against oppression. Turkey is the mother of the Turkmens.”

This year’s contest suffered from the lack of the Russian participants, who in the first two iterations of Turkvision have produced some of its most memorable moments. Many of the European entries feature Turkish diaspora members singing heartfelt, keyboard-backed Turkish ballads, and the post-Soviet republics have tended toward Russian-influenced pop. Russia’s regions, meanwhile, have produced some of the most self-consciously Turkic and original performances with martial rhythms, hunting and warrior imagery, and throat singing and animal imitations.

Kyrgyzstan’s Jiidesh Idrisova, however, took up that mantle in her winning performance; she and her backup hip-hop dancers dressed in fur-and-leather Mongol-inspired costumes and her pop song, Kim Bilet, featured both throat singing and auto-tuned vocals. Kazakhstan placed second and Turkey third. An ex-Soviet republic has now won every Turkvision; Azerbaijan won the inaugural contest in 2013 and Kazakhstan won last year.

The Russia-Turkey dispute was not even the first major problem for this year’s Turkvision. The contest was originally scheduled to take place in Mary, Turkmenistan. In August, without explanation, the venue of the contest was changed to Istanbul. Next year’s Turkvision is scheduled to take place in Baku.

Editor's note: Joshua Kucera is a Washington, DC-based freelance writer who specializes in Central Asia, the Caucasus and the Middle East. He is the editor of EurasiaNet's Bug Pit blog.

[armnuke]

Re: Regional geopolitics

Expert: Turkey Faces Full-Scale Armed Conflict in Southeast

Turkey may be on the verge of a civil war that will destabilize the situation in the country for years ahead, Semyon Bagdasarov, director of the Center for the Study of the Middle East and Central Asia, told TASS on Wednesday. "The Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) wanted to enlist Russia’s support very much because a true civil war has broken out in southeastern Turkey. The Kurds need external support," Bagdasarov said commenting on a visit to Moscow of Selahattin Demirtas, a co-chairman of the pro-Kurdish HDP party, Tass reported.

"As for Russia, it should have clear understanding that it should support the national liberation movement of the Kurdish people, including the HDP, if it wants to influence Turkey’s stance," the Russian expert went on to say.

According to Bagdasarov, the civil war in the Kurdish-populated regions of southeastern Turkey will gain momentum. "The Turkish and US leaderships will have to forget about Syria soon," he stressed.

"The thing is that today the Iraqi government met a delegation of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (Turkey) and promised to supply it with weapons. The situation in the region is turning into a full-scale armed conflict, and Turkey is becoming the object of a civil war, which will destabilize the situation in the country for years ahead," Bagdasarov claimed.

http://en.farsnews.com/newstext.aspx?nn=13941003000729

[Vrej1915]

Re: Regional geopolitics

Assad again controls Damascus thanks to Russian air strikes and intelligence
debka
26/12/2015

The Russian air strike that Friday, Dec. 25, killed Zahran Aloush, founder of the most powerful Syrian rebel group Jaysh al-Islam and his deputy, gave President Bashar Assad a big break in the Syrian war, thanks to his powerful backer, Vladimir Putin.
This grave loss will accelerate the breakup of Syrian rebel strongholds in and around Damascus. It will also hasten the evacuation under a UN-sponsored ceasefire of at least 2,000 rebels from the Damascus region. Less noticed, was the UN plan to remove at the same time several thousands ISIS fighters from the Syrian capital and transport them to their Syrian headquarters. The latter project has not been trumpeted for good reason: It implies UN recognition of ISIS as a party in the Syria war.
For nearly five years, the war seesawed back and forth, with neither the Syrian army nor the insurgents gaining the upper hand for long, even after Tehran threw its Lebanese proxy, Hizballah, into the fray to bolster Assad’s army.
Interventions by the US, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, Jordan and Israel were too trifling and hesitant to tilt the balance in favor of the anti-Assad insurgent militias. Weapons supplies were inferior and tardy and kept the rebels heavily outgunned by the Syrian army’s tanks, helicopters and fighter jets, and helpless against the Iranian-made barrel bombs dropped by the Syrian air force.
The Obama administration was the architect of this uneven support strategy, going so far as to constrain the rebels’ other foreign backers against giving them the resources for carrying the day, aside from local victories.
This strategy had the effect of prolonging the vicious conflict – until it was cut short bytwo events:
1. In the summer of 2014, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant arrived in full force to capture the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, scattering seven Iraqi armed divisions to the four winds, and grabbing their sophisticated American weapons, along with their arsenals, that were crammed with good American tanks, armored personnel carriers, and an assortment of surface, antitank and antiair missiles.
Part of this booty was diverted to ISIS Syrian headquarters in Raqqa.
2. A year later, in late September 2015, President Vladimir Putin embarked on a massive buildup of Russian military strength in Syria - notably, his air and missile forces - for direct intervention in the war.
In contrast to President Barack Obama, who sought to keep his hand on the conflict by a complicated system of dribbling arms to select Syrian rebel groups, Putin went all out with massive military and strategic backing to assure the Syrian ruler and his Iranian ally of victory.
The Russian strategy is now becoming evident: It is to drive the rebels out of the areas they have captured around the main cities of Latakia, Aleppo, Idlib, Homs, Hama and the capital, Damascus, giving them two options: join the opposition front around the table for negotiating an end to the war, or total eradication – even though Moscow and Washington have yet to agree which of the rebel militias belong around that table.
According to Moscow’s scale of priorities, the fight against the Islamic State must wait its turn until after Bashar Assad’s authority as president is fully restored and his country returns to his army’s control.
But on the way to this objective, Putin has run up against a major impediment: the failure of Iranian, Shiite militia, Hizballah and Syrian army ground forces keep up with his pace. The plan was for Russian air strikes and missiles to clear rebels out of one area after another and for pro-Assad ground troops to storm in and take over.
But these troops are proving too slow to press the advantage given them by the Russians.
Last week, the Russians decided to use their intelligence assets to speed things up. They borrowed an Israeli counter-terror tactic to start targeting key rebel chiefs for liquidation.
The death of the Jaysh al-Islamc commander as the result of a Russian airborne rocket strike on Friday was an intelligence feat rather than a military one. Just as Israel last Sunday used its clandestine assets in Damascus to precisely target the Hizballah-Iranian arch terrorist Samir Quntar at his home in the Jaramana district, so the Russians directed their agents on the ground to mark the secret meeting of Jaysh al-Islam commanders at Marj al-Sultan at the precise moment for taking them down.
This blow to the rebel movement, plus the mass-evacuation of its fighters from the Syrian capital, are major steps towards bringing the Syrian capital back under the control of the Syrian dictator.

[Vrej1915]

Re: Regional geopolitics

Iran Test-Fires Rockets, Nearly Hits Western Warships In Gulf
December 30, 2015

http://www.rferl.org/content/iran-test-fires-rockets-nearly-hits-western-warhips-persian-gulf-hormuz-strait/27456694.html

The Iranian Revolutionary Guards fired rockets near three Western warships as they were entering the Persian Gulf in what a U.S. military spokesman on December 29 called a "highly provocative" act.

The rockets were not fired at the warships, but Iranian vessels were conducting a test on December 26 and a U.S. aircraft carrier came within 1,500 yards of being hit by a rocket, U.S officials said.

The U.S. Truman aircraft carrier was given only 23 minutes' notice, said Navy Commander Kyle Raines, spokesman for the U.S. Central Command.

"These actions were highly provocative, unsafe, and unprofessional, and call into question Iran's commitment to the security of a waterway vital to international commerce," he said.

The Western warships were on a routine transit through the narrow Hormuz Strait at the mouth of the Gulf when the incident occurred, he said.

According to Reuters, NBC News said the U.S. destroyer Buckley and a French frigate were in the area where the rockets were fired.

"While most interactions between Iranian forces and the U.S. Navy are professional, safe, and routine, this event was not and runs contrary to efforts to ensure freedom of navigation and maritime safety in the global commons," Raines said.

Based on reporting by Reuters and AFP