RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20548/iran-israel-denial-game

Soleimani would do everything to avoid a direct clash with either Israel or the US forces in the region.

If he [“Supreme Guide” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei] does nothing, he could anger his core supporters. If he orders attacks on Israeli and/or Jewish targets, he won’t be able to cite plausible deniability. And that, as the Iranian state TV analyst suggests, could give Israel an excuse for attacks on big targets in Tehran itself.

“Will this time be different?” This is the question that haunts Tehran political circles as more body bags are flown in from Damascus.

The body bags contain the mortal remains of 13 Iranian diplomatic and military officers, including two senior commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), General Muhammad-Reza Zahedi (alias Abu Mahdi) and Gen. Muhammad-Hadi Haj-Rahimi, killed in an Israeli airstrike on what was presented as an Iranian consular building in the Syrian capital.

To be sure, this is not the first time that Israelis have taken out IRGC officers, and Lebanese, Iraqi, Syrian, Pakistani, and Afghan mercenaries in Syria.

The take-out operation started in 2015 and reached a peak in 2020. The last time an Iranian official organ provided figures was in 2018, when the Foundation for Martyrs and Self-Sacrificers put Iran’s losses at around 5,000. The figures didn’t show how many were Iranian officers or foreign mercenaries.

In the first three years of this deadly cycle, Tehran used the transfer of body bags from Damascus as a propaganda ploy and organized mass rallies on the burial day of its “heroes of Islam.” Later, when Tehran’s losses grew the propaganda aspect was forgotten, the “heroes of Islam” were quietly buried in their native hometowns and villages.

Over time, partly thanks to the influence of late Gen. Qassem Soleimani, Tehran decided to swallow the bitter pill and brag about “taking revenge,” but not retaliate.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20529/qatar-role-gaza-hamas

In one of the more high profile cases involving Qatar’s financing of terrorism, the family of murdered American journalist Steven Sotloff claimed in a federal lawsuit in 2022 that prominent Qatari institutions wired $800,000 to an Islamic State “judge” who ordered the murder of Sotloff and another American journalist, James Foley. The two were beheaded in Syria in 2014, their killings filmed and published in grisly propaganda videos.

The US moved its forces to Qatar’s Al Udeid Air Base from Saudi Arabia in 2003, after the 9/11 attacks on the US in 2001. There seems no reason why it could not be moved once again to a country in the region that does not support terror groups.

Of even greater concern [than Qatar contributing $5.1 billion to US campuses since 1986], though, is the Biden administration’s willingness to allow Qatar to play a prominent role in negotiations for a ceasefire in Gaza and manage humanitarian aid delivered to a new pier being built in Gaza, even though Doha’s negotiating status and that of a potential caretaker have been thoroughly compromised through its involvement in creating Hamas’s terrorist infrastructure.

Given Qatar’s well-documented support for Hamas, it is clear that no meaningful resolution of the Gaza conflict is possible so long as Doha is continuing with its efforts to negotiate a settlement that is favourable to Hamas, one that would enable the terrorist movement to remain in control of Gaza, or that Qatar should operate, or indeed have anything to do with, the delivery of “humanitarian aid” to what seems planned as Hamas’s new beachhead.

Rather than allowing Qatar to continue playing its double game, where Doha pretends to be a close ally of the West while at the same time sponsoring terrorist groups such as Hamas and the Taliban, the Biden administration needs to wake up to the real threat Qatar poses to the security of the Middle East, and concentrate its efforts on negotiating a ceasefire deal and finding a custodian for Gaza and its new pier that do not require Qatar’s malign involvement.

After the success the Gulf state of Qatar achieved in helping restore the Taliban to power in Afghanistan, Doha is now investing all its energy in seeking to keep Hamas in power in Gaza.

For more than a decade, the tiny Gulf emirate has been using the massive profits it derives from its vast energy resources to sponsor radical Islamist ideology that underpins terrorist organisations such as Hamas.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20489/south-africa-hamas

“The South African government is the same thing as Hamas. It’s an Iranian proxy, and its role in the war is to fight the ideological and ideas war to stigmatize Jews around the world. ” — Frans Cronje, CEO Race Relations Institute, interview on Chai FM Radio, January 26, 2024.

The ANC’s lax monitoring and prosecution of the terrorist presence in South Africa may have been the result of an understanding between the government and terrorist groups not to execute terror operations in the country while permitting fundraising to continue without interference from South African law enforcement agencies.

Adding to South Africa’s concerns is the possibility that its citizens waging jihad in Mozambique may eventually return and apply their combat experience at home to target the ANC regime.

South Africa’s ruling African National Congress (ANC) has close and long-standing ties to the terrorist organization Hamas. As early as 2015, Hamas had developed personal ties with South Africa’s then-President Jacob Zuma. In October 2015, the ANC hosted a Hamas delegation led by terrorist mastermind Khaled Mashaal, who met with Zuma in Pretoria.

South Africa might appear to have scored another diplomatic victory propaganda victory by getting the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to accept onto its judicial docket the African state’s charge that Israel’s presence in the West Bank is an illegal occupation. This recent initiative follows South Africa’s December 29, 2023 presentation to the ICJ that Israel’s military operations in Gaza were supposedly acts of genocide against the territory’s civilian population.

While South Africa’s latest grandstand maneuver will most likely fail on its lack of merit, the effort did succeed in exposing yet another unsavory dimension of the relationship between South Africa and the terrorist organization Hamas, which initiated the war against Israel on October 7, 2023.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/iran-smuggles-us-weapons-from-afghanistan-to-terrorists-in-israel/

In December, the Biden administration blocked a shipment of M4 rifles to Israel. The rifles were meant to be used by local community self-defense units of the kind that had served as the front line of defense against the Hamas attack on Oct 7. However the Biden administration claimed that it was concerned that the self-defense units might be Jewish “right-wing extremists”.

The Islamic terrorists attacking them however had no trouble finding M4 rifles. They just expected theirs to come by a more complicated road from Afghanistan, by way of Iran’s terror operatives, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan via a drug smuggling route, and then inside Israel.

The M4 rifles were part of a package that included grenade launchers, anti-tank missiles, anti-tank landmines, RPGs, C4 and Semtex explosives, and hand grenades.

A number of those were clearly American weapons including the M4s and the M203 grenade launchers: both in use in Afghanistan. The Alma Center, founded by IDF Lt Col (Res.) Sarit Zehavi, believes that the M4s are likely “spoils from Iraq, Syria or Afghanistan.”

If U.S. weapons from Afghanistan made their way to Islamic terrorists in Israel, it would not be the first time. Islamic terrorists in Gaza had been previously spotted with M4 and M16 rifles, including during the Oct 7 attacks. Rep. James Comer had dispatched a letter after the Hamas attacks to the Department of Defense asking it to explain the M4A1 Carbines, which were “specially designed for U.S. Special Operations Forces” in the hands of the terrorists.

“The surprise terror attacks by Hamas into Israel were made possible, in part, because of U.S. arms left behind in Afghanistan by the Biden administration,” Larry Keane, the Counsel for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, wrote at the Firearm Industry Trade Association.

The weapons package now intercepted by Israel shows how Iran may have tapped into the weapons left behind in Afghanistan. The weapons shipment appears to be a ‘sandwich’ with Iran moving American weapons to the Islamic terrorists backed by the Biden administration.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20531/turkish-tv-discusses-hitting-greece

[T]he Turkish government aims to conquer the Greek islands in the Aegean Sea – either militarily or demographically. The goal is the same: the islands’ capture.

The Turkish media also falsely and repeatedly claims that “152 Greek islands and islets in the Aegean belong to Turkey”. These islands, however, historically and legally, belong to Greece, mainly through the 1924 Treaty of Lausanne, 1932 Turkish-Italian Agreements and the 1947 Paris Treaty.

Conquest is part of Islamic jihad (warfare in the service of Islam) which, according to Islamic scriptures, is a communal obligation. The ideology of conquest in the name of jihad is what drove Ottoman Turks to invade and conquer lands stretching across Asia, Europe and Africa for more than 600 years.

According to Islamists, Muslim military expansion is an act of Allah’s favor because Allah bestows those places upon Muslim conquerors.

The Turkish government’s stance on the genocide is a bizarre combination of denial and conceit. First, they say that their ancestors did not commit genocide and that it was merely a war of self-defense. Then, they proclaim “they [Christians] deserved it” and “if need be, we could do it again”.

The US government seems to ignore that Turkey – acting as if it is the successor to the Ottoman Empire – does not stop threatening Greece, Cyprus and Armenia with military invasion.

The US Congress would be well advised to reconsider its decision regarding F-16 sales to Turkey and this alliance altogether.

On Turkey’s pro-government TV channel AHaber, political analysts and national security specialists on February 28 enthusiastically discussed how the Turkish Air Force could strike Greek islands in the Aegean Sea.