Tuesday, July 28, 2015
Military Power, not Sanctions, Will Halt Jihadist and State-sponsored Terrorism
Iranians act on Khamenei's advice to continue their disruptive Middle East intervention. ~~~~~ Bahrain said on Saturday that it stopped an attempt to smuggle explosives into the country. Two Bahraini suspects were arrested after the Bahrain Royal Naval Force intercepted a vessel heading towards Bahrain, the Interior Ministry said. The Ministry named the suspects as Mahdi Subah Abdul Mohsen Mohammad, 30, and Abbas Abdul Hussain Abdullah Mohammad, also 30. Initial inquiries showed that Mahdi received military training in Iran during August 2013, included how to manufacture and use explosive ordinance and improvised explosive devices, as well as firearms training. The training occurred at an Iranian Revolutionary Guards camp, the Ministry said in a statement carried by Bahrain News Agency (BNA). The suspects also received funds to assist in the failed smuggling operation, according to Ministry information as reported by BNA : "The two suspects arrested attempted to dispose of the materials they received off the coast of Bahrain; however they were later recovered by the Bahraini Coast Guard and were found to contain a lethal mix of materials, including 43.8 kg of the powerful explosive C4, eight automatic assault rifles (Kalashnikov), 32 Kalashnikov magazines, and ammunition and detonators. The two suspects have admitted receiving the shipment from Iranian handlers outside Bahrain’s territorial waters." According to the Ministry, investigations also revealed that Mahdi was recruited by a Bahraini citizen, Jaffar Ahmed Salman, currently a fugitive in Iran. He is said to have facilitated the travel, financing and training. The Ministry said the incident is the latest in a number of failed attempts to smuggle explosive materials into Bahrain recently. Last month, Bahraini Police reported the discovery of a weapons stash containing large quantities of internationally sourced explosives and bomb-making materials in the Dar Kulaib area in the south of the country. Bahraini authorities said those arrested have been referred to the Public Prosecution while investigations continue. ~~~~~ Following the Bahrain announcement, Iran accused sunni-ruled Bahrain of raising tensions in the Gulf by making unfounded allegations against it. Iran's official IRNA news agency quoted Iran foreign ministry spokeswoman Marzieh Afkham as saying : "It is clear that the government of Bahrain, by repeating unfounded allegations, seeks to create a climate of tension in the region. Such methods are not constructive, and do not diminish the Islamic republic's commitment to continue its policy...and regional cooperation in the fight against terrorism and extremism." That announcement came within hours after Bahrain, which has a shiite majority, said it was recalling its envoy from Teheran in protest at "hostile" comments by Iranian leaders. Last Sunday, Bahrain summoned Iran's acting charge d'affaires to protest against its supreme leader Ayatollah Al Khamenei voicing support for "oppressed people" across the Middle East, including in Bahrain. Iran supports the shiite majority that is ruled by a sunni minority royal family. Iran doesn't hide its support for the shiite protest movement in Bahrain, but rejects accusations of interference in Bahrain's internal affairs. Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, in Kuwait on Sunday on a regional tour that will include Qatar and Iraq, urged Iran's Gulf Arab neighbours to cooperate against the common threat of "terrorism, extremism and sectarianism." Zarif also denied as "baseless" Bahrain's claims that it had detained two men for trying to smuggle weapons from Iran : "I openly say the claims are totally wrong....The timing of the announcement is an attempt to prevent any progress in cooperation between Iran and other Gulf states." ~~~~~ And, yesterday, Bahrain's protector, Saudi Arabia, responded. Saudi Foreign Minister Ade al-Jubeir accused Iran of making threats against Riyadh's ally, Bahrain, which he said showed that the Islamic republic was harboring hostile designs against its Middle East neighbors. Speaking at a joint news conference with visiting European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, Jubeir said Saudi Arabia had raised the issue with her. He said the comments showed that Iran is intervening in its neighbors' internal affairs : "It does not represent the desire of a state for good neighborly relations but that of a state which has aspirations in the region and which carried out hostile act like this." He added that Iran's hostile actions could be linked to the terms of the agreement with world powers on its nuclear program and possibly to setbacks suffered by Iran's Houthi allies in Yemen and by President Bashar al-Assad's forces in Syria. "We reject their comments and reject the hostility they show towards the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the countries of the region," he said. Relations between regional sunni leader Saudi Arabia and shiite rival leader Iran have long been hostile, with Riyadh accusing non-Arab Iran of trying to expand its influence to its Arab neighbors and allies. Saudi Arabia, a Western ally, and the Gulf Arab states are concerned that the nuclear deal will encourage rapprochement between Iran and the US that could embolden Iran to increase support for paramilitary groups across the Middle East. ~~~~~ And who's going to try to calm the troubled waters in the Gulf? The very person who agitated them by maklng a deal with Iran. US Secretary of State John Kerry will travel to Egypt and the Gulf this weekend for talks on the recent Iran nuclear deal and the fight against ISIS militants. Kerry will be in Cairo on August 2nd for a session of the US-Egypt Strategic Dialogue -- a forum that "reaffirms the United States’ longstanding and enduring partnership with Egypt," the State Department said yesterday. On August 3rd, he will travel to Doha to meet with counterparts from the Gulf Cooperation Council -- Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman and Qatar -- for talks US officials say wil concentrate on the Iran nuclear deal, the war n Syria and the battle against ISIS. In Doha, Kerry will also meet his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov. Kerry said last Friday that he and Lavrov plan to discuss combatting ISIS militants and the role Iran could play after Turkey agreed to step up its effort and to allow US jets launch air strikes from a base near the Syrian border. Russia has been trying to ease relations between the Syrian al-Assad government and regional states, including Saudi Arabia and Turkey, to forge an alliance to fight ISIS. ~~~~~ Dear readers, today a bomb attack killed two Bahraini policemen on duty in the mainly shiite village of Sitra, south of the Bahrain capital Manama. The Interior Ministry announced the attack just days after the government said it had disrupted an arms smuggling plot linked to Iran. Reuters reports that the Ministry posted on its Twitter account : "A terrorist bombing targeted policemen on duty in the Sitra area, resulting in the deaths of two of them and seriously wounding a third." It added that five more policemen had received light to moderate injuries and were being treated in hospital. Is Iran so sure of its position with the UN and Europe that it feels free to insult the intelligence of the US Congress as it decides the fate of the Iran deal in America? Or is Iran's terrorist program so advanced and well-financed that it matters little to the Ayatollah what Congress does? We hear how sanctions have strangled Iran economically -- but it has continued its nuclear program and now very likely has the essentials of a bomb; it has coopted Iraq by supplying military men and weapons while Obama hesitates; it is preparing to buy an advanced anti-missile system from that other sanctions "pauper," Russia, whose pummeling of Ukraine continues. Sanction-riddled North Korea is reported ready to launch its first working ICBM later this year. Why is the West so sure that sanctions work anywhere? The evil intentions are carried out. The threat to annihiliate the West and Israel is ever closer and more real. Are sanctions only doing what any ordinary person could predict -- impoverishing and starving citizens with no clout while the war machine is fed. A 45-kg cache of C4 in Bahrain is far from an endgame, but the message is clear. Weapons and determined fanaticism beat sanctions every time. Only when the US and Europe step up to this home-truth and muscle up their sanctions with real military punch will Khamenei and his terrorist gangs be stopped. If you don't believe me, ask Turkey -- it just "got religion" about how to deal with jihadist terrorism. Cleaning out terrorists and creating buffer zones are done with military power, not sanctions.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
45 Kg of C-4 is certainly not an end game at all in the world of terrorists’ activities.
ReplyDeleteBut it does establish a fact that there is a supply chain in place. Also 45 Kg of C-4 is not to be taken lightly at all. Great damage could be done with just 45Kg used and placed properly.
We are not taking the money supply source or the fighting material source seriously.
Ass the 5+1 nations sat “negotiating” with the Iranians for years – they were preparing for war against various their Arab nation neighbors. They were preparing for nuclear capabilities to be used against anyone they deemed destructible. They were preparing to win this jihad.
All the while our chief negotiator was preparing to run for president.
United States military training does not include instruction in the ideology of the enemy, a deliberate omission that puts America in "great peril." Muslims who adhere to Sharia law are behind the global jihad movement and the deadly attacks around the world on innocent people of all faiths, including other Muslims.
ReplyDeleteA plan to secure the Middle East for their own desired outcome, and one that defeats the Islamic terrorist groups and the so-called jihad should be fashioned after Presidents Ronald Reagan plan to defeat the Communists Soviet Union.
I am shocked and saddened by the absence void in factual analysis of our enemy on behalf of the national security community and what we face today is tantamount to the military of the past Cold War being prevented from studying Communism. The military is being prevented from studying the ideology that they faced on the battlefield. Analogous to a NFL football team not studying films of next week’s opponent.
A military victory is not within reach until we understand and know the enemy.
Obama will/did do anything even to the point of an agreement with Iran that gives them 100 Billion dollars, little to no inspection on their nuclear programs … than to have Israel and Saudi Arabia launch a first strike against his people in Iran and various other Muslim nations that he some fond feeling for.
DeleteBeware! Your Muslim Doctor Could Be A Jihadist. “COULD BE”, not necessarily is. Doctors, civil engineers and scientists have a capacity to prove very problematic if they embrace or have already embraced the jihadist doctrine of Sharia.
ReplyDeleteThis administration, this congress all talk of the War on Terrorism as being fought “there’ not “here”. Well friends it is being fought here. Everything that happens as an accident, an unexplained singularities, everyone could be has the opportunity to be an act of terrorism.
Every cent that is sent home to the Middle East by some well-meaning prosperous Muslims living here in the U.S., or Europe, or anyplace outside the Muslim world of direct influence can be suspect of “helping the cause” in a round-about way of thinking they are protect family still there.
Bu contribution with evil at any level, for any reason, is still envelopment with evil.
Casey pops premise that it’s will in the end be military might that stops Islamic terrorism/jihad is 110% correct as is the always the case. Sanctions will only force the ‘bankers’ of terrorism to force more contributions out of the existing and new sources of greater and greater cash flows they need.
ReplyDeleteBut keep in mind that the more aggressive that the opponents of this jihad get the more barbaric and the with more frequency these barbarous attacks against the Muslim people will get.
The worse in this war is still ahead of us.
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War
“Relativism,” defined by Merriam-Webster: the belief that different things are true, right, etc., for different people or at different times. So as long as your enemy believes he can defeat you, he will keep fighting. When he is convinced that his defeat is certain, and that his victory is impossible, he will quit fighting.
ReplyDeleteIn the Jihad War that radical Islam has declared on America, Israel, England, and indeed on Western Civilization, most Americans and Europeans do not seem to know or understand the enemy, the Jihad, the Islamic Resistance Movement that now includes Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, Iran, Syria, and the hundreds of other bigger and smaller non-governmental organizations of Islamic Jihad. Most of us know only what we hear on the evening news, or read in the papers, and the major media have hardly (if ever) mentioned the motives that are the driving force of Jihad – mostly because they don’t really know or understand their motives. But the Jihad is not difficult to understand – one need only look to the Koran for illumination and clarity.
Westerners no longer think of religion as a reason for war. We think “religious wars” are the stuff of ancient European history from centuries and centuries ago. We are wrong. The Jihad War is fundamentally and quintessentially a religious war. It is religious at the core. It is a war for the conquest of the world by Islam. It is inspired, motivated, driven, by the words of Allah, the words of God Himself. It is a war for the dominance of Islam over all other religions, for the dominance of Islamic culture over all other cultures. It is a war for Islamic supremacy.
Jihad is a war to be won with the tools of war not the tools on international bankers via prohibitions. IF you wish to kill the snake you cut off its head … you don’t try to just strangle it.
How can Jihad be defeated? Simply – perhaps not easily, or quickly, but simply – Jihad can be defeated, its motivation broken, dissipated, fractured, destroyed, by a Western “solidarity” to resist Jihad with all necessary will, political force, and military force, a solidarity to convince the Jihad that it cannot succeed.
ReplyDeleteThis will require the projection of overt military force and covert intelligence and combat operations against Jihad as long as Jihad continues to fight.
It also requires a projection of moral force and intellectual force, of intellectual and moral clarity and will. America, Europe, and the rest of Civilization must say to the face of Jihad – YOU CANNOT WIN, WE WILL NOT LET YOU WIN.
The Jihad cannot be reasoned with. It cannot be bargained with. It cannot be treatied with. It is not amenable to diplomacy, which it will view (correctly) as a sign of weakness, timidity, fear, and lack of resolve. It can only be surrendered to, or destroyed.