Tag: Netanyahu

Iran and the S-300 surface-to-air missile system. Lesson fortyfour

Russia has sold or is selling S-300 air defense systems to Iran.

Iran has at least five bases on the Strait of Hormuz. The bases are located at Bandar Abbas, Bandar Lengeh, Sirik, Kish Island and Abu Musa, the latter two being islands.

The Americans have several air bases near or in the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf. The bases are called Isa Airbase (Bahrain), Al Udeid (Qatar) and Al Minhad and Al Dhafra (UAE).

In addition, the Americans have a naval base in Bahrain, and one on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, and a base in Djibouti on the Horn of Africa. They also have a large base with combat personnel on the British island of Ascension 2,500 km west of Africa halfway to Brazil in South America.

According to Russian President Vladimir Putin, the sale of the S-300 air defense system will stabilize the situation in the Middle East. But more likely it will do just the opposite, destabilizing the situation in the Middle East. Israel felt an urge to take action against Iranian nuclear facilities in the near future before Iran had deployed air defense systems. The Iranian news organization Tasnim reported on July 19, 2016 that Iran had obtained the first S-300 PMU-2 air defense systems which Russia sold to them.

If Israel does not strike while they can, if Iran becomes a nuclear weapons country with operational nuclear weapons with sufficient range and accuracy, then because of the Iranian mullahs’ unpredictability, it could turn into a disaster for Israel, or at least develop into a cold war between Israel and Iran. The Iranians have not been late in involving other stakeholders in the conflict, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, which risks tipping over the balance of power to Israel’s disadvantage and strengthen Iran’s position in the region. That would probably lead to a new Arab war against Israel. It could also mean that more states in the region would try to develop nuclear weapons.

Nor is there anything to guarantee that Russia will not sell the nuclear weapons carrier missiles to Iran, once Iran has received and deployed its air defense systems. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Lavrov emphasizes that the weapons are defensive and pose no threat to neighboring countries, including Israel. Israeli intelligence minister Yuval Steinitz made a statement; “Instead of demanding that Iran cease its terrorist acts in the Middle East and the world, it now allows the country to acquire advanced weapons that will only lead to increased aggression.”

Iran also supplies crude oil to Russia in exchange for grain and building materials. In this way, we are already being affected in our part of the world as Russia exports its surplus of oil to strengthen its economy. The so-called P5 + 1 group, consisting of the United States, Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany, reached an agreement in July 2015 on Iran’s nuclear program, which meant that Russia and Iran stood as winners. President Putin said in a statement on the Kremlin’s website that the world could take a relieved breath. In Israel, the sentiments were of another kind. The country’s Prime Minister Netanyahu did not mince words and called the agreement a big mistake of historical proportions. The sanctions against Iran were supposed to be lifted. The agreement meant that;

A) Iran would scale down its nuclear program while opening the doors for UN inspectors to all its nuclear facilities, including military ones.
B) The arms embargo against Iran was stated to remain for five years.
C) In addition, according to the IAEA, a roadmap had been signed to investigate Iran’s previous nuclear activities.
D) But even if a contract was in the clear, it would take months before it could take effect. The US Congress and Iran’s parliament would now approve the agreement.
E) The West’s sanctions against Iran, which isolated the country financially, could be lifted and several billion dollars of Iran’s frozen assets thawed thereafter.

Whether or not the sanctions under Obama really were lifted is an assessment question for anyone to figure out for himself.

Source; Euromaidan Press, April 2015; SR; Ekot, July 2015

Homework:

Do you think that Hezbollah with Iran’s help can tip the balance in the Middle East? And if they do, will there be another “Yom Kippur”? If you don’t know what Yom Kippur is I suggest that you read up about it. But I can tell you that it was the Arab war against the Israelis in October 1973 and it is also a Jewish Holiday, which they named the war after since the Arabs attacked Israel on the last day of the yearly Jewish fasting. The Jews were taken by surprise back then in the year of 1973.

Roger M. Klang, defense political spokesman for the Christian Values Party (Kristna Värdepartiet) in Sweden

Middle East gas pipelines. Lesson forty

Both Russia and the United States are primarily active in Syria due to planned gas pipelines, and due to oil and gas discovered by the Israelis. The picture below shows two proposed gas pipelines and a yellow circle that marks oil discoveries, which are expected to surpass the total oil reserves in Saudi Arabia. The supposed oil field lies at the Golan Heights occupied by Israel on the border with Syria.

The gas pipeline between Qatar (see picture above) and Turkey further into Europe was a proposal from Qatar in 2009 to connect a gas pipeline to the existing “Nabucco pipeline”, which runs between Iran-Turkey and Baku-Turkey up to the borders of Europe, to supply Turkey and Europe with gas. One intended route was to be stretched through Saudi Arabia-Jordan-Syria and another route through Saudi Arabia-Kuwait-Iraq. Syria opposed the proposal from Qatar on the grounds that Syria wanted to “defend its Russian allies, Europe’s leading natural gas supplier”.

The Russian preferred gas pipeline (see illustration) whose route would run between Iran-Iraq-Syria-Lebanon and into the Mediterranean may have been more likely to get enforced. But if the Kremlin have a choice, it will not come about either. It is very interesting that Lebanon seemingly is to be one of the transit countries for the gas from Iran. That country could easily be circumvented and thus you could have avoided added troubles.

The oil and gas discoveries at the Golan Heights (see yellow ring in the picture above) have been awarded by Netanyahu’s government and is intended to be exploited by a company called Genie Oil and Gas. The oil discovery, which was discovered in 2015, is located within a 246 square kilometer area at the southern Golan Heights. Genie Oil and Gas has heavy names such as former defense minister Dick Cheney, British banker Jacob Rothschild, ex. CIA chief James Woolsey and media mogul Rupert Murdoch, in its Strategic Advisory Board, a board chaired by the founder of the company, the oil magnate Howard Jonas. Howard Jonas himself sits on ten billion barrels of oil in the US and forty billion barrels of oil in Israel. In addition, there are huge gas deposits in the waters outside Israel at 1,500 meters depth which are expected to be exploited starting in 2019 to supply Israel with gas for 40 years to come.

The Brexit election took place in June 2016 at a time when Barrack Obama was still president and before the US presidential election that year. It was defacto Obama who paved the way for Brexit, not David Cameron, Theresa May or Donald Trump! David Cameron was at the end of his political career, and Theresa May was about to replace Cameron as Prime Minister at the time of the Brexit election. Obama did what he did just because of the oil at the Golan Heights and in Uganda because he felt that the US could only bring one country in Europe, their foremost allied, Britain, aboard the lifeboat. It was Obama’s farewell gift to mainland Europe. “You can manage best you can!” He didn’t say that, but that’s what he meant. Trump just got the issue landing in his lap by the unscrupulous Obama, but was quick to “go along with it”, without any moral concerns whatsoever. The United States and Britain have kept the rest of Europe in the dark.

I don’t think Israel as a state has been involved in the plot even though they have been involved in the deal. Although a British Jew, Jacob Rothschild, is on the board and is a financier for Genie Oil and Gas, this does not mean that all of Israel are involved in this plot, it would be dishonest to claim such a thing. Israel knows they must follow God’s will to survive as a nation in their small part of the world. They can’t do anything about it anyway, they have to struggle to survive as a state themselves.

I suspect this Anglo-Saxon strategy makes America no longer a God state. “America takes care of their own!” And this is not in Israel’s interest. Rather, much of Israel is an involuntary passenger in an imbecill drunk drivers vehicle. All Israel as passengers can do are to make the driver aware of the dangers that appears during their journey and try to lead the driver along the safest road for both drivers and passengers as well as other road users. There are of course many voluntary passengers including Netanyahu in this unsafe, crazy and stupid ride. But we don’t know if Trump’s politics are for the worst yet, sometimes the most unpredictable persons can be right. We only know that the ride is unpredictable and unsafe. But if other players are predictable the outcome can still be for the best or it can at least be tolerable.

Homework:

Do you think that Israel as a common state knows that the drunken driver is slamming into innocent pedestrians on his ride?

If yes, what do you think it will induce for Israel’s safety as a state?

Roger M. Klang, defense political Spokesman for the Christian Values Party (Kristna Värdepartiet) in Sweden