Important Takeaways:
- Branches make gains in Africa, Middle East, and reach out to U.S. sympathizers
- Behind the ISIS-inspired assault in New Orleans on New Year’s Day is a disturbing reality: Military officials and national security insiders fear a perfect storm is forming around the world that could lead to more deadly terrorist attacks in the U.S.
- Even before U.S. Army veteran Shamsud-Din Jabbar killed 14 New Year’s revelers by driving a vehicle into a crowd on Bourbon Street, a growing consensus in foreign policy circles acknowledged that conditions were ripe for an Islamic State resurgence abroad and a new pool of recruits in the U.S., Europe and Asia willing to carry out acts of violence.
- The more territory the group controls and the safer its leaders feel from attack, the easier it is to coordinate recruiting efforts online, teach would-be terrorists how to build bombs or map out jihadi missions around the globe.
- U.S. and international officials warn that weak central governments are ill-equipped to stop it.
- In Afghanistan, the Islamic State’s local affiliate organization, ISIS-K, has dramatically expanded its reach since U.S. troops withdrew in August 2021.
- The most immediate threat to the U.S. seems to emanate from Syria, where a surprise rebel offensive overthrew the government of longtime dictator Bashar Assad last month. The U.S. quietly increased the number of troops in Syria from 900 to about 2,000 during the regime’s collapse and carried out strikes against ISIS fighters who set up shop in areas once controlled by Mr. Assad’s forces and their Russian allies.
- With an untested rebel force now governing in Damascus, the door may be open for neighboring Turkey to pursue Kurdish rebels who have been key U.S. partners for the past decade in the war against ISIS.
- “We’re going to see a lot more Islamic State and copycat attacks,” said former Defense Department official Michael Rubin, now a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. “The Islamic State is on the rebound, and tens of thousands of its militants might soon go free if Turkey or their proxies overwhelm the camp where Kurds keep them under guard in northeastern Syria
- “If ISIS goes free in Syria, don’t expect them to remain there,” Mr. Rubin told The Washington Times.
- “It would just be a matter of time until they began crossing the southern border or, for that matter, the northern border with Canada.”
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Important Takeaways:
- The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) conducted a secret raid to destroy an underground missile factory funded by Iran inside Syria prior to the fall of the Assad regime, Israeli military censors revealed on Thursday.
- The declassified photos and videos of the operation, which involved over 100 Israeli commandos from the elite Shaldag (“Kingfisher”) unit, went viral in Israel.
- In a statement, the IDF said:
- On September 8th, 2024, during a special operation by the Israeli Air Force, troops from the Shaldag Unit raided and destroyed an underground compound for manufacturing precision missiles in the Masyaf area, deep in Syrian territory.
- For years, the Intelligence Directorate conducted extensive intelligence gathering and monitoring, confirming the value of the target. In the months leading up to the operation, a plan was launched for the Israeli Air Force to destroy it.
- The soldiers landed using helicopters, with fire and intelligence-gathering support from aircraft, fighter jets, and naval vessels of the Israeli Navy. The raid’s target was an underground compound deep in Syrian territory, funded and supported by Iran. The compound was a flagship project for Iran’s efforts to arm its terror proxies on Israel’s northern border. The compound included advanced assembly lines designed to manufacture precision-guided missiles and long-range rockets, significantly increasing the supply of missiles to Hezbollah and other Iranian terror proxies in the region.
- During the operation, the forces reached critical machinery for manufacturing precision missiles, including a planetary mixer, numerous weapons, and intelligence documents, which were transferred for investigation. The soldiers destroyed the compound and safely returned to Israeli territory.
- The IDF will continue to act strategically and professionally with various methods and tactics to remove threats directed at the citizens of Israel.
- Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement: “I salute our heroic fighters for the daring and successful operation deep in Syria. This was one of the most important preventive operations that we have taken against the efforts of the Iranian axis to arm itself in order to attack us; it attests to our boldness and determination to take action everywhere to defend ourselves.”
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Important Takeaways:
- Israel conducted a commando raid on an underground Iranian missile production facility near the city of Maysaf in Syria in early September, the Jerusalem Post learned in later September, but was only allowed to confirm now after KAN News was permitted to publicize the IDF officially taking credit late Sunday.
- That a raid took place, but without Israeli confirmation, was first reported by Axios on September 12, with the Post receiving secret confirmation shortly after, but not permission to publicize the information.
- It appears that Israeli censor and secrecy rules regarding operations in Syria have become more flexible given the huge increase in IDF operations in Syria since the fall of the Assad regime.
- With the fall of the regime, information security officials likely view any threat of retaliation from Syria as being at a much lower risk level.
- The raid targeted two significant sites, which were the Syrian defense industry’s Scientific Studies and Research Center and the underground missile production facility run by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
- The decision to carry out the strike was believed to be influenced by concerns over the ongoing war, along with the potential risk that the Iranian missile factory would begin mass-producing missiles.
- …weapons were reportedly intended to be used as a supply for Hezbollah.
- The operation occurred approximately 200 kilometers from Israeli territory and was deemed urgent to prevent the facility from reaching full production capacity.
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Important Takeaways:
- ‘Colossal’ explosions have filled the skies in Syria as Israeli strikes are said to have targeted military sites in the ‘the heaviest strikes’ in the area for more than a decade – with blasts which registered on earthquake sensors.
- A war monitor group said that Israeli strikes had targeted military sites in Syria’s coastal Tartus region.
- ‘Israeli warplanes launched strikes’ targeting a series of sites including air defense units and ‘surface-to-surface missile depots’, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, in what it said were ‘the heaviest strikes in Syria’s coastal region since the start of strikes in 2012’.
- It has been claimed that the explosion was so large, it measured as a magnitude 3.0 on seismic sensors.
- Tartus has been the location of one of Russia’s two military bases in Syria and was used as a naval base, as well as an ammunition depot.
- The huge explosion, as well as secondary explosions, may indicate the presence of a large volume of stored armaments.
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Important Takeaways:
- Army Radio military correspondent Doron Kadosh reported on air that Israel had destroyed 86% of Syria’s surface-to-air missile capability, among 500 other sites that the IDF had targeted since the fall of the Assad regime Sunday.
- Kadosh elaborated, in a post on X, that Israel had used 1800 munitions in the attack on Syrian weapons — munitions that had been intended for other purposes, but were switched to the new mission once the fall of the regime began.
- Now, he said, with a “clear axis to Iran,” Israel’s military and intelligence officials were preparing operational plans for an attack on the regime’s nuclear facilities. The decision to launch a strike would be left to elected political leaders.
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Important Takeaways:
- Of all the winners and losers from Syria’s sudden change of power, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan stands out as among those with the most to gain.
- Erdogan’s clout over his southern neighbor has increased dramatically with the fall of his one-time friend Bashar al-Assad, bolstering his political standing at home and in the international arena.
- The question now is whether Erdogan can convert his new clout into meeting long-held policy objectives — and if the Trump administration will help or hinder him.
- Turkey has already urged disparate opposition forces to work for a reunified Syria, while Turkey-backed rebels wasted no time in pushing out Kurdish forces from two northern towns to the west of the Euphrates River.
- But that risks running into US opposition.
- Kurdish forces allied with the US played a critical role in defeating Islamic State in Syria, yet Turkey regards them as terrorists and a threat to its unity because they are affiliated with the separatist Kurdish group, the PKK, which is waging a war for autonomy in Turkey’s southeast.
- The way Trump decides to handle the PKK presence in Syria will be decisive in how his administration’s relations with Ankara evolve, according to Turkish officials familiar with Erdogan’s strategy who asked not to be named discussing sensitive security matters.
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Important Takeaways:
- As the insurgents swept across Syria in just 10 days to bring an end to the Assad family’s 50-year rule, they broke into prisons and security facilities to free political prisoners and many of the tens of thousands of people who disappeared since the conflict began back in 2011.
- Videos shared widely across social media showed dozens of prisoners running in celebration after the insurgents released them, some barefoot and others wearing little clothing. One of them screams in celebration after he finds out that the government has fallen.
- Syria’s prisons have been infamous for their harsh conditions. Torture is systematic, say human rights groups, whistleblowers, and former detainees. Secret executions have been reported at more than two dozen facilities run by Syrian intelligence, as well as at other sites.
- Syria’s feared security apparatus and prisons did not only serve to isolate Assad’s opponents, but also to instill fear among his own people said Lina Khatib, Associate Fellow in the Middle East and North Africa program at the London think tank Chatham House.
- Over the past 10 days, insurgents freed prisoners in cities including Aleppo, Homs, Hama as well as Damascus.
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Important Takeaways:
- Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has taken credit for the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s government in Syria from a speech delivered from the Golan Heights—where Israeli forces have seized territory formerly occupied by the Syrian Arab Army. “This collapse is the direct result of our forceful action,” Netanyahu declared.
- Calling the takeover of Damascus by Hayʼat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a rebrand of former al-Qaeda branch al-Nusra, an “historic day for the Middle East,” Netanyahu said: “The collapse of the Assad regime, the tyranny in Damascus, offers great opportunity but also is fraught with significant dangers… [It] means that we have to take action against possible threats.”
- Chief among these is the Separation of Forces Agreement from 1974 between Israel and Syria, he said, which “collapsed” when Assad’s army “abandoned its positions.”
- “We gave the Israeli army the order to take over these positions to ensure that no hostile force embeds itself right next to the border of Israel. This is a temporary defensive position until a suitable arrangement is found,” he claimed.
- “If we can establish neighborly relations and peaceful relations with the new forces emerging in Syria, that’s our desire. But if we do not, we will do whatever it takes to defend the State of Israel and the border of Israel,” he added.
- Israeli forces have launched a series of strikes described as “very intensive” by Israeli press sources since Assad’s ouster, devastating the country’s air defenses and supposed “strategic weapons sites.”
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Important Takeaways:
- Mike Huckabee, President-Elect Donald Trump’s nominee to be the United States’ Ambassador to Israel, stated that the chemical weapons inside of Syria cannot fall into the hands of the rebels that have now taken power and the weapons must “be destroyed, and if Israel doesn’t do it, then the rest of the world should come in and do it as well.”
- Huckabee began by saying that “we certainly have a critical national interest” in what happens in Syria, “but what we don’t have is a reason to get in the middle of two warring [factions], neither of which are good guys.”
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Important Takeaways:
- “Turkey is bombing and massacring Kurds tonight. No protests, no marches, no media coverage, no condemnations from UN, no ICC arrest warrants for Erdogan. Since 1914 Turkey has killed over 1.5 million Kurds. Stop Kurdish genocide.” — Hemdad Mehristani, researcher, X, October 23, 2024.
- If Turkey has the right to respond to a terrorist attack by bombing dozens of targets belonging to Kurdish militants in Iraq and Syria, why is Israel being condemned for responding to the October 7 Hamas-led atrocities against its own citizens? Just because of the “two-state solution”: Michigan and Minnesota?
- Not only is Erdogan lying when he accuses Israel of “genocide,” but he is also proving that he is a big hypocrite. If he is really worried about the safety of the Muslims in the Gaza Strip, why does he continue to support Hamas, while denying Israel the right to defend itself against Islamist terrorism? If he believes that he has the right to bomb Kurdish militants in Syria and Iraq, why is he denouncing Israel for taking the same action against Palestinian Islamist terrorists?
- The complicit silence of the anti-Israel groups on US university campuses towards Turkey’s crimes is simply evidence of a staggering racism and hypocrisy.
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