The war in Syria just took a huge step forward in escalation and the heat between the US and Russia just got a lot hotter.
What happened? What will happen?
Read while you listen!
Thank you for listening!
Kimberly Rogers-Brown
BeastWatchNews.com
Theme music by Mishkanim.
This past Saturday night Syrian leader Bashar Assad launched a suspected chemical weapons attack on a rebel held Syrian town of Douma near Damascus. 200 people were killed in that suspected chemical attack in Douma, over 1,000 were wounded.
The suspected chemical attack came at the end of one of the deadliest Syrian government offensives of the war, with an estimated 1,700 civilians killed in eastern Ghouta in air and artillery bombardments.
Many of the dead are little children. Entire families in shelters were gassed to death in Douma and East Ghouta while hiding from the bombing in their cellars, but they suffocated from the poisonous gas.
US State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said that Washington was closely following “disturbing reports” of the chemical weapons attack on a Douma hospital.
While Damascus and Moscow both deny that chemical weapons were used in the attack, US President Trump believes otherwise. President Trump went on a tweet storm singling out Russian president Vladimir Putin as responsible. The President wrote that he held Russia and Iran, Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s backers, responsible for the attack and called the Syrian President “Animal Assad” and warned there would be a “big price to pay” for the attack. President Trump also lashed out at former President Obama, blaming him for the current situation as well.
There are some strange behaviors by the western media regarding this attack. The Washington Post, New York Times and CNN went as far as ignoring the issue altogether, while the BBC only mentioned the fact that Syrian government air strikes on Douma have restarted in “retaliation for the shelling of nearby government-held areas,” and the story was buried under a headline condemning the SAA’s air strikes.
Incredibly, it appears that the western media is collaborating with the US, covering up something. Usually the press is right into the thick of the trouble, especially when children are involved. The weirdness of the press lends itself quite easily to the accusation made by a few pundits that this even was a false flag attack perpetrated by the US.
Hal Turner ran this headline: FALSE-FLAG CONFIRMED – CHLORINE GAS USED FOR CHEMICAL ATTACK IN SYRIA WAS “MADE IN GERMANY” BY MERCK CORPORATION.
Hal said, “As the world is finding out about a “chemical weapons attack” in Syria which injured about 1,000 and reportedly killed between 40 and 161, new evidence has surfaced showing the Chlorine Gas came from Cylinders manufactured by Merck Corporation in Germany!
Yes, Germany; a NATO member country.
The images below show the Chlorine gas cylinders captured from a Terrorist hideout in east Ghouta Syria, proving the Syrian government (which cannot and does not trade with Germany) could not have perpetrated the attack as is being claimed by the USA and western allies. The attack was, in fact, a “FALSE FLAG” perpetrated by someone else, designed to be BLAMED on the Syrian government.
Someone inside NATO arranged for these chlorine gas cylinders to be covertly shipped into Syria, and they ended up in the hands of US-Saudi-backed “Jaish Al Islam” & “Al-Nusra Front” in Damascus country side in order to poison innocent Syrians and falsely accuse the Syrian government.”
Hal Turner believes this FALSE FLAG attack “was designed to put blame on Syria President Bashar Assad to justify a massive U.S. military attack directly against Syria. He warned that people in the US government have been planning for a direct war with Russia and would use this alleged attack to induce/force a US military response DESPITE warnings from Russia that US missiles would be shot down and the ships launching them would be attacked.
As of 10:42 AM Sunday, it appeared President Trump had “taken the bait.” It appeared that the US and its allies were speeding toward a massive military attack and that Russia is speeding toward a massive military response against the US. Russian military assets are being hastily removed from Joint Bases in Syria – not because they might be targets or collateral damage — but rather to be used for a COUNTER-ATTACK against the US.”
RT is reporting that, indeed, the US missile destroyer, the USS ‘Donald Cook’, reportedly sailed toward Syria as Trump weighed his options. The USS ‘Donald Cook’ is a guided-missile destroyer that has left Cyprus and is reportedly now sitting in the eastern Mediterranean. The movement of the vessel comes as top US officials have threatened to attack Syria.
“Russian air defenses in Syria, AND IN THE WESTERN MILITARY DISTRICT OF RUSSIA ITSELF have been placed on high alert. It appears that Hal Turner was right. There was a change to the DEFCON status of the United States. Another interesting tweet that came out of DEFCON said that the Syrians believe the US was the source of the chemical attack.
US Military analysts were up all night at the Pentagon [last Sunday] and President Trump confirmed he sas having discussions throughout the night with his National Security people”.
Hal also reported that Russian assets are being moved away from their joint Syrian military bases, apparently in preparation for direct conflict with the US.
Hal Turner is not the only one blowing the whistle on this. TUCKER CARLSON of Fox News wrote: Leaders on both sides of the aisle in Congress, in the media, in our intelligence services, and virtually every overfunded think tank in Washington have suddenly aligned on a single point of agreement. America must go to war in Syria immediately. Bashar Al Assad cannot continue to lead that country. He must be overthrown.
Assad is an evil man, they tell us. His latest crime is a chlorine gas attack carried out over the weekend by his forces against a rebel-held suburb of Damascus. Assad’s poison gas suffocated children. Pictures of the aftermath of that are all over the internet and they are horrifying. Assad is a monster. That’s the official story. Almost everyone in power claims to believe it. The push to war in Syria, by the way, has united politicians from both sides.
Hmm… Isn’t it interesting how a united cause brings both sides of the aisle together under the leadership of one man?
Trump has to take action in Syria, everyone nods sagely. That ought to make you nervous. Universal bipartisan agreement on anything is usually the first sign that something deeply unwise is about to happen. If only because there is nobody left to ask skeptical questions. And we should be skeptical of this. Starting with the poison gas attack itself. All the geniuses tell us that Assad killed those children, but do they really know that? Of course they don’t really know that. They are making it up. They have no real idea what happened.
By the way, I only mention Tucker’s name there so you will know I am not the only person – along with Hal turner – whose antennae went through the roof when I heard about this attack.
They don’t want them struck in a US attack. Makes sense considering that if the coalition strikes they’re not likely to be targets but could be collateral.
The other side of things are that they may indeed be targeted if the coalition believe that Russia will use them, and that is something I doubt the war planners would be wanting to do from the offset, but they will want to send a message; not in terms of that area being attacked by the USA, but in terms of Russians prepping for response with those assets to US forces.
Russia Intel Source tells me precautionary measures are being taken in Syria but worse, in the follwing hours there was also likely to be such preparation in the Russian western military district in light of Trump’s provocative tweets.
Conspiracy theorist, Alex Jones, weighed in to call the chemical attack a “false flag” launched by Syrian rebel forces that was meant to keep the U.S. and other world powers engaged in Syria’s civil war.
“It has every hallmark of a false flag. And why does it have every hallmark of a false flag? The Russians have announced they’re pulling out a month ago, the United States announces it’s going to pull out a week ago—President Trump. The globalists openly want to keep us there and break the country into three parts. This is a big, big deal,” Jones said.
He added, “It’s so obvious that they’re trying to suck us into a war.”
Ahh! There it is! Someone – perhaps many “someones” – want to continue the war in Syria. During the Obama era, every time there was a withdrawal by one of the sides – as was announced last week that the U.S. would withdraw troops from Syria – “something” (quote/unquote) would happen to cause both the U.S. and Russia to stay put, and even increase troops in the region. Trump appears to be playing the same game.
There may be several reasons the U.S. wants to stay in Syria. One could be the embarrassment of admitting defeat. The second may be the total loss of control of fossil fuels in the Middle East which would be disastrous. That could cause the entire Western world to be under the control of Islamic and Russian forces that could withhold fuel at any moment and for any length of time.
The fact that Britain is considering engaging with the U.S. in a joint military retaliation against Syria may be a hint that the loss of the small amount of control the U.S. and UK still have in the Middle East is the reason they might have perpetrated this false flag using German made chemical weapons. The U.S. has been trying to ensure that Russia cannot cut off Europe’s fuel supply through Ukraine since Obama upticked the war between the U.S. and Russia over Ukraine.
Ukraine finally became an EU member, but at the risk of Russia shutting down Gazprom. That is a very real threat. You might say that Russia would lose if it shut off Europe’s gas supply. Not so. Russia has many other nations it can export its fossil fuels to. Shutting off Europe’s gas supply would effectively make Europe a hostage of Russia.
But another reason exists for Trump to keep U.S. troops in Syria. Israel. Herein lies the Bible prophecy. Israel wants the US to guard it from the Iranians. Ezekiel 38:7 says that is exactly what God wants Gog, the United States, to do so that in God’s timing He can bring punishment on Gog.
Ezekiel 38:7 “Be ready, prepare yourself, you and all your assemblies that are assembled unto you. And you shall be a guard for them.
In previous broadcasts, I’ve said I believe the guarding of an entity called “them” is not the Persians who invade Israel when Gog enters Israel, but that it is Israel itself that will be guarded by Gog. In fact that already has happened with that new U.S. military base in the Negev.
And I also believe, like the Rabbis who gave President George Bush the Gog scroll in 2001 because they believe that the office of U.S. President embodies Gog, that the United States will one day have a President that is a descendant of Gog. That President may be sitting in office right now. If not, a future President will be a descendant of Gog, I believe.
America’s punishment for messing around with Russia’s allies, Syria and Iran, is likely to come in the form of direct war with Russia and China on US soil.
Trump’s unilateral deal with Putin has turned out to be the worst deal of the 21st century so far. It has placed Israel in danger. I said last year that Trump would awaken, one day, to the realization that the deal he made was a bad one. I think that has happened and he realizes that the U.S. must have a large presence in Syria to be ready to defend Israel. The only way to make that happen is to escalate the Syrian war.
Why couldn’t Trump just add troops to the U.S. base in Israel’s Negev? That would be too obvious. Iran would see it as a provocation for war with Israel even more than an escalation in Syria. That’s because Syria can be made to look like a diversion and not the real reason for keeping U.S. troops in the Middle East.
Infowars editor-at-large Paul Joseph Watson also uploaded his own video defending the Assad regime from accusations that it was behind the chemical attacks in Douma.
“With the Syrian army and Russia on the verge of defeating ISIS and jihadist rebels in the town of Douma, they launch a massive chemical weapons attack that brings global condemnation, inviting massive U.S. airstrikes across the country and we’re just supposed to swallow this entire narrative without question,” Watson said.
“No. That’s insane.”
Watson took a second to clarify that he believed the attack did happen and that people did actually die before he claimed that “it makes absolutely no sense for the Russians or Syrians to be behind this attack.”
“Why does almost every chemical weapon attack happen when the Syrian army is about to close in on a rebel stronghold? And what’s the evidence here? Unverified footage from the White Helmets—a group with direct links to the very jihadist groups that benefit from this chemical weapons attack,” Watson said.
David Knight, who hosts the Infowars morning program, questioned whether Trump’s condemnation of the Assad regime was evidence that the president was being “gaslighted” about the attack and insinuated that Trump may be assassinated if he resists calls for military action.
“I don’t know whether President Trump is being gaslighted, whether he really believes this or whether he knows what happened to JFK,” Knight said, “as he’s not playing along with this—or is he fooled by what is going on? But nevertheless, it is dangerous.”
Jones issued a “WW3 ALERT”! He said the US and UK are readying attack ships and jets to strike Syria and Russia.
In fact, Jones is right. The USS Donald Cook is an Arleigh Burke-class warship, which carries 60 Tomahawk cruise missiles on board. It left the port of Larnaca in Cyprus on Monday, according to the US Navy. Several media outlets cited defense sources as saying that the destroyer is moving towards Syria. The ship is currently the only naval asset the US could use to strike targets in Syria with cruise missiles.
US envoy to the UN, Nikki Haley, said the US will not be deterred from attacking Syria by a lack of UNSC mandate. Washington was expected to act within 48 hours, but as of this recording, no US attack on Syria has yet occurred.
Washington Post: The prospect of a U.S. strike on Syria in retaliation for an alleged chemical attack, coupled with a missile raid apparently carried out by Israel that killed Iranian military personnel, has underscored the risk that the conflict is on the brink of a dangerous escalation.
On Monday, Syrian rebels began evacuating the Damascus suburb where the alleged poison gas attack took place, after agreeing to a surrender deal that will restore government control over the area for the first time in six years.
U.S. strikes are not going to alter the Assad government’s trajectory, “and they may make things worse,” said Emile Hokayem of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. “There might be a narrow, self-satisfying strike, but as long as there is no bigger perspective or broader strategy for the whole conflict, it may just fuel escalation without meeting any objective.”
He added, “The time for intervention has passed.”
Syria was already on edge, braced for military retaliation from the United States, when missiles struck an air base near Palmyra in the east of the province of Homs in the pre-dawn hours Monday, prompting accusations from the Syrian government that U.S. forces were responsible. After the Pentagon issued a strong denial, Russia and Syria then said it was Israel that had attacked the T-4 base.
In Washington, Trump said his team was still debating how to punish Damascus for the alleged use of chemical weapons in the attack Saturday on the town of Douma, the last major rebel-held urban stronghold in the suburb of Eastern Ghouta.
The main rebel group in the area, Jaish al-Islam, had been holding out for a settlement that would allow it to remain and join a peace process proposed by the Russians under which rebel-held territories would eventually reconcile with the Assad government.
After the alleged chemical attack, the rebels relented, agreeing to evacuate to rebel-held areas in the north and allow the government to retake control of the enclave, residents said. The attack came as the final straw following weeks of sustained airstrikes that killed hundreds of people and injured thousands. The bombardment had kept more than 100,000 people huddled in basements and shelters, said a medical student in Douma who has worked with the opposition and spoke on the condition of anonymity for safety reasons.
On Monday, the rebels began boarding buses for northern Syria alongside several thousand civilians who fear being detained for their opposition activities once government control returns.
The departure was broadcast by state television and trumpeted as yet another major military victory for Assad over his opponents. Eastern Ghouta was the last significant area controlled by the rebels in the vicinity of the capital, and though a government victory was a foregone conclusion after troops launched a major offensive in February, the capitulation came as yet another milestone in the Assad government’s march toward defeating its opponents.
Trump’s declaration last week that he wants to pull U.S. troops out of northeastern Syria further undermines the impact that strikes might have on slowing the government’s progress, said Faysal Itani of the Atlantic Council in Washington.
“A president who says he wants to get the hell out of Syria is not really in a position to threaten the military progress of the regime,” he said. “If Assad has boxed us into a position where we’ve got to throw some missiles at him, it doesn’t really change the picture.”
A small attack such as the one a year ago conducted in retaliation for a sarin gas attack that killed civilians in the northern Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun wouldn’t make a difference”, he said. A larger one would run the risk of confrontation with Iran and Russia, which have both repeatedly expressed their desire to see the United States leave Syria.
The small U.S. force of about 2,000 troops deployed in northeastern Syria alongside Syria’s Kurds is particularly vulnerable to revenge attacks from Iran and Syria”, Itani said. Iran also could push back against the United States in places such as Iraq, where U.S. troops are present.
Russia has warned that U.S. strikes in Syria would have “grave consequences,” according to a Foreign Ministry statement on Sunday. Given the heightened tensions between Russia and the United States on other issues, Russian President Vladimir Putin may seize on U.S. strikes as an opportunity to leverage a confrontation and force the United States to the negotiating table, said Russian analyst Vladimir Frolov.
“The Cuban missile crisis might be the template Putin is looking at right now,” he said. “Force a military showdown, then call Trump to a summit to decrease tensions.”
“Russia wants the U.S. out of Syria as soon as possible, so if we have a clash and Trump retreats, Putin scores twice,” he added.
Said Michael Horowitz, a senior analyst at Le Beck International, a Middle East-based geopolitical and security consultancy: “The timing of the strike isn’t coincidental,” he said.
Oh! Another expert that thinks this escalation is a little more than coincidental!
“By striking [Assad] and his Iranian allies just a day after Trump warned them of the price they would pay . . . Israel mitigates the risk of an Iranian response,” he said.
“Israel has been trying to convince Washington to adopt a more pro-active, anti-Iran strategy in Syria, and certainly sees Trump’s rhetoric in the wake of the chemical attack as an opportunity.”
Question: Did Israel know ahead of time that the U.S. would perpetrate a false flag attack in Syria? Was this also done for the purpose of allowing Israel to once again strike that Iranian base in Syria?
Russia and Syria have consistently denied all allegations of chemical attacks during the seven-year-long Syrian war, and in this instance, they have accused the rebels of staging a “false flag” incident Saturday to trigger U.S. intervention. As Russian troops moved into the area Monday in the wake of the evacuating fighters, Syrian doctors visited the site of the alleged chemical attack and found no evidence that poisonous gases had been used, Russia’s Defense Ministry said in a statement.
Syria and Russia are not in any hurry to engage the US directly. They are calling for an inspection of the bombed sites, according to Reuters. President Bashar al-Assad’s government has invited international inspectors to send a team to Syria to investigate an alleged chemical attack in the town of Douma in a move apparently aimed at averting possible Western military action over the incident.
President Trump warned on Monday of a quick, forceful response once responsibility was established. The White House said Trump will now not travel on Friday to the Summit of the Americas in Peru so that he can focus on the crisis.
The Syrian government and Russia said there was no evidence that a gas attack had taken place and the claim was bogus. But the incident has thrust Syria’s seven-year-old conflict back to the forefront of international concern.
Adding to the volatile situation, Iran, Assad’s main ally along with Russia, threatened to respond to an air strike on a Syrian military base on Monday that Tehran, Damascus and Moscow have blamed on Israel. More on that in a few minutes.
Meanwhile on the ground, thousands of militants and their families arrived in rebel-held northwestern Syria after surrendering Douma to government forces. The evacuation deal restored Assad’s control over the entire eastern Ghouta – formerly the biggest rebel bastion near Damascus.
The Hague-based Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) is already at work trying to establish what exactly took place in Douma.
But whether a team would try to get there was unclear. OPCW inspectors have been attacked on two previous missions to the sites of chemical weapons attacks in Syria.
“Syria is keen on cooperating with the OPCW to uncover the truth behind the allegations that some Western sides have been advertising to justify their aggressive intentions,” state news agency SANA said, quoting an official Foreign Ministry source.
In Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the Kremlin would submit a resolution to the U.N. Security Council proposing that the OPCW investigate the alleged attack.
MILITARY OPTIONS
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov said there was no threat of the situation in Syria resulting in a military clash between Russia and the United States.
TASS news agency quoted Bogdanov as saying Russia and U.S. officials had “working contacts” over Syria and he believed common sense would prevail.
On Monday, Trump told a meeting of military leaders and national security advisers in Washington that he would make a decision that night or shortly after on a response, and that the United States had “a lot of options militarily” on Syria.
“But we can’t let atrocities like we all witnessed … we can’t let that happen in our world … especially when we’re able to because of the power of the United States, the power of our country, we’re able to stop it,” Trump said.
The United States requested the U.N. Security Council vote at 3 p.m. (1900 GMT) on Tuesday on a proposal for a new inquiry on the use of chemical weapons in Syria, but there were conflicting resolutions delivered by the US and Russia and nothing was accomplished.
At a meeting on Monday, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said Washington would respond to the suspected attack whether the Security Council acted or not.
“This is basically a diplomatic set-up,” said Richard Gowan, a U.N. expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
“Russia will inevitably veto the U.S. resolution criticising Assad, and Washington will use this to justify military strikes,” he said. “A breakdown at the U.N. will also make it easier for France to justify strikes.”
Oh! France who also has quite an interest in keeping an oil presence in the Middle East.
France said it would respond if it was proven that Assad’s forces carried out the attack. Any riposte would most likely be in coordination with the United States, government aides said.
The British government is also discussing military intervention with its allies in Syria in response to the alleged attack. Prime Minister Theresa May will talk to Trump later on Tuesday.
“That kind of atrocity is not acceptable,” International Development Secretary Penny Mordaunt said. “My prime concern is that we do not have a repeat of those appalling atrocities, and that we are doing everything we can to protect men women and children who are targeted.”
U.S. officials told Reuters that Washington was weighing a multinational military response.
One that is also likely to get all those countries attacked by Russia, China and Iran later on. Remember that the coming Islamic Beast will kill the whore of Revelation. Europe is the daughter of the Vatican, the whore, and therefore, Europe’s destruction will come at the hands of Islam.
Washington bombed a Syrian government air base last year over a toxic gas attack.
Russian U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia accused the United States, France and Britain of stoking international tensions by engaging in a “confrontational policy against Russia and Syria”.
“Russia is being unpardonably threatened. The tone with which this is being done has gone beyond the threshold of what is acceptable, even during the Cold War.”
MORE CLARITY
Initial U.S. assessments have been unable to determine conclusively what materials were used in the attack and could not say with certainty that Assad’s forces were behind it.
Trump said, however, that Washington was “getting more clarity” on who was responsible.
A previous joint inquiry of the United Nations and the OPCW had found the Syrian government used the nerve agent sarin in an attack in April 2017, and had also several times used chlorine as a weapon. Damascus blamed Islamic State militants for mustard gas use.
Despite the international revulsion over the chemical weapons attacks, the death toll from such incidents is in the dozens, a fraction of the hundreds of thousands of combatants and civilians killed since an uprising against Assad’s rule broke out in March 2011.
The deal over the rebel evacuation of Douma took effect on Sunday, hours after medical aid groups reported the suspected chemical attack.
RIA news agency quoted Russia’s Defence Ministry as saying 3,600 militants and their families had left Douma over the past 24 hours. About 40,000 militants and their families are expected to leave, the pro-government Watan newspaper said.
Sixty-seven buses carrying hundreds of fighters, along with family members and other civilians who did not wish to come back under Assad’s rule, reached opposition areas near Aleppo on Tuesday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
As part of the surrender deal, the Jaish al-Islam group that controlled the town released scores of people it had been holding.
Jaish al-Islam’s departure will bring to an end the opposition presence in eastern Ghouta, giving Assad’ his biggest battlefield victory since late 2016, when he took back Aleppo, and underlining his unassailable position in the war.
Jaish Al-Islam’s departure may bring to an end to the opposition between themselves and the Syrian Army, but it has created another, and likely bigger and deadlier, opposition between the U.S. and Russia.
A UN meeting was held on Tuesday. Both the U.S. and Russia proposed resolutions, the details of which I don’t have time to spell out. Nothing was resolved via the UNSC and the situation continues to heat up.
So, Russia has decided to deploy troops to the Syrian town of Douma that was the site of a purported chemical weapons attack over the weekend.
Yippee Ki yay! The countdown to the Gog-Magog and King of the North wars is getting a lot closer and will be followed up at the end of the Great Tribulation with Armageddon. Somewhere in between the U.S. will be destroyed by Russia and its red allies, China and North Korea.
In fact, China announced this week that the U.S. needs to take a closer look at the danger to America from China. The United States should be aware of the close military ties between Beijing and Moscow, said the quote from SCMP.com news service.
China’s new defence minister, Wei Fenghe, said he will be “visiting Russia as the new defence minister of China to show the world the high level of development of our bilateral relations, and firm determination of our armed forces to strengthen strategic cooperation”. He said it was to be a signal to the U.S.
In talks with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Shoigu, Wei said he wanted it made clear that his visit was a signal to “let the Americans know about the close ties between the armed forces of China and Russia”.
Wei was accompanied on his trip by China’s foreign minister and senior diplomat Wang Yi, both of whom are newly appointed State Councillors.
A new sherriff is in town!
Wang is expected to hold talks with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, on Thursday.
Great! Right in the middle of this latest Syrian crisis between the U.S. and Russia! Do you think maybe they will discuss more of their plans to destroy America and her European and island nation allies like Japan, Philippines, Guam, Australia, New Zealand and any other nations that are allied with the U.S.?
Nah! Not a chance!
Israeli Air Force credited with deadly strike on Syrian airbase
The day after the Syria chemical attack, Israel followed up with an attack on Iranian forces in Syria. According to Russia’s Defense Ministry, Israel carried out the attack by launching eight guided missiles from two F-15 planes, and Syria shot down five of the missiles.
Israel did not acknowledge carrying out the strike.
The Syrian Tiyas Military Airbase, located in the Homs province, was struck by several missiles on Monday, Syrian media reported.
According to reports, at least 14 were killed in the strike and several others were wounded. Some reports say that over 20 missiles landed in and around the base. Syrian media claimed that Syrian forces were successful in intercepting eight missiles.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), which has operatives inside Syria, reported that “Syrian and non-Syrian nationalities” were killed in the strike. The “non-Syrians” likely refers to Iranians.
The T4 Air Airbase is home to Iranian forces, the Lebanese Hezbollah terror organization and Syrian regime forces.
Syrian media initially blamed “American aggression,” but the Pentagon has denied any involvement in the strikes. Syria then pointed its accusatory finger at Israel.
The Russian Defense Ministry on Monday issued a rare statement blaming Israel for the attack. It said that two IAF F-15 jets fired the missile at the Syrian airbase from Lebanese airspace. The Ministry also claimed that the Syrian air defense destroyed five of the missiles fired by the IAF, while three other missiles hit the western part of the T4 airfield. The Syrian media claimed that Syrian forces intercepted eight out of the 20 missiles launched at the site.
So, we have a few variations on the news here, but the basic story remains the same. However, suffice to say that no Russian servicemen were hurt in the Israeli airstrike, the Ministry stated. Thank God!
The Russian chairman of the Federation Council Committee on International Affairs, Senator Vladimir Dzhabarov, stated that if the Israeli strike in Syria was “unprovoked,” it “may complicate” the situation in Syria, and that “the cause of the attack should be clarified.”
Israel has remained silent.
The T-4 Airbase was hit by the Israeli Air Force (IAF) in February, if you will recall. That incident began when an Iranian UAV was shot down by the IAF inside Israeli territory. In response to the Iranian violation of Israeli border sovereignty, IAF jets flew deep into Syria to hit the drone’s launch and control center at the T-4 base. Several Iranian soldiers were reportedly killed in that attack.
Israel has repeatedly stated that it will not allow Iran to establish itself militarily in Syria. Iran is working to take over Syria and turn it into a hub for terrorism, and Israel will not tolerate it, Ambassador Danny Danon told the United Nations (UN) in March.
Following the air strike on the Syrian T-4 Airbase on Monday, Iran’s Ali Akbar Velayati issued several threats targeting Israel. Velayati, who serves as a top adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, made the threats on Tuesday speaking to the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA).
Reports after the strike indicated that at least 14 were killed, with Iranian officials announcing that seven members of its military died in the attack. One of the dead was identified as a colonel in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ air force.
Responding to the strike, Velayati told IRNA “Defenders of the holy shrines are still standing by the Syrian people and government and will continue their fight against the enemies of the Islamic Ummah, particularly the Zionist regime and its masters. The crimes will not remain unanswered.”
It is not clear which “holy shrines” Iran is guarding from all the way up in Syria. Mecca? Medina? How about Jerusalem? Syria certainly doesn’t have any “holy shrines” that are of interest to Iran. But what Syria does have is all that thousands of miles of pipeline distribution hub under the ground.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif attempted to connect Monday’s air strike to recent gains in the Syrian civil war purportedly achieved by brutal dictator Bashar Assad’s forces.
“The Zionist regime and the US have in different stages rushed to the scene to boost the morale of terrorists,” he said, according to Iran’s Press TV. “Whenever the terrorists face defeats, the Zionist regime launches operations and so do the Americans,” Zarif declared.
Assad has recently been accused of multiple chemical attacks on his own people, including an alleged chemical attack in Douma last weekend that left dozens dead. While Assad and his allies deny perpetrating chemical weapons attacks, the international community continues to collect damning evidence.
As of this recording, President Trump has stated that ‘missiles will be coming’ to Syria.
“Get ready Russia, because they will be coming, nice and new and ‘smart!'” Mr Trump said in his tweet.
In one tweet, Trump said, “Our relationship with Russia is worse now than it has ever been, and that includes the Cold War. There is no reason for this. Russia needs us to help with their economy, something that would be very easy to do, and we need all nations to work together. Stop the arms race?”
I have repeatedly said that Trump’s approach to Russia has to do with its economy. This is because, for Trump, money is everything. It solves everything.
The US, UK and France – THE BIG THREE, ANCIENT BROTHERS – have agreed to work together and are believed to be preparing for a military strike in response to the alleged chemical attack over the weekend.
I shall continue to watch and report.