Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has accused the United States and NATO of aiming an antimissile system being deployed in Europe at Russia despite assurances that it is intended to guard against attacks from rogue states.

With his Kremlin reelection plans in full swing, Putin said on the “Cold Politics” (Kholodnaya Politika) program on February 2 that its former Cold War adversaries have “undoubtedly aimed at neutralizing the nuclear rocket capability of Russia.”

Putin said the antimissile system can cover “territory to the Urals [Mountains], the places where our ground nuclear forces are based.”

Putin added that “today there is no threat from Iran or North Korea” and said NATO is not offering any guarantees, written or otherwise, that the system is not targeting Russia.

NATO two years ago invited Russia to cooperate to create a “security roof that protects us all.”

“We need a missile-defense system that includes not just all countries of NATO but Russia, too,” NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said at the time.

Russia responded coolly to that and other Western initiatives on missile defense.

In his February 2 appearance, Putin described the U.S. as the initiator of an antimissile system in Europe and called it the only country in history to have used nuclear weapons, and that against non-nuclear Japan in 1945.

“What should we do, just black this out from our memory?” Putin asked. “We will always respond to threats that appear along our borders.”

Putin said Russia is the only country besides the United States with a “nuclear triad” — ground, sea, and air nuclear forces.

Putin accused Russia’s “partners in the UN Security Council” of producing evidence of the presence of weapons of mass destruction in some countries and calling for the invasion of these countries or changing the governments of these countries. He said he doubts the sincerity of such partners.

“It seems to me our partners don’t want allies, they want vassals,” Putin said. They want to rule” but “Russia doesn’t work that way,” he concluded.

Putin’s remarks come a little more than a month before a Russian presidential election in which Putin is seeking to return to the presidency after serving as prime minister since 2008, when Russia’s constitution obliged him to step down after two consecutive terms.

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Russia dismissed denials by NATO and three alliance members about plans for military intervention in Syria, saying it has information that a no-fly zone and humanitarian corridors are under discussion.

“Our partners in the West are in fact discussing a no-fly zone,” Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters in Moscow today. “There are other ideas being realized, including humanitarian convoys, in the hope they could provoke a response from government forces, border guards.”

Members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and some Persian Gulf countries are considering a repeat of the campaign in Libya, Nikolai Patrushev, the head of the Russian Security Council, said Jan. 12. Turkey, a NATO member, may play a key role and is working with the U.S. on a no-fly zone to protect Syrian rebels, he said. The U.K., France and Turkey, denied the same day that military intervention in Syria was an option.

French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe in November suggested setting up humanitarian corridors to deliver aid in Syria protected by military forces. Qatar last week said Arab troops should be dispatched to Syria to halt violence after Arab League observers failed to deter a crackdown on protests.

Russia will use its veto-wielding power to prevent the United Nations Security Council from approving any attempted military intervention in Syria, Lavrov said.

‘Their Own Initiative’

“If somebody decides to use force at any cost, I doubt we can stop them, but it will happen at their own initiative and let it be on their conscience,” he said. “They won’t get any mandate from the UN Security Council.”

Russia, which has Soviet-era ties with Syria, argues that UN-sanctioned bombing of Libya by NATO to protect civilians was used to bring about regime change and that western governments are trying to repeat that scenario in Syria.

Lavrov today also rejected U.S. criticism over a Russian arms shipment to Syria, saying it’s not violating international law by supplying weapons to the Middle Eastern country.

…

The U.S. has “very grave concern” about arms reaching Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, said yesterday after news reports that a Russian shipment of ammunition arrived in Syria via Cyprus.

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A “flash” message received in the Kremlin today from the Northern Fleet Command, whose Russian Navy flotilla is in the Mediterranean Sea after having just left their Syrian port of call, reports that the anti-submarine ship Admiral Chabanenko has detected the firing of a torpedo having the “unmistakable signature” of one fired from a kilo-class submarine near Isola del Giglio a popular vacation island about 18 miles off the Italian Tuscan coast.

Within 10 minutes from the detection of this torpedo being fired, this “flash” message continues, a distress call was received from a cruise ship nearing the port of Isola del Giglio Costa named Costa Concordia, and owned by owned by Genoa-based Costa Cruises, stating that it had been“attacked” and was in “immediate danger of capsizing.”

Reports from the London Telegraph about this attack state that the Costa Concordia’s passengers’ dinner was “interrupted by a loud boom around 8 pm local time” with an initial announcement claiming that the ship was suffering an electrical failure, ordering everyone onboard to don life-jackets, and appearing to confirm this “flash” message of it being an attack.

The Northern Fleet Command further states that after the initial distress call from Costa Concordia it was ordered by the US Naval Air Station Sigonella (located in Sicily and known as “The Hub of the Med”) to cease open broadcasts and, instead, use NATO encrypted communications only. [Note: Due to past attacks on cruise liners carrying international passengers, all Western ships of this type are required to carry NATO encrypted radios.]

Most disturbing about this “flash” message, however, is its stating that the only known submarine currently suspected to be in the Mediterranean Sea is one, or possibly two, possessing kilo-class torpedoes belong to the Islamic Republic of Iran Navy (IRIN).

Russian military analysts note that Iran has, indeed, previously stated its intentions to expand its naval forces reach into international waters with the Commander of Iran’s Navy Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari saying this past March they planned to expand their navy’s operational zone far beyond the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman.

In an 11 September 2008 report, the Washington Institute for the Near East Policy said that in the two decades since the Iraqi imposed war on Iran, the Islamic Republic has excelled in naval capabilities and is able to wage unique asymmetric warfare against larger naval forces.  According to the report, Iran’s Navy has been “transformed into a highly motivated, well-equipped, and well-financed force and is effectively in control of the world’s oil lifeline, the Strait of Hormuz.”

Iranian naval leaders this past June, according to their state-run Fars News Agency, further stated that they now had a total of 11 submarines, which they said would be used to patrol the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman and that they would, also, send to distant waters such as the Red Sea and the Mediterranean.

To why Iran would attack innocent Western civilians Russian military analysts say is due to the “undeclared war” being waged against the Iranians by the West that has killed a number of their top nuclear scientists, military troops and bystanders, including women and children.

The latest attack in this “undeclared war” came this past week when another Iranian nuclear scientist was assassinated and that their Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said was committed bythe  “abominable”  and “cowardly  intelligence services of the CIA and Mossad of the United States and Israel and that Iran is now reporting they have evidence to support.

Interesting to note is that within hours of these charges being leveled against the US by Iran’s Supreme Leader a number of top American intelligence officers leaked to the press that Israeli Mossad officers had posed as CIA agents and were recruiting for the Pakistani militant group Jundallah to carry out terror strikes in Iran, and as we can read, in part, as reported today by London’s Daily Mail News Service:

“When President Bush heard that this was going on, he ‘went absolutely ballistic,’ one agent said.

After Barack Obama took office, the report claimed, he ‘drastically scaled back joint U.S.-Israel intelligence programs targeting Iran,’ despite Israel’s frequent propositions to carry out covert assassination missions against Iran’s nuclear programme.

One intelligence official told the magazine: ‘Israel is supposed to be working with us, not against us. If they want to shed blood, it would help a lot if it was their blood and not ours.’

‘It’s amazing what the Israelis thought they could get away with,’ a U.S. intelligence officer told Foreign Policy.”

So fearful has the US become about an Israeli attack on Iran, the New York times reported yesterday that President Obama opened a “clandestine communication” with Iran’s Supreme Leader warning that if the Straight of Hormuz was closed he would have no choice but use military force to reopen it.

The Wall Street Journal is further reporting that President Barack Obama, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and other top US officials have delivered a string of private messages to Israeli leaders warning about the dire consequences of a strike, but at the same time are reported to be “prepping” their Mideast facilities for an Israeli attack on Iran.

With embattled Nigeria, one of the biggest suppliers of oil to the United States, preparing to cease pumping oil on Sunday as it nears outright civil-war, and when coupled with the staggering withdrawal by foreigners of over $85 billion in US debt in the last 6 weeks alone, Russian economists warn that an attack on Iran would literally send the US and EU economies into a “death spiral” as the cost of petrol would reach nearly $15 a gallon.

So dire has this situation become the head of the Kremlin’s Security Council, Nikolai Patrushev, warned yesterday that “There is a likelihood of military escalation of the conflict, towards which Israel is pushing the Americans.”

Also, speaking today at a press conference in Brussels, outgoing Russian Ambassador to NATO Dmitry Rogozin warned against a NATO attack on Iran, saying that Russia would view any military attacks as a “direct threat to our security.”

Philip Giraldi, the former counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer of the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) warned in his latest column, “What War With Iran Might Look Like,” that an attack by Iran, like the one suspected against the Costa Concordia would, indeed, be the spark that sets off World War III.

Unfortunately for the American people, who are not allowed to know these things by their propaganda media organs, the events described herein that they believe will have no affect on them couldn’t be more mistaken as the fires of this “last global war” will most surely affect us all.

One can only hope these people awaken from their long slumber before all is truly lost.

January 14, 2012 © EU and US all rights reserved. Permission to use this report in its entirety is granted under the condition it is linked back to its original source at WhatDoesItMean.Com.

The escalating conflict around Iran should be contained by common effort, otherwise the promising Arab Spring will grow into a “scorching Arab Summer,” says Dmitry Rogozin, Russia’s former envoy to NATO.

“Iran is our close neighbor, just south of the Caucasus. Should anything happen to Iran, should Iran get drawn into any political or military hardships, this will be a direct threat to our national security,” stressed Rogozin.

Dmitry Rogozin, who served as Russia’s special envoy to NATO in 2008-2011, was appointed deputy prime minister by Vladimir Putin in December. On Friday he was bidding farewell to his NATO colleagues in the alliance’s headquarters in Brussels.

As for Syria, if NATO persists in interfering in its affairs, a catastrophe will be hard to avoid, said Rogozin, talking to journalists on the premises of the Russian mission to the alliance.

“The example of Libya should have cooled everybody down in matters dealing with foreign civil wars,” he said, stressing that this is his personal point of view.

“Syria must be left alone and the sides to the conflict must be assisted in breaking the stand-off and starting negotiations. No one must interfere with Syria. This is dangerous,” added Rogozin.

The West’s attempts to improve democracy in the Middle East and North Africa have resulted in Islamists coming to power. It is now up to the West to decide how comfortable they feel with neighbors who determine their politics with Sharia law, says Rogozin.

“If we add the escalating tensions around Iran to the situation in Syria and the consequences of the Libyan war, then the upcoming ‘scorching’ Arab Summer, which is following the Arab Spring, will hardly be to anyone’s taste.”

Russia’s response will make AMD ‘a waste of money’

Despite his recent promotion, Rogozin is still in charge of Russia-NATO discussions on anti-missile defense (AMD) issues.

A legal binding that the European and American missile defense systems will not target Russia has not been taken off the table, Rogozin pointed out.

“It seems strange that it is Russia who is required to show flexibility. This is not our project. If an architect is building a house, it is up to him to offer a design which would not violate property rights, area design and neighbors’ interests. So it is our US colleagues who should demonstrate miraculous flexibility to ensure that their AMD system does not violate the interests of other countries if it is to be located in Europe.”

Rogozin also called on European leaders to stop being “political puppets” in the AMD game, adding that everyone should stand for their own interests, not for some “Atlantic solidarity.”

If Moscow’s position is ignored and the range of the US anti-missile defense system covers the European part of Russia, this will be considered a situation requiring defensive action.

“I will certainly ensure Russia will give a corresponding technical response if the AMD system endangers our national interests. This will result in the American AMD being considered a waste of money,” said Rogozin.

Russia has everything needed to annihilate any attempt “to strip” its strategic potential, he added. This also means the era of imported weapons is coming to an end.

In a farewell gesture, Rogozin said he was considering planting a tree in the alliance’s headquarters. Symbolically enough, this would be a poplar, or “topol” in Russian, which brings up associations with Russia’s modern intercontinental ballistic missiles Topol-M.

But NATO replied that planting a tree within the headquarters perimeter “is not possible,” so the tree will have to be planted nearby.

A grim Ministry of Finance report prepared for Prime Minister Putin is warning today that the decision by Iran to cease taking US Dollars for its oil could verybe the “first shot” fired in World War III, and one which Russia will be blamed for by the Obama regime.

According to this report, Iran swiftly countered planed US sanctions against its Central Bank yesterday by announcing that it will no longer accept the US Dollar as payment for its oil shipments to India, Japan and China, and further announced that bilateral trade between itself and Russia will, also, break from the US Dollar for settlement in favor of the Iranian Rial and Russian Rubles.

Sure to enrage the Obama regime, this report continues, was that the proposal to switch to the Ruble and the Rial was raised by President Medvedev at a meeting with his Iranian counterpart, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in Astana, Kazakhstan, of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

Though Iran had previously announced in 2008 that it had stopped trading its oil for US Dollars (Ahmadinejad called the depreciating US Dollar a “worthless piece of paper”) India, Japan and China were made exempt due to their large holdings of American currency and fears of wreaking further chaos on the global economic collapse that had just begun.

Important to note, this report reminds us, is that a similar move by Iraq’s former leader Saddam Hussein in not accepting US Dollars for oil in 2000 brought about the invasion of his country by the Americans and their European allies resulting in his eventual execution and causing the vast wealth of Iraqi oil and gas fields to be turned over to the Western oil giants.

Likewise, this report says, former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi earned the same fate as Hussein after he, in the months leading up to the US-NATO military attack on his country, called on African and Muslim nations to join together to create a new currency that would rival the US Dollar and Euro and saying that Libya would only sell oil and other resources around the world only for gold dinars.

Most oil sales throughout the world are denominated in US Dollars, and according to proponents of the petrodollar warfare hypothesis, because most countries rely on oil imports, they are forced to maintain large stockpiles of Dollars in order to continue imports.

This creates a consistent demand for US Dollars and upwards pressure on its value, regardless of economic conditions in the United States. This in turn allows the US government to gain revenues through seignorage and by issuing bonds at lower interest rates than they otherwise would be able to. As a result the USgovernment can run higher budget deficits at a more sustainable level than can most other countries.

But, this report reminds us, the current budget deficit of the US has now reached the staggering amount of $15.23 trillion which is the size of its entire economy, and with the Federal Reserve preparing to being another round of massive printing this coming summer the loss of Iran’s oil customers needing US Dollars could very well signal the collapse of the entire American economy.

Though the Obama regime has sent its Treasury Secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, to China and Japan today in an effort to persuade them to cut back on Iranian oil this effort appears doomed from start as the Chinese have outright rejected this move and Japan has, likewise, expressed its concerns.

As is always the case in these type of dire matters, reports from the US show its mainstream propaganda media organs are not reporting on this potentially catastrophic turn of events leading to yet another circumstance where the American people will be taken by complete surprise when this cold war suddenly turns hot.

In order to prepare itself for what is to come, however, a vast Russian naval fleet arrived in Syria yesterday in an attempt to forestall US-NATO action against its Middle East ally currently under attack by the CIA-backed terrorist group known as al-Qaida.

Most shocking in this report are some Russian economists stating that the Obama regime is actually anticipating the collapse of the US Dollar as a “solution”to their being able to implement drastic socialistic change such as was done during the Great Depression under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and which the grim statistics being reported from the US show they are, indeed, nearing total economic collapse and include:

1. A staggering 48 percent of all Americans are either considered to be “low income” or are living in poverty.

2. Approximately 57 percent of all children in the United States are living in homes that are either considered to be “low income” or impoverished.

3. If the number of Americans that “wanted jobs” was the same today as it was back in 2007, the “official” unemployment rate put out by the U.S. government would be up to 11 percent.

4. The average amount of time that a worker stays unemployed in the United States is now over 40 weeks.

5. One recent survey found that 77 percent of all U.S. small businesses do not plan to hire any more workers.

6. There are fewer payroll jobs in the United States today than there were back in 2000 even though we have added 30 million extra people to the population since then.

7. Since December 2007, median household income in the United States has declined by a total of 6.8 percent once you account for inflation.

8. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 16.6 million Americans were self-employed back in December 2006. Today, that number has shrunk to 14.5 million.

9. A Gallup poll from earlier this year found that approximately one out of every five Americans that do have a job consider themselves to be underemployed.

10. According to author Paul Osterman, about 20 percent of all U.S. adults are currently working jobs that pay poverty-level wages.

As the buildup for war between the US and Iran continues to escalate, UN Chief Ban ki Moon’s call for the easing of tensions has gone unheeded as the Obama regimes call for the “dogs of war” to be unleashed on the Iranian people shows no sign of abatement.

To what the final outcome may be in all of these events was detailed by Professor Igor Panarin of the Diplomatic Academy of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs who has long warned the United States is in a state of economic collapse which will see America being divided up into 6 regions due to a “vulnerable political setup,” “lack of unified national laws,” and “divisions among the elite, which have become clear in these crisis conditions.”

Interesting to note about Professor Panarin’s prediction of the United States splintering into different regions are new reports coming from the United States showing that the Obama regime has recently called for the staffing of what are called FEMA Concentration Camps in not just 6, but 10 different regions of their country.

Professor Panarin further warned that “a secret agreement was reached between Canada, Mexico and the US on a common Amero currency as a new monetary unit” and said that “this could signal preparations to replace the dollar.”

When asked how Russia should react to his vision of the future, Professor Panarin said: “Develop the ruble as a regional currency. Create a fully functioning oil exchange, trading in rubles… We must break the strings tying us to the financial Titanic, which in my view will soon sink.”

January 10, 2012 © EU and US all rights reserved. Permission to use this report in its entirety is granted under the condition it is linked back to its original source at WhatDoesItMean.Com.

Revelations have surfaced about the presence of British spies in Syria as the UK government draws secret plans for a NATO-backed no-fly zone over the country.

A British security official has revealed that Britain’s Ministry of Defence has been drawing up secret plots to secure a NATO-sponsored no-fly zone over Syria as intelligence agents from MI6 and the CIA are examining the situation on the ground in the country, reported the Daily Star.

“MI6 and the CIA are in Syria to infiltrate,” revealed the newspaper.

The revelations come as the Western media has launched a campaign to criticise the presence of the Arab League observers in Syria calling on them to return so that their governments would be able to draw up plots for military intervention based on fabricated evidence.

However, independent analysts have seriously questioned the West’s media hype over the usefulness of the Arab League observers’ presence in Syria, as they assert the West is using the Arab League as an NGO.

“[The Arab League] has been one of the most pathetic organizations in the Arab World for a long, long time, doing nothing on Palestine, doing nothing to prevent the war on Iraq. And, now it’s being used as an NGO by the West,” said Tariq Ali, editor of London-based New Left Review.

Furthermore, Ali warned against the Western intervention in Syria saying “we need a negotiated settlement in Syria.”

“We do not want a Western intervention as in Libya which with each passing day the information coming out of Libya shows the disaster,” said Ali in an interview with Russia’s English news channel Russia Today.

The Daily Star also reported that the Western intervention in Syria “is all going like Libya but this will be bigger and bloodier.”

Furthermore, the British newspaper revealed that the British government’s “highest priority” while drawing up its secret plots would be Israel’s security saying “Syria supports Hezbollah. That threatens Israel.”

Pointing out that Western intervention in Syria has already started, Ali said: “I don’t know why they [foreign nations] seem reluctant to [acknowledging armed opposition extremists operating in Syria] because most the nations which seem reluctant to notice that are the ones who’re supplying the weaponry.”

Source.

The new deployment, DEBKAfile’s military sources report, consists of USS Combined Task Force 52 (CTF 52), which is trained and equipped for dismantling marine mines and NATO Maritime Mine Counter measures Group 2 (SNMCMG2). The American group is led by the USS Arden mine countermeasures ship; NATO’s by the British HMS Pembroke minesweeper. Other vessels in the task forces are the Hunt-class destroyer HMS Middleton and the French mine warfare ships FS Croix du Sud and FS Var.

Also on the ready are several US Expeditionary Combat Readiness units of the US Fifth Fleet Bahrain command. Seventeen of these special marine units are attached to the Fifth Fleet as America’s answer to the Iranian Navy’s fast assault boats and marine units.

US military sources told DEBKAfile Wednesday, Dec. 28, that United States has the countermeasures for sweeping the waterway of mines and making it safe for marine passage after no more than a 24-48 hour interruption.

At the same time, leading military and naval officials in Washington take Tehran’s threats seriously. They don’t buy the proposition advanced by various American pundits and analysts that Iran would never close the Strait of Hormuz, though which one third of the world’s oil passes, because it would then bottle up its own energy exports. Those officials, according to our sources, believe that Tehran hopes the mines in the waterway will blow up passing oil tankers and other shipping. It doesn’t have to be sealed hermetically to endanger international shipping; just a few mines here and there and an explosion would be enough to deter shippers and crews from risking their vessels.

As Adm. Habibollah Sayari commander of the Iranian Navy put it Wednesday, Dec. 28: “Shutting the strait for Iran’s armed forces is really easy – or as we say in Iran, easier than drinking a glass of water.” He went on to say: “But today, we don’t need [to shut] the strait because we have the Sea of Oman under control and can control transit.”

DEBKAfile’s Middle East marine sources said the Iranian admiral’s boast about the Sea of Oman was just hot air.  For the big Iranian Velayati 90 sea exercise which began Saturday, America has deployed in that sea two large air and sea strike groups led by the USS John C. Stennis aircraft carrier and the USS Bataan aircraft amphibious ship.

And they are highly visible: Thursday morning, Dec. 29, Iranian Navy’s Deputy Commander Rear Adm. Mahmoud Mousavi reported an Iranian Navy aircraft had shot footage and images of a US carrier spotted in an area where the Velayat 90 war games were being conducted – most probably the Stennis. Its presence, he said, demonstrated that Iran’s naval forces were “precisely monitoring all moves by extra-regional powers” in the region.

Clearly, the US navy is very much on the spot in the Sea of Oman and other areas of the Iranian war game.

Middle East sources warn however that the repeated threats to close the Strait of Hormuz coming from Tehran this week and the framework of its naval exercise clearly point to the manner in which Iran intends to hit back for the tough new sanctions which the West plans to approve next month. The new round is expected to shear off 80 percent of the Islamic Republic’s revenues.
The European Union’s 27 member-states meet in January to approve an embargo on Iranian oil, with effect on 25 percent of Iran’s energy exports. Next month, too, President Barack Obama plans to sign into law an amendment authorizing severe penalties for foreign banks trading with Iran’s central bank, CBI, including the loss of links with American banks and financial institutions.

Tehran is expected to strike back hard by sowing mines in Hormuz and in the waters opposite the oil fields and terminals of fellow Persian Gulf oil producers, including Saudi Arabia.

It would not be the first time. In 1987 and 1988, sea mines were sown in the Persian Gulf for which Iran never took responsibility. It was generally seen as Tehran’s payback for US and Gulf Emirates’ backing for Iraq in its long war with the Islamic Republic. A number of oil tankers and American warships were struck by mines, including the USS Samuel B. Roberts. Such disasters can be averted today by means of the sophisticated countermeasures now in US hands.

Source.

Expanded Russian military and diplomatic support for the Assad regime was underscored by the deployment Friday, Dec. 16, of advanced Moscow-supplied Yakhont (SSN-26) shore-to-sea missiles along Syria’s Mediterranean shore to fend off a potential Western-Turkish invasion by sea. Last week, Russia airlifted to Syria 3 million face masks against chemical and biological weapons and the Admiral Kutznetsov carrier and strike group was sent on its way to Syria’s Mediterranean port of Tartus.

Russian naval sources in Moscow stressed that the flotilla is armed with the most advanced weapons against submarines and aerial attack. Upon arrival, the Russian craft will launch a major marine-air maneuver in which Syrian units will take part.

Syria has received from Russia 72 Yakhont missiles able to hit marine targets up to a distance of 300 kilometers – i.e., over the horizon, our military sources report. The missile’s radar remains inert, making it hard to detect, until it is close to target. It is then switched on to guide its aim.

Its high speed – 2,000 kmh – enables the Yakhont to strike before its target has time to activate self-defense systems.
Thursday night, in response to the deployment of 21 Syrian Scuds on the Turkish border, including five with chemical warheads, Ankara convened its top military council and declared its armed forces ready for war. Syria also rushed armored reinforcements to the Jordanian border.

DEBKAfile’s military and intelligence sources report that the rush of Syrian war moves backed by Russia indicates that both believe a Western-Arab force is on the point of invading Syria. They are keeping an eye especially on Turkey which is suspected of having obtained a NATO marine and air umbrella, including the US Sixth Fleet, for military preparations aimed at ousting Bashar Assad, so repeating the operation against Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi.

The diplomatic flurry around Syria was accentuated by US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s arrival in Ankara Friday morning to find Turkish armed forces on war preparedness, and Syrian Vice President Farouk A-Shara’s landing in Moscow for a crisis conference with Russian leaders.

Thursday night, Dec. 15, DEBKAfile reported:

War tensions around Syria rose alarmingly Thursday night, Dec. 15, when Turkey’s top military council convened “to review the armed forces’ preparedness for war” in response to the deployment of Syrian missiles, some tipped with chemical warheads, on their common border. DEBKAfile’s military sources report the meeting was led by Turkish President Abdullah Gul and Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan.

The Assad government also rushed armored units in two directions – to the Turkish frontier and also to the Jordanian border opposite the US special operations units from Iraq newly deployed to defend Jordan against a Syrian attack, as DEBKAfile reported on Dec. 13

Our sources report that 21 Syrian missile launchers, five of them Scud D with chemical warheads, are deployed in northern Syria opposite the Turkish Hatai (Alexandretta) district. They were moved up in broad daylight to make sure Western spy satellites and Turkish intelligence surveillance saw them. More are on the way.

In Israel, the IDF announced it was reconstituting the special command for operations behind enemy lines under the command of Brig. Gen. Shay Avital.

Before the military council convened in Ankara, Turkey placed its border contingents, air force and navy on war preparedness.

The official statement said the high military council had “assessed Turkish army needs and necessary steps to address these requirements…”

The Turkish press repeated a statement by Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu in an interview two weeks ago that Turkey does not want to consider a military option for intervention in neighboring Syria as Damascus cracks down on popular protest, but it is ready for any scenario.

The Turkish army has prepared operational plans for seizing parts of northern Syria if the situation there continues to deteriorate. Those plans would essentially carve Syria into two entities, with the Turkish army holding the north and protecting opposition and civilian populations, while the Syrian army and Assad loyalists would remain in control of the central and southern regions.

Source.

A former official from within the ranks of the Federal Bureau of Investigation is reporting that US and NATO forces have landed outside of Syria and are training militants to overthrow the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

Whistleblower Sibel Edmonds, formerly a translator with the FBI, wrote over the weekend that American soldiers are among the NATO troops that have mysteriously and suddenly landed on the Jordanian and Syrian border. According to her, several sources internationally have confirmed the news, although the US media has been instructed to temporarily censor itself from reporting the news.

Additionally, Edmonds says that American and NATO forces are training Turkish troops as well, to possibly launch a strike from the north of Syria.

Edmonds writes that an Iraqi journalist based out of London has confirmed that US forces that vacated the Ain al-Assad Air Base in Iraq last week did in fact leave the country as part of President Obama’s drawdown of troops, but rather than return home, the soldiers were transferred into Jordan during the late hours of Thursday evening. Another source, writes Edmonds, informs her that “soldiers who speak languages other than Arabic” have been moving through Jordan mere miles from the country’s border with Syria. Troops believed to be NATO/American-affiliated have been spotted between the King Hussein Air Base in al-Mafraq and the Jordanian village of Albaej and its vicinity.

Nizar Nayouf, a correspondent for Edmond’s Boiling Frog Post whistleblower site, says an employee of the London-based offices of Royal Jordanian Airlines has further confirmed that at least one US aircraft transporting military personnel has brought American troops into Jordan in recent days. Nayouf, the former editor-in-chief of Sawt al-Democratiyya (Democracy’s Vote), had previously been sentenced to a decade behind bars for critiquing the Syrian government. He later won several human rights awards and the 2000 UNISCO prize for press freedom.

Since the uprising of rebel forces opposing al-Assad’s regime over Syria nearly a year ago, American officials have been critical of the country’s government but insist that they have otherwise distanced themselves from becoming involved in the protests. Following the deaths of dozens of protesters in the spring of 2011, the United States imposed strict sanctions against the official government of Syria.

Navi Pillay, the United Nations’ high commissioner for human rights, revealed this week that the uprising in Syria has caused over 5,000 deaths since it began in early 2011. In the case of the crackdown against former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s regime, NATO involvement began only one month into the uprising. Nine months later, the total death toll of the Libyan Civil War is estimated to be close to 30,000.

In her report, Edmonds says that NATO troops have been training soldiers just outside of Syria since as early as May, and that US media is prohibited from reporting on it until today. The Turkish paper Milliyet also reports that defected Syrian colonel Riad al-Assad is preparing troops to take over the Syrian government as well.

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NATO will withdraw its Iraq training mission at year-end after Baghdad refused to grant it legal immunity, Iraq’s top security adviser said on Sunday, mirroring the nearly-complete pullout of US forces.

But a NATO official in Brussels denied that any decision had been taken.

Iraq said the end of the mission was a surprise, with NATO previously having agreed in principle to staying through to the end of 2013.

“NATO surprised us with this decision,” National Security Adviser Falah al-Fayadh said in an interview aboard a flight transporting Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to Washington.

“We are sorry that NATO has advised that it will withdraw its mission from Iraq … because immunity is something that is out of the government’s reach,” he added, saying Baghdad was informed of the decision on Thursday.

The failure to agree on immunity from prosecution closely mirrors Iraq’s refusal to grant US soldiers similar protections earlier this year, sinking a potential deal between the two countries that means all American soldiers left in Iraq will leave by year-end.

About 6000 US troops remain stationed in the country on three bases, down from peaks of nearly 170,000 soldiers and 505 bases.

Fayadh added: “I would have preferred that there would be cooperation with NATO in other aspects, and not only through its mission in Iraq, and I was hoping that this mission would stay.”

An official at NATO headquarters in Brussels, however, said: “There hasn’t been a decision yet.”

“When they ask us to extend the mission, we need to see that the same legal framework will extend as well,” the official said on condition of anonymity.

On November 29, Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said Iraq was studying a contract to extend NATO’s presence in Iraq beyond year-end, but noted that such a deal would not grant its troops immunity from prosecution.

And on the same day, a NATO spokesman said the grouping had been asked by Maliki to “extend its training mission until the end of 2013.”

“The North Atlantic Council (the ambassadors of the 28 NATO Allies) has accepted this request in principle. Technical details are currently being worked out,” the spokesman said at the time.

Major General Jeffrey Buchanan, the spokesman for US forces in Iraq, said that Baghdad and NATO were working on an agreement that would see around 150 trainers beyond year-end. At the end of 2010, the training mission was comprised of 180 trainers.

NATO’s training mission in Iraq was aimed at assisting “in the development of Iraqi security forces training structures and institutions”, and as of November 2011, 12 countries were represented in its force.

Also on Sunday, US forces handed over to Iraq’s defence ministry a fourth base, Contingency Operating Site Kalsu, near the central Iraqi town of Iskandiriyah, in Babil province.

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