Global SITREP A5-15: Israel Strikes Hezbollah and Iranian Qods Force Troops in Syria

CRITICAL UPDATE 27 January 2015: Yesterday the Iranian Parliament gave its rubber-stamp approval to the regimes expressed intention to expand war operations (i.e. open a new war front) against Israel in Judea and Samaria (i.e. the West Bank, the Jewish homeland). This is intent to kinetically expand the war against Israel into Judea and Samaria is in addition to what IRGC Deputy Commander, Brigadier General Hossein Salami, declared before 208 Iranian MPs would be a military operation executing "a particular work specifically in retaliation and revenge for the incident that happened in in the Golan Heights, near Quneitra." One can readily surmise from this statement that Iran intends to launch a decapitation strike against the senior ranks of the Israel Defense Forces.

General Salami also declared that the U.S. strategy in Iraq has failed, including the drive to have the existing Shi'a-led Iraqi government give the Sunni population a proportional role and direct representation; that the U.S.-led coalition of 60 countries (Operation Inherent Resolve) against the Islamic State has failed, and that the successful Houthi (Shi'a) revolt against the U.S.-backed government in Yemen are all victories for the Islamic Republic of Iran. For its part the Iranian Parliament's intent was made clear by Mohammad Hassan Asafari who announced legislation authorizing the enrichment of uranium to 60% should the U.S. Congress pass legislation increasing sanctions against Iran.

The final announcement made yesterday was that an ongoing Shi'a revolution will topple the government (Constitutional Monarchy) of the U.S.-backed Kingdom of Bahrain under Sunni Muslim King Hamad bin Isa Al-Khalifa. Bahrain has long been the headquarters of the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet Headquarters and operations in the Gulf.

Assessment: One would have to willingly dismiss these world-world realities, as U.S. President Barack Obama apparently has, to not understand that the Islamic Republic of Iran is operating in a state of war (jihad) against the United States of America; the State of Israel; the Kingdom of Bahrain, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the now overthrown Republic of Yemen and several other U.S. allies in the region. In the absence of a credible and deterrent American policy for the entire Middle East region (see map above) at the start of 2015, the newly crowned King Salman of Saudi Arabia and Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel cannot afford to wait much longer to resolutely take military action against the Iranian war machine being brought against them on several fronts.

Iranian mourners carry a portrait of Brigadier General Mohammad Ali Allahdadi, a commander of the Islamic republic's Revolutionary Guards killed in an Israeli air strike on the weekend on Syria, during his funeral procession in Tehran on January 21, 2015. (Photo credit: AFP/ATTA KENARE)

25 January 2015: In light of the action which eternally dispatched a dozen IRGC and Hezbollah commanders, General Ali Allahdadi and Jihad Mughniyeh in particular, the glaring absence of any statement or appearance of IRGC Qods Force (IRGC-QF) Commander General Qasem Soleimani must be accounted as a confirmation of reports earlier this month of a reported nearly successful assassination attempt of the commander by Islamic State forces in Iraq. The entire upper echelon of the IRGC officer corps are now on record making public pronouncements on the death of General Allahdadi - except for Qasem Soleimani. 

There is one report in Iranian media which indicates he led the Ziarat-e Ashura prayer at Allahdadi's funeral service in Tehran. However, that report may well be Iranian disinformation because a similar report on the funeral in The Times of Israel makes no specific mention of this key function in the service or even of Soleimani's physical presence. An AFP photographer Atta Kenare was present at the service, but not one image of Soleimani is among the many taken by him, such as the above image and several others published in the ToI article.

As an aside, the ever increasing number of senior Iranian officers becoming KIA statistics in Iraq and Syria is becoming quite pronounced, especially now with the addition to this list of 12 more by the Israeli Hellfire. The most that Iran has done in response thus far is to burn Israeli flags on the streets of Tehran.

Image: An Israel Defense Forces. IAF AH-64D 'Seraph' poised on a

hilltop during June 2011 exercises in Greece with the Hellenic Air Force.

22 January 2015: Even though Israel's leadership did not have the real-time intel to know who was in those cars on Sunday... God did! Whatever may come in the aftermath of this critical event God knows, He has known it from before the foundation of the earth. I believe this event was an appointed warning of even greater judgments imminently coming upon those whose hatred and evil intent towards Israel, and the God of Israel whom they currently do not know, knows no bounds.

Mr. Netanyahu, leaders of Israel's government: you must recognize the hand of of the LORD your God, the God of all Israel, has moved against your enemies. Asaph's prophetic prayer, "Keep Thou not silence, O God; hold not Thy peace, and be not still, O God," (Psalm 83:1) is being answered before your eyes. "Behold therefore the goodness and severity of God: on those who fell, severity; but toward thee, goodness, if thou continue in His goodness. Otherwise, thou also shalt be cut off." (Romans 11:22) Look to Him, He alone is the salvation of all Israel.

20 January 2015: I do not believe for a microsecond that anyone in the Israeli civilian government, military or intelligence apparatus knew beforehand that IRGC Qods Force General Mohammed Ali Allahdadi, or Iranian Colonel Ali Reza al-Tabatabai, the commander of IRGC-Lebanon Radwan Brigade, or Commander Mohammed Issa of the Hezbollah forces in Iraq and Syria would accompany Jihad Mughniyeh and Abbas Hijazi on their inspection tour of the Golan front. I believe that the entire upper echelon of the Israeli government were stunned to the point of ashen white faces upon learning that their approved preemptive strike had also killed these senior Iranian officers. I believe Iran sent these officers to accompany Jihad Mughniyeh in the belief that Israel would not dare strike due to their presence. As the saying goes, no battle plan, however well conceived, survives first contact with the enemy, and especially when the command element does not have real-time intelligence to fail-safe or abort a strike in-progress.

19 January 2015: Yesterday, just a tad over 100 miles to the south of the underground Iranian WMD site exposed in SITREP A4, the IAF executed an airborne strike against a very high profile set of targets in the vicinity of Mazra'at Amal village near Al-Quneitra, Syria.  One or more of the IAF's upgraded AH-64D 'Seraph,' (AH-64D Apache Longbow) attack helicopters, like the example seen in the image above, may well have been the platform(s) which launched the deadly precision strike. 

This strike resulted in the annihilation of a supposedly covert convoy of three cars transporting a total of 12 Hezbollah and Iranian Qods Force terrorist commanders who were on an inspection tour just prior to the launching of a massive Hezbollah/Qods Force attack on IDF forces on the Golan Heights.  This strike force was led by the now deceased Jihad Mughniyeh, only son of the late Hezbollah master-terrorist Imad Fayez "Hajj" Mughniyeh, and a Hezbollah senior commander taken under a nurturing wing of Iran's Qods Force commander General Qasem Soleimani. Jihad Mughniyeh spent much of his young life growing up in Tehran, Iran, and like his father was a dedicated agent of the Islamic Republic of Iran regime of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Appropriately, the 12 Iranian/Hezbollah terrorists were dispatched into their eternities by American-made AGM-114 Hellfire missiles.

NOTE: The AH-64D Apache Longbow is the same attack helicopter that in one of its first official actions of 2009 the newly-minted Obama Administration had sought to keep out of Israel's possession but approved for immediate delivery to the short-lived Muslim Brotherhood terrorist government that was ruling Egypt under the leadership of Mohamed Morsi. The Obama Administration's objection to Israel having these helicopters was that Israel might use them against HAMAS and other Palestinian Islamic terrorists.

 AH-64D Seraph: One very bad bird of prey

My initial reaction yesterday to reports this heliborne strike was one of skepticism in considering that attack choppers are not exactly stealthy, they can be heard on the approach and alert an enemy from a considerable distance. Then I realized that Israeli intelligence activities almost certainly provided the necessary foreknowledge of the arrival of the convoy. Israel was able set the conditions under which this engagement on the battlefield would occur. This foreknowledge allowed the IDF to preposition the AH-64D Seraph's for an ambush, as suggested by the image at the top. Once the target convoy vehicles had placed themselves within range of the Hellfire missile (550 yards to a few miles), the Seraph's would simply pop-up from their hillside ambush positions, achieve laser and millimeter-wave guidance lock-on and the 1,000 mph Hellfire's would take care of the business at hand. The terrorists in the supposedly covert convoy never knew what hit them a second or two later.

At this time there is some question in Israel about when and how an Iranian retaliation could occur, with most pundits believing that Iran will not authorize a large-scale response. I consider this to be wishful thinking, and wishful thinking never won any war. The Israeli media pundits ignore the fact that it was a large-scale attack against the IDF that was the objective of the senior leaders just eliminated on the battlefield. Once a competent commander is available to take charge of the enemy forces already in position there would not be much to stop a retaliation. There is little doubt a large-scale Iranian/Hezbollah retaliation would trigger a war, and perhaps the war yet to occur as foretold in Isaiah 17 and Joshua 13.