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| Putin and his generals at the National Defense Control Center, Moscow |
Update 17 December 2015: A bit of a history lesson is now necessary to understand why the current situation in Syria exists, and how it was as predictable as the fall of Iraq into the Iranian sphere, the rise of the Islamic State: A lack of vision, leadership and willingness to apply the ultimate tool and force multiplier of foreign policy. To look at this in hindsight is like looking at a replay of a chess match in which one of the players is deliberately playing to lose.
We woke up yesterday to see that the US-led coalition supporting so-called moderate Sunni jihadist rebels against the Ba'athist regime of Bashar al-Assad had surrendered its very raison d'etre with the sudden announcement that the Obama Administration had abandoned its policy position that Bashar al-Assad must leave power. How did this come about?
In the latter half of 2013 when Obama threatened to bomb Syria (i.e. start a war) because al-Assad had possession of and was using chemical WMD against the Sunni jihadist rebels. Obama stated he could launch this war against Bashar al-Assad's Syria without Congressional approval. It was a bluff. U.S. allies in Great Britain knew it from the get-go and so did the French. Absent any U.S. leadership this world-class ruse quickly fell on its face without so much as a whimper.
The reason it did was the continuing effect of Obama's cut and run from the nearly won counter-terrorist war against the remnant Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). That cut and run retreat from victory was on full display. Within a very few months of the U.S. military retreat from Iraq the terrorists of AQI became the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and launched a blitz of conquest gaining vast territories and resources in both countries.
To the north the Obama bluff resulted in blatant Russian aggression and the rapid military conquest of Crimea from Ukraine, and the continuing to this day Russian war of aggression that is seeking to dismember southern Ukraine from the rest of the country.
In all of this there was not one scintilla of American leadership or pushback that amounted to anything approaching serious military or economic consequences for either of these enemies. Sunni terrorists were free to create a terrorist state, the essential requirement of Sunni eschatological belief - a Caliphate. To crown this infamous achievement, Obama then put up the false front of negotiations with Iran and Russia and achieved his goal of making Iran a nuclear weapons power. He essentially gave the Sunni a Caliphate and the Iranian-Mahdi hastening twelvers the Bomb.
In the face of such fecklessness the Russians now made manifest what Barack Hussein Obama had bluffed at two years previously - they put their combat power on the ground in Syria, in the skies, and on the ocean approaches in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, and covered it with an anti-aircraft missile shield that has no bearing whatsoever in any conflict with the Islamic State because it does not have an air force or missile force. Moreover, the Russians also have a nuclear weapons umbrella with which to defend what they have achieved in the Levant.
Can you now see where this is all leading? Does the greater Middle East now not have the essential driver for and catalyst to bring about war on a scale never before visited upon these lands? Do you now see the enabler of flood-like Bible prophecy fulfillment that exists from southern Europe to northern Africa to the Eastern Mediterranean Sea to the Arabian Peninsula to the Indian Ocean? And there is tiny but nuclear-armed Israel standing in the midst of it all.
14 December 2015: What I've flagged as an inherently dangerous situation in the Middle East grows more ominous with each passing day. If these SITREPs have not made the situation perfectly clear up to this point, one can only repeat that the I&W are that Russian forces in Syria have less to do with fighting the Islamic State and more to do with confronting the US-led Coalition and NATO head-on.
Islamic State has no air force in Syria or Iraq. They have flight training simulators in the heart of their Wilayat Tripolitania (i.e. Sirte, and western Libya) but those assets will be soon be scrap metal due to imminent airstrikes from French and British aircraft. So what drives Russia's deployment of additional top-of-the-line Su-34 'Fullback' bombers and Su-30 'Flanker-C' and the launching of Kalibr cruise missiles from a submerged Kilo-class submarine in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea; the deployment gift of of T-90MS 'Tagil' Main Battle Tanks to the Syrian Army 4th Division, and regular flights over Iraqi airspace of Tu-160 'Blackjack' enroute to targets in Syria?
All of this Putin muscle-flexing of last week is a show specifically intended for NATO eyes. This week These Russian forces have an additional tasking order. On the direct order of Putin to the National Defense Control Center, led by Russian Army Chief of Staff General Valery Gerasimov, in Moscow this past Friday a shoot to kill directive was issued. This order is a direct warning to NATO that any detected threat, even the slightest action deemed to be a provocative threat against Russian forces anywhere in the region, will be fired upon with extreme prejudice and without hesitation. This is no FRAGO from Moscow, this is a direct order that any perceived threat is to be destroyed immediately. While some will attribute this threat as being directed solely at Turkey, the fact is that since Turkey is a member of NATO and is covered by the collective defense provision of Article V of the NATO Charter, any attack by Russia on Turkey will be viewed as an attack upon all of the NATO allies.
Try not to blink, or you might miss what happens next.
9 December 2015: We're now seeing in the media the first public reports of what I first predicted one month ago (9 November 2015) would occur (now highlighted in yellow below) regarding the potential coming from Valdimir Putin of RUSSIAN tactical nuclear weapons becoming involved in the war against the Islamic State. Russia fired Kalibr 3N-14/T SLCM cruise missiles (NATO Name: SS-N-30A) against Islamic State from a submerged submarine (the Kilo-class diesel-electric submarine Rostov-on-Don) in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea. Along with this announcement from the Kremlin by Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, Putin added that the Kalibr can also be armed with nuclear warheads.This means, as if it is not obvious enough, that nuclear weapons are present within the Syrian war zone. It will be interesting to see if this becomes a banner head line for corporate global media in the next day or so, but I won't be holding my breath in anticipation of it.
29 November 2015: An unconfirmed report of extremely low credibility that has been picked up by some western media is claiming that Vladimir Putin will deploy 150,000 newly drafted Russian soldiers into Syria to destroy the Islamic State. The source for this claim is an Iranian website, Alalam.ir. Eschatology Today located this report at the VeteransToday website this morning.
We woke up yesterday to see that the US-led coalition supporting so-called moderate Sunni jihadist rebels against the Ba'athist regime of Bashar al-Assad had surrendered its very raison d'etre with the sudden announcement that the Obama Administration had abandoned its policy position that Bashar al-Assad must leave power. How did this come about?
In the latter half of 2013 when Obama threatened to bomb Syria (i.e. start a war) because al-Assad had possession of and was using chemical WMD against the Sunni jihadist rebels. Obama stated he could launch this war against Bashar al-Assad's Syria without Congressional approval. It was a bluff. U.S. allies in Great Britain knew it from the get-go and so did the French. Absent any U.S. leadership this world-class ruse quickly fell on its face without so much as a whimper.
The reason it did was the continuing effect of Obama's cut and run from the nearly won counter-terrorist war against the remnant Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). That cut and run retreat from victory was on full display. Within a very few months of the U.S. military retreat from Iraq the terrorists of AQI became the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and launched a blitz of conquest gaining vast territories and resources in both countries.
To the north the Obama bluff resulted in blatant Russian aggression and the rapid military conquest of Crimea from Ukraine, and the continuing to this day Russian war of aggression that is seeking to dismember southern Ukraine from the rest of the country.
In all of this there was not one scintilla of American leadership or pushback that amounted to anything approaching serious military or economic consequences for either of these enemies. Sunni terrorists were free to create a terrorist state, the essential requirement of Sunni eschatological belief - a Caliphate. To crown this infamous achievement, Obama then put up the false front of negotiations with Iran and Russia and achieved his goal of making Iran a nuclear weapons power. He essentially gave the Sunni a Caliphate and the Iranian-Mahdi hastening twelvers the Bomb.
In the face of such fecklessness the Russians now made manifest what Barack Hussein Obama had bluffed at two years previously - they put their combat power on the ground in Syria, in the skies, and on the ocean approaches in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, and covered it with an anti-aircraft missile shield that has no bearing whatsoever in any conflict with the Islamic State because it does not have an air force or missile force. Moreover, the Russians also have a nuclear weapons umbrella with which to defend what they have achieved in the Levant.
Can you now see where this is all leading? Does the greater Middle East now not have the essential driver for and catalyst to bring about war on a scale never before visited upon these lands? Do you now see the enabler of flood-like Bible prophecy fulfillment that exists from southern Europe to northern Africa to the Eastern Mediterranean Sea to the Arabian Peninsula to the Indian Ocean? And there is tiny but nuclear-armed Israel standing in the midst of it all.
14 December 2015: What I've flagged as an inherently dangerous situation in the Middle East grows more ominous with each passing day. If these SITREPs have not made the situation perfectly clear up to this point, one can only repeat that the I&W are that Russian forces in Syria have less to do with fighting the Islamic State and more to do with confronting the US-led Coalition and NATO head-on.
Islamic State has no air force in Syria or Iraq. They have flight training simulators in the heart of their Wilayat Tripolitania (i.e. Sirte, and western Libya) but those assets will be soon be scrap metal due to imminent airstrikes from French and British aircraft. So what drives Russia's deployment of additional top-of-the-line Su-34 'Fullback' bombers and Su-30 'Flanker-C' and the launching of Kalibr cruise missiles from a submerged Kilo-class submarine in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea; the deployment gift of of T-90MS 'Tagil' Main Battle Tanks to the Syrian Army 4th Division, and regular flights over Iraqi airspace of Tu-160 'Blackjack' enroute to targets in Syria?
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| Russian T-90 MBT |
All of this Putin muscle-flexing of last week is a show specifically intended for NATO eyes. This week These Russian forces have an additional tasking order. On the direct order of Putin to the National Defense Control Center, led by Russian Army Chief of Staff General Valery Gerasimov, in Moscow this past Friday a shoot to kill directive was issued. This order is a direct warning to NATO that any detected threat, even the slightest action deemed to be a provocative threat against Russian forces anywhere in the region, will be fired upon with extreme prejudice and without hesitation. This is no FRAGO from Moscow, this is a direct order that any perceived threat is to be destroyed immediately. While some will attribute this threat as being directed solely at Turkey, the fact is that since Turkey is a member of NATO and is covered by the collective defense provision of Article V of the NATO Charter, any attack by Russia on Turkey will be viewed as an attack upon all of the NATO allies.
Try not to blink, or you might miss what happens next.
9 December 2015: We're now seeing in the media the first public reports of what I first predicted one month ago (9 November 2015) would occur (now highlighted in yellow below) regarding the potential coming from Valdimir Putin of RUSSIAN tactical nuclear weapons becoming involved in the war against the Islamic State. Russia fired Kalibr 3N-14/T SLCM cruise missiles (NATO Name: SS-N-30A) against Islamic State from a submerged submarine (the Kilo-class diesel-electric submarine Rostov-on-Don) in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea. Along with this announcement from the Kremlin by Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, Putin added that the Kalibr can also be armed with nuclear warheads.This means, as if it is not obvious enough, that nuclear weapons are present within the Syrian war zone. It will be interesting to see if this becomes a banner head line for corporate global media in the next day or so, but I won't be holding my breath in anticipation of it.
29 November 2015: An unconfirmed report of extremely low credibility that has been picked up by some western media is claiming that Vladimir Putin will deploy 150,000 newly drafted Russian soldiers into Syria to destroy the Islamic State. The source for this claim is an Iranian website, Alalam.ir. Eschatology Today located this report at the VeteransToday website this morning.
My assessment is that this report has extremely low credibility as written due to the fact that newly conscripted Russian soldiers are not formed into new fighting battalions and brigades. What occurs is that platoon and company-sized units of these draftees are inserted into existing units to replace an equal number of previously conscripted troops who are being discharged after their one-year term of service. Put another way, draftees fresh out of a three-month long tactical training boot camp would constitute a combat ineffective fighting force if they were summarily deposited into an ongoing war on a foreign land. Due to the accelerated nature of their boot camp these draftees have not trained to repair their fighting equipment in non-combat situations, much less in a fog of war, heat of battle environment. Thus a large number would probably be chewed up in pretty short order and unit combat effectiveness would nose dive. Therefore, the Iranian origin report is at best a rumor, and most likely intentional disinformation (i.e. they know our eschatology as well as we know theirs).
The current reality is that Russia's army is slowly being transformed into a professional fighting force, with its best units consisting of all-volunteer careerist troops. These are the combat brigades and types of troops that Russia would deploy if it were serious about annihilating Islamic State. Russian combat brigades would also have to enter the battlefield in concert and strategic coordination with a large number of American, Turkish, Jordanian, British, French and Iraqi combat brigades positioned in Turkey, Iraq and Jordan in order to bottle-up, cut-off and kill the Islamic State in a full-scale campaign across the deserts of Syria and Iraq. That is what a serious anti-Islamic State war would look like and the best chance of that happening would be an accord being reached at what is supposed to be a global climate summit of world leaders in Paris, France beginning tomorrow.
27 November 2015: The shoot-down of a Russian Su-24M bomber by a NATO member (Muslim Turkey) resulting in the killing of its pilot by Syrian jihadists (the navigator/weapons officer has been rescued), followed quickly by the shooting down of a Mi-8 SAR (Search and Rescue) helicopter and resultant killing of a Russian marine by U.S.-armed Muslim jihadists have to be linked together as a singular event in the mind of Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin. This event has to have been to impetus to cause the immediate change in the military dynamic and order of battle for Russian forces deployed in Syria and the Eastern Mediterranean Sea. I assess with high probability and high risk that the first tangible evidence of the change in the military dynamic and order of battle will come in the form of hostile fire coming from the Russian missile cruiser Moskva. This ship has essentially been placed on orders from Moscow to shoot first and ignore all questions later.
The second change in the dynamic and order of battle is far more ominous. It will likely be the introduction of tactical nuclear weapons being transferred from storage in Crimea to the Russian flotilla in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea and the Basel al-Assad Air Base (a/k/a Hmeimim Air Base) near Jableh from which the doomed Su-22M took of on its last combat sortie. The introduction of Russian tactical nukes into this Middle Eastern war zone is something I put with much aforethought into the comment section of SITREP E2-15 on the morning of 9 November 2015. Understandably, no one touched that comment with a ten-foot pole. Yet here we are two weeks later and the introduction of those Russian tactical nukes into the Syrian battlefield is very much a part of the new dynamic and order of battle.
Russia has announced the deployment to Syria of its S-400 Triumf (NATO: SA-21 Growler) SAM system. The S-400 Triumf is an upgraded version of the S-300PMU/3 SAM system. Details are in the image above. Awaiting Israel's and NATO's response to this deployment.
Speaking of Israel, there is a Russian-Israeli military understanding that has been published in Israeli media (JPost, etc.). As published this understanding holds that Israel Defense Forces will not shoot down Russian air force aircraft conducting strike missions in southern Syria (i.e. Dera'a) and which might accidentally enter Israeli airspace over the Golan region. According to a quoted IDF spokesperson, the lines separating IAF operational areas and Russian operational areas are clearly defined according to the understanding, and at least from the Israeli perspective, Russia is not seen as an enemy of Israel. Therefore the Russians are free to conduct their anti-terrorist airstrikes in Syria and Israel is free to conduct its anti-Hezbollah and anti-Iran airstrikes in Syria and Lebanon. In my opinion, this current understanding probably has the life expectancy of a soap bubble blown by a child's toy and will likely burst upon the first item of Russian airdropped munition which "accidentally" hits an Israeli position on the Golan. So, we'll wait and see as this war progresses.
A Couple of Other Odds and Ends:
According to a Washington Free Beacon staff report of 25 NOV15, the JCPOA nuclear agreement between the P5+1 nations and the Islamic Republic of Iran is not legally binding because President Obama did not require them to do so in order to bring the agreement into effect. In essence, and according to the Obama Administration via the U.S. State Department, the JCPOA is nothing more than a verbal agreement between President Obama and Ayatollah Khamenei. For those who have suggested that Jeremiah 49:34-39 has been preempted by the JCPOA nuclear agreement, you might want to reconsider your viewpoint - it is based upon nothing.
The Atlantic published an interesting article on 24NOV15 titled "The War on ISIS: What's the Endgame?" The second sentence of the article caught my eye:
And speaking of Iran, it has been confirmed that the Ayatollah's right-hand man and commanding officer for global terror operations via the IRGC Qods Force, 58-year old General Qassem Soleimani, was wounded in the ongoing battle southwest of Aleppo, Syria. Several reports have indicated that his wounding came as a result of a strike by a U.S.-made BGM-71E TOW anti-tank missile (as referenced in SITREP D10:15) and he was the principal of an immediate medical evacuation (Medevac) to a hospital in Tehran. This is just a step towards justice due to Soleimani for his role in the hundreds of American troops killed and wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan by weapons Soleimani deployed on those battlefields.
Thus far the name and rank of Soleimani's IRGC-QF replacement on the Syrian battlefield is as yet unknown. The BGM-71E TOW missile also destroyed the Russian Mi-8 helicopter that was forced to land after being hit by groundfire during its SAR mission to recover the pilot and navigator of the downed Russian Su-24 bomber. Given the speed of the TOW strike and destruction the Mi-8 the proximity of the opposing forces to each other was within a couple hundred yards and clearly line-of-sight.
A Couple of Other Odds and Ends:
According to a Washington Free Beacon staff report of 25 NOV15, the JCPOA nuclear agreement between the P5+1 nations and the Islamic Republic of Iran is not legally binding because President Obama did not require them to do so in order to bring the agreement into effect. In essence, and according to the Obama Administration via the U.S. State Department, the JCPOA is nothing more than a verbal agreement between President Obama and Ayatollah Khamenei. For those who have suggested that Jeremiah 49:34-39 has been preempted by the JCPOA nuclear agreement, you might want to reconsider your viewpoint - it is based upon nothing.
The Atlantic published an interesting article on 24NOV15 titled "The War on ISIS: What's the Endgame?" The second sentence of the article caught my eye:
"Today, the United States is contemplating a major expansion of its military campaign against ISIS. Driven partly by faith that the end times are imminent, ISIS has stepped up expeditionary attacks outside its caliphate, including the bombing of a Russian jet over Egypt, a suicide attack in Lebanon, and coordinated assaults in Paris."If you follow that "end times" link embedded in the quote above it'll take you to another article from The Atlantic published in March 2015. That article makes clear that the Sunni eschatological theology underpinning the Islamic State is identical to that which we have known about the Twelver-Hojjatieh Shi'a clerics ruling in the Islamic Republic of Iran for the past 36 years and counting. The raison d'etre for both is that they believe they are "a harbinger of—and headline player in—the imminent end of the world." This is the bottom-line reason why Sunni Muslims have flocked from all over the world into Syria to join the Islamic State, receive military trained and return to their home countries, many disguised as "refugees" in order to execute attacks for the above stated purpose. The only difference between the Sunni jihadists and Shi'a jihadists and what keeps them at each others throats is that they each consider the other to be apostates of Islam. The Shi'a have their al-Mahdi-hastening Ayatollah Khamenei and his Twelver-Hojjatieh regime, and the Islamic State has their Caliph Ibrahim who is the al-Mahdi.
And speaking of Iran, it has been confirmed that the Ayatollah's right-hand man and commanding officer for global terror operations via the IRGC Qods Force, 58-year old General Qassem Soleimani, was wounded in the ongoing battle southwest of Aleppo, Syria. Several reports have indicated that his wounding came as a result of a strike by a U.S.-made BGM-71E TOW anti-tank missile (as referenced in SITREP D10:15) and he was the principal of an immediate medical evacuation (Medevac) to a hospital in Tehran. This is just a step towards justice due to Soleimani for his role in the hundreds of American troops killed and wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan by weapons Soleimani deployed on those battlefields.
Thus far the name and rank of Soleimani's IRGC-QF replacement on the Syrian battlefield is as yet unknown. The BGM-71E TOW missile also destroyed the Russian Mi-8 helicopter that was forced to land after being hit by groundfire during its SAR mission to recover the pilot and navigator of the downed Russian Su-24 bomber. Given the speed of the TOW strike and destruction the Mi-8 the proximity of the opposing forces to each other was within a couple hundred yards and clearly line-of-sight.
So, as we can probably all discern with relative ease, the deception is rampant and it is global, and it is something that we have to deal with until the moment we are commanded by Jesus, with the trump and voice of an archangel to "Come up hither!" (1 Thessalonians 4:16 and Revelation 4:1)
