Global SITREP C5-17: The Syrian Situation Revisited Part VII

Marjan Oil Field rig 

30 June 2017: Last entry for Part VII. Warfare for control of Quneitra resulted again in the Syrian Army deliberately sending mortar rounds into Israel. No one can be that far off in getting their mortar fire on-target. The IAF response was to immediately obliterate the Syrian mortar position.

Also, within the past 24-hours Russian propaganda media has reported that rebel forces in Daraa plan to use chemical weapons in a manner so as to blame it on the Al-Assad regime and in so doing cause retaliatory US/French air strikes on the regime. This report is an I&W that the Al-Assad regime, backed by Russia and Iran, is likely behind any such event should it actually occur in the stalemated Daraa warzone.

28 June 2017: It turns out that we caught the Syrians red-handed making Sarin at one of the Al -Sha'irat Air Base shelters not destroyed in the Tomahawk attack of two months ago. It looks as if the mixed of precursor chemicals has stopped and Syria has, for the moment at least, backed down. 

Last night, 27 June, the White House issued a warning to Bashar al-Assad's Syrian regime which is identical to the expectation published here (highlighted below) one week ago. The Associated Press published and then updated the White House warning early this morning. 

The warning is based on received, actionable and highly critical intelligence that al-Assad's military was detected preparing precursor chemicals "for a possible sarin gas attack in either the east (or) south of the country." So highly critical, urgent and actionable was the received intelligence that the normal American inter-governmental channels for issuing a direct warning to the Syrian government were bypassed. The warning was direct in stating that both Bashar al-Assad and his military forces would pay a "heavy price" if the chemical attack were to occur.

There is nowhere more south in Syria than the under siege city of Dara'a, and the east of the country is hotly contested by the U.S.-led CJTF-OIR forces against approaching Iranian/Hezbollah and Syrian columns as reported here in the previous parts of this SITREP.


26 June 2017: All eyes on the Golan Heights. A major flare-up could occur here at any moment's notice. Since Saturday the IAF has destroyed a Syrian heavy machine gun bunker and two Syrian Main Battle Tanks, both costing Syrian soldiers their lives.  

20 June 2017: Two noteworthy items. First, Saudi coastal security forces caught a team of IRGC-QF terrorists red-handed in the midst of an operation to blow up several Marjan Oil Field rigs. The Saudi's apprehended one IRGC terrorist team in their explosives-laden watercraft while two other teams managed to escape back into Iranian waters. Such an attack, even though it was thwarted, is an act of war, and serves to illustrate the nearness of Jeremiah 49:34-39 to its literal fulfillment.

Second, as noted earlier in comments, Russia is seriously outgunned by the US in the ongoing showdown in Syria. Also noted in the previous SITREP was the recent forward deployment into Syria of just two U.S. HIMARS rocket artillery system vehicles. Russian squawking about this deployment of two HIMARS 6x6 vehicles illustrates how sensitive they are to their mere presence.

However, two HIMARS vehicles do not constitute an overwhelming offensive juggernaut. So why the Russian angst? Note Russia's recent ultimatum to strike U.S. air or ground assets which located west of the Euphrates River. This is precisely where the HIMARS have been deployed. So, would Russia actually launch strikes against the HIMARS to show their resolve to counter the U.S. build up and make good on their threat? If this is Putin and his generals plan they had better reconsider and recalculate their risk assessment.

For the sake of argument, let's say Russia takes them out. In the U.S. counter-strike we would in a matter of minutes, certainly within an hour's time, take out all of their expensive big boy toys toys at Hmeimim Air Base. The embarked airwing of the USS G.H.W. Bush is a mere 5 minutes away from reaching out and touching those Russian toys, even while in port Haifa, and in a manner that would leave none of them operational. Without their vaunted S300 and S400 air defense systems and an operable runway at Hmeimim Air Base the Russian mission in Syria would effectively be eliminated. Mission incomplete, mission fail. The point is that Russia is severely outgunned in Syria.

Putin feeling froggy? Think he might jump? Not if he's as smart as he thinks he is. President Trump and his senior Pentagon military planners are calling Putin's bluff. Nevertheless, miscalculations do happen and Bible prophecy indicates there may well be a near-term miscalculation in Syria.

F/A-18 Super Hornets

The Eschatology Today predicted event written about in Part V of this series has now occurred and the also predicted new phase of the war in Syria is now a fact. It took almost exactly 30 days for the prediction within the 15 May update of that SITREP to occur in the real-world:

15 May 2017: The two nuclear-armed (US and Russia) opposing armed force coalitions in Syria now appear to be engaged in operations designed to seize and hold territory. This is conventional warfare as we have known it for millennia. The real danger here is the allies with each coalition could engage each other in combat, either deliberately or by accident and particularly in southern and western Syria. In the skies overhead a free-for-all dogfight could also occur between the two sides combat aircraft. And then there's the continuing Iranian-Hezbollah drive to seize the Syrian side of the Golan. This is all stage-setting for the major conflagration this series on the Syrian Situation has been highlighting according to Bible prophecy (Isaiah 17; Jeremiah 49:23-27)

If one were to continue to read the paragraph following the above from that same update and then look at the situation that is now developing just to the north of the "cities of Aroer" of northwestern Jordan, that is, around Dara'a, Syria, and as reinforced in the recent 18 June update in Part VI of this series, one might be able to see how these events are eminently predictable through the literal interpretation of the plain text wording of Isaiah's and Jeremiah's prophetic texts:

I would speculate (actually, I expect) that the Dara'a campaign appears to be falling into an Aleppo-like grind where the Syrian regime's offensive makes no headway resulting in the use of chemical weapons by the al-Assad regime in an attempt to break the stalemate. We all should understand what will result if this does occur as Dara'a lies just 9 miles from the Jordanian border.

So, with this as the lead-in to Part VII of this series, we can hopefully have a better understanding of how these prophecies will come to their literal fulfillment. What is Bible prophecy if not God telling us well in advance what will happen in the future due to the decisions made by the opposing sides in these last days "wars and rumors of wars." 

The critical thing is, these are no longer a hazy or distant future fulfillment of prophetic texts, but fulfillment that we can see occurring now, coming with as little advance notice as a Biblical month of 30 days. We're talking in this series on Syria about literal prophetic fulfillment before it happens, not as occurs from far too many preachers pulpits where the discussion is after the fact. This is utilizing the fulfillment of Bible prophecy as testimony to the inerrant nature of the LORD God's prophetic word. If this is not a here and now witnessing tool, then none exist. 

Global SITREP C4-17: The Syrian Situation Revisited Part VI

Iranian Routes to the Mediterranean Sea. Image: The New Yorker 09JUN17

Update 18 June 2017: It seems disinformation has clouded the tactical picture in southern Syria. The 13 June update last week (directly below) regarding the conquest of Dara'a by Syrian and Hezbollah forces was premature and overly optimistic. What had been thought to be reliable OSINT turns out to have been pro-regime news reported as fact by Western media sources.

In fact, Dara'a has not been conquered despite the Syrian Army and Hezbollah's best efforts to take the city behind a significant weeks-long bombardment which included the use of napalm barrel bombs. For all intents and purposes the city of Dara'a has been blasted into rubble, large structures appear to be mere shells of their former selves. 

Dara'a on 07JUN17. Image MEMO/Anadolu Agency)

I would speculate (actually, I expect) that the Dara'a campaign appears to be falling into an Aleppo-like grind where the the Syrian regime's offensive makes no headway resulting in the use of chemical weapons by the al-Assad regime in an attempt to break the stalemate. We all should understand what will result if this does occur as Dara'a lies just 9 miles from the Jordanian border.

Further west, at the Al-Tanf/Al-Walid border crossing, US-led CJTF-OIR forces have pushed forward approximately 45 miles northeast to the desert village of al-Zakf to establish a second base camp. Some patrols have reportedly been operating up to 60 miles north of the Jordanian-Iraqi-Syrian border triangle. On the Iraqi side of the border the Al-Walid crossing was fully secured this past week from Islamic State units by U.S. and Iraqi Army forces, permitting the deeper penetration into Islamic State, and blunting the Syria-Hezbollah advance into this region. 

U.S. HIMARS

The CJTF-OIR forward push was augmented this week with the arrival of at least two U.S.  M142 HIMARS, a highly accurate HIgh Mobility Artillery Rocket System riding on the back of a 6x6 all-terrain vehicle which deployed into Al-Tanf. The introduction of the HIMARS has caused great consternation for the Russians, as well as the Iranians. It places Syrian-Hezbollah and other Iranian-militia troops at risk of devastating strikes should they make further moves into the CJTF-OIR Area of Responsibility (AoR) in southern Syria. HIMARS enables CJTF-OIR forces to reach out and touch the enemy up to 180 miles away.

13 June 2017:  The situation along Syria's southern border has seen dramatic change in the past 24 hours. The city of Dara'a just north of the Jordanian border is now under the control of the Syrian 4th Division and Hezbollah. Syrian anti-regime fighters have reportedly retreated south into Jordan or east towards the CJTF-OIR base at the Al-Tanf/Al-Walid border crossing defended by US, UK, NATO and Jordanian SpecOps troops and air power.

Most other information of the past 48 hours about southern Syria is either disinformation or pure propaganda coming from Russian, Syrian, Iranian or their proxies. Further update coming...

11 June 2017: This past Tuesday, 6 June, coalition aircraft attacked a second convoy of Iranian, Hezbollah and Syrian armored vehicles and troops threatening the CJTF-OIR base at Al-Tanf. The convoy was stopped dead in its tracks, most of it destroyed. It is this region shaded gray in the above map and in detail in the below map where the Syrian war appears most likely, as has been started here previously, to be where a great clash continues to be on a steady simmer. 

On Friday, 9 June, as reported by The New Yorker, Iran-supported Shi'a militias reached the Syrian border from inside Iraq, and this is somewhat reflected in the above map. But the map has to be looked at closely. As you can see the primary route passes through Iraqi Kurdistan or Syrian Kurdistan. This hardly provides Iran clear passage from Iran to Lebanon, yet that is precisely what most media has been claiming, rather prematurely I might add. Iran does not control the major highways from its border to Lebanon.

The current eastern Syria war zone. ISW Graphic.

30 May 2017: Today, as reported by TASS, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made the not-so-veiled threat of a possible Russian-US military confrontation in eastern Syria. This is the potential confrontation Eschatology Today has been warning about in this series of Syrian Situation SITREPs. Lavrov accused the US-led coalition of directly infringing on Syrian sovereignty and said "these issues need to be settled, which is what our military is currently engaged in."  

The Iranian's are buoyed by this open Russian support for the combat operations their forces are engaged in eastern Syria and in northwestern Iraq (Hashd al-Sha'abi Shi'a militia), and now it appears they are seeking to directly engage in combat against the forces of the US-led CJTF-OIR and NATO which joined the Coalition effort recently. Iran informed Russia yesterday during a meeting in Moscow it is ready to double the size of the force it currently has deployed in Syria. The Hashd al-Sha'abi militia is rapidly becoming known as the Iranian Hezbollah of Iraq. This Shi'a Iraqi militia, under direct orders form the IRGC in Tehran will almost certainly now invade eastern Syria. 

The US has been dropping leaflets specifically instructing the Iranian militias and Hezbollah to withdraw their forces from the Syrian border regions on the Golan and Israeli frontier, and from all along the Jordanian border as well as the Iraqi border. The warning states that any movement of these Iranian forces towards CJTF-OIR Coalition and/or NATO forces will be viewed as hostile movements and attacked accordingly. The Iranian directed confrontation with US CJTF-OIR allies, the Kurdish/Arab Syrian Democratic Forces, as well as the New Free Syrian Army is now only a matter of time. The literal fulfillment of Isaiah 17 and Jeremiah 49:23-27 will be the result of this imminent warfare. 

28 May 2017: Al Mayadin (a/k/a Al-Mayadeen) is a small town in eastern Syria's Euphrates River valley. It lies closer to the Iraqi border town of Al-Qaim than it does to the Islamic State's de facto capital of Ar-Raqqa. Just to the north lies Dier ez Zor (a/k/a Dayr az Zawr), one of the focal points in the war against Islamic State. 

CJTF-OIR coalition aircraft are claimed to have stuck Islamic State assets in Al Mayadin on Wednesday, 24 May. Other organizations say the airstrike was by the Syrian Arab Air Force (SAAF). Almost immediately the Syrian regime, their allies in Russia and Iran, and alleged moderate Arab media (Aljazeera) and left-of-center US media (CBS, et. al.) began whining about fourteen alleged civilian deaths as a result of the strike which they blame on the US-led Coalition. 

This is rather telling as all of these media are utterly silent when it comes to civilian deaths due to Russian and Syrian military airstrikes since Russia's intervention in September 2015. Russian airstrikes have been conducted since that time with what various observing groups have said is a "reckless disregard for human life" in Syria. A conservative estimate of civilian death due to Russian airstrikes would be in the neighborhood 5,000 men, women and children. A liberal assessment would be double that number.

Due to the fact that all of Syria and much or Iraq are active war zones, any number of civilian deaths are unavoidable no matter whose bombs are falling. However, attributing those deaths falsely or using them for political expedience is just as abhorrent as the pure evil intent and ethnic genocide being perpetrated by the Syrian regime and their Russian and Iranian allies. The fact is that airstrikes and artillery barrages in this region, both Syrian Regime and their allies and CJTF-OIR are occurring every day, often overlapping one another. Accurate accounting of who, what when is very probably near impossible for any one or group of organizations due to the intensity of the warfare.

The truly big news for this SITREP is that NATO announced that it had joined the US-led CJTF-OIR operations against Islamic State as the strike on Al-Mayadin was being heralded in the media on May 25th. Also the ground war around Raqqa and elsewhere in eastern Syria is entering what may be a final phase that will result in its liberation from and the annihilation of Islamic State forces. We need to prepare ourselves for a series of really horrific news reports when these areas long under IS control are liberated. The depravity of the Islamic State is as bad or worse than anything that's occurred thus far in either Iraq or Syria since 2003.

Global SITREP D6-14: Coalition Airstrikes Against Islamic State in Syria

UPDATE 28 September 2014: The UK Parliament voted recently to sanction RAF airstrikes against Islamic State forces inside the recognized borders of Iraq. Let me repeat the last part of the above: inside the recognized borders of Iraq. This does not include any part of Syria. Just Iraq. Any UK strikes in Syria will require a separate authorization vote by the British MPs. Also, this vote only authorized air strikes and explicitly forbids any of the essential UK ground forces to conventionally engage with and destroy the Islamic State terrorist military machine. Much was made recently in the media that the UK dispatched two GR4 Tornado strike aircraft from Cyprus to join the strikes on Islamic State targets in Iraq. These two British strike aircraft flew into Iraq and flew right back to their RAF Akrotiri base on Cyprus. Thus far into what they have dubbed 'Operation Shader' the RAF mission has been not to bomb anything, but to take reconnaissance pictures. However, RAF bombing runs could occur today if the recon missions have firmly located priority IS targets.

Other foreign, non-Arab governments committing a handful of aircraft to the campaign, or dare I say 'crusade,' against the Islamic State are Australia, France, Belgium, Netherlands and Denmark.

23/24 September 2014: Unconstitutional American airstrikes (meaning these airstrikes were not authorized by the U.S. Congress) on Syrian territory against Islamic State military facilities began last evening at about 2030 hours Eastern Daylight Time and included both manned strike aircraft and Tomahawk cruise missiles. There is no confirmation as yet, but the airstrikes also reportedly included aircraft from some of the GCC nations as well as aircraft from the Royal Jordanian Air Force. Prophetically, this military action in Syria elicits the Sheba/Dedan/merchants of Tarshish alliance referred to in Ezekiel 38:13.

It also appears as if the vast majority of the targets which were struck were in the vicinity of Raqqa, Syria, the proclaimed capital of the Islamic State, and were executed without the express request or permission of Bashar al-Assad's government in Damascus. These strikes appear to have been minimal as the battle damage assessment images show the target structures were still basically intact. Other targets just west of Aleppo, Syria where the newly emergent Al Qaeda franchise known as "Khorasan" were also allegedly struck due to claimed  intelligence reports had them directly involved in the final stages of a planned attack against the US homeland or European allies.  No European or NATO aircraft participated in these strikes.

CInC Obama and his coffee cup salute to US Marines

This specific type of intelligence directly invokes the notion that the US intelligence had gained HUMINT derived knowledge of the inner workings of the Al Qaeda-linked terrorist "Khorasan" cell which was publicly identified for the first time just days ago by US government sources.  I'm not sure I fully buy into this explanation as it appears to be far too convenient and politically expedient of an excuse for the American coffee cup saluting Commander-In-Chief (see image above) to issue and have immediately executed an illegal (U.S. Constitution and standing International Law) order to US military forces. There is something else to this that is unmistakable.

DO NOT be deceived! This "Khorasan" group is Al Qaeda by yet another made-up name. Al Qaeda in Syria, a/k/a al-Nusra, and Al Qaeda in Iraq, a/k/a Islamic State, according to the Obama Administration were defeated, destroyed and the Global War on Terror was declared over, especially in Iraq. So Obama brought the troops home. This is no war being started just weeks prior to an important election in the United States, this is just one of the promised "overseas contingency operations." The "Khorasan" group has long worked hand-in-hand with other Al Qaeda branch offices in Yemen (AQAP) and Pakistan (Al Qaeda Prime).

The total absence of left-of-center activists and political demonstrations in the United States against an overt act of war in a foreign nation is both deeply disturbing and highly instructive at the same time. These are the "optics" I am paying attention to at the present time, the rest appears to be window dressing for some other agenda. We may see that agenda on full display today at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City. Will Obama complete his circumvention of U.S. Constitutional Law by seeking carte blanche U.N. authorization for his Syrian adventure?

25 September 2014: The answer to the above question is in the affirmative. However, it was presented to the General Assembly of the United Nations in the most pompous, narcissistic manner and was laced with totally discredited marxist invective and demonstrated an unprecedented level of naivete. In short, an American president made a complete fool of himself and, by extension, all of us. Obama invoked a worldview which has no basis in reality because it exists nowhere but within his own ideological mindset. His speech was incoherent and non-cohesive. Obama's General Assembly speech was a nonstarter which guaranteed that the U.N. Security Council, chaired by many heads of state, would adore it and adopt it in a further enhancement of global disaster which we all know is coming like a flood upon this world. A truly global war on a non-defined enemy, but anyone the "State" deems to be a threat, has just been declared by the United Nations Security Council.