Russian President Vladimir Putin is concerned about Israel’s repeated attacks in Syria, he said, after talking for an hour and-a-half with President Barack Obama early Tuesday, Sept. 29, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York. Putin agreed that Israel’s security concerns must be taken into account in Syria, but he was worried by the IDF’s periodic strikes on positions in the embattled territory.
Sunday night, the IDF hit Syrian military targets with powerful Tamuz artillery rockets after two errant Syrian rockets landed on the Golan.
The message the Russian president issued, straight after his meeting with Obama, was that Moscow would not put up with Israeli strikes in Syria, even in response to an attack.
1. Why did Putin take the trouble to respond in person to a trivial incident like a cross-border exchange of fire on the Golan directly after his highly-important talks with Obama?
2. Why was he so concerned by this incident? It occurred just a week after the Russian president and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu had agreed in Moscow to set up a coordination mechanism to prevent clashes between IDF and Russian forces. And in any case Russian forces were not involved.
3. What was behind statement issued by Israel’s Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon after the incident, in which he stressed with unusual emphasis Israel’s zero tolerance of Syrian rocket infractions of its sovereignty?
4. The two highly-charged statements were obviously occasioned by much more than errant cross-border fire from the Syrian side of the Golan.
Netanyahu let the cat out of the bag at his meeting with Putin last week at the Russian presidential residence outside Moscow. The prime minister disclosed his knowledge that Gen. Azadi had come to replace Gen. Ali Allah Dadi, who died on Jan 18 in an Israeli air strike against a convoy carrying Iranian Guards and Hizballah commanders traveling near Quneitra. They were there to survey a site for mounting a terrorist campaign inside Israel.
The Israeli air strike nipped this plan in the bud. But Iran and Hizballah never gave up, and Gen. Azadi was assigned to finish setting up the terror machine and getting it up and running.
A week ago, Netanyahu gave Putin notice that Israel would not let this happen – even if this meant disposing of another Iranian general.
The Russian leader explained that Israel’s attacks on Iranian military targets presented a problem because they weakened Bashar Assad.
As matter stand therefore, Russia and Israel are on a collision course: While Israel views Gen. Azadi as a menacing adversary, Putin regards him as part of the Russian-Iranian axis in Syria and wants Israel to keep its hands off him. This point is of such paramount importance to the Russian leader’s plans for Syria that he made a big deal of it at the highest international forum - almost as a sequel to his first meeting with President Obama in more than a year.
The Syrian rocket fire Friday and Saturday was not in fact “errant” as the IDF spokesman maintained. The rockets were fired on the orders of Iranian Brig. Azadi as a demonstration that Israel’s warning to Putin was a waste of time and he meant to go forward with his operation regardless. Netanyahu and Ya’alon conveyed their message of resistance to this operation by instructing the IDF to hit back with the Tamuz rocket, a system powerful enough to give the other side pause and present Putin with an unforeseen complication in his Syrian venture.
Israel is concerned with the build-up of Iranian forces in Syria, near the border with Israel, National Infrastructure, Energy and Water Minister Yuval Steinitz (Likud) said in an interview with Army Radio on Tuesday.
Steinitz's comments came amid the recent addition of Russian troops to Syria to bolster President Bashar Assad in his fight against Islamic State and other rebel groups challenging his rule in Syria. However, the Likud minister was more concerned with the infusion of troops from Assad's other central backer, Iran.
"Nobody wants to see Russian forces in the area of the Golan Heights, but we definitely don't want to see Iranian forces near Israel," Steinitz told Army Radio.
Steinitz, speaking as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was en route to New York to address the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday, said that Israel would clarify Israel's concerns regarding Iranian forces in Syria in discussions with the relevant parties.
"In all of our discussions, first and foremost with the United States, but also with Russia and the rest of the world powers, we must make sure that the Iranian forces will stay in Iran," Steinitz said.
A senior Israeli security source said earlier this month that an Iranian Islamic Republican Guards Corp force, comprised of hundreds of soldiers, recently entered Syria to assist the embattled Assad regime.
The source described a meeting last month between Quds Force commander Qassam Suleimani and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow as an event preceding the Russian- Iranian military initiative to rescue Assad.
At the UN General Assembly meeting today, Russian President Vladimir Putin blamed the West for the rise of radical Islamic groups. He also demanded a global alliance to fight these groups.
“It seems, however, that far from learning from others’ mistakes, everyone just keeps repeating them,” he stated. “And so the export of revolutions, this time so-called ‘democratic’ ones, continues. Suffice it to look at the situation in the Middle East and North Africa. Certainly, political and social problems in this region have been piling up for long time. And people there wish for changes.”
He continued: “But how did it really turn out? Rather than bringing about reforms, an aggressive foreign interference has resulted in a flagrant destruction of national institutions and the lifestyle itself. Instead of the triumph of democracy and progress, we got violence, poverty, and a social disaster. And nobody cares about human rights, including the right to life.”
“I cannot help asking those who have caused this situation: do you realize now what you have done?” said Putin, adding:
But I am afraid no one is going to answer that. Indeed, policies based on self-conceit, and belief in one’s exceptionality and impunity have never been abandoned. It is now obvious that the power vacuum created in some countries of the Middle East and North Africa led to emergence of anarchy areas. Those immediately started to be filled with extremists and terrorists.
The Russian government has continuously tried to convince others to join Assad to fight against ISIS. Saudi Arabia and Turkey were the largest countries to turn down Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s proposals over the summer. This did not stop Putin from pushing his UN colleagues to form a global alliance.
Russian President Vladimir Putin reportedly said Monday that he was concerned about Israeli airstrikes on Syrian soil.
According to Hebrew media reports, the Russian president said Israel’s security concerns must be taken into account in Syria, but added he was worried by the IDF’s periodic strikes on positions in the embattled territory.
The IDF hit two Syrian military targets across Israel’s border on the Golan Heights Sunday night in response to errant rocket fire launched from Syria.
Putin’s comment came a week after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu returned from Moscow saying Russia and Israel had agreed on a mechanism to avoid military confrontations between the two countries in Syria and that the Russian president had not objected to Israeli strikes on Hezbollah weapons transfers.
Putin said he and Obama discussed the US-led coalition’s action against IS during the “very constructive, business-like and frank” meeting.
Meanwhile, a US official said Obama and Putin have agreed to discuss a political transition in Syria, but remain at odds about what that would mean for Syrian leader Assad’s future.
The meeting came hours after the leaders outlined their contrasting visions for Syria’s future in dueling speeches at the United Nations General Assembly summit. Obama urged a political transition to replace embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad, while Putin warned it would be a mistake to abandon the current government.
Arch globalist and color revolution mastermind George Soros demands Europe “accept responsibility” for the mass influx of Muslims now flooding the continent.
He writes for Project Syndicate, an Open Society propaganda forum, that the EU is obliged to take in a million Muslim migrants per year and spend $16.8k annually on each, a grand total of $17 billion.
The money would come from frontline European countries and the United States in the form of long-term bonds.
“The EU needs a comprehensive plan to respond to the crisis, one that reasserts effective governance over the flows of asylum-seekers so that they take place in a safe, orderly way, and at a pace that reflects Europe’s capacity to absorb them. To be comprehensive, the plan has to extend beyond the borders of Europe,” Soros writes.
The plan must be globalist in nature, Soros argues, and led by the United Nations. “This would distribute the burden of the Syrian crisis over a larger number of states, while also establishing global standards for dealing with the problems of forced migration more generally.”
Moreover, according to Soros, the Muslim migrants must be allowed to choose where they will settle. Most currently travel to Germany and Western Europe where social benefits are available.
Demographics on the influx show that nearly 60% are young males, 26% children and 18% females over the age of eighteen, according to Eurostat.
The United Nations states the current influx of 8,000 refugees per day entering the continent is merely “the tip of the iceberg.”
“I don’t see it abating, I don’t see it stopping,” Amin Awad, regional refugee coordinator for the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR, said from Geneva last week. “If anything, it gives an indication perhaps that this is the tip of the iceberg.”
Muslim migration “has been the biggest engine of demographic growth in the EU as a whole since the mid-1990s,” a report issued by the EU’s Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development states. “It is about to become the only one.”
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