What a Cotton-Picking Mess!
November 15, 2006
http://www.tribulationperiod.com/
The phrase from an old Tex Ritter Song, “You can’t pick very much cotton, when them cotton bulbs get rotten, in them old cotton fields back home,” is certainly appropriate for the situation in the Middle East
today.
I have never seen such a rotten mess in the “old world” since I listened to the invasion of Poland by Hitler in September of 1939. Truly, it will take the Second Advent of Messiah to straighten out this horrific maze of hate that has engulfed the Middle East and spread its tentacles around a tottering planet.
While it is quite true that no man can tell the hour, the day, the week, the year, the times of the moon, or the four seasons of Christ’s coming in the air for his Saints, I exhort all who would listen to understand that we can “see the day approaching.” Its approach is accelerating, and I am convinced when it does break out, it will be abrupt and without quarter.
Mark 13:32 – But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father.
Acts 1:6,7 – When they therefore were come together, they asked of him, saying, Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel? [7] And he said unto them, It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power.
Hebrews 10:25 – Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching.
I have collected a number of November articles from a wide variety of sources to place in a BLOG that illustrates my point.
Begin Arutz Sheva Article
*Shabak Chief Warns Again of Gaza Initiated War
Aratz Sheva – Israel National News
By Hillel Fendel
November 14, 2006
Yuval Diskin, Head of the GSS, tells Knesset Members yet again that Israel faces a massive military offensive initiated by increasingly-armed Palestinian terrorists in Gaza.
Appearing this morning (Tuesday) before the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Diskin said that the terrorists in Gaza are preparing
and arming themselves for the coming clash. The extremist factions in particular are strengthening themselves, he said.
Diskin told the MKs that the terrorists in Gaza are carefully studying the lessons of the recent war in Lebanon, and are receiving mass quantities of weapons smuggled in from Egypt. He added that terror experts are also making their way into Gaza in various clandestine ways, as part of the preparations for the frontal clash with the IDF.
The General Security Service chief said that Israel will be left with no choice but to preempt the attack with a large, comprehensive offensive in Gaza. He added, however, that now is not the time for an offensive. Instead, he proposed that Israel enable Fatah to be strengthened at the expense of Hamas.
Diskin has long painted a grim picture of the situation in Gaza. He told the same committee this past August, “Samaria has become the land of Islamic Jihad following the Disengagement,” noting that Judea and Samaria have become much harder to control since four Jewish communities in northern Samaria were destroyed by the Israeli government in 2005. He said that Hizbullah is becoming a greater threat than even Fatah and Hamas within these areas.
A week earlier, the Shabak chief told the government ministers that the “intensification of terror infrastructure in Gaza is a strategic problem which, if not treated properly, will result in a situation just like in Lebanon.” He said that “tons of explosives and hundreds of weapons have been smuggled in recently through the Philadelphi Corridor [on the Gaza-Egyptian border].”
In response to Dichter’s comments, Attorney General Menachem Mazuz has been asked to initiate a public investigative committee to review the decision-making process that led to the Disengagement from Gaza. An organization named “The World Task Force for the Nation and the Land” demands an investigation into how such a decision could have been made in the face of strong security warnings and the firing of Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Yaalon, who opposed the plan.
COLLECTION OF NOVEMBER ARTICLES
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs Daily Alert
*IDF: Hamas Building an Army in Gaza
Joshua Brilliant
The Israeli defense establishment maintains Hamas is building an army in Gaza, partly to fight Israel and partly for a showdown with Fatah. Hamas already has thousands of armed men whose uniforms and conduct demonstrate “elements characteristic of an army,” a milit
ary source said. The head of the IDF Southern Command, Maj.-Gen. Yoav Gallant, told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Tuesday that Hamas is building battalion
and brigade formations. It smuggles into Gaza two to three tons of explosives a month and is engaged in serial production of weapons. Unless checked, Israel could find itself facing a force “in the scale of a division [10,000 soldiers – similar to the size of Hizballah].”
A military source said Palestinians have smuggled large quantities of anti-tank missiles, and over the past year hundreds of thousands of guns, mostly through tunnels. Israel “must not let Hamas and (other) terror organizations build a terrorist infrastructure similar to the one Hizballah built in Lebanon,” Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz said Tuesday. (UPI)
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs Daily Alert
*Hizballah Sets Deadline for New Lebanon Government
Nadim Ladki
Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah on Tuesday gave Lebanon’s majority anti-Syrian coalition until mid-November to agree to the formation of a national unity government or face protests demanding new elections. He said Hizballah and its allies should have at least a third of the cabinet. The group, and Nabih Berri’s Amal faction, currently have five ministers
in the 24-member government. A third of votes in the government can block the passage of decisions in any cabinet vote. (Reuters)
*U.S. Preparing Abbas Guard to Take on Hamas
Aluf Benn and Avi Issacharoff (Ha’aretz)
The Bush administration has undertaken efforts to arm and train the Presidential Guard of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas in order to prepare it for a potential violent confrontation with Hamas forces in Gaza.
Palestinian sources say the training of 400 Force 17 troops in a “Special Presidential Guard” started a month ago in Jericho under the guidance of an American military instructor.
*Hamas Receives Advanced Anti-Tank Missiles
(Middle East Newsline)
Israel has determined that the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority has received advanced, Russian-made, AT-14 Kornet anti-tank missiles with a range of 5.5 km. and a high level of accuracy.
Officials said the weapons were capable of changing the strategic balance in the region since they could significantly threaten Israeli military operations in Gaza.
They said the missiles could also target civilian and military sites inside Israel.
“The Palestinians have received dozens of the anti-tank missiles that were used by Hizballah in the Lebanon war,” said Shalom Harari, a senior consultant to the Defense Ministry.
“These are weapons that break the strategic balance.”
*U.S. worried Iran, Syria helping Hezbollah bid to oust Siniora
By Shmuel Rosner, Haaretz Correspondent and News Agencies
November 1, 2006
The White House expressed concern Wednesday over what it called mounting evidence that Syria and Iran are joining with Hezbollah in an attempt to topple the Lebanese government.
Press Secretary Tony Snow said any such bids through tactics including violence or physical threats to Lebanese leaders would be a clear violation of Lebanon’s sovereignty and three United Nations Security Council resolutions.
“Support for a sovereign, democratic, and prosperous Lebanon is a key element of U.S. policy in the Middle East. We are therefore increasingly concerned by mounting evidence that the Syrian and Iranian governments, Hezbollah, and their Lebanese allies are preparing plans to topple Lebanon’s democratically-elected government led by Prime Minister Siniora,” the White House said in a statement.
“Any attempt to destabilize Lebanon’s democratically-elected government through such tactics as manufactured demonstrations and violence, or by physically threatening its leaders would, at the very least, be a clear violation of Lebanon’s sovereignty and United Nations Security Council Resolutions 1559, 1680, and 1701,” the statement said.
Hezbollah on Wednesday threatened demonstrations to force early elections in Lebanon if its demands were not met for a “national unity” cabinet that would give the militants and their allies veto power over key decisions.
The effort seems certain to further exacerbate an already tense political situation in Lebanon, where the Western-backed government of Prime Minister Fuad Siniora has refused earlier Hezbollah calls to step down and allow the formation of a new Cabinet.
It could also lead to violence, with pro-government groups warning of a confrontation with militants in the streets.
“Our concept of the national unity government is that all the basic forces in Lebanon be in it … actual and serious participation, not an aesthetic participation,” Hezbollah’s leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, said in a three-hour interview on his group’s television channel Al-Manar on Tuesday night.
In the face of Nasrallah’s ultimatum, government supporters have threatened counter-protests, raising fears of a repeat of the kind of sectarian clashes between Lebanon’s Sunnis, Shiites, Druze and Christians that ravaged the country during its 1975-90 civil war.
Leaders of the anti-Syrian factions have repeatedly warned of violence if Hezbollah supporters pour into the streets.
The move, if successful, would significantly raise Hezbollah’s standing in the cabinet, where it and its Shiite ally, Amal, currently have five ministers. Such veto power and influence in decision-making would also bolster their standing in the 128-seat parliament, where the group and its allies hold less than half the seats, compared to 70 seats held by the anti-Syrian majority.
Prime Minister Siniora has repeatedly rejected the idea of a new government, contending that his cabinet achieved much for the country and did its best to stop the war. His supporters say that Hezbollah and its backers, in pushing for greater political power, are doing Damascus’ bidding and are trying to undermine the formation of an international tribunal to try suspects in the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in February 2005.
Walid Jumblatt, a member of parliament, was quoted by Lebanese newspapers Wednesday as warning during a visit to Washington that “threats by some forces in Lebanon to resort to street [protests] in order to bring down the government” would “lead to anarchy.”
Nasrallah has played down any fears of violence in the threatened street protests, saying his campaign would be peaceful.
The Hezbollah chief further threatened to press for early general elections in the hope of winning a majority that would turn the current anti-Syrian majority in parliament into a minority, and elect a pro-Syrian premier.
Nasrallah’s comments however “do not reflect … the political resistance the government had played to ensure the Israeli withdrawal,” Siniora said Wednesday, referring to the Israeli pullout from southern Lebanon after the recent conflict with Hezbollah.
Observers say Hezbollah and its ally the Shiite Amal movement are aiming to gain control of at least a third of the cabinet, which would give them the ability to veto cabinet votes.
Next week’s talks are widely seen as the last chance to avert a showdown on the streets and threaten Lebanon’s stability.
In a related development, sources close to senior Christian political figure General Michel Aoun have claimed that negotiations are underway to prevent any demonstrations by enlarging the current cabinet.
The plan would see the appointment of ministers loyal to Aoun, himself a Hezbollah ally, as well as other representative currently outside the government, the sources told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.
“The negotiations are on the right track and we will probably be discussing the names of the new ministers,” the sources said. Hezbollah currently has two ministers in Siniora’s cabinet.
Arutz Sheva – National News Service
*Iran-Hamas Summit in Coming Weeks
Wednesday, November 1, 2006 / 10 Cheshvan 5767
A Palestinian Authority-Iranian summit is to take place in the coming weeks with Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh traveling to Iran to meet with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
The meeting was confirmed by Haniyeh’s office. This will be the first official visit of the Hamas leader to Iran, though Hamas terror chief Khaled Mashal (pictured above) met with Ahmadinejad previously.
Iran has been a major backer of Hamas throughout the period since the terror group won the PA elections. During that time, most of the PA’s Western funding sources have withheld funding pending a Hamas recognition of the Jewish state.
The top Hamas official will also be visiting Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, Qatar, and Lebanon.
Analysts are concerned that the Iranian-Hamas summit will increase the coordination between the two entities, both publicly seeking the liquidation of the Jewish state.
Terror Group Claims it Fired Rocket in Samaria
A terrorist group associated with the Popular Resistance Committee declared Wednesday that it had succeeded in firing a Nasser 1 missile at a Jewish community on the outskirts of Shechem.
The IDF denied the report, saying no missile had fallen near the Jewish community of Migdalim, which was identified as the target by the Saladdin Brigades’ statement.
“This is a present to the martyrs and their soul, to the injured and the prisoners, and it is the first step toward exterminating the Zionists through the missiles of the Palestinian resistance,” the statement read.
Rockets in Sderot
Meanwhile, seven Kassam rockets were fired from Gaza toward the city of Sderot Wednesday. One of the rockets landed in the yard of a private residence, damaging cars and causing a number of residents to go into shock. Two other rockets smashed into a factory in Sderot’s industrial zone, setting a fire and causin a minor spill of hazardous chemicals. Three people were lightly injured.
Another Kassam rocket landed south of the city of Ashkelon, near a strategic facility. It failed to cause any damage or injury.
*Hamas begins to fire antitank missiles in West Bank
November 2, 2006, 3:15 PM (GMT+02:00)
Exclusive to DEBKAfile’s military sources: While the IDF continues “Operation Autumn Clouds” in Beit Hanun, and Qassam rockets continue to fall on Sderot and the Western Negev, Hamas has begun to fire rockets from the West Bank at Israeli targets. The IDF on Wednesday, Nov. 1, refuted an announcement by the Salah a-Din Brigades, the military wing of the Popular Resistance Committees, that on Wednesday morning it had fired a short-range Nasser 1 rocket at the settlement of Migdalim, east of Ariel in Samaria. However, senior officers in Central Command told
DEBKAfile’s military sources that the Palestinians, for the first time, fired an antitank missile at an Israeli settlement, adding that it had been smuggled into the West Bank from the Gaza Strip or the Sinai Peninsula. According to the officers, Hamas has devoted tremendous resources to opening a second front by firing short-range missiles at Israeli targets from the West Bank, and has already succeeded in stockpiling a “not insignificant” number of such missiles. “The first instance of the firing of such a missile took place early Wednesday morning at 4 a.m., and now it will escalate,” one officer said. Another officer said: “What we said was that we didn’t find the missile fragments in the field. However, just because we didn’t find them doesn’t mean we don’t know what the Palestinians are up to. The missile was definitely fired, and without any doubt this heralds the opening of a new period of warfare in the West Bank and within the Green Line.” DEBKAfile’s military and intelligence sources report that senior IDF officers are saying that while the political echelon and military brass are still deliberating how to halt or lessen the influx of weapons through Palestinian-made smuggling tunnels along the Philadelphi Corridor and the Egypt-Gaza border, Hamas is concentrating most of its efforts to bringing its assorted weaponry from Gaza to the West Bank. Hamas sees this as a priority, even more than bringing advanced weaponry into Gaza. Over the past few weeks, the IDF says, Hamas has succeeded in opening another smuggling route from the Sinai Peninsula to the Arava near Eilat. From there the missiles cross the Jordan River into Jordan, then are snuck into the West Bank through the Dead Sea area by Beduin smuggling networks. Hamas wants to establish in the West Bank and adjoining areas on the other side of the Green Line a zone of live fire similar to what exists along the Gaza Strip security fence. [See DEBKAfile’s article from Nov. 1 “The Russian-made antitank missile Metis-M9 is returning to the battle field – this time to the Gaza Strip”] A senior officer in Central Command said: “Now, after the first firing [of a missile] at Migdalim, the firing of antitank missiles at settlements and Israeli vehicles will escalate in Judea and Samaria. It is only a question of a short time before areas inside the Green Line become targets.”
Arutz Sheva – National News Netword
*UNIFIL Patrol Takes Nights Off, UN Admits Hizbullah Arming
Wednesday, November 1, 2006 / 10 Cheshvan 5767
Despite the 20,000 troops deployed in southern Lebanon, the United Nations admits that weapons smuggling from Syria continues unhindered. A German report finds UNIFIL does not patrol after dark.
Hizbullah terrorists are free to roam at night without fear of being identified by the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), according to a report by the German paper Der Spiegel.
Spanish UNIFIL official Richard Ortax admitted to the paper that no patrols are carried out at night “because of the danger involved.” UNIFIL commanders said their function is to “observe changes in the behavior of the local population.”
One junior officer told Der Spiegel he was glad that his battalion had only left its camp once. “It’s absurd,” he said. “We landed here and set up our tent city, but since then we’ve only left the camp to drive around and to make sure that we’re seen.”
The report cites a long tradition of UNIFIL inaction, which it says allowed time for a Finnish contingent to construct a giant sauna and an Indian contingent to decorate its base with traditional Indian artwork.
The UNIFIL troops and the 14,000 Lebanese soldiers stationed in the region add up to a total of around 20,000 troops in the 18-by 31-mile region
of southern Lebanon. Another 6,000 troops are still expected to arrive.
The United Nations itself has admitted that Syria was still successfully smuggling arms to the Hizbullah, which neither UNIFIL nor the Lebanese army plan to stop.
Israel has maintained overflights in the region in order to monitor and discourage the smuggling, yet UNIFIL officials condemn the continued Israeli maneuvers. The Lebanese army even attempted to shoot down Israeli fighter jets on Tuesday. France and the European Union have been accusing Israel of violating Resolution 1701 with its flights over Lebanon.
The current state of affairs has led Israeli officials to speak about “rethinking the implementation of Israel’s commitments” made in the context of the UN-brokered cease-fire.
The UN Security Council “noted with regret [that] non-Lebanese militias” in the country had not been disbanded or disarmed, an allusion to the Iranian and Syrian-backed Hizbullah. The statement on Tuesday was termed a “presidential statement,” which is the weakest of all available Security Council actions.
Following the meeting, UN envoy to the region Terje Roed-Larsen explicitly admitted that Syria was actively smuggling weapons into Lebanon. He said that Lebanese government officials “have stated publicly and also in conversations with us that there have been arms coming across the border into Lebanon.”
Roed-Larsen added that Syria itself does not deny the flow of weapons, claiming only that the arms are not being dispatched by the Syrian government. “The consistent position of the government of Syria has been that, ‘Yes, there might be arms smuggling over the border, but this is arms smuggling and the border is porous and very difficult to control,'” Roed-Larsen told reporters.
Roed-Larsen ducked UN responsibility for the smuggling, saying UN troops had not been asked by the Lebanese army to monitor the border.
*Iran test fires 3 new missiles in Gulf
Associated Press, THE JERUSALEM POST
November 3, 2006
Iran has successfully test fired three new models of missiles in the Persian Gulf, state TV reported Friday.
Television showed footage of the elite Revolutionary Guards firing the missiles from mobile launching pads on the shore, and from warships.
The three new types of missiles, named Noor, Kowsar, and Nasr, have a range of about 170 kilometers and were built for naval warfare, TV reported.
The weapons are “suitable for covering all the Strait of Hormuz, the Persian gulf and the sea of Oman” said Admiral Sardar Fadavi, the deputy navy chief of the Revolutionary Guard.
Some 20 percent of the world’s oil supply passes every day through the strategic Strait of Hormuz.
The Revolutionary Guards began maneuvers on Thursday, shortly after a US-led military exercise in the Gulf.
*Eye of the Storm: The ‘Iranization’ of Syria
AMIR TAHERI, THE JERUSALEM POST
November 1, 2006
While there is much talk of continued Syrian machinations in Lebanon, little attention is paid to an Iranian plan to remodel Syria into a Khomeinist state.
The Teheran-Damascus axis that challenges the United States in the Middle East was first formed in 1980 when Saddam Hussein invaded Iran in the hope of destroying the newly created Islamic Republic.
At first, the Khomeinist regime in Iran and the Ba’athist dictatorship in Syria seemed unlikely allies. The Khomeinists followed a radical Shi’ite ideology aimed at global jihad in the name of their brand of Islam. The Syrian Ba’athists, on the other hand, were secularists inspired by an Arabized version of National Socialism aimed at uniting Arab countries under one flag and one party.
The Iran-Iraq war brought the two together for a simple reason: the Syrians knew that if Saddam won he would become the unrivaled Arab supremo, marginalizing the Syrian Ba’ath and eventually toppling the regime of President Hafez Assad. The mullahs knew that only Syria could prevent a unified Arab bloc to back Saddam.
The mullahs had to pay for Syrian support in the form of cut-price oil and an annual cash handout of $150 million. In 1982 the two furthered their alliance by sponsoring the Lebanese branch of Hizbullah.
All along, however, the Syrians were careful not to be totally hooked to the Iranian strategy. Hafez Assad insisted on meeting every American president and maintained close contact with Washington. He was also ruthless when it came to Islamist tendencies, even if that meant massacring thousands of people. Even in Lebanon, Assad did not put all his eggs in the Iranian basket and insisted on having his own Shi’ite outlet in the form of Nabih Berri’s Amal movement.
To underline their difference, the Syrians also made a number of small but significant gestures. For example, they refused Iranian demands that women be kept out of official ceremonies attended by visiting Khomeinist dignitaries, or that no alcohol be served on such occasions.
“Syria is Syria and Iran is Iran,” Syria’s then defense minister Mustafa Tlas told a reporter in 1986. “We cannot live like them and they cannot live like us. But we can work together.”
Today, Tlas may well have much to worry about. For there are signs that the Islamic Republic is determined to export its ideology to Syria. Teheran believes that only an Islamicized Syria would be a dependable ally in driving the US out of the Middle East, wiping Israel off the map, and creating a new Islamic “superpower” with Iran as its “core component.”
According to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad secular anti-imperialism, including Ba’athism, has failed to halt the advance of the American “Great Satan.” Today, only militant Islamism can fill the gap left by the disintegration of the USSR and Communism as global challengers to “imperialist hegemony.”
TEHERAN STRATEGISTS, working on the assumption that Israel and the Islamic Republic will clash at some point, regard Lebanon and Syria as part of the Iranian glacis. It was to secure Lebanon and Syria as strategic assets that Teheran launched its plan for the “Fertile Crescent.”
The first phase of the plan consisted of an Iranian-sponsored campaign last year to cast suspicion on elements in the Syrian Ba’ath known for their opposition to Khomeinism. Hundreds of Ba’ athist cadres, including senior figures, were retired or driven into exile.
Cadres with what is euphemistically called “better Islamic sensibilities” have taken their place. Many of the new rising stars have some experience of Iran, having served there in diplomatic, military and intelligence capacities on behalf of their government. In Syria today, having an “Iranian flavor” is as useful for an individual’s career as a Soviet one was in the old days.
President Bashar Assad’s purge of the party, the army and security services of secular elements has, in turn, increased his vulnerability to conspiracies by the excluded cadres. Some of those cadres have formed alliances with the regime’s Sunni fundamentalist and democratic opponents. That, in turn, has increased Assad’s reliance on Iranian security and the Lebanese branch of Hizbullah. Sources in Damascus claim that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and the Hizbullah have assigned special units to protect Assad, if and when he is threatened by domestic enemies.
Teheran has also succeeded in killing what Dr. Hassan Abbasi, Ahmadinejad’s strategic guru, has called “the American temptation” in Damascus. That “temptation” came to the fore in 2003 when Assad surrounded himself with Western-educated technocrats and diplomats who wanted him to switch to the American side in the wake of regime change in Baghdad.
Since then, however, the Syrian officials branded by Abbasi as “Emrikazadeh” (struck by America) have been silenced or force to change tune. Teheran has successfully peddled the fear that Syria may be a target for American “regime change.”
ONE OTHER development has forced Syria closer to Iran: The murder of former Lebanese premier Rafik Hariri in 2005 destroyed bridges between Damascus and moderate Arab capitals. Today, hardly a single Arab regime is prepared to maintain friendly ties with Syria, let alone prop up the Assad regime. At one stroke Syria lost the annual stipend of $250 million that it had received from Saudi Arabia since 1991. The more isolated Syria becomes the more its leaders are forced to depend on Iranian power.
To protect himself against alleged US plans for “regime change,” Assad is leaning on the mullahs who also want to change his regime.
Last June Syria did what it had not done even during its alliance with the USSR, and signed a defense pact with the Islamic Republic.
The pact gives Iran direct access to the Syrian military at middle and senior levels, provides for joint staff conversations, harmonization of weapons systems and training, and military exercises. Under it, any attack on either partner would be regarded as an aggression against the other. One result of the pact has been a fourfold increase in the number of Iranian military and security personnel in Syria.
“Iran is trying to play the role that the Soviet Union played in Syria during the Cold War,” says a former member of Assad’s cabinet. “It is the regional big power and behaving like one.”
Several developments confirm that view:
• Iran has increased scholarships offered to Syrians, including for military training, from a mere 200 in 2001 to over 3,000 this year.
• Assad has lifted the ban on Syrians attending Islamic seminaries in Iran, allowing over 170 Syrians to attend seminaries in the Iranian holy city of Qom.
• The ban on Iranian cultural centers outside Damascus has been lifted.
Iran has now set up 11 centers for Khomeinist indoctrination in Syrian cities including Aleppo and Latakiyah. By last September a total of 17,000 Syrians had enrolled in classes to learn Farsi and study the “philosophy of Imam Khomeini.”
• Iran is clearly flexing is economic muscle in Syria. Hundreds of Iranian companies, from banks to building contractors, are active in Syria, employing tens of thousands of people in a country hit by mass unemployment. This year the Islamic Republic is expected to become Syria’s second major trading partner, after the European Union.
• Syria has agreed to raise the number of Iranian pilgrims visiting the Zeynabiah Shi’ite holy shrine near Damascus from 150 to 1,000 a day. Critics claim that the pilgrimage is used as cover for the presence in Damascus of hundreds of Islamic Revolutionary Guard fighters at any given time.
• Iranian television and radio networks, broadcasting in Arabic, are now available in every Syrian home while other non-Syrian Arabic-language media are banned.
• Assad has granted 41 Iran-based charities permission to operate in Syria. These use the models of Hizbullah and Hamas by providing services such as clinics, schools, interest-free loan agencies and grants for weddings.
• Women who agree to wear Khomeinist-style hijabs and men who grow Khomeinist-style beards receive cash gifts and preferential treatment in getting jobs with hundreds of Iranian companies operating in Syria. Visitors to Syria would be struck by the massive rise in the number of young women and men trying to confirm to the Khomeinist “look.”
• Syria has also lifted the ban on Shi’ite proselytization, allowing hundreds of Iranian mullahs to convert Syrian Sunnis to Shi’ism. There are also reports of mass conversions of members of Assad’s own Alawite sect to Iranian duodecimain Shi’ism. Traditionally, Iranian Shi’ism considered the Alawites as heterodox because of esoteric elements in their theology. Last year, however, two ayatollahs of Qom with ties to the Khomeinist regime declared he Alawites part of the Muslim ummah, and authorized “theological exchanges” with them, opening the path for attempts at conversion.
• In Lebanon, Iran is trying to undermine Syria’s role by marginalizing Amal and establishing direct contact with the Christian bloc led by ex-general Michel Aoun. Teheran wants Berri and Aoun to put themselves under the banner of a front led by Hizbullah.
Last summer’s war in Lebanon that ended with Israel’s “greatest defeat,” according to Iran, has strengthened the supporters of a Damascus-Teheran axis within the Syrian leadership.
The Assad regime is the typical Arab set-up that cannot survive without the backing of an outside power. For a brief moment in 2003 and 2004 it looked as if the US could provide that backing. Since then, Assad has been left with no option but putting himself under Iranian protection. And that, in turn, makes a showdown between the US and the Islamic Republic that much more possible.
FAIR USE NOTICE: This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner.
We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more detailed information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. You may use material originated by this site. However, if you wish to use any quoted copyrighted material from this site, which did not originate at this site, for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner from which we extracted it.