A furious Trump administration halted military assistance to the Lebanese army Wednesday, Aug. 30, when a Hizballah-brokered deal allowed some 300 ISIS fighters to safely leave the Lebanese border battlefield under a truce. Fifty tanks and armored vehicles which the US recently airlifted to Lebanon for battling jihadi forces occupying the northern Beqaa will be taken back.
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Kim Jong-un escalated his military stance early Tuesday, Aug. 29, by firing a ballistic missile over Japan’s northern Island of Hokkaido. It broke up into three pieces and landed in the Pacific, 200km from the island’s coast. The Japanese government issued a warning for people to take cover over radio and TV. The US and Japanese governments are being watched by other rogue regimes for their response.
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Less than a week after Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu warned Vladimir Putin in Sochi that Israel had red lines against a permanent Iranian military presence in Syria - certainly near its borders, Moscow put the prime minister’s warning to the test. DEBKAfile reports exclusively that on Saturday and Sunday, (Aug.26-27) ,Russian forces installed Iranian Revolutionary Guards and Hizballah officers at a joint “administration center” they had set up in Quneitra.
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The Islamic State summer offensive is in full spate on three fronts - two in Syria and a third in European cities - thus pricking the prevailing view of Western experts on Islamic terror that the caliphate’s territorial shrinkage in Syria and Iraq heralds its approaching demise. A surprise assault this week gave the jihadists the chance to snatch several villages southeast of Raqqa as well as Syrian camps and positions. Around 100 Syrian troops were left dead.
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Israeli diplomats have filed a quiet demarche with Washington over the participation of US special forces in a joint operation with the Syrian, Hizballah and Lebanese armies to clear the Lebanese-Syrian border region of Al Qaeda’s Syrian arm the rebel Nusra Front, which is fighting with ISIS elements. This is reported by debkafile. This “coalition’s” next target is the Syrian-Israeli border.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu set out for President Vladimir Putin Israel’s red lines against Iran establishing a permanent, expanded military presence in Syria. This theme dominated their three-hour conversation in Sochi on Wednesday, Aug. 23. Netanyahu stiffened his warning with a veiled hint that should Iran or Hizballah cross those lines, there would be a regional war. But, say debkafile's analysts, those lines were crossed long ago.
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Spanish Interior Minister Juan Ignacio Zoido promised on Saturday Aug. 19 that after the Islamic State’s two car attacks had left 14 dead and more than 130 injured, the terrorist network responsible for the violence had been “fully dismantled” and no longer posed a threat. in fact: The Moroccan-based network’s terror cells across six European countries are poised for more.
Spain this week suffered the biggest Islamic State onslaught to be mounted in Europe since Nov/ 14, 2015, when they murdered 140 people in Paris. The Spanish offensive claimed the lives of 14 civilians and 7 terrorists. More than 100 victims are in hospital, 20 with serious injuries. ISIS does claim some terrorist operations carried out by local extremists on their own initiative. But the three-day terror rampage that hit Spain this week bore all the hallmarks of ISIS planning and organization.
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Incoming Israeli Air force Chief Maj. Gen. Amikam Nurkin, 41, who took the command over from Amir Eshel at a ceremony on Monday, Aug. 14, plunges straight into the ongoing air campaigns Israel is waging covertly and continuously against Iranian, Hizballah and Islamic State targets - and not only in the Syrian and Lebanese arenas.
The transformation of a small, strategic wedge of land between the Syrian, Israeli, Jordanian and Iraqi borders is going forward apace without arousing much interest - even in Israel, where it should cause the most concern, debkafile reports. On Wednesday, Aug. 8, two Russian army companies of Ingushet troops from the northern Caucasus set up a command post in the Syrian village of Tal al-Shahm, 13km from Israel’s Golan border.
US President Donald Trump toughened his stance on North Korea in remarks to reporters Thursday night, Aug. 10. Rejecting criticism at home of his “fire and fury” threat, Trump said: “They’ve been doing this to our country for a long time, for many years, and it’s about time that somebody stuck up for the people of this country. So, if anything, maybe that statement wasn’t tough enough.”
Less than 24 hours after the US-Russian sponsored ceasefire went into force in southwest Syria, it broke down early Monday, July 10, when large-scale Syrian army and Hizballah forces launched a general offensive on Syrian rebel forces in the Al Suweida province. This region was listed with Quneitra and Daraa as one of three demilitarized locations covered by the truce.
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