John Kerry, Call Holding Line 2, Tehran Terrorism Calling

Posted on July 8, 2016July 8, 2016 by Denise Simon

Iranian commander: Missiles ready for the ‘annihilation’ of Israel

JPost: The deputy commander of Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guard said the country has over 100,000 missiles in Lebanon alone readied for the “annihilation” of Israel.

Speaking before Friday prayers on Iran’s state-run IRIB TV, Hossein Salami also said that Iran has “tens of thousands” of additional missiles that are ready to wipe the “accursed black dot” of Israel off the map, according to a translation from the Farsi by the Middle East Media Research Institute.

Salami is deputy head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is under the command of the country’s Supreme Leader.

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Iran’s Support for Terrorism Under the JCPOA

WashingtonInstitute/Levitt: The Islamic Republic’s terror sponsorship has hardly abated since the nuclear deal was reached, giving the Obama administration another opportunity to reassess these menacing behaviors and hold Tehran accountable.

July 14 will mark one year since the signing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the nuclear agreement with Iran. This article is part of a series of PolicyWatches assessing how the deal has affected various U.S. interests, to be released in the days leading up to the anniversary.

When the JCPOA was implemented in January, terrorism-related sanctions remained in place against Iran, and U.S. officials promised they would hold Tehran accountable for any such activity despite the lifting of nuclear sanctions. As Secretary of State John Kerry noted on January 21, “If we catch them funding terrorism, they’re going to have a problem with the United States Congress and with other people, obviously.” And yet, in the year since the deal was signed, Iran’s threatening behavior has not diminished.

In February, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper testified that “Iran, the foremost state sponsor of terrorism — continues to exert its influence in regional crises in the Middle East through the International Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF), its terrorist partner Lebanese Hezbollah, and proxy groups…Iran and Hezbollah remain a continuing terrorist threat to U.S. interests and partners worldwide.” A month later, CENTCOM chief Gen. Joseph Votel testified that Iran had become “more aggressive in the days since the agreement.”

Sponsoring Terrorists in the Levant

Iran has been a consistent supporter of U.S.-designated Palestinian terrorist organizations, including Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and Hamas. In August 2015, after four rockets hit the Israeli Golan Heights and Upper Galilee, Jerusalem attributed the attack to a joint effort by PIJ and the IRGC-QF. These claims were substantiated when Israeli counterstrikes against the cell that launched the initial salvo wound up killing an IRGC general, Mohammad Ali Allahdadi.

In September, the Treasury Department designated Maher Jawad Yunes Salah, a dual British-Jordanian citizen who headed the Hamas Finance Committee headquartered in Saudi Arabia. In that capacity, he had been overseeing the transfer of tens of millions of dollars from Iran to the committee; these monies were used to fund Hamas activity in Gaza, including the group’s military “wing,” the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades.

Although Iran and Hamas have argued at times over the latter’s refusal to support the Assad regime in Syria, they rekindled their broken relationship this year. According to a November report issued by Congressional Research Service, “Iran has apparently sought to rebuild the relationship with Hamas by providing missile technology that Hamas used to construct its own rockets, and by helping it rebuild tunnels destroyed in the [2014] conflict with Israel.” At a press conference in 2015, an Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman asserted that bolstering resistance to Israel — in part by funding Hamas — is a “principled policy.” This support was clarified in February when a Hamas delegation visited Iran for eight days and met with various officials, including IRGC-QF commander Qasem Soleimani. According to a member of the delegation quoted by the Jerusalem Post, Soleimani stated that “Iran was a staunch supporter of the Palestinian resistance before the nuclear deal, and it will remain so after the deal.” Hamas celebrated the trip in a statement of its own, highlighting its “successful and positive meetings with Iranian officials.”

Despite this rapprochement with Hamas, Iran continued its sponsorship of al-Sabirin, a new proxy militant group in Gaza. Led by a former PIJ commander, al-Sabirin reportedly receives $10 million a year from Tehran. Members of the group have also apparently converted to Shia Islam despite operating in Sunni-majority Gaza, adding another level of complexity to the relationship. In December, al-Sabirin claimed responsibility for an explosion that targeted Israeli forces on the border.

Elsewhere in the Levant, Lebanese Hezbollah remains Iran’s primary terrorist proxy. Last month, the group’s secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah, bluntly declared that “Hezbollah gets its money and arms from Iran, and as long as Iran has money, so does Hezbollah.” Since the JCPOA was signed, the U.S.-designated terrorist organization has engaged in numerous criminal, espionage, and terrorist plots.

In February, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration announced that it had uncovered a major drug trafficking and money laundering network during a multinational investigation. The agency named the “Business Affairs Component” of Hezbollah’s External Security Organization as one of the main benefactors of a network that collected and transported “millions of euros in drug proceeds,” which in turn were used to purchase weapons for Hezbollah fighters in Syria.

Last year, less than a week after the JCPOA was signed, Israeli officials arrested a Swedish-Lebanese man, Hassan Khalil Hizran, at Ben Gurion Airport for attempting to gather intelligence on Israeli targets on Hezbollah’s behalf. And just days before the signing, a Lebanese-Canadian man confessed his ties to Hezbollah and said the group had directed him to attack Israeli targets. He was jailed in Cyprus after authorities seized nine tons of a chemical compound used in bombmaking from his home there.

As Hezbollah pours considerable weaponry and manpower into the conflicts in Syria and Iraq, it has also directed third-party actors to carry out terrorist attacks. This January, Israeli authorities arrested five Palestinians for planning an attack “organized and funded by Hezbollah.” According to Israeli officials, the leader of this West Bank cell was recruited by Hassan Nasrallah’s son Jawad. Hezbollah trained and directed the group to surveil Israeli targets, giving the men $5,000 to carry out suicide bombings and other attacks. Based on these and other cases, a senior Israeli official warned in February that Iran was “building an international terror network” of cells with access to weapons, intelligence, and operatives to carry out attacks in the West.

The Gulf

In naming Iran as a major sponsor of terror, the State Department’s 2015 Country Reports on Terrorism revealed that Tehran has “provided weapons, funding, and training to Shia militants in Bahrain,” and that the island state had “raided, interdicted, and rounded up numerous Iran-sponsored weapons caches, arms transfers, and militants” that year. In November, Bahraini authorities arrested forty-seven individuals for their involvement in a terrorist organization linked to the IRGC. And this January, authorities detained six individuals for their involvement in a terrorist cell with claimed links to Iran and Hezbollah. The cell was accused of orchestrating a July 2015 explosion that killed two people outside a girls school in Sitra.

Iran also continued to support Shiite terrorists in Kuwait. In August 2015, local authorities raided a terrorist cell of twenty-six Shiite Kuwaitis, accusing them of amassing “a large amount of weapons, ammunition, and explosives.” After media outlets reported the cell’s alleged links to Iran and Hezbollah, the public prosecutor issued a gag order on the investigation. In January, a local court sentenced two men, one Kuwaiti and one Iranian, to death for spying on behalf of Iran and Hezbollah.

Tehran’s antagonistic relationship with Saudi Arabia also continued this year, mainly through proxy warfare, but also through alleged activities against Saudi targets. In February, the Saudi-aligned Yemeni government asserted that it had evidence of “Hezbollah training the Houthi rebels and fighting alongside them in attacks on Saudi Arabia’s border.” And according to another report that same month, Filipino authorities claimed to thwart an IRGC plot against a fleet of Saudi passenger planes in the Philippines.

Beyond the Middle East

This May, an American drone strike killed Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour on the Iran-Pakistan border. At the very least, his activities indicated tacit Iranian support for the Taliban, if not more. U.S. authorities had tracked him visiting family in Iran and conducted the strike as he returned to Pakistan. Afterward, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid stated that Mansour had been on one of his several “unofficial trips” to Iran because of “ongoing battle obligations.”

Previously, in November, Kenyan authorities arrested two Iranian citizens on charges of plotting to carry out a terrorist attack against Israeli targets in Nairobi. The Iranians were allegedly sent by the IRGC-QF.

A month later, the Nigerian army launched a massive attack on the Shiite town of Zaria after reportedly obtaining intelligence about an assassination attempt on the country’s army chief of staff. The plot was allegedly organized by the Islamic Movement of Nigeria, a Shiite militant group that Iran had previously trained in the assembly of explosives and other skills, according to a former Iranian Foreign Ministry advisor.

Conclusion

At an April 2015 Washington Institute event held three months before the signing of the JCPOA, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew stated, “Make no mistake: deal or no deal, we will continue to use all our available tools, including sanctions, to counter Iran’s menacing behavior.” A year later, President Obama underscored this pledge to Gulf Cooperation Council partners at a Camp David summit: “We have to be effective in our defenses and hold Iran to account where it is acting in ways that are contrary to international rules and norms.”

Today, however, it is clear that Iran’s support for terrorism has only increased since the deal was reached, and officials cannot feign surprise on the matter. In June, for example, senior Treasury official Adam Szubin bluntly concluded, “As we expected, Iran has not moderated this conduct since the implementation of the JCPOA.” Given Iran’s ongoing support for terrorism and regional instability and the administration’s repeated insistence that it would hold Tehran’s feet to the fire on these very issues, the JCPOA’s first anniversary presents Washington with a perfect opportunity to reassess the regime’s menacing behavior and take steps to hold it accountable.

Deeper Ties of the Dallas Sniper/Terrorists

Posted on July 8, 2016July 8, 2016 by Denise Simon

BARC

Note the bottom flag on the lower left. Referenced here in this article.

The organizer of the Black Lives Matter protest in Dallas is Jeff Hood. You can meet him here as described by Breitbart.

So, this goes to a deeper condition and Robert Spencer did some great work.

Dallas massacre of police: FBI investigating anti-police group that attended Dallas mosque
JULY 8, 2016 10:26 AM BY ROBERT SPENCER
The Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and other Islamic supremacist groups have assiduously courted Black Lives Matter, and linked their propaganda efforts against “Islamophobia” to the Black Lives Matter stand against perceived racism. In Dallas last night, we see where this is tending: as Kyle Shideler notes in the March article below, “At the event, MAS leader Khalilah Sabra openly discussed the importance of Muslim support for Black Lives Matter, and urged ‘revolution.’ Comparing the situation in the United States to the Muslim Brotherhood-led Arab Spring revolutions, she asked, ‘We are the community that staged a revolution across the world; if we can do that, why can’t we have that revolution in America?’” And with the mass murder of police in Dallas last night, we’re getting there.

The Nation of Islam is not an orthodox Muslim group, and subscribes to a great deal of racial mythology that is nowhere in Islamic tradition. It is, however, also true that many black Americans first enter the Nation, and then become orthodox Sunni Muslims. And given the increased racial tensions of the Obama era, many people in both the NOI and among mainstream Sunnis have a taste for the “revolution” that is brought about by means of jihad.
“Dallas police shootings: Race rally cops killed in Dallas sniper ambush,” The Australian, July 9, 2016:

Heavily armed snipers killed five police and transit officers in downtown Dallas and wounded seven more, in a premeditated and triangulated “ambush-style” assault during a rally protesting against the killing of black men after two shootings this week….

As the FBI and local authorities launched an investigation, their focus was expected to probe militant black rights groups set up in Dallas. Anti-police groups include the New Black Panther Party and Huey P. Newton Gun Club, named after the founder of the 1960s activist Black Panther Party.

The Huey P. Newton Gun Club includes a coalition of BARC (Blacks Against Racist Cops) and other African-American groups, who agitate against police brutality. The group attended the Nation of Islam’s Muhammad mosque in Dallas in April to monitor protests by an anti- Islamic group, the Bureau of American Islamic Relations. Both sides were armed, and moved on by police….

It’s useful to recall this: “Black Lives Matter and a History of Islamist Outreach to African Americans,” by Kyle Shideler, Townhall, March 17, 2016:

Once the dust settled, last week’s protest of a Donald Trump rally in Chicago demonstrated a growing nexus between Islamist groups in the United States and the radical leftist “Black Lives Matter” movement.

This rhetoric of unity between these movements was clearly on display at the 2015 joint conference of the 2015 Muslim American Society (MAS) and the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA). MAS was described by federal prosecutors as the “overt arm” of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood, and ICNA is recognized as the front for the Pakistani Islamist group Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI) founded by one of the foremost thinkers on modern Jihad, Syed Abul A’la Maududi.

At the event, MAS leader Khalilah Sabra openly discussed the importance of Muslim support for Black Lives Matter, and urged “revolution.” Comparing the situation in the United States to the Muslim Brotherhood-led Arab Spring revolutions, she asked, “We are the community that staged a revolution across the world; if we can do that, why can’t we have that revolution in America?”

Reporting on this merging “revolutionary” alliance goes back as far as the first outbreak of disorder in Ferguson. Few may recall the attendance at Michael Brown’s funeral of CAIR executive director Nihad Awad. Awad was identified in federal court as a member of the Palestine Committee, a covert group of Muslim Brothers dedicated to supporting Hamas in the United States.
CAIR joined other groups named by federal law enforcement as Muslim Brotherhood organizations and lined up behind the Ferguson protests.

In November of 2014, Fox News reported on an effort by CAIR Michigan Director Dawud Walid to link the death of Michael Brown at the hands of police and the death of Luqman Abdullah, a Detroit imam shot during an FBI raid.

Abdullah was described by the FBI as a leader of a nationwide Islamic organization known as “The Ummah,” run by convicted cop-killer Jamil Abdullah Amin. Abdullah’s group engaged in criminal activity in order to raise funds in order for an effort to establish Sharia law in opposition to the U.S. government.

Amin and CAIR have a long association together, with CAIR providing funding for Amin’s legal defense, and issuing numerous press releases in support of the Georgia radical imam and former Black Panther.

While this linkage of Islamist front groups to radical racial politics may seem a relatively new development, the reality is it has been the result of a nearly four decade long effort by Islamist groups. A major thinker on this effort was a Pakistani immigrant and ICNA leader named Shamim A. Siddiqui, who knew JeI founder Maududi personally. Siddiqui wrote his work, Methodology of Dawah Il Allah in American Perspective in 1989. Read more here.

Dallas Sniper: Micah Johnson

Posted on July 8, 2016July 8, 2016 by Denise Simon

micah johnson, micah x johnson, micah xavier johnson, micah x johnson dallas

Micah X. Johnson seen in a photo uploaded to Facebook by his sister. (Facebook)

ABC: The suspected gunman in an attack on police officers in Dallas — which left five cops dead and seven injured — had bomb-making materials, ballistic vests and rifles in his house, police said.
The news from police came as police pieced together the background on the suspect, 25-year-old Micah Xavier Johnson, in the ambush-style shooting Thursday night.
Detectives are also analyzing information in a “personal journal of combat tactics” they recovered, Dallas police said.
Johnson, who was killed by police when they detonated a bomb delivered by robot, served as a U.S. Army reservist until April 2015. He was trained and served in the Army Reserve as a carpentry and masonry specialist, defense officials said.
Johnson, a private first class, was deployed to Afghanistan from November 2013 to July 2014, according to his service record.
Police said Johnson had no criminal history. Police said “others have identified him as a loner.”

Police said in a statement that Johnson’s Facebook account: “included the following names and information: Fahed Hassen, Richard GRIFFIN aka Professor Griff, GRIFFIN embraces a radical form of Afrocentrism, and GRIFFIN wrote a book A Warriors Tapestry.”

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Excellent work by: Heavy: A gunman “upset about Black Lives Matter” and “recent police shootings” who opened fire Thursday night in Dallas in an attack on police officers has been identified as Micah X. Johnson, the Los Angeles Times and CBS News report.

Five police officers were killed and seven were wounded, officials said. Two civilians were also wounded in the shootings. Johnson, 25, was killed when a police robot detonated a bomb near him following a standoff that lasted several hours, Police Chief David Brown said Friday at a press conference.

“The suspect said he was upset with white people and wanted to kill white people, especially white officers,” Brown said.

It is not clear if there were any other gunmen, or whether other people taken into custody by police were involved in the shooting. Police initially said two snipers positioned themselves in triangulated locations to fire on officers from elevated positions.

The gunfire began just before 9 p.m. while a peaceful rally was held by the Black Lives Matter organization in response to recent controversial police killings of black men in Louisiana and Minnesota. The officers were fired upon by a gunman with a sniper rifle in an elevated position at times during the incident, officials said.

The gunman was then cornered in El Centro College in downtown Dallas.

Little is known about the gunman so far, and this post will be updated as more information is released. Here’s what we know so far about the suspected shooter and the tragic incident:

Warning: Some of the videos below may contain graphic content.

1. The Suspect Told Police He Was Not Affiliated With Any Groups & He ‘Did This Alone’

micah johnson, micah x johnson, micah xavier johnson, micah x johnson dallas

Micah Xavier Johnson. (Facebook)

After the shootings in downtown Dallas, the gunman, identified as Micah Xavier Johnson, 25, holed himself up inside the El Centro College building in the downtown area of the city, Dallas Police Chief David Brown said at a press conference.

He told police he was “not affiliated with any groups,” and he said he “did this alone,” the chief said.

Sources told the Los Angeles Times that Johnson has no ties to terror groups and no known criminal history. He has lived in the Dallas area and has family members living in Mesquite, Texas, east of Dallas, the newspaper reports, citing federal law enforcement sources.

A black SUV was found at the scene registered to Delphene Johnson, who is Micah Johnson’s mother according to Facebook posts and public records, NBC Dallas-Fort Worth reports. Live helicopter video from the news station showed police at her home in Mesquite.

The suspect told police he was a U.S. Army Veteran, CBS News reports.

micah johnson, micah x johnson, micah xavier johnson, micah x johnson dallas

Micah X. Johnson seen in a photo uploaded to Facebook by his sister. (Facebook)

Johnson told police negotiators the “end is coming” and said he wanted to “kill more” officers, according to Brown.

Police said after several hours of negotiating and shooting at the officers, the suspect was killed by a bomb-wielding robot.

“We tried to negotiate for several hours, negotiations broke down, we had an exchange of gunfire with the suspect,” Brown said. “We saw no other option but to use our bomb-robot and place a device on its extension for it to detonate where the suspect was. Other options would have exposed our officers to grave danger. The suspect is a result of detonating the bomb.”

The suspect did not shoot himself, despite reports, Brown said.

“He wanted to kill officers, and he expressed killing white people, he expressed killing white officers,” Brown said. “He expressed anger for Black Lives Matter. None of that makes sense, none of that is a legitimate reason to do harm to anyone, so the rest of it would just be speculating on what his motivations were. We just know what he said to our negotiators.”

Dallas Police Headquarters Shooting: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know

An armored vehicle shot at officers and the Dallas Police headquarters early Saturday morning before leading police on a chase and into a standoff.

Click here to read more

2. He Claimed There Were ‘Bombs All Over Downtown Dallas’ During Negotiations With Police

While he was barricaded in the hotel, the suspect told police there were bombs planted “all over” downtown Dallas, the city’s police chief said at a press conference.

Police have not said if any bombs or suspicious items have been found.

“He said we will eventually find the IEDs,” Police Chief David Brown said at a press conference.

The shooting came a year and a month after a man angry at police opened fire on the Dallas Police headquarters. He fired several shots at the building, but no one was injured. The man, James Boulware, was driving an armored van and was later chased down by police. He was killed during a standoff.

Boulware also claimed he had planted bombs in downtown Dallas.

Dallas Police Officers Shot: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know

Snipers shot 12 Dallas police officers – killing 5 – at a Black Lives Matter protest Thursday night. Suspect said he wanted to kill white people, chief said. GRAPHIC VIDEO

Click here to read more

3. Police Are Still Searching Until they Determine There Are No Outstanding Suspects, the Chief Said

Police are still trying to determine how many gunmen were involved in the attack. Chief David Brown said they will continuing searching and investigating until they can be sure no one is on the loose.

Brown said they want to ensure “that everyone associated with this tragic is brought to justice. … We won’t expand on any further on what other suspects we have interviewed or looked at or their status until we get further into this investigation and get closer to a conclusion of who are all involved.”

Brown said, “I’m not going to be satisfied until we turn over every stone. … We’re not satisfied that we’ve exhausted every lead. And we’re not going to be satisfied until every lead is exhausted. So if there is someone out there that was associated with this, we will find you and we will prosecute you and we will bring you to justice.”

Police previously said two people were spotted getting into a Mercedes into downtown Dallas carrying camouflage duffle bags, the police chief said. The car was spotted by police and stopped on the highway. The people in the car were taken into custody. The chief said a woman was also arrested near El Centro College.

Police are not sure if any of those three people who are in custody are connected to the shooting.

One man who was marching during the protest, Mark Hughes, was incorrectly identified by police as a “person of interest” in the shooting, and his photo was distributed on Twitter by the department. Hughes was open carrying a rifle, which is legal in Texas, to exercise his Second Amendment rights, but he turned over the gun to a police officer after the shooting began so he would not be mistaken as a suspect. That moment was caught on video.

The man later turned himself in to police after his photo was distributed across social media and on national television. He was released after being questioned.

Alton Sterling: Top 10 Facts You Need to Know

A 37-year-old Baton Rouge, Louisiana, man was fatally shot by police in an incident caught on video by a witness that has sparked protests in the city.

Click here to read more

4. The Slain Officers Include 4 From the Dallas PD & 1 From the City’s Transit Authority Police

Four of the officers killed are from the Dallas Police Department. The fifth victim, Officer David Thompson, worked for the Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) authority’s police department.

A second victim was identified by family members as Dallas Officer Patrick Zamarripa.

The other officers have not yet been identified publicly and Dallas Police Chief David Brown said they are working to notify families of the victims.

One wounded officer has been identified as DART Officer Misty McBride. She is expected to survive.

“Some of the bravest men and women you ever want to be associated with,” Brown said about the Dallas and DART police officers who responded to the shooting. “You see video footage after video footage of them running toward gunfire from an elevated position with no chance to protect themselves. And to put themselves in harms way to make sure citizens can get to a place of security.”

“So please join me in applauding these brave men and women who do this job under great scrutiny, under great vulnerability. Who literally risk their lives to protect our democracy. We don’t feel much support most days, let’s not make today most days. Please, we need your support to be able to protect you from men like these who carried out this tragic, tragic event. Pray for these families,” Brown said.

Officer Brent Thompson: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know

Officer Brent Thompson, the first slain officer shot in Dallas identified, had trained Iraqi and Afghan police. He was 43, and a DART officer.

Click here to read more

WATCH: Video Shows Dallas Gunman Shooting Officer [GRAPHIC]

A graphic video obtained by KDFW-TV shows a gunman opening fire on a police officer in Dallas Thursday night., shooting him in the back. Watch it here.

Click here to read more

5. Police Took Part in the Planning of the Peaceful Rally & March, the Chief Says

The shootings came during a peaceful rally and march in response to two controversial police shootings of black men that occurred this week. The rally began at 7 p.m. and was set to end at 9 p.m. The shooting occurred just before 9 p.m.

Alton Sterling was fatally shot by two officers in Baton Rouge, Louisiana on Tuesday. A day later, Philando Castile was killed by police during a traffic stop in Falcon Heights, Minnesota. Parts of both shootings were caught on videos that spread quickly across social media. Investigations into both those shootings are ongoing and no officers have been charged.

Dallas Police Chief David Brown said he and others in the police department participated in the planning of the rally.

Officers were posing for pictures with marchers and the mood was peaceful and light, officials said.

Note the armband: The red, black, and green Pan-African flag designed by the UNIA in 1920.

The Pan-African flag — also known as the UNIA flag, Afro-American flag and Black Liberation Flag — is a tri-color flag consisting of three equal horizontal bands of (from top down) red, black and green. The Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL) formally adopted it on August 13, 1920 in Article 39 of the Declaration of the Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World,^[1] during its month-long convention at Madison Square Garden in New York City.^[2]^[3] Variations of the flag can and have been used in various countries and territories in Africa and the Americas to represent Pan-Africanist ideologies. Several Pan-African organizations and movements have often employed the emblematic tri-color scheme in various contexts.

Media preview

The Triangulated Terror Attack in Dallas

Posted on July 8, 2016July 8, 2016 by Denise Simon

Update: BREAKING: Dallas mayor tells CBS that 12 police officers and two civilians were shot during sniper attack. The dead shooter (sniper) was killed by a police robot with an explosive.

The deadliest day for law enforcement since 9/11 and now the biggest crime scene is law enforcement history. 3 are in custody.

Reuters: Police described Thursday night’s ambush as carefully planned and executed.

Dallas Police Chief David Brown said the shooters, some in elevated positions, used sniper rifles to fire at the officers in what appeared to be a coordinated attack.

“(They were) working together with rifles, triangulating at elevated positions in different points in the downtown area where the march ended up going,” Brown told a news conference, adding a civilian was also wounded.

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Meanwhile, there is Islamic State following Dallas:

Jihadi Telegram Channel Finds Inspiration in Dallas Sniper Attack on Police

Western Jihadist Forum Digest

Last Updated: July 8, 2016

A jihadi Telegram channel found inspiration in the sniper attack in Dallas, Texas, in which five police officers were killed, suggesting Muslim fighters carry out similar shootings, and that online jihadists instigate black men against the U.S. government.

WFAA: Early Thursday evening, protesters gathered to speak out and march after videos emerged this week of two officer-involved shootings that led to the deaths of Alton Sterling, 37, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and Philando Castile, 32, in Falcon Heights, Minnesota.

The night began with protesters gathering at a downtown Dallas park and then marching through the streets. It ended abruptly when shots were fired, striking at least 11 officers, killing five.

8:59p Just before 9 p.m., police report shots fired.

9:05p Video captures gunshots ringing out. Officers yell “active shooter” around area of San Jacinto and Griffin streets.

9:40p Two officers reported down.

9:41p Police clear out the Bank of America building, the tallest skyscraper in Dallas.

10:23p DART police reports four officers shot, including one dead. The deceased officer was later identified as Ofc. Brent Thompson, 43. The update brought the total number of officers shot to six.

10:29p Chief David Brown reports 10 officers were shot by two snipers. He says three of those officers have died.

10:44p Dallas police and ATF officers expand their perimeter as their search for the suspects continue.

10:52p Dallas police release image of a person they call a suspect on their Twitter page. Chief David Brown also tweets about the man, calling him a person of interest, not a suspect. The man is later identified as Mark Hughes, who’s brother recorded video declaring his brother’s innocence. He’s later released by police.

10:53p Authorities raise number of officers shot to 11.

11:10p Shots fired in El Centro parking garage in downtown Dallas; SWAT team corners suspect

11:13p Dallas police announce fourth officer dies.

11:27p Police say that they’ve taken a female suspect into custody after a shootout at the El Centro College. Second suspect still at scene.

11:47p Police departments across the nation, including Houston and Seattle, report they’ve begun pairing up officers as a precaution.

11:55p Police announce the large police presence on I-35 was in connection to a suspicious incident in which police say they followed a vehicle

1:15a Students and staff still inside El Centro College as it remains in lockdown as standoff continues nearby.

1:35a A police flash bang goes off at scene of standoff.

1:47a Fifth officer reported dead.

2:05a Officers line up outside 7-Eleven to stop looting

3:06a Suspect dead after standoff with police in garage. Authorities haven’t revealed how the suspect died.

White House and Kremlin Coordination on Syria

Posted on July 7, 2016July 7, 2016 by Denise Simon

IRAQ: Syrian rebel group directed US airstrikes against ISIS targets in the desert near Aksahat.

The New Syrian Army @NSyA_Official

#US airstrikes w/ #NSyA spotters help in clearing #Akashat Desert. Early report of 5 #Da‘esh killed. #ISIL retreating from Ak to the desert.

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The Kremlin: Obama agrees to more military coordination in Syria

President Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin, in a telephone call Wednesday, agreed they were ready to intensify military coordination in Syria, according to a Kremlin statement.

“Both sides reaffirmed their readiness to increase the military coordination of Russian and U.S. actions,” it said, according to a translation by the Russian news agency, Interfax.

The call, initiated by Putin, came as the Syrian military said it would begin a 72-hour truce in the country’s long-running civil war to honor the Eid holiday marking the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Syrian rebels reportedly agreed to the truce, although fighting continued.

Secretary of State John F. Kerry said he hoped the truce initiative was an “outgrowth” of talks in which the United States is trying to persuade Russia to press its ally, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, to stop bombing civilians and opposition groups seeking to oust him. Kerry spoke during a visit to Tblisi, Georgia.

The administration last week offered to help Russia improve its own air targeting against terrorist groups, including the Islamic State, if it would rein in Assad. In Wednesday’s call, the Kremlin said, Putin “urged” Obama to work harder to separate U.S.-backed opposition groups from the forces of Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate.

U.S. officials have said they are willing to discuss additional coordination in their so-far separate counterterrorism operations in Syria, but remain unsure if Russia would pressure Assad and that no decisions have been made.

The White House made no mention of increased coordination with Russia in its own statement about the Putin call. Obama, it said, “emphasized his concerns over the failure of the Syrian regime to comply with the cessation of hostilities in Syria,” referring to a truce that was negotiated under U.S.-Russian auspices in February, but has since largely fallen apart under intensified Syrian and Russian bombing.

“President Obama stressed the importance of Russia pressing the Syrian regime for a lasting halt to offensive attacks against civilians and parties to the cessation, noting the importance of fully recommitting to the original terms of the cessation,” which was signed by Assad and opposition groups, but excluded the Islamic State and Jabhat al-Nusra.

Russia has long been eager to expand its military cooperation with the United States, a goal that administration officials attribute to Putin’s desire for increased status on the world stage. While both oppose the Islamic State and agree that Syria’s separate civil conflict undermines efforts to destroy the terror group, they have vastly different prescriptions — centering on whether Assad stays or goes — for resolving it.

Both Obama and Putin, their statements said, called for progress on negotiations toward a political solution to the Syrian conflict. More here from WashingtonPost

The Syria Trump and Clinton Aren’t Talking About

As the presidential candidates spin sketchy ideas for peace in Syria, whole cities are starving.

In part from Politico:

The truth is that the world, at least much of the United States, is not watching.

For Americans, caught up in a circus-like presidential election driven by fear and anger—about lost jobs, about terrorist attacks, about immigrants—Syria is simply part of an indefinite mass of Middle Eastern chaos and danger. Though Syria has endured five years of war, and suffered more than 400,000 dead, it manages to arouse as much suspicion as pity. And when it has been discussed at all by presidential candidates often it has been to argue over the need for an immigration ban on all Muslims to prevent terrorists from hiding among the trickle of Syrians entering the country. No one talks about Daraya, or the 18 other besieged towns across Syria just like it where starvation is being used as a tool of war.

The ordeal of Daraya exemplifies how we have gotten everything wrong about Syria. Daraya is suffering because the U.N. and Western countries like the United States cannot act effectively in concert, cannot manage to compel Assad to do anything he says he will do. Beginning last autumn and continuing through early this year, the International Syria Support Group (ISSG), the 17-nation group plus the European Union and U.N., convened in Vienna and Geneva to help determine the future of Syria. The group issued a series of directives, most of them quite straightforward: Commit to a cease-fire and allow humanitarian aid to enter places like Daraya.

So far, Assad has violated every directive, with no consequences for his noncompliance. This demonstrates two things: the U.N., which has been attempting to mediate the peace talks for four years, has once again lost any credibility and that Assad is basically above the law. The question for the United States is what will the next president do about it?

Going by the sketchy and not always consistent ideas put forward by Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, the presumptive presidential nominees of their parties, it’s hard to believe the next occupant of the White House will make a measurable improvement. That said, there is some reason to believe either one of them could be far more aggressive than President Barack Obama, whose decision not to enforce his so-called red line on chemical weapons in 2013 and his general desire to get out of the Middle East has left him open to criticism that he pulled his punch on Syria.

Obama has consistently rejected direct strikes against the Syrian government, saying that “what we have learned over the last 10, 12, 13 years is that unless we can get the parties on the ground to agree to live together in some fashion, then no amount of U.S. military engagement will solve the problem.” And now the White House is proposing a plan that would strengthen military cooperation between the U.S. and Russia, which has been bombing targets inside Syria since September, to combat terrorist groups in Syria in exchange for Russia’s agreement to persuade the Assad regime to stop bombing U.S.-supported rebels like the ones holed up in Daraya. Whether Vladimir Putin would follow through on such a deal is something about which Syria experts express deep skepticism.

So what would Clinton and Trump do differently—if anything?

“Under a Clinton administration, it’s fair to assume there will be a move to discuss the establishment of safe zones, probably first in places away from Russian activities to avoid any potential confrontation,” Shadi Hamid, a senior analyst with the Brookings Institution, says. “Regardless of her own preferences, she’d be under pressure to distinguish herself from Obama on foreign policy, and Syria would make sense as the place to chart a new approach.”

The no-fly zone Clinton has called for in north Syria would provide a humanitarian safe-space that, in theory, would stem the tide of refugees fleeing for Europe. But Clinton, generally seen as more hawkish than Obama, has struggled to answer the difficult questions about how to implement it and enforce it. Would she commit ground troops, widely accepted as a logistical prerequisite? And would she be prepared for the U.S. to shoot down Russian jets that violated the airspace? Her answers about “deconflicting airspace” have sounded more wishful than anything.

Her answers about “deconflicting airspace” have sounded more wishful than anything.

Kim Ghattas, who wrote a biography of Clinton, The Secretary, says: “She will likely want to quickly signal to the Russians, but also the Iranians, that there is a new president in the (White House) who is ready to impose a price on Iran for its behavior in the region—at the risk of undermining the nuclear deal—and force a political settlement in Syria.”

But Ghattas says that a lot depends on what is actually happening inside Syria by the time she gets to the Oval Office. “Either way, her approach will be driven by her concerns about the vacuum that the U.S. leaves when it is not fully engaged in a situation or a region.”

And then there’s Trump.

The real estate mogul’s thoughts on Syria are in such conflict they ought to have their own no-fly zone. He has campaigned against foreign entanglements like the Iraq War, never missing an opportunity to remind voters of Clinton’s support for that invasion. But he has also pledged to destroy ISIL, something he alleges current U.S. policy will never achieve. But that can only mean committing American troops to the region. As for Assad, whom he has pronounced “bad,” Trump has expressed no interest in angering Vladimir Putin by interfering with Russia’s desire to keep Assad in power.

“Trump’s experience in foreign policy matter is dire, to say the least, and the erratic nature of his approach confounds explanation,” says H.A. Hellyer, senior nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Centre for the Middle East in London. “What little he has said on Syria indicates he’s more comfortable with the Russian position than he is with the current American one, and views ISIL as more of a threat to regional and international stability than Assad’s regime.”

While Clinton has a four-year record of foreign policy decisions to indicate her tendencies, Trump’s utter lack of a record is what confounds those trying to responsibly predict what he might do.

“Trump is unpredictable and a total mystery, ‘a jump in the dark’, possibly over a cliff,” Nadim Shehadi, director of the Fares Center for Eastern Mediterranean Studies at the Fletcher School of Tufts University, says. “But those who are favorable to him think that he will be more like a chairman of the board and appoint various CEOs for different tasks like Defense, State, Health, and leave them to do their job.”

Hamid, from Brookings, says there might be some flexibility in Trump’s approach if his advisers, or public opinion, can persuade him to re-engage on Syria. “In the form of establishing no-fly and no-drive zones, which Trump seemed to suggest recently he’d be open to,” Hamid says. “But this is at cross purposes with his friendliness with Putin, who would see such safe zones as a threat.” Full story here.