Category Archives: ISIS ISIL Islamic State Caliphate

Terror Incubation in Europe and U.S.

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Israel says Iran building terror network in Europe, US

AP ~ NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) — Israel’s defense minister on Wednesday accused Iran of building an international terror network that includes “sleeper cells” that are stockpiling arms, intelligence and operatives in order to strike on command in places including Europe and the U.S.

Moshe Yaalon said Iran aims to destabilize the Middle East and other parts of the world and is training, funding and arming “emissaries” to spread a revolution. He said Tehran is the anchor of a “dangerous axis” that includes Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut, Sanaa and other cities in the region.

“The Iranian regime through the Iranian Revolutionary Guard corps is building a complex terror infrastructure including sleeping cells that are stockpiling arms, intelligence and operatives and are ready to act on order including in Europe and America,” Yaalon said after talks with his Cypriot counterpart.

Israel considers Iran the biggest threat to the region, citing its support for anti-Israel militant groups like Hezbollah and Hamas, and has been an outspoken critic of the international nuclear deal with Iran.

The Israeli defense minister offered no direct evidence of such sleeper cells existing in the U.S. or Europe, but referred indirectly to the case of a Hezbollah member who was jailed in Cyprus last June following the seizure of nine tons of a chemical compound that can be converted into an explosive.

A Cypriot court sentenced Lebanese Canadian Hussein Bassam Abdallah to six years in prison after prosecutors said he admitted that Hezbollah aimed to mount terrorist attacks against Israeli interests in Cyprus using the ammonium nitrate that he had been ordered to guard at the Larnaca home of another official of the Iranian-backed group.

Yaalon said Cypriot authorities had “defeated attempts by Hezbollah and Iran to establish a terror infrastructure” on the island that aimed to expand “throughout Europe.”

Yaalon said that apart from the refugee crisis, the war in Syria has resulted in “widespread infiltration by murderous, merciless terror organizations” that belong to global jihad and are partly funded by Iran.

He said that requires western nations to counter attempts to carry out “massive terror attacks.”

Yaalon’s trip to Cyprus was the first official visit by an Israeli defense minister to the east Mediterranean island.

***

Up To 5,000 Islamic State Trained Jihadists Could Be At Large In Europe — Says U.K. Head Of Europol –‘ Islamic State, And/Or, Other Religious Terror Groups,’ Actively Planning Mass Casualty Attack/s Somewhere In Europe 

FC: Robin Wainwright, the British head of Europol, Europe’s International Crime Agency, in an interview with Germany’s Neue Osnabrucker Zeitung newspaper warned that “up to 5,000 jihadists could be at large in Europe, after training with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.”  

Justin Huggler, reporting in the February 19, 2016 edition of London’s The Telegraph, writing from Berlin, writes that “Europol estimates the number of EU citizens who have slipped back [into Europe] after training in the Middle East, is between 3,000 – 5,000..  “Europe is currently facing the highest terror threat in more than ten years,” according to Mr. Wainwright.  “We can expect the Islamic State, or other religious terror groups to stage an attack somewhere in Europe — with the aim of achieving mass casualties among the civilian population.”

For Afghanistan, we Need Charlie Wilson

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Anyone in Congress remember Charlie Wilson without the booze and women of course. Why you ask? Deja Vu for sure….1980.

While Russia has won Syria, could it be they are about to declare victory in Afghanistan as well?

From Russia with Bullets: Moscow Gifts Kabul 10,000 AK-47s

Russia gives Afghanistan 10,000 assault rifles, but abstains from joining American efforts at peace talks.

 

TheDiplomat: Wednesday, Afghanistan accepted a gift of 10,000 AK-47s and millions of rounds of ammunition from Russia. In recent months there has been much discussion about increased Russian engagement with Afghanistan, although Moscow’s cooperation with Washington’s initiatives–such as peace talks with the Taliban–remains seemingly out of the question.

Speaking at a ceremony to accept the weapons gift, Afghan National Security Adviser Mohammad Hanif Atmar said: “This important donation is from an important friend of Afghanistan in a crucial time for Afghanistan and the region.”

Twenty-seven years ago this month, the final Soviet troops withdrew from Afghanistan, where they’d been fighting a war for a decade. The communist government of Muhammad Najibullah, which they left in Kabul held out for three more years until the collapse of the Soviet Union cut off the financial inflow from Moscow, estimated at $3-4 billion annually, and the mujahedin closed in. More here.

Sidebar: The Afghan forces and the United States have pulled back from Helmand Province….

Russia Pulls Back From Cooperating With U.S. on Afghanistan

KABUL, Afghanistan — For all the conflicts in the world in which Washington is at odds with Moscow, the deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan has been one area where the Obama administration’s interests and Russia’s concerns coincide.

Disputes over the wars in Ukraine and Syria had not stopped the governments from cooperating on counternarcotics and securing military supply lines. But after initial success on those fronts, Russia now seems to be disengaging with both the United States and the American-backed Afghan government.

On an old Cold War battlefield where Russia fought a nearly decade-long war against United States-supplied fighters, Moscow has a new strategy: the cold shoulder.
“We won’t join the useless events, and we’ve already told the Americans,” President Vladimir V. Putin’s envoy to Afghanistan, Zamir N. Kabulov, told Russian state news media this month. Russia, he said, would sit out any talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government in Kabul, backed by the United States, Pakistan and China.
“Honestly speaking, we’re already tired of joining anything Washington starts,” Mr. Kabulov said. The Kremlin, he added, “has no desire to participate in what the Americans organize ‘on the fly’ just for their own pre-election interests and where they give us the role of extras on the set.”
The government of Mr. Putin has instead decided to address on its own what it sees as the immediate security threat from the chaos in Afghanistan and the emergence there of militants other than the Taliban, especially those from the Islamic State.
Russia has reinforced its largest foreign military base in Tajikistan, along the border with Afghanistan, and the Russian military has held regular exercises with Tajik soldiers. The Kremlin has committed $1.2 billion to train and equip the Tajik Army, forming a new bulwark in Central Asia north of Afghanistan.

Mr. Kabulov also recently disclosed that Russia had opened direct channels to the Taliban to exchange information about militants in northern Afghanistan allied with the Islamic State. (The Taliban have denied being in touch with Moscow.)
Afghan officials worry that a breakdown of consensus among the international powers with an interest in Afghanistan, and the establishment of direct contacts with those governments and the insurgent Taliban, would undermine the government in Kabul.
They are also concerned that the Russian government’s recent moves are motivated by forces outside their control, such as a lack of a clear American strategy and Mr. Putin’s tense relationship with the United States.
“Bilaterally, we have struggled to convince the Russians on certain issues because they increasingly see us only as part of this larger game with the United States,” said one senior Afghan official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear his comments would further stoke the mistrust in Moscow.


The Kremlin’s recent moves are seen as a shift from the role Russia played during 14 years of NATO presence in Afghanistan — one of guarded cooperation marked by frequent contradictions.

Even as Moscow was alarmed by the presence of nearly 140,000 Western troops in its backyard, often deriding the mission as a failure, Mr. Putin’s government was happy to let the American-led coalition contain the common threats posed by Al Qaeda and the Taliban, and by drugs, of which Afghanistan produced plenty that are trafficked and consumed in Russia.
In a little more than a year since the end of the NATO combat mission in Afghanistan, the fighting here has intensified, shifting to the north along the 1,250-mile border with three Central Asian states Russia still considers as its underbelly. The Taliban briefly overran the city of Kunduz last fall.
The top American general here offered contradictory statements about the insurgent group. In a hearing at the Senate Armed Services Committee this month, the commander of United States and NATO forces in Afghanistan, Gen. John F. Campbell, said, “Our country has made a decision that we are not at war with the Taliban.” Just days later in Kabul, he said the Taliban were the enemy.
The Russian government does not fear a direct threat from the Taliban as much as it is worried about Central Asian fighters who could use Afghanistan as a staging ground to penetrate Russia’s borders. One group of particular concern is the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, some factions of which have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State. Afghan officials have also reported the presence of militants from Tajikistan, Chechnya and Chinese Uighurs, many who relocated to Afghanistan from Pakistan’s tribal areas.
Fighting drug trafficking rings that partially fund the Afghan insurgency had been an area of common interest for the Russians and the Americans, said Yuri V. Krupnov, an adviser to the head of Russia’s antidrug agency, Viktor P. Ivanov. But that stopped when the United States Treasury Department in 2014 imposed sanctions on Mr. Ivanov, a close associate of Mr. Putin’s.
“Washington had no dialogue with us, and just asserted its interests and sovereignty, and was uninterested in the views of Russia or anybody else,” Mr. Krupnov said, adding, “The Obama administration buried this promising line of cooperation. All room for cooperation is exhausted.”
The alliance between the foreign militants in Afghanistan may not be as threatening as Russia fears. In Badakhshan Province, the number of foreign fighters is estimated to be about 500, some traveling with their families, Taliban commanders there say. The largest group is Tajik fighters, followed by Uzbeks from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. Chechens and Uighurs have a smaller presence.
The militants from Central Asia have been problematic to their Afghan Taliban guests, the local commanders say, because they use harsher methods, and, somewhat scandalously, are more relaxed in how they observe Islam. On top of all of that, the local Taliban have grown furious that some of their guests have recently warmed toward the Islamic State, which they see as intruding on their turf.
“The Quetta Shura insisted that we treat them nicely, that they need our cooperation, but they have a lot of shortcomings,” said Malawi Amanuddin, the Taliban’s shadow governor in Badakhshan. “They say they are waging jihad, but their women here walk around not covering themselves according to Islamic hijab.”
It is these internal rifts, perhaps, that have encouraged Russian officials to explore their channels directly with the Taliban and drive a wedge deeper between the militants who threaten Russia and their Afghan hosts.
“The official position, and this is from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, is that Russia is risking a lot and has nothing to gain” from cooperating with the United States, Aleksei V. Malashenko, a researcher at the Carnegie center in Moscow, said in a telephone interview. “We couldn’t agree on Georgia, on Ukraine and on Syria; why get involved in another conflict where we cannot agree?” he said, describing the Russian position as “let the Americans boil.”

Russia Win in Syria, now What for Saudi Coalition

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Senate foreign policy chairman: Russia the winner in Syria’s civil war

TheHill: The outcome of Syria’s long-running civil war is effectively settled, according to the head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

And Russia won.

“Let’s face it: This is close to over now,” Sen. Bob Corker told reporters at a breakfast sponsored by The Christian Science Monitor on Wednesday.

“It is very difficult at present, with Russia having stepped into the vacuum … now it’s a direct conflict with Russia,“ Corker added, “which is why there’s unlikely to be a Plan B.”

American inaction, Corker maintained —particularly following President Obama’s failure to act on the “red line” he imposed in 2013 with regard to the use of chemical weapons —has effectively empowered Russia’s support of embattled leader Bashar Assad.

“Let’s face it: We are empowering Assad,” Corker maintained on Wednesday.

“When we did not hit Assad in September of 2013 and said to the world —said to the world —that we could not be counted on. … Who propped up Assad more than anyone? We did!” Corker exclaimed. “We began by propping up Assad and making these hollow comments about ‘He had to go.’”

Corker’s comments on Wednesday came on the heels of this week’s announcement that the U.S. and Russia had reached a “cessation of hostilities”scheduled to go into effect on Saturday.

The arrangement, which many viewed skeptically, will allow for continued airstrikes against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and other designated terror groups. However, it calls for both sides to stop seeking new territory and allow for humanitarian aide to pass through.

Washington and Moscow have been at odds in the Syrian chaos. While both countries have claimed to be trying to root out terrorists, Russian forces have frequently targeted U.S.-backed rebels trying to unseat Assad from power.

According to Corker, Russia won’t change its calculus until challenges against Assad have been wiped out.

Pentagon, CIA Chiefs Don’t Think Russia Will Abide by Syria Cease-Fire

Emerging alliance of Russia hawks in cabinet exposes disagreement in the administration

WSJ:

WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama’s top military and intelligence advisers, convinced Russia won’t abide by a cease-fire in Syria, are pushing for ways to increase pressure on Moscow, including expanding covert military assistance for some rebels now taking a pounding from Russian airstrikes.

Defense Secretary Ash Carter; Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and Central Intelligence Agency Director John Brennan have voiced increasingly tough views in White House meetings, calling for new measures to “inflict real pain on the Russians,” a senior administration official said.

The emerging alliance of Russia hawks exposes discord among defense and diplomatic officials and could put pressure on Mr. Obama to take stronger action against Moscow. But doing so risks pulling the U.S. deeper into a proxy fight in Syria, with Moscow showing little sign of lessening its support for President Bashar al-Assad.

The Syrian government said Tuesday it accepted the proposed cease-fire, announced a day earlier by the U.S. and Russia. But it said military operations would continue not only against Islamic State and the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front—both designated by the United Nations as terrorist organizations—but against “other terrorist groups connected to them” as well.

Russia and the Assad regime have branded all rebel groups as terrorists—further clouding prospects for any truce.

The opposition’s delegation to U.N.-mediated peace talks in Geneva said late Monday it supported the U.S.-Russia deal, with several conditions related to humanitarian issues.

Russia’s bombing campaign in Syria, launched last fall, has infuriated the CIA in particular because the strikes have aggressively targeted relatively moderate rebels it has backed with military supplies, including antitank missiles, U.S. officials say.

Officials say it was unclear whether stepped-up support would make much difference at this stage, given how much ground the CIA-backed rebels have lost in the recent pro-regime offensive.

Mr. Obama has been reluctant to allow either the U.S. or its regional partners to supply the rebels with advanced ground-to-air antiaircraft weapons to fend off airstrikes. While introducing that sort of system could be a game-changer, any decision to help the rebels directly go after Russian soldiers or destroy Russian airplanes could mark a dramatic escalation.

At the heart of the debate is how much confidence to place in diplomacy at this point in the Syria drama.

On Capitol Hill on Tuesday, Secretary of State John Kerry said there have been discussions within the administration over what strategy to pursue “in the event we don’t succeed” in negotiations. He noted the president has the ability to take additional actions against Moscow.

But Mr. Kerry also said that “this is a moment to try to see whether or not we can make this work, not to find ways to preordain its failure and start talking about all the downsides of what we might do afterward.”

Officials said neither Mr. Carter nor Gen. Dunford had formally submitted recommendations to Mr. Obama.

Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook declined to comment, as did a spokesman for the CIA director. Navy Capt. Greg Hicks, a spokesman for Gen. Dunford, said the general’s recommendations were private.

A senior administration official said of the White House’s review: “We’ll judge Russia by its actions, not its words.”

The official added: “To be clear: Our actions are not aimed at Russia. Our focus, however, does not change the fact that Russia, by increasingly involving itself in a vicious conflict on the side of a brutal dictator, will become enmeshed in a quagmire. Should it not change course, Russia’s fate will be self-inflicted.”

Aside from expanding the CIA program, other options under discussion include providing intelligence support to moderate rebels to help them better defend themselves against Russian air attacks and to possibly conduct more effective offensive operations, officials said.

Another option with wide support among Mr. Obama’s advisers would impose new economic sanctions against Russia. But senior administration officials said they doubt European powers would go along, given the importance they place on trade with Russia.

The drawn-out negotiations with Moscow this month over a cease-fire agreement in Syria exposed the growing rift within the administration.

Mr. Carter had publicly voiced support for the negotiations led by Mr. Kerry. But while the talks were under way last week, Messrs. Carter and Brennan, and Gen. Dunford, privately warned the White House they risked undermining Washington’s standing with regional partners in the two U.S.-led coalitions—one in support of anti-Assad rebels, the other fighting Islamic State, the senior officials said.

At one point last week, the Pentagon came close to withdrawing its representatives from the cease-fire talks after the Russians claimed military cooperation between the U.S. and Russia was part of the closed-door discussions, according to senior administration officials.

Mr. Carter was upset about the Russian claims because he had explicitly ruled out such discussions, the officials said.

The Pentagon believes Russia was trying to try to drive a wedge between the U.S. and its coalition partners and to make it look like Washington would support Moscow’s military campaign in Syria and accept Mr. Assad.

While Russia was engaged in the cease-fire talks, U.S. officials say its war planes stepped up their attacks on positions held by moderate rebels. Russia maintains its airstrikes are targeting terrorist groups.

Mr. Kerry believes Monday’s agreement has “a viable chance of succeeding,” according to a senior administration official close to the secretary.

In contrast, Mr. Carter told senior officials Monday that it won’t hold. “He thinks it’s a ruse,” a senior administration official said.

Messrs. Carter and Brennan and Gen. Dunford raised many of their concerns in meetings last week involving Mr. Kerry, White House National Security Adviser Susan Rice and White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, according to senior administration officials.

The senior administration official close to Mr. Kerry said the secretary recognized the challenge of ensuring Russian compliance. The official added that the agreement was partially intended to test whether Moscow can be trusted. If Russia doesn’t abide by the deal, then “Plan-B thinking needs to occur,” the official said.

Mr. Kerry has supported the CIA program in Syria in the past and has advocated for greater military involvement, such as the creation of a safe zone to protect the moderate opposition. But the Pentagon has been resistant to such ideas, warning they could lead to a conflict with Russia, administration officials have said.

Senior administration officials involved in the discussions said it is unclear whether Mr. Obama would support expanding the CIA program.

Ms. Rice, Mr. McDonough and other senior national security officials at the White House have voiced skepticism in the past about the CIA effort.

White House critics of the program warned that open-ended support for the rebels could pull the U.S. deeper into the conflict over time, with little chance of success as long as Moscow remains willing to increase its support to Mr. Assad, according to former administration officials.

Current and former officials said Mr. Obama was persuaded in 2013 to green-light the covert program in Syria in part because doing so gave the CIA influence over the actions of regional partners, including Saudi and Turkish intelligence, preventing them, for example, from introducing advanced antiaircraft weapons known as Manpads on the battlefield. Washington warned the weapons could fall into terrorist hands and be turned against commercial aircraft.

If the U.S. doesn’t take action to prevent moderate rebel forces from being wiped out by the Russian-backed offensive, then the Saudis or some other group could decide to break ranks with Washington and send large numbers of Manpads into northern Syria to shoot down Russian bombers, U.S. intelligence agencies have warned policy makers, increasing the chances of a wider conflict.

Iran Winning Syria with $50 Billion?

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Kerry: Iran is getting less than $50 billion in cash after nuclear deal

Reuters/BI: U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Tuesday that the amount of cash Iran will receive due to the implementation of the nuclear agreement is below the $50 billion level.

“It’s below the $50 billion (level),” he told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, when he was asked about varying reports about how much money Iran would receive.

Iran gained access to about $100 billion in frozen assets when an international nuclear agreement was implemented last month, but much of it already was tied up because of debts and other commitments.

Earlier reports had said Tehran would receive as much as $150 billion.

Iran is on track to achieve its objectives in Syria

MEE: Iran has been able to create a large paramilitary base in Syria that aims to hold a few key areas, primarily Damascus. It doesn’t need Assad

The kinship between Iran and Syria dates back to the dawn of the victory of the Iranian Revolution in 1979. The unfailing relationship between the two states was formed not because Iranians were Shia Muslims and the Alawites, an offshoot of Shia Islam, were the dominant power in Syria.

Rather, it was because the two states had similar strategic security interests. They were both hostile toward, and threatened by, three powerful arch enemies: the United States, Israel and Iraq. In fact, the Syrian Baathist government was completely secular in nature, basically founded on Arab nationalism and pan-Arabism.

Perhaps the factor most responsible for the strategic bond between Iran and Syria was the two states’ hostility toward Israel. Syrians under the rule of Hafez al-Assad, the father of current Syria President Bashar al-Assad, were humiliated during the Six-Day War in 1967 and lost territory – the strategic Golan Heights – to Israel, which to this date remains under Israeli occupation. And since its inception, the Islamic Republic of Iran has, for a number of reasons, defined hostility toward Israel as one of the pillars of its foreign policy.

In the 1980s, the Hezbollah of Lebanon militia emerged. It was funded by Iran, and its forces were trained and organised by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. Iran sought to change the balance of power in favour of the minority Shia in Lebanon and keep Israel’s unchallenged hegemony in the area in check.

Most importantly, Iran sought to utilise Hezbollah as a proxy force that would threaten the security of Israel in the context of a deterrence doctrine. This development gave Syria supreme strategic importance in its relationship with Iran, as Syria was able to provide safe passage through which weapons could be supplied to Hezbollah.

Iran’s doctrine of the creation of Hezbollah proved a success. During the so-called 33-Day War of Israel against Hezbollah in 2006, the militant group emerged as the only Arab military power able to counter and defeat Israeli aggression.

Then came the March 2011 pro-democracy protests that erupted throughout Syria. The Syrian government used violence to suppress demonstrations, and by 2012 the conflict had expanded into a fully fledged multi-sided armed conflict. The struggle drew numerous actors ranging from secular and jihadi Syrian opposition groups to foreign jihadists, as well as regional and international states.

As the war evolved in Syria, Iranians found themselves faced with major security threats: the rise of the anti-Shia Salafist group, Daesh (also known as ISIS, ISIL, and IS), and the involvement of its Sunni regional rivals, led by Saudi Arabia and Turkey, in the war, seeking wholeheartedly to topple Iran’s ally, President Bashar al-Assad. Assad’s collapse could be a monumental blow to Iran’s aforementioned deterrence doctrine against Israel which took them more than two decades to establish.

As the situation deteriorated and Assad lost grip on power and territory in Syria, Iran developed a two-fold strategy. The first aim was to prevent the establishment of an anti-Iran government – be it supported by the West or its regional rivals – that would rule the whole of Syria.

Iran’s support of Assad’s regime must be viewed in this context. In other words, by fiercely propping up Assad’s regime, modelled after what they accomplished in Lebanon and Iraq, Iran seeks to convince the world that it cannot be ignored in any future power-sharing in Syria through the participation of its allies. The second aim is to establish its own stronghold in Syria, given that Assad’s fall is an inevitability.

To materialise the first strategic objective, Iran heavily invested in Syria. Staffan de Mistura, the UN special envoy to Syria, has been quoted as saying that he estimates that Iran spends $6 billion annually on Assad’s government. Some researchers estimate that “Iran spent between $14 and $15 billion in military and economic aid to the Damascus regime in 2012 and 2013.”

To achieve the second objective, Iran organised the paramilitary National Defence Forces (NDF), which, according to some reports, is by far the largest militia network in Syria. IRGC officials are explicit about their active role in the creation of the NDF. According to some independent reports, there are an estimated 100,000 National Defence Force fighters under arms in Syria.

In this respect, Iran primarily counts on two groups. The first is the Alawites, whom Iran has supported during this bloody multi-actor war. Given that 74 percent of the Syrian population is Sunni, the Alawite religious group logically became the natural client of Iran, as Iranians are seen as their sole protector against the Sunni majority and their backers.

The second group includes a number of smaller but highly religiously motivated militias that fight wars in defence of the Shia ideology, chief among them The National Ideological Resistance in Syria (NIR – in Arabic: al-muqawama al-wataniya al-‘aqa’idiya fi Souria.) This group is considered a Syrian version of Hezbollah of Lebanon.

Iran’s strategic goals have almost been achieved. Although they were ignored in the Geneva I and Geneva II peace conferences on Syria, they now participate in the International Syria Support Group (ISSG) talks to bring the Syrian war to an end. They are now recognised as a key player both on the ground and in the diplomatic struggle over Syria. It is inconceivable that Iran will not have a representative similar to Hezbollah in Lebanon or the Badr Organisation in Iraq in the future power-sharing that will unfold in Syria.

On the other front, i.e., establishing a militia proxy, Iran knows well that Assad will not remain in power forever. By following the model of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, and its proxies in Iraq, Iran has been able to create a large paramilitary base in Syria that aims to hold a few key areas, primarily Damascus. It now seeks to expand into Aleppo.

In addition to helping Iran dictate its presence and influence regardless of what sort of government may appear once the Syrian civil war ends, this militia base could play a double role. First, to appear as another deterrent force against Israel. And second, to keep a corridor open for supplying weapons to Iran’s Lebanese ally, Hezbollah.

To achieve its objectives, Iran does not require a Bashar al-Assad or a pro-Iranian government to rule the whole of Syria.

– Shahir Shahidsaless is a political analyst and freelance journalist writing primarily about Iranian domestic and foreign affairs. He is also the co-author of “Iran and the United States: An Insider’s View on the Failed Past and the Road to Peace”. 

– See more at: http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/iran-track-achieve-its-objectives-syria-674162107#sthash.Ggxl3DAH.dpuf

35 and 56…Watch Out, Ask Lots of Questions, Gitmo

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The White House Guantanamo Detention Center plan calls for transferring another 35 detainees to other countries and shifting the remaining 56 to US-based facilities. These guys really want to give up top notch healthcare, food, housing and soccer?     

In 2009: TheHill: The House instructed conferees negotiating with the Senate on a final version of the Homeland Security spending bill to include language prohibiting the transfer of Guantanamo detainees to U.S. soil. The bill already includes a provision prohibiting the detainees from air travel within or to the United States.

Appropriators have placed Guantanamo provisions into at least four other bills. The Senate Defense spending bill, which has yet to pass the chamber, and the House-approved version would also block the use of federal money for the transfer of detainees to the United States. The House Commerce, Justice and Science appropriations bill and the State Department spending bill would block 2010 federal funding for the closure of the prison. Those bills have been passed by the House and are awaiting Senate action. *** The Senate did confirm and Obama signed it into law as it was in the spending bill. Note the year, this was a Democrat controlled Congress. If Obama does move forward in any method, he will have to sign a waiver of the law and then a Constitutional crisis begins as the military knows this is a law. Does the military comply with the Commander in Chief or do they comply with the law?

Then again in 2010:

Congress Bars Gitmo Transfers  

WSJ: Congress on Wednesday passed legislation that would effectively bar the transfer of Guantanamo detainees to the U.S. for trial, rejecting pleas from Obama administration officials who called the move unwise.

A defense authorization bill passed by the House and Senate included the language on the offshore prison, which President Barack Obama tried unsuccessfully to close in his first year in office.

*** Then again this month, February 2016:

Military Tells Congress It Can’t Send Gitmo Detainees to U.S.

Bloomberg: Just as President Barack Obama is planning to send Congress his plan to close the Guantanamo Bay prison this year, leaders of the military say it will not transfer any detainees to the U.S., unless the law prohibiting such transfers is changed.

Lt. General William Mayville Jr., the director of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said as much in a letter to Congress last week, which I obtained. Mayville’s letter gets to the heart of a knotty constitutional issue on Guantanamo: Does President Obama have the authority to close the facility without the consent of Congress?

Writing to 16 House members who served in the military, Mayville writes: “Current law prohibits the use of funds to ‘transfer, release or assist in the transfer or release’ of detainees of Guantanamo Bay to or within the United States, and prohibits the construction, modification or acquisition of any facility within the United States to house any Guantanamo detainee. The Joint Staff will not take any action contrary to those restrictions.”

Start here and this was today further telling how reckless the whole release thing really is:

4 Arrested in Spain, Morocco for IS Armed Group Ties

ABC: Spanish and Moroccan police on Tuesday arrested four suspected members of a jihadi cell that sought to recruit fighters for the Islamic State group, including one described as a former Guantanamo detainee who once fought with militants in Afghanistan.

Three people were arrested in Spain’s North African enclave city of Ceuta while a Moroccan was arrested in the Moroccan border town of Farkhana, next to Melilla, Spain’s other North African enclave, statements from the two nations’ interior ministries said.

One of those detained in Ceuta was the former Guantanamo detainee who was not named by Spanish authorities but described as “a leader who was trained in handling weapons, explosives and in military tactics.” After being captured in 2002 and held in Guantanamo, he was returned to Spain in 2004, said Interior Minister Jorge Fernandez Diaz.

Another suspect was the brother of a fighter who blew himself up during an attack in Syria and man detained Tuesday “was inclined to do the same thing,” he said.

The suspects had set up contacts to try to acquire weapons and bomb-making materials and were aiming “to carry out terrorist acts in Spanish territory,” the Spanish ministry statement said, without specifying possible targets.

They also worked to recruit teenagers from Ceuta to join IS in Iraq and Syria, the Spanish statement said.

Spanish police arrested about 100 suspected Islamic extremists last year and more than 600 total since the 2004 train bombings in Madrid that killed 191 people and injured nearly 2,000.

Rubio: Today, In the Senate, I have sponsored and supported legislation to prohibit dangerous detainee transfers, block funds for closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay, and prevent the return of the facility to Cuba. And I have stood with Senators Tim Scott (R-SC), Cory Gardner (R-CO), and Pat Roberts (R-KS) to oppose bringing terrorists to facilities in South Carolina, Colorado, and Kansas, because it is unnecessary, expensive and, most importantly, dangerous.