Tag Archives: Israel

Iran Claims to “Defeat” the Islamic State in Syria, a “Dangerous Conspiracy” by America and Israel

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 22 November 2017

Qassem Sulaymani, Hassan Nasrallah, Ali Khamene’i (c. 2000)

The leader of the Quds Force, the expeditionary unit of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Qassem Sulaymani, sent a public letter to Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamene’i, on 21 November. Sulaymani’s letter followed the apparent expulsion of the Islamic State from its last urban stronghold in Syria, al-Bukamal, on 19 November, by Quds Force-led troops—foreign Shi’a jihadists and the battered remnants of Bashar al-Asad’s army. Sulaymani informs Khamene’i that in overcoming the Islamic State and its caliphate, a “U.S.-Zionist-made” terrorist entity has been defeated. Sulaymani’s letter is reproduced below, with some noteworthy sections highlighted in bold. Continue reading →

Defining Freedom Fighters and Terrorists in Syria (and Beyond)

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 21 November 2017

Zozan Temir (Zozan Cudi) in ‘No Free Steps to Heaven’

Yesterday, it was announced that a 15 November Turkish government airstrike in the mountains of the Sirnak area in southeastern Turkey, near the zone where the borders of Turkey, Syria, and Iraq meet, had killed twelve guerrillas from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Given that the PKK has waged war against Turkey since 1984, and the state has obviously fought back, such events are distressingly mundane. But this event was exceptional because among the slain was a female foreign fighter, Zozan Temir. Continue reading →

Iran Raises the Stature of One of Its Shi’a Jihadist Militias: Harakat Hizballah al-Nujaba

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 22 September 2017

Logo of Harakat Hizballah al-Nujaba

Reuters has published a profile of Harakat Hizballah al-Nujaba (HHN), sometimes simply called Harakat al-Nujaba, a Shi’a militia made up of Iraqi citizens that is loyal to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamene’i and the revolutionary theocracy’s ideology of absolute wilayat al-faqih (guardianship of the jurist). HHN, which first emerged in the summer of 2013, is one of a web of overlapping Shi’a jihadist groups recruited from Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and beyond—as far afield as the Ivory Coast—that have been used to spearhead Tehran’s imperial push into the Arab world, particularly the rescue of Bashar al-Asad’s regime in Syria that would otherwise have fallen to a popular rebellion. In recent months, Iran has been raising the profile of HHN. Continue reading →

When Usama Bin Laden Defended the Islamic State

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 17 July 2017

Usama bin Laden gave a speech lasting nearly an hour on 29 December 2007, entitled, “The Way to Foil the Conspiracies”. A translation of the speech is published below.

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Raqqa Doesn’t Want to Be Liberated By the West’s Partners

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 30 May 2017

Map of the tribes around Raqqa city (source: WINEP report)

We are now on the eve of the operation to evict the Islamic State (IS) from its Syrian capital, Raqqa, and, as expected, the United States will partner with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the front-group for the Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its armed wing, the People’s Protection Units (YPG), which President Donald Trump’s administration has committed to directly arming.

Many of the doubts voiced about this course relate to Turkey, since the PYD/YPG is—despite continued efforts to obfuscate the fact—the Syrian department of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), the premier internal security threat to Turkey for many decades. The discussion then tends to fall into one of two grooves. Continue reading →

America Sanctions Anjem Choudary and other British Islamic State Jihadists

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 30 March 2017

Anjem Choudary (image source)

The State Department designated five individuals on 30 March 2017 as Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGTs), imposing sanctions on them for having “committed, or [for] pos[ing] a significant risk of committing, acts of terrorism that threaten the security of U.S. nationals or the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States.” Four of those sanctioned are members of the Islamic State (IS), including two key British operatives in the group’s global network, and the other is a member of al-Qaeda. On the same day, the Treasury Department sanctioned two IS operatives involved in funding and guiding external IS operations in the Far East and Southeast Asia. Continue reading →

Outcome Uncertain as American Involvement in Syria Deepens

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on March 10, 2017

American ground forces are getting more deeply entangled in Syria as the offensive to push the Islamic State (IS) out of its de facto capital city, Raqqa, approaches. It remains unclear exactly which actors in Syria these troops will be assisting, though there are more and more indications that their mission will redound to the benefit of the regime of Bashar al-Assad and his allies, Iran and Russia. Continue reading →

The Islamic State’s Shadow War With Israel

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on March 5, 2017

Al-Naba 70, released on 2 March 2017, p. 15. The caption under the picture says: “The apostate Husayn Duwayhi al-Bareeki”

In the 70th edition of Al-Naba, the weekly newsletter of the Islamic State (IS), entitled, “The Liquidation of Spies for the Jewish State” (tasfiya juwasees lil-dawla al-yahudiya), which did include a description of IS’s Wilayat Sinai having eliminated an Israeli spy network, but also included more general information about the IS security structure in Egypt. Continue reading →

International Taboo on Chemical Weapons Frays As U.S. Steps Back

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on January 13, 2017

Yesterday, the United States Treasury Department imposed sanctions on eighteen senior officials in the regime of Bashar al-Assad. The sanctions come in response to reports in August and October 2016 by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), the United Nations investigative body, which found that found “the Syrian government, specifically the Syrian Arab Air Force, was responsible for three chlorine gas attacks in Talmenes on April 21, 2014, and in Qmenas and Sarmin on March 16, 2015.” This is three years after the Assad regime was spared punitive military strikes for its use of chemical weapons under a Russian-orchestrated “deal” that ostensibly disarmed Assad of such weapons. Continue reading →

The Assad Regime Admits to Manipulating the Islamic State

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on January 6, 2017

Khaled Abboud

From the beginning of the uprising in Syria in 2011, there have been accusations that Bashar al-Assad’s regime was in a de facto partnership with the Islamic State (IS) against the mainstream opposition. These accusations have a considerable basis in fact: during the entirety of the Anglo-American occupation of Iraq, Assad collaborated with IS jihadists in the destabilization of Iraq, killing thousands of Iraqi civilians and hundreds of American and British troops. Once the Syrian uprising was underway, the regime undertook various measures to bolster extremists in the insurgency. Assad and IS worked in tandem to leave Syria as a binary choice between themselves: Assad was sure this would rehabilitate him in the eyes of the world and transform his criminal regime into a partner of the international community in suppressing a terrorist insurgency, and IS wanted to rally Sunnis to its banner. The Secretary of the Syrian Parliament has now come forward to underline this. Continue reading →