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The Islamic State has taken another hostage and he was reading to America from a teleprompter in an expensive suit and blue tie Monday evening at the Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall near Arlington National Cemetery. Apparently there are some things that simply are more powerful than the president of the United States namely, the military-industrial complex, the original sponsor of the Islamic State and now the sponsor of U.S. President Donald Trump's planned troop surge in Afghanistan.

"We are not nation-building again," Mr. Trump proclaimed near the end of his Monday-night address. "We are killing terrorists."

Back in 2001, I might have believed that. Actually, I did believe it when the U.S. launched a war against the Afghanistan-ruling Taliban in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

But that was 16 years ago. Mr. Trump had the right idea when he tweeted on January 11, 2013: "Let's get out of Afghanistan. Our troops are being killed by the Afghanis we train and we waste billions there. Nonsense! Rebuild the USA."

While indeed there are still jihadists in Afghanistan, that's hardly shocking no more shocking than the fact that wildebeests and lions roam the Serengeti. There are terrorists in Europe, too, and they're mowing down citizens with cars on a regular basis. Terrorists are everywhere these days. We have to ask ourselves whether the 16-year fight against terrorism has made America and its allies any safer.

Afghanistan is back to square one, with the Taliban increasingly running the country, backed by its traditional sponsors: Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Most of the terrorists who attacked America on Sept. 11, 2001, were from Saudi Arabia. And Pakistan was where the mastermind of the attacks, Osama bin Laden, found safe haven until he was killed by U.S. Navy SEALs.

Dick Locher, Chicago Tribune

Dick Locher, Chicago Tribune

The Taliban's military activities are also funded by the black market opium trade. Russia bailed on counterterrorism cooperation with the NATO alliance in Afghanistan because of frustration over the lack of interest in cutting this source of revenue, which grew by 43 percent last year, according to United Nations officials.

If you're not going to touch the opium trafficking, and you're not going to penalize Saudi Arabia for sponsoring jihadism and interfering with its neighbors, then you're wasting your time sending soldiers back into that bottomless black hole of conflict.

By sending more troops to Afghanistan, the U.S. is actually worsening the national-security interests of the Western world, just as it did with attempts at regime change in Syria and Libya, where both conflicts caused jihadist blowback in Europe. As the noose tightens in the Middle East, terror attacks have ramped up. And such attacks have become easier to pull off as European borders have opened in the interests of humanitarianism, exposing a lethal loophole in Western benevolence.

Make no mistake: This is still all about regime change for the military-industrial complex, particularly as hopes of overthrowing the Syrian government dissipate. What do Syria and Afghanistan have in common? Proximity to Iran. This is hardly a coincidence.

Mr. Trump's secretary of defense, General James Mattis, has done little to hide his animosity toward the Iranian regime, telling a high school journalist in a June interview that "[Iran] is the only reason Assad has been able to stay in power." Mattis added: "Iran is certainly the most destabilizing influence in the Middle East, and when I would travel to Cairo or Tel Aviv or Riyadh ... from Arabs from Jews, all the people in the region, that is their view of Iran."

What Mr. Mattis failed to mention is that nearly all those entities are on the same side, along with the U.S. military-industrial complex. Russia and Iran are on the other side the one that's constantly treated like an enemy for having competing economic interests.

In Monday's speech, Mr. Trump admonished Pakistan but not Saudi Arabia. "We can no longer be silent about Pakistan's safe havens for terrorist organizations, the Taliban and other groups that pose a threat to the region and beyond."

Why not just cut off the head of the snake? What will it take for this administration to sanction and condemn Saudi Arabia?

Notably, Mr. Trump didn't mention Iran. Heaven forbid that anyone put two and two together and figure out the real reason behind this new incursion: regime change in Tehran.

Can we please just take a break from failed regime changes already? If this is all really about long-term foreign economic interests and it always is there are far more intelligent ways to achieve success. As an international businessman, Mr. Trump should know that bombing the competition isn't exactly the best foundation for a long-term business strategy.

Rachel Marsden (www.rachelmarsden.com) is a columnist, political strategist and former Fox News host based in Paris.

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Afghanistan surge is about regime change in Iran - Baltimore Sun

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he will discuss with Russian President Vladimir Putin on August 23 his concerns about Iran's military presence in Syria.

Netanyahu will meet Putin at the Black Sea resort city of Sochi. Both Russia and Iran back Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in his six-year civil war against armed Syrian rebels.

"I will raise the problem of Iran trying to establish a military presence in Syria," Netanyahu said on August 22.

"This proves that Iran's aggression has not diminished since the nuclear agreement, which has become a problem not only for Israel, but for all the countries of the Middle East and the entire world."

Iran, an avowed enemy of Israel, has not responded to Netanyahu's repeated allegations that it seeks to bolster its military presence on the Jewish state's borders.

Recent Israeli media reports have featured satellite photos purportedly showing weapons factories that Iran is helping to build in both Syria and Lebanon.

Israeli officials said Netanyahu will tell Putin that despite tensions between Moscow and Washington, Russia and the United States need to cooperate to reach an arrangement in Syria that will ensure Tehran does not strengthen its presence there.

The Sochi meeting will be the sixth between the two leaders since September 2015. The head of Israeli spy agency Mossad, Yossi Cohen, and Netanyahu's new national security chief, Meir Ben-Shabbat, will join Netanyahu and Putin in Sochi.

Israeli officials said Netanyahu opposes a southwest Syria cease-fire recently announced by Russia and the United States, saying he believes it will enable Iran and its ally, the Lebanese Hizballah militia, to solidify their presence in the country.

Russia and the United States maintain that they protected Israel's interests in establishing the cease-fire.

Israels main concern is that with both Moscow and Washington distracted by other matters, the Russians and the Americans will make do with such piecemeal cease-fire agreements and will not try to reach broader arrangements that determine how Syria will look after the civil war is over, Israeli officials said.

With no broad agreement in place, it would easier for Iran, Hizballah, and the Shiite militias brought to Syria by the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to augment their presence in the country, the officials said.

Israel believes that after the civil war is over, Russia and the United States must ensure that anyone who is not Syrian leaves the country, the officials said.

As in previous meetings between Netanyahu and Putin, Netanyahu is expected to express Israels concern that weapons supplied by Russia to Iran and Syria are being given to Hizballah.

Over the years Israel has raised similar allegations, but Russia has repeatedly denied them.

Beyond concerns about Iran, Netanyahu's talks with Putin are also likely to involve coordinating their military actions in Syria.

Russia and Israel have established a "hotline" to avoid accidental clashes in the country.

Israel has sought to avoid being dragged into Syrian conflict, but has acknowledged carrying out strikes to stop advanced weapons deliveries to Hizballah.

Excerpt from:
Israeli Leader To Raise Concern About Iran's Military In Syria With Putin - RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty

Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri (R) meets with Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister for Arab and African Affairs Hossein Jaberi Ansari in Beirut on August 22, 2017.

Lebanons prime minister has held talks with an Iranian deputy foreign minister on the threats posed by the Israeli regime and terrorism to the troubled Middle East region.

The meeting between Saad Hariri and Hossein Jaberi Ansari, which took place in Beirut on Tuesday, focused on Tehran-Beirut ties as well asthelatest developments in Lebanon and the broader Middle East region.

During the meeting, Hariri referred to Israel and terrorism as the two primary threats facing Lebanon and the entire region.

Hariri described dialogue and cooperation among different Lebanese political parties as the reason behind the Beirut governments recent achievements, stressing that the country was determined to continue that approach.

Jaberi Ansari, for his part, said the two threats highlighted by the Lebanese premier provide a common ground for boosting Tehran-Beirut ties and regional cooperation.

He further voiced the Islamic Republics readiness to bolster relations with Lebanon in all fields and termed the Arab country as a good example of national consensus and domestic coexistence.

In a press conference following the meeting, the Iranian official said he had held talks with Hariri on the need to resolve the Syria crisis through dialogue and to continue the counter-terrorism fight there.

Jaberi Ansari expressed Irans resolve to bolster cooperation with Lebanon, especially in the political and the economic areas.

Asked about Lebanons recent counterterrorism operation near the Syrian frontier, he said that the Lebanese military, backed by the Hezbollah resistance movement and the nations support, have managed to score major victories against the terrorists.

He expressed hope that the joint cooperation will continue until terrorists are eradicated from the border region.

The Iranian officialfurther congratulated the Lebanese nation, government, army and the resistance on the battlefield victories.

The Lebanese military launched its anti-terror operation on Saturday. Hezbollah also started a simultaneous offensive against the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group from the Syrian side of the frontier.

Last month, Hezbollah concluded a joint counter-terrorism campaign with the Syrian army at Lebanons highlands of Arsal.

Jaberi Ansari, who arrived in Lebanon on Monday for a three-day visit, has already held talks with President Michel Aoun, Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri and Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah.

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Lebanon, Iran view Israel, terrorism as threats to regional stability - Press TV

As the Islamic State continues to lose ground in Iraq and Syria, one of the more common talking points for debate is the supposed prospect of an Iranian land-route running through Iraq and Syria to Lebanon and the Mediterranean, and what the U.S. response should be. But how seriously should the idea of the land-route be taken? If the land-route concept is taken seriously, what are the viable U.S. policy responses, if any?

When it comes to supporting clients and allies in Syria and Lebanon, Iran has relied on aircraft (mostly traveling to Damascus) and naval routes, both during and prior to the Syrian civil war even when a theoretical land-route passing through Iraq and Syria to Lebanon existed. Broadly speaking, the U.S. and its allies have been unable to prevent the use of aircraft and naval routes, and indeed there is little that can be done about those routes.

The prospect of a pure land route as an additional guarantee in the event of loss of access to all airbases and naval ports (which seems highly unlikely anyway) might sound attractive. However, using such a route as the primary means to move important supplies and weapons would have to take into account the problem of an Islamic State insurgency that will remain potent in the Syria-Iraq desert border areas even after the organization loses its formal territorial holdings. For the Islamic State, attacking Iranian military convoys using a land route through the Syria-Iraq border areas would be worthwhile for two reasons. First, the attacks would allow the group to bolster a propaganda message of fighting Iran. Second, the convoys could offer chances for seizing valuable war booty.

It is true that Iranian forces and Iranian-backed Shia militias (e.g. Hezbollah and multiple Iraqi groups) have been participating in the Syrian regimes broader offensive pushing eastwards towards the borders with Iraq. Yet this should not obscure the fact that the regime has its own vital reasons for pushing eastwards that tend to be ignored in favor of a simplistic view of the Syrian civil war as primarily proxy warfare between international powers. For instance, the regime wants to restore land trade routes with Iraq that existed before the war, and wants to reclaim the countrys most valuable oil resources as well as important agricultural resources. Otherwise, the regime will face difficulties in trying to secure reconstruction and will be left too economically dependent on its allies Russia and Iran.

For native Syrian militias fighting for the regime, there are reasons to want to push eastwards: for example, among those militias participating in the fighting are Shaitat tribesmen with origins in the eastern Syrian province of Deir az-Zor. The Shaitat tribe rose up in revolt against the Islamic State, which seized control of its areas in 2014, only to be brutally crushed. Now, many of those tribesmen who fled to regime-held areas are seeking to return home and exact revenge.

The Iraqi Shia militias in particular also have their own reasons for participating in the offensive. Their ideological allegiance to Iran and service to Iranian interests should not be denied, but participating in the fight to take eastern Syria is something they genuinely view as being in Iraqs interests by securing the borders and reducing the Islamic State threat. As Jaafar al-Husseini, the military spokesman for the Iraqi Shia militia Kataib Hezbollah, explained to me: Linking up [on both sides of the borders] secures the borders of Iraq, prevents the movement of the armed men [Islamic State] and helps to liberate the land of Syria, which is part of our belief that the battle is one in Iraq and Syria.

One may ask why the regime and its allies are only conducting these operations now. The most important point is that from the standpoint of the regimes immediate survival, the insurgency concentrated in the western half of the country posed by far the bigger threat than the Islamic State in the east. When the insurgency, led by jihadists and Salafists with CIA-backed groups functioning as auxiliaries, made major gains in the northwest of Syria by expelling the regime from all major towns in Idlib province in spring 2015, the regime lost a provincial capital (Idlib city) and was at risk of losing another one (Hama city), and faced the prospect of insurgent advances into important Alawite constituent communities for the regime in Latakia and the al-Ghab plain.

The leader of the 313 Force, a Syrian militia backed by Iran, poses in front of a sign with Bashar al-Assads portrait that reads: God willing, in the near future we can open the trade route between the two countries again an indication of the regimes intent to re-establish the trade route between Syria and Iraq.

Blocking the possibility of these advances, and then inflicting a decisive defeat on the insurgency by retaking Aleppo city, served as the impetus for the Russian intervention in the fall of 2015. With those insurgent threats in the west now largely neutralized, the priorities have simply shifted. A lot of the discourse though failed to anticipate the eastward shift, believing that the regime and its allies did not have the manpower to retake the eastern areas and were only interested in useful Syria, rather than taking the regimes declarations on multiple occasions about retaking the whole country seriously.

In short, the Iranian land-route angle is being overplayed in the current events. But even supposing that such an ambition were driving the current offensive, one must ask whether the U.S. could actually stop this prospect from being realized. In the current circumstances, the Iranian forces and their allies would either have to take the Albukamal-al-Qaim crossing between Deir az-Zor and Anbar, or construct a new route entirely. U.S. forces, meanwhile, would have to maintain an indefinite presence in the areas of Syria that could function as land-routes for Iran but are currently blocked off by the American presence.

Since before the Trump administration, U.S. policy had intended for Syrian rebel forces trained by the U.S. and Jordan from the remnants of the Deir az-Zor insurgency destroyed by the Islamic State to retake the eastern regions from the Islamic State. These forces initially came under the moniker of the New Syrian Army, which captured the Tanf border crossing with Iraq in the Syrian desert from the Islamic State in March 2016. Yet these rebels failed to make any meaningful advances beyond that, notably botching a raid on Albukamal. The rebels holding the Tanf border crossing have since been reconstituted as the Revolutionary Commandoes Army (RMA), but it is clear these forces and similar groups that were intended to retake Deir az-Zor province do not have the capability to do so.

Indeed, their spokesmen seem to exaggerate their numbers. A spokesman for RMA, one of whose commanders fled recently to regime-held areas, claimed his group has more than 1,000 fighters. It was further claimed that within a month, the group would have 4,000-5,000 fighters. A spokesman for the Qaryatayn Martyrs Brigade, a group that recently broke with the U.S. on account of a disagreement on fighting the regimes forces, similarly claimed to me that his group has 4,000 fighters. RMA, on the other hand, says that the Qaryatayn Martyrs Brigade only consists of approximately 300 fighters. Whatever the truth of these claimed figures, these groups are not sufficient in manpower to take Deir az-Zor province.

Thus, in the case of the Tanf border crossing, the American presence would be set to be stuck there indefinitely, likely subject to harassment by Iranian-backed forces falling short of all-out war. The only alternatives are either to try to pressure the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) currently assaulting the Islamic States de facto capital of Raqqa to launch a major offensive to take all of Deir az-Zor province (an unlikely prospect) and maintain a permanent U.S. presence and substantial economic commitment to SDF areas, or unilaterally deploy thousands of U.S. troops to take Deir az-Zor, only to face an insurgency that will either bolster the Islamic State or take on a different form. After all, the province was a source of fighters who ended up going to Iraq to fight the American presence there during the Iraq War.

In sum, the notion of confronting Iran in the east of Syria and blocking a supposed Iranian land-route may sound tough rhetorically but lacks a basis in reality. The idea of claiming a U.S. stake in the east of Syria and thus somehow being able to push for a political transition in the long run away from the Assad regime is fantasy. The Trump administration should resist calls to engage in a major escalation for a poorly defined objective that does not actually reverse what my colleague Kirk Sowell of Inside Iraqi Politics describes as Irans position as the pre-eminent player between Iran and the Mediterranean. Any U.S. policy-making should focus instead on dealing with the reality as it is and deterring threats that arise from it: that is, making clear that any actual attacks on U.S. assets and allies will be met with severe retaliation.

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The Iranian Land Route to the Mediterranean: Myth or Reality? - American Spectator

WASHINGTON, Aug. 22, 2017 The United States and its coalition partners remain unwavering in their commitment to Iraq in defeating the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said today in Baghdad.

Mattis spoke to reporters with Brett McGurk, special presidential envoy for the global coalition to defeat ISIS, and Army Lt. Gen. Stephen J. Townsend, the commanding general of Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve.

"We in the coalition will remain steadfast with our Iraqi allies -- all the way through the defeat of ISIS," Mattis said. "It's not over yet. There's hard fighting ahead."

The defense secretary commended efforts from U.S., coalition and Iraqi forces, lauding the positive gains since Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi took office in 2014.

"Today the security for the Iraqi people has been greatly improved," Mattis said, pointing out that Iraqi cities have been liberated, people freed from the terrorists' brutal rule, and the Iraqi economy is recovering.

Iraq is reengaging with the region, he said, and ISIS is "on the run."

The terrorists, he said, "have been shown to be unable to stand up to our team in combat and they have not retaken one inch of ground that they've lost."

Mattis said the United States is dedicated to the strategic framework agreement to stand with the Iraqi people and their military to help secure a better future and maintain stability and security.

'Very Promising' Regional Developments

McGurk highlighted positive regional developments, to include the Arar border crossing between Iraq and Saudi Arabia opening for the first time since 1990. In addition, he said, Iraqi and Jordanian officials are discussing the reopening of the Turaibil border crossing, a nearly $1 billion-a-month commerce route.

"We're looking very closely at the future beyond [ISIS] and we are encouraged by the leadership of Prime Minister Abadi with this regional engagement," McGurk said. "We think it is really delivering some results and a very promising development here on the ground."

Victory 'Assured' in Tal Afar, Raqqa

The coalition and partnered forces on the ground in Iraq and Syria are making significant gains, Townsend said.

"The fighting's tough, but the momentum was with our partners and the Iraqi security forces and in the Syrian Democratic Forces," he said.

The Iraqi city of Mosul was liberated after months of tough fighting, Townsend noted, adding the coalition is in its third month of operations to defeat ISIS in the Syrian city of Raqqa.

"A year ago the liberation of Mosul was just some ideas and some lines on paper. The liberation of Raqqa was not even that," the general said.

After the intense fighting in Mosul, the Iraqi forces regrouped, quickly refitting and transitioning their force into a new offensive in Tal Afar, west of Mosul, he said.

In Syria, the terrorists are surrounded and cut off, but continue to show their cruelty as they hide among women and children and show no regard for noncombatants, according to Townsend.

The U.S. remains united with its partners and committed in the lasting defeat of ISIS in Iraq and Syria, and to prevent the terrorists from "exporting their terror around the world and to protect our homelands," he said.

"Victory over ISIS is assured in Tal Afar and Raqqa," the general said.

The coalition, Townsend said, must continue to disrupt ISIS's ability to inspire new recruits, deprive the terrorists of sanctuary, interrupt their revenue streams, destroy their equipment, kill their fighters and deny their ability to attack the homelands.

(Follow Lisa Ferdinando on Twitter: @FerdinandoDoD)

Link:
Mattis: US, Coalition 'Steadfast' With Iraq for ISIS Defeat - Department of Defense