Posted by DanielS on Fri, 18 Dec 2015 23:56 | #

Interesting timing, what with all that money coming from Germany on the one hand and the massive faux pas on Turkey’s part, downing the Russian jet, on the other.

Israel wants Assad out and Russia wants him in. ...but they are otherwise on relatively good terms. Yes?

Not only a dicey present, but quite an interesting history between Jews and Turkey..

Posted by Israel - ISIL oil connection on Mon, 21 Dec 2015 23:46 | #

TT Metzger had said that if it wasn’t for a black radio show he might not have heard this story anywhere else - tracing the Israel - ISIL oil connection. But actually, Kumiko had discussed this one weeks ago…

Posted by Kumiko Oumae on Thu, 24 Dec 2015 01:15 | #

Yes, what they are talking about it’s pretty close to what I was discussing with you a couple of weeks ago. In addition to Turkey and Israel being connected on the issue of oil smuggling, they are also historically connected on the issue of intelligence sharing as well. What makes it worse is that both USA-UK and Russia share intelligence with Israel as on top of that, and so it enables the Israelis to walk circles around people by playing them off against each other.

Another factor which needs to be considered also, is that depriving ISIL of its oil revenue may tighten their funds up a little, but since most of their funding really comes from taxation and extortion, we should beware of the idea that bombing the oil transports is a ‘silver bullet’ that would end the problem.

After bombing the transports, the best thing that they could do would be to look at the situation within the ISIL-controlled territory and decide whether or not they’d like to just ‘hit reset’ on the entire region, by bombing ISIL’s chief areas of support into the dust, so that the only thing those areas would be good for is parking cars on. But if they don’t want to do that because that would be ‘overkill’, then perhaps they could insert 3 or 4 brigades into the region, but that might be a hard sell to the public after 15 years of war.

Regarding how Russia’s relationship with Israel has been going, who better is there to ask than the Israelis themselves? For example, it’s publicly available news that Russia informs Israel of where its airstrikes will be placed ahead of time. Vladimir Putin also has assuaged Israeli fears by reassuring them that Syria cannot be in a position to ever open a front against Israel.

The fact that Russia is balancing its interest in maintaining a port in Syria, alongside its agenda of increasing its rapport with Israel, is a part of this conflict which is not explored often enough, but which is interwoven throughout the Russian decision-making process. As an example just off the top of my head, let’s cast our minds back to the time when the USA was threatening to use Tomohawk missiles against Damascus unless Damascus complied with the demand to disarm its chemical weapons programme. At that time, various Russian vessels were adjacent to Syria, and some people had theorised that Russia would prevent the Tomohawk card from being played, by despatching the S300 system and also by bringing Su-30 aircraft that Syria has wanted to buy, and giving it to Syria on credit so that they could neutralise Barack Obama and John Kerry’s threat of Tomohawk missile attacks.

Instead, Russia showed up with its vessels, and evacuated its own personnel from certain locations on the coast, and pretty much left Syria in the lurch.

Why would they do that? When you consider that Syria’s chemical deterrent is designed to offset Israel’s nuclear ambiguity, and that the staggered two-tier arrangement of the Syrian chemical battalions was designed for breaking Israel’s lines of supply in a hypothetical ‘Battle of Megiddo’ (similar to 1918’s battle lines), it only makes sense if you take into account that Russia wanted to ‘manage’ the situation by allowing Syria to suffer certain setbacks as part of ‘balancing’ Russia’s interests in Syria, against Russia’s desire to cultivate a good relationship with Israel.