US Pulling Some of Its Missile Systems Out of Middle East – Reports
SPUTNIK NEWS / BATTLE FOR WORLD – September 27, 2018: The article highlights the US military is now focused to a greater extent on tensions with China and Russia, according to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), citing senior US military officials.
The United States is pulling some of its anti-aircraft and missile batteries out of the Middle East, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday (September 26), citing senior US military staffers and that the removal will reportedly be conducted next month (October).
As many as four Patriot missile systems will be withdrawn from Jordan, Kuwait and Bahrain, according to the Wall Street Journal, adding that the step essentially marks a shift of attention away from the long-lasting military confrontations in the Middle East and Afghanistan, towards soured relations with China and Russia, and subsequently to meet nascent threats from there.
The report stated the systems had already been deactivated, with the dismantling slated to begin October.
The US Central Command has refused to comment on the matter, as reported by the WSJ.
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Israel Ready to Open Quneitra Checkpoint on Border With Syria – Defense Minister
SPUTNIK NEWS / BATTLE FOR WORLD – September 27, 2018: The article highlights Israel is ready to open the Quneitra checkpoint – the only official border crossing point with Syria, according to the Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman on Thursday (September 27).
Avigdor Lieberman noted that Israel was willing to resume normal activity at the crossing point and “the ball is now in Syria’s hands”, and specified that the crossing point would be opened for UN personnel and would resume operating as before the war.
“We see Syrian police and customs officers on the opposite side of the border, work is underway, patrols of the Russian military police are passing. … We are ready to bring life back to normal,” said Lieberman, after visiting the Israeli section of the border crossing.
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Jordan Ready to Reopen Border With Syria – Foreign Minister
SPUTNIK NEWS / BATTLE FOR WORLD – September 27, 2018: The article highlights that Jordan is prepared to reopen its border with Syria once the technical details of such a move are worked out, Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi told Sputnik news agency on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday (September 27).
“In principle, we want to open borders. A technical committee is meeting right now to agree details that will allow us to open borders,” Safadi said.
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Trump and Netanyahu skipped the Israeli-Russian crisis until after an early PM-Putin encounter
DEBKA / BATTLE FOR WORLD – September 27, 2018: The article highlights that President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu performed a neat double act for stepping around the issue of the Israeli-Russian crisis when they faced reporters at UN Center on Wednesday, Sept. 27. And that Trump said that “The US stands behind Israel”, while Netanyahu said, he had received from the president “everything he asked for.” So what did he ask for? The answer is: Nothing.
According to DEBKAfile, their sources revealed exclusively that the agenda for this meeting was pre-set. When Netanyahu set off for New York, after an urgent security cabinet meeting on the crisis, he knew that Russian President Vladimir Putin was expecting to see him in the coming days, after the furor in Moscow and Tel Aviv over the Il-20 crash had abated somewhat. And that Netanyahu was able to inform Trump that he and Putin had already agreed on certain matters for defusing the crisis, as follows:
- The deconfliction agreement covering Russian-Israeli military coordination for Israel’s operations in Syria must be amended.
- The current arrangements would be observed until the Russian and Israeli leaders’ meeting.
- The two would also decide how – and if – the delivery of Russian S-300 air defense missiles to Syria fit in with the new coordination arrangements.
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Netanyahu Discloses Second Alleged Iranian Atomic Secret Facility in Tehran. The big booger strikes again
SPUTNIK NEWS / BATTLE FOR WORLD – September 27, 2018: The article highlights that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made fresh allegations about Iran’s alleged nuclear program during his speech to the UN General Assembly on Thursday (September 27).
The Israeli prime minister claimed Iran’s ‘secret warehouse’, just a few kilometers away from the site raided by Israeli commandos last year containing an alleged atomic archive, has additional materials and equipment related to an atomic weapons program.
Today I am disclosing for the first time that Iran has another secret facility in Tehran, a secret atomic warehouse for storing massive amounts of equipment and material for Iran’s secret nuclear weapons program,” Netanyahu said at the United Nations.
(BattleForWorld: The big booger Netanyahu of world nuisance strikes again.)
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Lebanon Accuses Israel of ‘Once Again Making Excuses to Justify Aggression’
SPUTNIK NEWS / BATTLE FOR WORLD – September 28, 2018: The article highlights that Beirut has responded to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s UN General Assembly speech, where he included threats that Tel Aviv wouldn’t let the Hezbollah militant group get away with efforts to build up an arsenal of precision-guided missiles.
In a scathing reply to Netanyahu’s speech, Lebanon’s acting foreign minister Gebran Bassil suggested that Israel had forgotten its previous defeats at the hands of Lebanese forces. “Here is Israel once again coming up with excuses to justify aggression and preparing to violate the sovereignty of other nations using the [UN] platform,” Bassil wrote on Twitter.
And that here “Israel has forgotten that Lebanon drove it out, defeated its aggression, and seems oblivious to the fact that its arrogance and ‘new friends’ will be of no benefit,” the foreign minister added, referring to Prime Minister Netanyahu’s remark about Israel gaining a new “intimacy and friendship” with other Arab states against Iran.
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Netanyahu’s UN Speech Aimed at ‘Creating Pretexts for Attacks’ – Scholar
SPUTNIK NEWS / BATTLE FOR WORLD – September 29, 2018: The article highlights that the Iranian foreign minister called Benjamin Netanyahu’s claims of a secret nuclear facility in Iran “an arts and crafts show.” In a tweet published on Thursday (September 27), Mr. Zarif noted that Israel was the only regime in the Middle East possessing a secret and undeclared nuclear weapons program, including an actual atomic arsenal.
Radio Sputnik discussed Netanyahu’s speech at the UN with Tim Anderson, an expert in international politics at the University of Sydney.
Sputnik: Iran says that Netanyahu’s claims cannot be taken into account seriously. What judgment do you have regarding Israeli PM’s UN speech? Do his arguments stand up to scrutiny?
Tim Anderson: He is a dangerous man and he is creating, like his mentor in the US, pretexts, which were a bit of credibility, pretexts that he will use and has used for almost arbitrary attacks.
Sputnik: Do you think that he was believed? How seriously were his remark taken and by whom?
Tim Anderson: It’s difficult to say…
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