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Posts Tagged egypt
Israel sends two warships to Egyptian border
Posted by Jack Sinclair in News, Threat Watch on 30/Aug/2011 15:48
“Military sources tell AP Israeli Navy sent additional warships to maritime border with Egypt following intelligence indicating viable terror threat.
Military intelligence suggests that an Islamic Jihad terror cell has left the Gaza Strip and intends to infiltrate Israel through Sinai. Minister for Home Front Defense Matan Vilnai has been quoted as saying that the cell may number as many as 10 terrorists.
Meanwhile, Iran set to send 15th fleet to area as well as ‘to thwart pirate activity’
Iran’s Navy Commander Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari:
“The presence of Iran’s army in the high seas will convey the message of peace and friendship to all countries.â€
Obama and the Arab Spring
Posted by Brian in News, Threat Watch on 25/May/2011 14:23
Obama and the Arab Spring is republished with permission of STRATFOR.
By George Friedman
U.S. President Barack Obama gave a speech last week on the Middle East. Presidents make many speeches. Some are meant to be taken casually, others are made to address an immediate crisis, and still others are intended to be a statement of broad American policy. As in any country, U.S. presidents follow rituals indicating which category their speeches fall into. Obama clearly intended his recent Middle East speech to fall into the last category, as reflecting a shift in strategy if not the declaration of a new doctrine.
While events in the region drove Obama’s speech, politics also played a strong part, as with any presidential speech. Devising and implementing policy are the president’s job. To do so, presidents must be able to lead — and leading requires having public support. After the 2010 election, I said that presidents who lose control of one house of Congress in midterm elections turn to foreign policy because it is a place in which they retain the power to act. The U.S. presidential campaign season has begun, and the United States is engaged in wars that are not going well. Within this framework, Obama thus sought to make both a strategic and a political speech. Read the rest of this entry »
The Arab Risings, Israel and Hamas
Posted by Brian in News, Threat Watch on 12/Apr/2011 12:32
The Arab Risings, Israel and Hamas is republished with permission of STRATFOR.
By George Friedman
There was one striking thing missing from the events in the Middle East in past months: Israel. While certainly mentioned and condemned, none of the demonstrations centered on the issue of Israel. Israel was a side issue for the demonstrators, with the focus being on replacing unpopular rulers.
This is odd. Since even before the creation of the state of Israel, anti-Zionism has been a driving force among the Arab public, perhaps more than it has been with Arab governments. While a few have been willing to develop open diplomatic relations with Israel, many more have maintained informal relations: Numerous Arab governments have been willing to maintain covert relations with Israel, with extensive cooperation on intelligence and related matters. They have been unwilling to incur the displeasure of the Arab masses through open cooperation, however.
That makes it all the more strange that the Arab opposition movements — from Libya to Bahrain — have not made overt and covert cooperation with Israel a central issue, if for no other reason than to mobilize the Arab masses. Let me emphasize that Israel was frequently an issue, but not the central one. If we go far back to the rise of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser and his revolution for Pan-Arabism and socialism, his issues against King Farouk were tightly bound with anti-Zionism. Similarly, radical Islamists have always made Israel a central issue, yet it wasn’t there in this round of unrest. This was particularly surprising with regimes like Egypt’s, which had formal relations with Israel. Read the rest of this entry »
Iranian Warships in Suez Canal
Posted by Gary in News, Threat Watch on 23/Feb/2011 13:00
First Iranian warships to pass through the Suez canal since 1979.
Revolution and the Muslim World
Posted by Brian in Opinion, Threat Watch on 22/Feb/2011 12:17
Revolution and the Muslim World is republished with permission of STRATFOR.
By George Friedman
The Muslim world, from North Africa to Iran, has experienced a wave of instability in the last few weeks. No regimes have been overthrown yet, although as of this writing, Libya was teetering on the brink.
There have been moments in history where revolution spread in a region or around the world as if it were a wildfire. These moments do not come often. Those that come to mind include 1848, where a rising in France engulfed Europe. There was also 1968, where the demonstrations of what we might call the New Left swept the world: Mexico City, Paris, New York and hundreds of other towns saw anti-war revolutions staged by Marxists and other radicals. Prague saw the Soviets smash a New Leftist government. Even China’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution could, by a stretch, be included. In 1989, a wave of unrest, triggered by East Germans wanting to get to the West, generated an uprising in Eastern Europe that overthrew Soviet rule.
Each had a basic theme. The 1848 uprisings attempted to establish liberal democracies in nations that had been submerged in the reaction to Napoleon. 1968 was about radical reform in capitalist society. 1989 was about the overthrow of communism. They were all more complex than that, varying from country to country. But in the end, the reasons behind them could reasonably be condensed into a sentence or two.
Some of these revolutions had great impact. 1989 changed the global balance of power. 1848 ended in failure at the time — France reverted to a monarchy within four years — but set the stage for later political changes. 1968 produced little that was lasting. The key is that in each country where they took place, there were significant differences in the details — but they shared core principles at a time when other countries were open to those principles, at least to some extent. Read the rest of this entry »
Egypt, Israel and a Strategic Reconsideration
Posted by Brian in News, Threat Watch on 8/Feb/2011 13:18
Egypt, Israel and a Strategic Reconsideration is republished with permission of STRATFOR.
By George Friedman
The events in Egypt have sent shock waves through Israel. The 1978 Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel have been the bedrock of Israeli national security. In three of the four wars Israel fought before the accords, a catastrophic outcome for Israel was conceivable. In 1948, 1967 and 1973, credible scenarios existed in which the Israelis were defeated and the state of Israel ceased to exist. In 1973, it appeared for several days that one of those scenarios was unfolding.
The survival of Israel was no longer at stake after 1978. In the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, the various Palestinian intifadas and the wars with Hezbollah in 2006 and Hamas in Gaza in 2008, Israeli interests were involved, but not survival. There is a huge difference between the two. Israel had achieved a geopolitical ideal after 1978 in which it had divided and effectively made peace with two of the four Arab states that bordered it, and neutralized one of those states. The treaty with Egypt removed the threat to the Negev and the southern coastal approaches to Tel Aviv.
The agreement with Jordan in 1994, which formalized a long-standing relationship, secured the longest and most vulnerable border along the Jordan River. The situation in Lebanon was such that whatever threat emerged from there was limited. Only Syria remained hostile but, by itself, it could not threaten Israel. Damascus was far more focused on Lebanon anyway. As for the Palestinians, they posed a problem for Israel, but without the foreign military forces along the frontiers, the Palestinians could trouble but not destroy Israel. Israel’s existence was not at stake, nor was it an issue for 33 years. Read the rest of this entry »
Social Media as a Tool for Protest
Social Media as a Tool for Protest is republished with permission of STRATFOR.
By Marko Papic and Sean Noonan
Internet services were reportedly restored in Egypt on Feb. 2 after being completely shut down for two days. Egyptian authorities unplugged the last Internet service provider (ISP) still operating Jan. 31 amidst ongoing protests across the country. The other four providers in Egypt — Link Egypt, Vodafone/Raya, Telecom Egypt and Etisalat Misr — were shut down as the crisis boiled over on Jan. 27. Commentators immediately assumed this was a response to the organizational capabilities of social media websites that Cairo could not completely block from public access.
The role of social media in protests and revolutions has garnered considerable media attention in recent years. Current conventional wisdom has it that social networks have made regime change easier to organize and execute. An underlying assumption is that social media is making it more difficult to sustain an authoritarian regime — even for hardened autocracies like Iran and Myanmar — which could usher in a new wave of democratization around the globe. In a Jan. 27 YouTube interview, U.S. President Barack Obama went as far as to compare social networking to universal liberties such as freedom of speech.
Social media alone, however, do not instigate revolutions. They are no more responsible for the recent unrest in Tunisia and Egypt than cassette-tape recordings of Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini speeches were responsible for the 1979 revolution in Iran. Social media are tools that allow revolutionary groups to lower the costs of participation, organization, recruitment and training. But like any tool, social media have inherent weaknesses and strengths, and their effectiveness depends on how effectively leaders use them and how accessible they are to people who know how to use them. Read the rest of this entry »
Egypt and the Destruction of Churches: Strategic Implications
Posted by Brian in Opinion, Threat Watch on 4/Jan/2011 17:36
Egypt and the Destruction of Churches: Strategic Implications is republished with permission of STRATFOR.
By George Friedman
Over the past few days, Christian churches have been attacked in at least two countries — Nigeria and Egypt — while small packages containing improvised explosive devices were placed on the doorsteps of Christian families in Iraq. Attacks against Christians are not uncommon in the Islamic world, driven by local issues and groups, and it is unclear whether these latest attacks were simply coincidental and do not raise the threat to a new level or whether they indicate the existence of a new, coordinated, international initiative. There is a strong case to be made for the idea that there is nothing new in all of this.
Yet I am struck by the close timing of events in three distant and dispersed countries. Certainly, Egyptian intelligence services are looking for any regional connections (e.g., whether Iraqi operatives recruited the Egyptian bomber). While there have been previous bombings in Egypt, they have focused on tourists, not churches. What is important is this: If the recent attacks are not coincidental, then a coordinated campaign is being conducted against Christian churches that spans at least these countries. And it is a network that has evaded detection by intelligence services.
Obviously, this is speculative. What is clear, however, is that the attack on a church in one country — Egypt — is far from common and was particularly destructive. Egypt has been relatively quiet in terms of terrorism, and there have been few recent attacks on the large Coptic Christian population. The Egyptian government has been effective in ruthlessly suppressing Islamist extremists and has been active in sharing intelligence on terrorism with American, Israeli and other Muslim governments. Its intelligence apparatus has been one of the mainstays of global efforts to limit terrorism as well as keep Egypt’s domestic opposition in check.
Therefore, the attack in Egypt is significant for no other reason than that it happened and represents a failure of Egyptian security. While such failures are inevitable, what made this failure significant was that it occurred in tight sequence with attacks on multiple Christian targets in Iraq and Nigeria and after a threat al Qaeda made last month against Egyptian Copts. This was a warning, which in my mind increases the possibility of coordinated action, but the Egyptians failed to block it. Read the rest of this entry »
M1-A1 Abrams rumbles across a live-fire range
Posted by Jack Sinclair in News on 20/Oct/2010 17:39
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An M1-A1 Abrams Main Battle Tank, attached to India Company, Battalion Landing Team, 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment, 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit, rumbles across a live-fire range during a Combined-Arms Live-Fire Exercise conducted as part of Exercise Bright Star 2009 in Egypt, Oct. 14, 2009. The multinational exercise is designed to improve readiness, interoperability and strengthen the military and professional relationships among U.S., Egyptian and participating forces. Bright Star is conducted by U.S. Central Command and held every two years. Elements of the 22nd MEU are currently are participating in the multinational exercise while serving as the theater reserve force for U.S. Central Command. Photo by Cpl. Theodore Ritchie
Egyptian Mosque Investor contributed to Terror Group – thought it was a Charity.
Posted by Jack Sinclair in News on 3/Sep/2010 19:01
MYFOXNY.COM – Fox 5 News reported Thursday that one of the financial backers of the Islamic mosque and cultural center project in Lower Manhattan once contributed to a terror group, although the investor says the contribution was made because he thought he was giving money to a harmless charity.
One of the key players in Sharif El-Gamal’s Mosque near Ground Zero is Egyptian born businessman, Hisham Elzanaty. Fox 5 News has learned exclusively and confirmed with Mr. Elzanaty’s attorney that Elzanaty made a “significant investment†in the development of the mosque near Ground Zero.
Jack: I’m sure it was an honest mistake. Why would he lie? (taqiyya!)
No, really, how could he know, since nearly every Islamic terror group out there masquerades as a charity?