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Milestones to the Kingdom

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MAR-MSY-RU:151219:(18-DEC-15 D):Introducing Col. Gen. Alexander Dvornikov, C-in-C of Russian Forces in Syria

Debka 18-Dec-15

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It was not by chance that Russian President Vladimir Putin selected Col. Gen. Alexander Dvornikov, an outstanding ground forces commander, as chief of Russia’s military operation in Syria and Iraq.

Their association goes back 26 years to the last moments of the dying Soviet empire. But in 2015, Putin found the general was right for the job he had in mind by virtue of his military experience and high qualifications.

Dvornikov’s appointment, first revealed here by DEBKA Weekly’s military and intelligence sources, came after a fierce debate in August among Russia’s politicians and generals over the officer best suited to lead Russia’s military campaign in Syria, one of the most high-powered military ventures of Putin’s presidency.

Many favored a senior air force officer, conceiving the campaign as consisting mainly of air strikes. They proposed Col. Gen. Victor Nikolaevich Bondarev, chief of Aerospace Defense Forces, a branch established just four months ago.

Putin overruled them, having decided that the ground component was to be just as important as the future aerial campaign in the major Russian intervention the Syrian conflict that was due to start in September. He chose Dvornikov in consideration of his extensive experience in warfare against Islamic terror groups during his service in the North Caucasus Military District from 2000 to 2003, first as chief of staff and then as a motorized infantry division commander.

Putin and the general first met in Dresden, then East Germany, a few weeks after the fall of the Berlin Wall. It was Dec. 5, 1989, and anti-Soviet protesters were storming the city headquarters of Stasi, the East German secret police. A group crossed the road and headed to a building which housed local KGB headquarters. A guard at the gate rushed into the building with news of the approaching threat.

KGB Major Vladimir Putin went out to speak to the protesters.

“Don’t try to force your way into this property,” he was quoted as telling them. “My comrades are armed, and they’re authorized to use their weapons in an emergency.”

The warning was enough. The protesters melted away.

But amid the chaos of those days, Putin was not satisfied that the building was safe. He called up a Red Army tank unit and requested protection. He was shocked to hear the battalion commander at the other end of the line replying, “We cannot do anything without orders from Moscow, and Moscow is silent.”

That commander, DEBKA Weekly’s intelligence sources reveal, was none other than a 30-year old officer called Alexander Dvornikov.

Moscow’s silence on that occasion shaped Putin’s philosophy from that time on. Never, he determined there and then, if he ever reached a position of power, would Moscow be silent. That resolve was shared by Dvornikov, with whom the future Russian president stayed in close touch.

Over the years, while Putin climbed the political ladder to the Kremlin, Dvornikov rose in the military ranks to colonel general, gaining the reputation of a punctilious commander who never gives up until he attains his objective.

DEBKA Weekly’s military sources now bring the Dresden episode up to its 2015 sequel.

The tenacious Russian general was given control of the twin Russian commands in Damascus and Baghdad. They function as two halves of the same war room. Their operations are fully coordinated and keep the single overall commander, Col. Gen. Dvornikov, on top of events and in control of decisions 24/7.

At the Damascus headquarters, he has three partners: the Syrian Chief of Staff Gen. Ali Abdullah Ayyoub, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Gen. Key Parvar and the commander of Hizballah forces in Syria, Mostafa Bader el-Din.

Gen. Qassem Soleimani, Iranian commander in Syria and Iraq, occasionally takes part in high command meetings in Damascus.

(See a separate item on Soleimani)

Biographical Note:

Alexander Dvornikov was born in 1961 in Ussuriysk, the Far East of the USSR, and spent his life in military service.

After graduating from Moscow Higher Military Command School in 1982, he served in the Far Eastern Military District as a platoon commander, company commander and battalion chief of staff.

After his transfer to East Germany, he was appointed first as deputy battalion commander, then full battalion chief.

In 1991, he graduated from the prestigious Moscow Military Academy of Frunze.

>From 1994-2000, Dvornikov was a regimental chief of staff and then a regimental commander in the Moscow Military District.

In 2005, he graduated from the Military Academy of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Russia in Moscow; from 2005-2008, he served in the Siberian Military District as deputy army commander and army chief of staff, and then from 2011-2012 as deputy commander of the Eastern Military District.

In April 2012, Dvornikov was appointed chief of staff and 1st deputy commander of the Central Military District. That lasted until October 15, when he won the post of commander of Russian forces in Syria and Iraq.

During his long military career, Dvornikov collected numerous medals and decorations, among them the Order for Service to the Homeland in the Soviet Union’s Armed Forces, 3rd class; Order of Merit to the Fatherland, 4th class; the Order of Courage; and the Order of Military Merit.

TIS-MIQ-MSY:151218:(18-DEC-15 D):Full ISIS Mobilization in Iraq & Syria to Fight for Mosul

Debka 18-Dec-15

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The comments made by President Barack Obama at the Pentagon on Monday, Dec. 14, purported to outline a strategy for defeating the Islamic State. He also offered a couple of statistics on past performance.

“We are hitting ISIL harder than ever,” he said. The US has dropped almost 9,000 bombs since it launched attacks last year, and last month struck its largest amount of ISIS targets, killing their leaders.

Obama also claimed that the terrorist organization had so far “lost 40 percent of the populated areas it once controlled in Iraq – and would lose more.”

The data gathered by DEBKA Weekly’s military and counterterrorism sources show a different picture.

The jihadist group has indeed lost ground in Iraq – but no more than 10 percent and most of it in the ghost towns of Tikrit, the capital of Anbar, and the refinery town of Baiji, parts of which the Iraqi army does not dare enter.

These are the “populated areas” the US president referred to.

He carefully skirted around the results of the US “hitting ISIL harder than ever.”

They are listed here by our military sources:

  1. ISIS has suffered roughly 10,000 fatalities in Iraq and Syria to date, but only 12 percent of them from American or Russian air strikes. The remaining 88 percent were killed in battle.
  2. This formidable casualty count has not reduced the terrorist organization’s military strength or diminished its operational abilities, because its losses are more than refilled by a still larger number of fighters joining ISIS from around the globe.
  3. In December 2015, ISIS fighting strength hit a new high of 70,000 – half from countries outside Syria or Iraq, such as the US, Canada, Britain, France, Spain, Holland and Russia. A fresh influx of fighters arrived in recent months from Libya, Algeria, Tunisia and Egypt.
  4. All the same, the Islamic State is beginning to feel the strain of stepped-up Russian assaults, and has taken note of US-Russian cooperation in northern Syria, a front to which ISIS gives top priority.

(See last DEBKA Weekly issue 688: The Secret Euphrates Pact between Obama and Putin),

The Islamists have reacted by imposing mandatory conscription on jihadists aged 18 to 35 in the Syrian and Iraq territories under its control. They expect to raise another 10,000 troops.

Past draft dodgers were usually executed when captured.

  1. This week, ISIS is concentrating its military effort on three fronts: northern Syria and the two Iraqi cities it holds – Ramadi (see separate article on the battle for this city) and Mosul, Iraq’s second city after Baghdad.
  2. ISIS commanders, especially the former Iraqi generals who joined the jihadist group, have charted plans well in advance of an offensive for retaking Mosul, by making the town the strongest fortress of the Islamic Caliphate.

According to DEBKA Weekly’s intelligence sources, a combined army of Americans, Iraqi forces, Kurdish autonomous region (KRG) peshmerga and Iraqi Shiite militias, under Iranian Revolutionary Guards command, is seen getting set to retake Mosul by next spring or summer.

Determined to deprive President Obama of a game-changing victory shortly before he departs the White House, the jihadists are already busy planting hundreds of trucks filled with explosives at strategic points around the city for blocking a tank or infantry invasion. Western military sources estimate that a total of 1,000 and 1,200 truck bombs will eventually be in position.

The jihadists are also digging and fortifying tunnels under the neighborhoods envisaged as sites of battle to give their fighters a tactical advantage.

Western military sources estimate that it would take an army of no less than 160,000 troops, trained in guerrilla warfare, and fighting house by house, to wrest the fortified sections of Mosul from ISIS. There is not the slightest chance of the Obama administration and its coalition allies raising and deploying an army of this size.

MAR-MSY-US-RU-IS:151218:(18-DEC-15 D):Is the US-Russian Syrian Deal Good or Bad for Israel?

Debka 18-Dec-15

Israel’s leading policy-makers and security officials were sharply divided this week over whether the steps the US and Russia have set in motion in Syria benefit or harm Israel’s interests. These differences focused on the Obama administration’s concession to Moscow in support of allowing Bashar Assad to remain in power.

One senior Israeli official in Jerusalem commented sarcastically to DEBKA Weekly sources, “Our top people have suddenly changed their tune.” Others now determine that the Islamic State poses the greater threat to Israel compared with Iran and Assad rolled in one, or even, “It’s good that the Russian army has arrived in Syria right now.”

None of these officials, oddly enough, addresses the presence of Israel’s arch-enemy the Shiite Hizballah in Syria, except as a small detail of the big picture.

By and large, DEBKA Weekly’s military sources report, Israel’s defense chiefs are divided between two schools of thought: supporters and opponents of the new US-Russian understanding for Syria.

IDF chief of staff Lieut. Gen. Gady Eisenkot leads the first school.

He is heard saying in formal and private discussions that Assad’s ouster is no long a national priority and that it is pointless to keep on trying to break the military bond between Iran, Syria and Hizballah.

His argument hinges mainly on the asset Israel is gaining from the smooth coordination between the Russian and Israeli air forces for avoiding clashes. Moscow’s military presence in Syria is a guarantee, in the Israeli general’s view, that those three foes will not act out their hatred of Israel, so long as the Russians remain in Syria and call the shots there.

Eisenkott repeatedly stresses that the IDF is the only Middle East army with which Russia is willing to maintain this level of coordination. He praises the sensitivity of Russian officers in Syria to every Israeli request and issue, attributing this receptiveness to directives from the top, i.e. President Vladimir Putin in person.

Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon takes the opposite view.

He does not negate the perils posed by ISIS, but does not see Daesh as an existential threat to the Jewish state.

Even if the jihadists manage to plant cells and activate them for large-scale terror attacks, Ya’alon is confident that Israel can count on its informal anti-ISIS coalitions with Egypt and Jordan – and partly with Saudi Arabia – to beat the jihadist terrorists down.

For the defense minister, the greatest menace facing Israel comes from the Iranian-Syrian-Hizballah bloc. In contrast to the IDF chief, who prefers to focus the national war effort on fighting the Islamic State, Ya’alon calls for urgent action to smash Assad and his regime, which he calls the vital Syrian link binding Iran and Hizballah.

Severing that link is absolutely essential, he argues, for breaking up the collaboration between the two Shiite armies dedicated to Israel’s destruction.

If this is not achieved, the minister predicts that Israel will soon have to contend with a combined Iranian-Hizballah army, the latter no longer a paramilitary terror group but a military force hardened by combat in Syria and professional enough to undertake a serious invasion of Israel.

It is up to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to choose between these opposing viewpoints in order to retool Israel’s policy and defense strategy in the light of the new world power setup taking shape in the Syrian arena. The question DEBKA Weekly’s military sources ask is: How long will it take for a decision on this most pressing issue?

RU-MIN:151218:(18-DEC-15 D):Russia Controls the Levers of the US-Iranian-Backed Battle for Ramadi

Debka 18-Dec-15

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Is the battle for Ramadi the Iraqi army’s big chance to recover its lost honor since rolling over in the face of the Islamic State from June 2014?

According to a report run by US media on Monday, Dec. 14, the battle to regain the city overrun by the Islamic State seven months ago, offers just that chance.

“For Iraq’s armed forces, and the Americans who are training and backing them, this is a particularly important fight. Here, the country’s Shiite militias are not taking part, and that gives the regular Iraqi military a chance to repair its image.”

Maj. Gen. Ismail al-Mahlawi, head of the Anbar Operations Command said: “This had to be a battle using purely the Iraqi military” – an assessment confirmed by the White House and Pentagon.

On this point, DEBKA Weekly’s intelligence and military sources beg to differ: In actual fact, the Ramadi offensive is being led not by one, but by three military forces:

  1. Iraqi army units are attacking the city from the north.
  2. Iranian-backed Iraqi Shiite militias, such as the Mahdi Army, the Badr Brigades and the Popular Mobilization Committee, are attacking from the south.

They are under the command of Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, who led the Shiite militia forces in the capture of the towns of Tikrit and Baiji. Muhandis fights in the guise of an Iraqi Shiite militia chief, concealing his real identity as an Iranian brigadier general and the secret deputy of the Iranian al-Qods Brigades chief, Gen. Qasem Soleimani.

As Soleimani’s deputy, Muhandis is the real commander of Iran’s Iraqi front.

  1. The US military, whose warplanes bomb the ISIS forces controlling the Ramadi city center – 80 percent in support of the pro-Iranian Shiite militia operations and only 20 percent to benefit the Iraqi army.

This attests to a measure of US-Iranian cooperation, DEBKA Weekly’s military sources report.

Last month, the US conducted 200 air strikes against ISIS targets in Ramadi (equal to the number of Russian air raids in Syria in 48 hours)

It is therefore hard to say that the battle for Ramadi is conducted “purely by the Iraqi army” – especially when a fourth partner is in play in a behind-the-scenes, yet critical, role.

DEBKA Weekly’s military and intelligence sources disclose that Shiite militia operations are directed by the Russian war room in Baghdad, headed (as we reported in a separate article) by Col. Gen. Alexander Dvornikov, joint commander of Russian forces in Iraq and Syria.

Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis and the commander of the Badr Brigades, Hadi Al-Amiri, are regulars at the Baghdad command meetings, which regularly hear updates on all US military movements.

These briefings provide the Russian general with enough intelligence for steering Russian and Iranian military moves according to the state of war with ISIS and other terrorist organizations – but also in accordance with American military steps.

With his hands on the controls of the war 24/7, Gen. Dvornikov can use Iranian allies for pulling invisible strings to manipulate US forces in Iraq.

MIN:151218:(18-DEC-15 D):Who Made the Iranian Al Qods Chief Disappear? Syrian Rebels or Khamenei?

Debka 18-Dec-15

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The disappearance of Qassem Soleimani, the live wire behind Iran’s Middle East war efforts and foreign terror conspiracies, is baffling the world’s top intelligence agencies.

For years, Soleimani operated in the shadows of his clandestine calling as commander of the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) Al Qods Brigades, in the pursuit of external “operations.” But in recent months, the newly-promoted commander of Iranian forces in Syria and Iraq played a decisive role on the battlefields of the Middle East and in relations between Iran and Russia.

In this capacity, Soleimani began collecting kudos and was hailed in Tehran as the next president. His photo frequently appeared in the social media.

Some weeks ago, those photos disappeared without warning, and he failed to show up at official meetings and functions staged by IRGC or the Al-Qods Brigades. He did not turn up to deliver a speech on Dec. 7, Students Day, without explanation.

When a middle-ranking IRGC officer fell in combat on the Aleppo front in northern Syria, the Iranian Tasnim news agency ran a short obituary in Soleimani’s name without a picture.

Tuesday, Dec. 15, the Iranian Fars agency reported he was seen in Moscow a week ago talking to President Vladimir Putin. The next day, the IRGC information bureau denied this.

One of Soleimani’s last recorded actions was to offer $1,000 for each fighter willing to go to Syria – even Sunnis from poverty-stricken Balochistan in southwestern Iran – to make up for heavy Iranian losses.,

DEBKA Weekly’s Iranian sources investigating the disappearance have heard several theories:

1. The most popular is that the missing general is still alive, but seriously wounded in the fighting around Aleppo and was moved to a private hospital at the residential compound of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – and even that he is recuperating.

2. He is tied down in Moscow monitoring developments in the Syrian war at the insistence of Russian general staff high-ups, who need him there as the only Iranian official competent to sign off on operational decisions.

3. Ayatollah Khamenei was so irritated by the acclaim showered on Soleimani, especially in the foreign media, that he banished him from the public view and sent him back to his old clandestine job.

4. Other Tehran sources told DEBKA Weekly that the radical camp is keeping him under cover as its candidate for the presidency in the coming elections, and plan to spring him on the public at the right moment.

5. Soleimani is alive and well, but is keeping a low profile after losing much of his popular luster in the wake of Iran’s military debacles in Syria and war losses.

Some sources say the Al Qods leader’s idea to invite massive Russian intervention in Syria has blown up in his face. Moscow’s campaign is so comprehensive that it is swallowing Syria whole, leaving nothing for Iran.

MIN-MYE:151218:(18-DEC-15 D):Iran Ditches Yemen Rebels: “The Saudis Have the Ball.”

Debka 18-Dec-15

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As Yemen peace talks went into their second day Wednesday, Dec. 16 at an undisclosed Swiss venue, the seven-day ceasefire broke down just hours after it was announced Tuesday.

Taking part in the UN-backed peace talks are Yemeni President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi and his government, representatives of the Iran-backed Houthi rebels, and the General People’s Congress party of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh – whose loyalists in the security forces have backed the rebels.

Brig. Gen. Ahmed al-Assiri, spokesman for the Saudi-led coalition fighting the rebels on behalf of exiled President Hadi, said his side was only responding to repeated violations by the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels.

All of DEBKA Weekly’s Gulf sources agreed that a complete cease-fire in Yemen was no better than a pipe dream. The Houthis used the truce to fire missiles at Saudi-led forces, which consist for now mostly of Colombian mercenaries hired by the United Arab Emirate and a Sudanese infantry battalion contributed by Khartoum to the war effort.

These forces are using the lull for advancing toward Taiz in the Yemeni highlands near the Red Sea port of Mocha. They missed their September deadline for reaching Sanaa, the capital. They may also miss reaching Taiz.

Tuesday, Dec. 15, the Saudi-led force was ambushed ahead of its destination by Houthis shooting Russian Tochka missiles. The Saudi commander Col. Abdullah al-Sahyan and the Emirati officer Sultan al-Ketbi were killed.

Both parties understand that they have no choice but to reach an agreement for ending the war. The rebel leader, Abdul Malik al-Houthi, in particular, is in a fix since he received a secret message from his backers in Tehran informing him that Iran is bogged down in the Iraqi and Syrian wars and the Houthis would henceforth have to fend for themselves.

The message ended with the enigmatic phrase: “The ball is in the Saudis’ court.”

The Houthi leader saw exactly what it meant: Iran had ditched the Yemeni rebels and left them no option other than to come to terms with Saudi Arabia for ending the war with all possible speed.

This week, the Houthis were no longer fighting to win but to enhance their bargaining position against Riyadh.

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