Nadene Goldfoot
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, also known as Mohammad Reza Shah, was the last Shah of Iran from 16 September 1941 until his overthrow in the Iranian Revolution on 11 February 1979. Due to his status as the last Shah of Iran, he is often known as simply the Shah. He had been a friend of Israel as had King Cyrus in 538 BCE of Persia.
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Ruhollah Khomeini in 1981
former " Iranian politician, revolutionary, and cleric |
Iran keeps her eyes open. As soon as Syria became independent in 1946, Iran established a consulate there. The 2 countries had good relations until the Iranian Revolution of 1979 when the King was deposed and the Ayatollah stepped in. Syria's president Hafez al-Assad took a 4 day trip to Tehran in 1975 and signed cooperation agreements between the two countries. It only took a few years more and Assad was supporting Iranian dissidents and started training Iranian guerrillas. Carter's time ended and Reagan took over in 1981.
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| rockets found by Israeli navy being smuggled by ship |
Syria had a civil war when Iran aided their government in 2011 so they could deal with protesters. Iran was not prepared to lose this "golden counterweight" to Israel.
Ali Khamenei, Iran's Supreme Leader, said, "In Syria, the hand of America and Israel is evident. Wherever a movement is Islamic, poplist and anti-American, we support it."
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| Iran's Revolutionary Guard |
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| Iran's army parading |
One major area of cooperation between Iran and Syria was in Lebanon in the Lebanese Civil War. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of Iran established and trained the Hebollah terrorists to spread Khomeini's ideology and repel the 1982 Israeli invasion in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah is both their ammunition against Israel. Now Iran can influence the Lebanese affairs as well. In 1982, Ronald Reagan was the USA president. Today, 8/4/2020, a huge explosion was triggered and the results made Lebanon look like an A bomb scene. TV first thought fire-crackers went off. It most likely was an ammunition dump stored at the port with other explosives and went off by itself, ammunition for Iran to use bought by Russia.
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| Hezbollah in Lebanon-controlled by Iran |
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Haifa is 85 miles from Lebanon
from Metula, Israel, one goes to the "Good Fence" crossing. From the 1948 establishment of the State of Israel until 1970, Israel's border with Lebanon was quiet to the point that farmers from the Israeli town of Metula farmed their lands in the Ayoun Valley inside Lebanon. In 1970, after their expulsion from Jordan during Black September, the PLO began taking control over southern Lebanon and violating the tranquility that had prevailed in the area. |
By 2006, Iran and Syria signed agreements against the US and Israel's common threats against them.
In June 2009 Iran had a disputed presidential election. US president Obama condemned their crackdown on their opposition, THE GREEN MOVEMENT who were pro-democracy demonstrators. Obama was elected in 2009. In 2010 Obama signed expanded sanctions against Iran. This caused their oil exports to be halved.
"In 2012, Obama, who had previously demanded the resignation of Syria's president Bashar al-Assad, said that the use of chemical weapons by the Assad government would be crossing a red line and would entail U.S. military action. After reports on 21 August 2013 about the usage of chemical weapons in Syria, the Obama administration formally blamed the incident on the Syrian government and sought Congressional approval for military action in Syria. Besides, Obama sought support from Britain and France for an attack in Syria. The Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel approved plans for a barrage of Tomahawk cruise missile strikes to have those called off by Obama in September. On 11 September 2013 (the first 9/11), Obama put a military strike or combat operations on hold and achieved an agreement with Russia and the Syrian government to destroy all chemical weapons in Syria."
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| President Obama meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss Syria and ISIL, September 29, 2015 |
"Obama's decision to allow the violation of a red line he himself had drawn to go unpunished is widely criticised by the U.S. political establishment, as well as the allies, as detrimental to America's international credibility. However, in early 2016, Obama said he was "proud" of his decision, which repudiated what he referred to as the "Washington playbook" and avoided entangling the US in yet another "unfixable" situation in the Middle East. , "The agony of Syria is the biggest moral stain on Barack Obama's presidency. And the chaos rippling from Syria—where many now turn to al-Qaeda, not the West, for salvation—is his greatest geopolitical failure."
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| Iranian women in Syria, moving in |
By June 2017, Iran launched missiles into Syria, aiming for Islamic State (ISIS) fighters in retaliation for Tehran terror attacks which killed 18 people. Iran made clear that all foreign military forces like the USA without permission should respect Syria's territorial integrity and leave the country. Donald Trump was then US president. Like father and son, Iran said that they consider Syria's security its own security, and they consider their own defense capabilities to be those of Syria. Iran has consistently invested billions of dollars into the Syrian economy. They make out to be 2 peas in a pod.
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| President Donald Trump |
The Trump administration officially put Iran "on notice" following their ballistic missile tests on January 29, 2017, just days after taking office. After the late January missile tests by Iran, the Trump administration imposed sanctions on 25 Iranian individuals and entities on February 3, which it said were "initial steps", with Trump's then-National Security Advisor Michael T. Flynn adding that ″the days of turning a blind eye to Iran's hostile and belligerent actions toward the United States and the world community are over.
On December 30, 2018 Trump wanted to withdraw troops from Syria. Senator Lindsey Graham said that the decision was "a stain on the honor of the United States," and that while he agrees that it's possible to reduce the American footprint in Afghanistan, Syria, and Iraq, the US must keep troops in Syria to ensure ISIL can't regroup. Graham also said that he and a group of generals would urge Trump to reconsider his withdrawal plans during a luncheon later that day. One week after this announcement, Trump asserted he would not approve any extension of the American deployment in Syria. On January 6, 2019, national security advisor John Bolton added conditions to the pullout,.
America would remain in Syria until ISIL is eradicated and until Turkey guarantees it would not strike America's Kurdish allies.
Again, the policy was not to hurt the Kurds, who were also helpful for Israel. In October 2019, Trump ordered the Pentagon to withdraw U.S. troops from northeastern Syria to allow Turkey to conduct a planned military operation against Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, which had been supporting the U.S. against ISIL since 2014. The sudden announcement on the night of October 6 came after a Trump telephone call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. U.S. troops reportedly began withdrawing from some positions in northern Syria on October 7." This was a calamity to both the US and Israel. No one could understand it. "Trump defended his withdrawal order, stating that the Kurdish-Turkish conflict "has nothing to do with us" and described the situation as "strategically brilliant" for the U.S."
American forces continued their withdrawal from northeastern Syria and Turkey moved into the area formerly controlled by the United States’ Kurdish allies. Fighting has raged in the area for weeks, and forced tens of thousands of Kurdish civilians to flee their homes, according to aid organizations. They all felt betrayed. The Kurdish expression “No friends but the mountains” has become more painfully true. The Kurds are the closest matching DNA group of people to Jews that there are; Palestinians are not as close. Many Kurds live in Israel.
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| Iran, Turkey and Russia, now good friends |
Things have not always been very good between Iran and Turkey. In a surprise announcement that marked a noticeable shift in Iran’s regional policy, Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif declared Tehran’s “support” for the Turkey-backed “legitimate” Government of National Accord in Libya during a joint press conference with his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu on June 15, 2020. It was the Iranian government’s first official endorsement of GNA amid claims and rumors that the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps is surreptitiously transferring arms to forces of the Russian-backed Libyan National Army led by Khalifa Haftar. So Russia is backing the Libyans who also help Iran, and Iran is now supporting Turkey.
Labels: ammunition, Ayatolla, explosion, Good Fence, iran, Iranian soldiers, Israel, Kurds, Lebanon, Putin, rockets, Russia, Shah, Syria, USA
# posted by Nadene Goldfoot @ 9:14 PM
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, also known as Mohammad Reza Shah, was the last Shah of Iran from 16 September 1941 until his overthrow in the Iranian Revolution on 11 February 1979. Due to his status as the last Shah of Iran, he is often known as simply the Shah. He had been a friend of Israel as had King Cyrus in 538 BCE of Persia. 
