ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

The Chinese regime has moved armaments to its man-made islands in the South China Sea, as tensions with neighboring countries and the United States intensify. The exact type of weapons deployed were not specified in an exclusive report from Australian news agency The Sydney Morning Herald. It states, however, that Australian officials are worried that China will follow up by deploying long-range radar and anti-aircraft batteries. In the Chinese Communist Party’s newly released military strategy, it shifted the air defense policy of its air force to allow for offensive actions. The Australian report states that discussions around the weapons deployments “are prompting discussions in senior military circles” that may lead Australia to begin sending its air force to the South China Sea for “freedom of navigation” missions “to demonstrate that Canberra does not accept Beijing’s hardening claims.” Missions could include fly-throughs, sail-throughs, and similar exercises alongside the...

NATO is destabilizing the Ukrainian crisis by turning blind eye to Kiev’s aim for a military solution, Moscow’s envoy to NATO said, warning that alliance’s rhetoric of shifting all responsibility onto Russia is not consistent with real state of affairs. “NATO continues to position Russia as a participant in the conflict, which is far from reality and has a serious confrontational potential because, in essence, it gives Kiev carte blanche to seek a military solution to the conflict,” Russian envoy to NATO Aleksandr Grushko told Rossiya 24 TV channel. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced earlier on Wednesday that the alliance will create up to eight new command and control units on its eastern borders. “We are establishing six command and control units in the three Baltic countries [Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia] and in Poland, Bulgaria, and Romania. And probably also [there will] be two more of those in two more countries,”Stoltenberg said. Calling the alliance’s belligerent r...

More than 100 pages of previously classified Department of Defense and Department of State documents implicate the Obama administration in a cover-up to obscure the role Hillary Clinton and the State Department played in the rise of ISIS. The documents were obtained in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the Washington watchdog Judicial Watch. They confirm WND reporting over the past three years of evidence that U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens was involved in shipping weapons from Benghazi to support the al-Qaida-affiliated militias fighting the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria, effectively arming the Sunni jihadists who morphed into ISIS. The documents further confirm WND reporting that the goal of the terrorists behind the Benghazi attack that killed Stevens was to force the release of Omar Abdul Rahman, the “blind sheik” in U.S. prison serving a life sentence for his involvement in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, and to avenge death of a prominent ...

Macedonia has just neutralised an armed group whose sponsors had been under surveillance for at least eight months. By doing so, it has prevented a new attempt at a coup d’État, planned by Washington for the 17th of May. The aim was to spread the chaos already infecting Ukraine into Macedonia in order to stall the passage of a Russian gas pipeline to the European Union. By Thierry Meyssan May 26, 2015 " Information Clearing House " - " Voltaire Network " - On the 9th of May, 2015, the Macedonian police launched a dawn operation to arrest an armed group which had infiltrated the country and which was suspected of preparing a number of attacks. The police evacuated the civilian population before launching the assault. The suspects opened fire, which led to a bitter firefight, leaving 14 terrorists and 8 members of the police forces dead. 30 people were taken prisoner. There were a large number of wounded Not a terrorist act, but an attempted coup d’...

Reuters/Kacper Pempel Iranian security experts have thwarted an industrial espionage attempt on Islamic Republic's oil ministry, cyber police chief announced, claiming the attack originated in the US. Speaking at a cyber crime forum in Tehran on Tuesday, the head of Iran’s Cyber Police (FATA) Brigadier General Seyed Kamal Hadianfar announced that Cyber Attacks Emergency Center had defended the oil ministry against hackers. The alleged attack took place during a four-day holiday on March 21-24. “These hackers were from the US” Hadianfar said, as cited by FARS news agency. “The IP address for these hackers was in America.” The chief of cyber police said that Tehran had already informed Washington via an official letter and issued an “international judicial order” as FATA passed the issue to the foreign ministry. FATA discovers, identifies and solves some 90 percent of Internet crimes committed against Iran, Iran’s Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli said speaking at the same ev...

Image from resistart.ir In an effort to reveal the “evil face” of ISIS and expose the atrocities committed by jihadists, Iran has launched a cartoonist contest, offering awards for the best caricatures mocking the terror group as well as “arrogant” foreign leaders supporting it. At least 800 entry cartoons from 43 different countries around the world were received by the Iranian House of Cartoon. The committee then selected 280 from the heap, with winners expected to be announced on 31 May. “In order to reveal the true nature of the Islamic State, we decided to hold this contest and have people submit their cartoons or caricatures. The Islamic State tries to associate itself with Islam but in essence it has no idea about Islam,” event organizer Masoud Shojaei Tabatabai told Iran’s Press TV. The contest is divided between two sections – cartoons and caricatures – that aim not only to expose the evilness of ISIS but the “unwavering support” of “arrogant” governments and leaders that the...

By GMA News BEIJING - A Chinese state-owned newspaper said on Monday that "war is inevitable" between China and the United States over the South China Sea unless Washington stops demanding Beijing halt the building of artificial islands in the disputed waterway. The Global Times, an influential nationalist tabloid owned by the ruling Communist Party's official newspaper the People's Daily, said in an editorial that China was determined to finish its construction work, calling it the country's "most important bottom line." The editorial comes amid rising tensions over China's land reclamation in the Spratly archipelago of the South China Sea. China last week said it was "strongly dissatisfied" after a US spy plane flew over areas near the reefs, with both sides accusing each other of stoking instability. China should "carefully prepare" for the possibility of a conflict with the United States, the newspaper said. "If the Unit...

Reuters / Muhammad Hamed Catherine Shakdam ​The very country which brought the world one of the most brutal and intolerant religious ideologies - Wahhabism, while operating the most oppressive modern-day theocracy, is vying for the presidency of the UN Human Rights Council. Saudi Arabia has come to represent many things over the decades - theocracy, oppression, brutality and even at times downright barbarism. And seeing how the Kingdom has become infamous for carrying out death sentences by beheading, it’s safe to say that upholding the principles of human rights is not exactly the regime’s forte. Yet, King Salman, the new self-proclaimed custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, did not flinch when he declared on May, 20 that, “The Saudi Arabian government guarantees freedom of expression and opposes discrimination.” The comment was aimed at Bandar Al-Aiban, president of the Human Rights Commission (HRC), Mufleh Al-Qahtani, president of the National Society for Human Rights, and other senior...

Fakhreddin's Castle (top), is pictured in the historical city of Palmyra (Reuters/Nour Fourat) Moscow has condemned the massacre of civilians in the ancient city of Palmyra, urging the international community to denounce double standards in its approach to fighting terrorists, and unite against IS (Islamic State, formerly ISIS/ISIL) aggression. “We strongly condemn the atrocities committed by armed extremists in Palmyra,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement. “Once again, we urge international and regional parties to abandon the vicious practice of using double standard approaches to fighting against terrorism, and launch efficient cooperation with the governments of Middle East countries, which are directly repelling the ISIS offensive,” the ministry said. Moscow believes that US-led airstrike campaign against Islamic State positions in Iraq and Syria have not done enough to impede the jihadists’ advance in the two Middle Eastern states. “Despite efforts taken by the s...

In a ground mission in eastern Syria last weekend, US special forces killed Abu Sayyaf, a man they described as playing a key role in Islamic State's oil and gas operations. The American commandos were quickly engaged in a firefight, during which Abu Sayyaf was killed. But their original goal was to capture and interrogate him, apparently in an effort to improve their understanding of how IS works. It raised the question of how much is known about the structure of an organisation that rapidly overran large parts of Syria and Iraq last year, and has been able to hold onto much of that territory despite months of air strikes by a US-led coalition. On a broad level the shape of Islamic State may seem fairly clear. Islamic State has seized large swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq There are conflicting reports about the fate of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi Its stated goal has been to establish a "caliphate" to rule over the entire Muslim world, under a single leader and in line w...

A deactivated Soviet-era SS-4 medium range nuclear capable ballistic missile is displayed at La Cabana fortress in Havana (Reuters / Desmond Boylan) Washington has blocked the final document of a UN conference that reviewed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, accusing Egypt of manipulating the gathering to target Israel. Moscow has slammed the US for rendering the four-week meeting futile. The 9th international conference was held in New York from April 27 until May 22. A total of 162 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) participant states were in attendance. These conferences are held every five years to assess the worldwide disarmament process. The blocked document included a plan to establish a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East. To do this, Egypt, who first proposed such a zone in 1980, suggested a regional UN conference on banning weapons of mass destruction. The gathering would have no pre-determined agenda and would go ahead with or without the presence of Israel. This was...

Family members of victims and well wishers are seen after a suicide bomb attack at the Imam Ali mosque in the village of al-Qadeeh in the eastern province of Gatif, Saudi Arabia, May 22, 2015. (Reuters / Stringer) Download video (23.76 MB) Friday’s ISIS suicide bombings in Yemen and Saudi Arabia – killing a total of at least 43 people – is yet more bitter fruit of the policy pursued by Britain, the US and France and their Gulf allies for the past eight years. This strategy – of fostering violently sectarian anti-Shiite militias in order to destroy Syria and isolate Iran – is itself but part of the West’s wider war against the entire global South by weakening any independent regional powers allied to the BRICs countries, and especially to Russia. The strategy was first revealed as far back as 2007 in Seymour Hersh’s article “The Redirection", which revealed how Bush administration officials were working with the Saudis to channel billions of dollars to sectarian death squads whos...

Saudi Arabia will join the nuclear club by buying “off the shelf” atomic weapons from Pakistan, US officials told a London newspaper. The Saudis — who financed much of Pakistan’s nuke program — are fearful of international efforts to keep its enemy Iran from acquiring a bomb, the Sunday Times of London reports. The Saudis think the deal, backed by President Obama, will actually accelerate Iran’s nuke push. Saudi Arabia has talked for years about acquiring a bomb from the Pakistanis. “The House of Saud has now made the strategic decision to move forward,” a former US defense official said.

A T-14 tank with the Armata Universal Combat Platform (RIA Novosti / Mikhail Voskresenskiy) It made an impressive debut during the Victory parade in Moscow, Russia’s brand-new ‘supertank’ is still shrouded in mystery, and has proved a magnet for rumors. Here is what we know for sure. 1. Armata is not the name of a tank, but an armored platform, onto which modules will be fitted to create more than a dozen vehicles. Besides the T-14 battle tank, it will be the chassis for a personnel carrier, self-propelled artillery and an air defense system. 2. The T-14 is the first Russian tank designed entirely in the post-Soviet era, and in only six years. The design and production of certain crucial elements – such as the armor, and the turrets – had to be done “from scratch.” 3. Armata T-14 features a fully automated and unmanned turret – perhaps the most revolutionary technological decision taken by its designers. In theory, this should allow better protection for the crew, now located in the hu...

The results of the one-day meeting in Riyadh amongst the heads of the Cooperation Council for Arab States of the Gulf (the first time it was attended by the President of France Francois Hollande) gave a crystal clear look at the tough trend to be continued by these leaders into a future military solution to the Yemen conflict. The joint decision communiqué states: “Leaders of the GCC reiterated their unconditional support for Saudi Arabia at the head of the Operation Determination Storm, which was carried out to restore the rule of law in Yemen. The leaders were satisfied with the outcome of a significantly positive campaign outcome and launched a new Operation Renewal of Hope in response to the request from Yemeni President Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi to restore its legitimacy and to resume the political process in accordance with our initiative in the Gulf.” Put simply, the President of Yemen called to the so-called Arab Coalition, who, abandoning self-preservation, leapt to his aid, leve...

F. William Engdahl First appeared: On April 26 Russia’s main national TV station, Rossiya 1, featured President Vladimir Putin in a documentary to the Russian people on the events of the recent period including the annexation of Crimea, the US coup d’etat in Ukraine, and the general state of relations with the United States and the EU. His words were frank. And in the middle of his remarks the Russian former KGB chief dropped a political bombshell that was known by Russian intelligence two decades ago. Putin stated bluntly that in his view the West would only be content in having a Russia weak, suffering and begging from the West, something clearly the Russian character is not disposed to. Then a short way into his remarks, the Russian President stated for the first time publicly something that Russian intelligence has known for almost two decades but kept silent until now, most probably in hopes of an era of better normalized Russia-US relations. Putin stated that the terror in Ch...