ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

Source: idfblog.com On April 27, the Israeli Air Defense Forces launched a Patriot missile at an alleged drone that penetrated the Israeli airspace coming from the Syrian airspace.  It was not clear that if the missile hit the target. The Patriot missile launch came after Israel targeted an alleged arms depot with weapons sent from Iran to Hezbollah at the Damascus International Airport. Several rockets were fired by Israeli warplanes at the Damascus International Airport and one of them hit the main fuel tanks at the airport causing a massive fire. This raises questions about the validity of the Israeli claims. The Damascus International Airport returned to service at the same day. Sources from inside the airport confirmed that Syrian civil aircraft were not damaged, as well as the C-130 Iranian cargo planes deployed at the airport for the purposes of logistics support were not affected by the strike. According to opposition sources, Israeli tanks took positions righ...

North K orea test-fired a ballistic missile on Saturday in local time, but the missile exploded soon after launch, U.S. officials told NBC News. The officials said that the failed test involved a short-range, non-nuclear missile, which would be able to hit Seoul, but not Japan. One official told NBC that the U.S. had warning of the test and watched it closely. A South Korean military official confirmed to NBC that the test occurred around 5:30 a.m. local time. The official said the missile traveled northeast towards the East Sea. "Currently, we are closely monitoring North Korea's further military provocation and are totally ready to meet any and all kinds of provocation," the official told NBC. U.S. Pacific Command said the missile did not leave North Korean territory, adding that the North American Aerospace Defense Command determined the launch did not pose a threat to North America. Pacific Command said it "stands behind our steadfast commitment to the secu...

By  Adam Johnson John Goodman played a moviemaker working with CIA agent Ben Affleck to produce a fake film in the Oscar-winning  Argo . It turns out there were real CIA agents working with the real movie-makers to make the actual film  Argo . Vice ’s Jason Leopold ( 4/6/16 ) has uncovered documents showing the CIA had a role in producing up to 22 entertainment “projects,” including  History Channel  documentary  Air America: The CIA’s Secret Airline ,  Bravo ‘s  Top Chef: Covert Cuisine , the  USA Network  series  Covert Affairs  and the  BBC  documentary  The Secret War on Terror —along with two fictional feature films about the CIA that both came out in 2012. The CIA’s involvement in the production of  Zero Dark Thirty  (effectively exchanging “insider” access for a two-hour-long torture commercial) has  already been well-established , but the agency’s role in the production of...

A still image taken from a video posted to a social media and said to be shot on April 27, 2017, shows explosions and rising flames amid lights in distance, said to be shot in Damascus, Syria.  Reuters BEIRUT  — Syrian state media blamed Israel on Thursday for an early morning missile attack on a military installation near Damascus International Airport that shook the capital with the force of the blasts. Israeli Minister of Intelligence Yisrael Katz would not comment directly on the incident in  war-torn Syria  but said any similar strike would be in line with established policy to interrupt the transfer of weapons to the militant group Hezbollah. “It absolutely matches our declared policy, a policy that we also implement,” Katz told Israel’s Army Radio. Israel begins an airstrike against Syria Israeli officials report their target was a shipment of advanced long-range missiles headed to the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. They are bo…...

+1 A general views shows the damage following an air strike on a hospital in the village of Deir Sharqi in  Syria 's  rebel -held province of Idlib, on April 27, 2017 Air  strikes  on two  hospitals  in  rebel -held northwestern  Syria  on Thursday left 10 people dead including two babies in incubators, a monitor said. They were among 19 people killed as a result of  strikes  across  rebel -held Idlib province on Thursday, the  Syria n Observatory for Human Rights said. An AFP correspondent in the village of Deir Sharqi, where one of the  hospitals  was hit, saw extensive damage and wards buried in rubble. It was the third time in less than a week that medical facilities in the province, controlled by  rebel s and jihadist groups, had been hit in air  strikes . "Apparently Russian aircraft... carried out four successive raids at dawn on a hospital on the outskirts" of Deir Sharqi...

By Moon Of Alabama   In  Why North Korea Needs Nukes - And How To End That  we pointed to the utter destruction the U.S. and its allies waged in the war on Korea on all parts of the country. That North Korea seeks " weapons  of mass destruction" is quite understandable when one takes into account the  hundreds of thousands tons of napalm  used against it. But even Napalm and the criminal destruction of North Korean dams were not the worst depravation the U.S. applied. Biological warfare agents, primarily anthrax, were dropped over North Korea and China and killed civilians. The U.S./UN command denied such use and covered it up. One consequence of that cover up was the development of torture methods in the U.S. SERE pilot training programs and their later proliferation into criminal abuses in Guantanamo, Abu Graibh and elsewhere. An important piece of evidence of this trail was recently and for the first time re-published on the web During t...

By Finian Cunningham  US media reports this week blamed North Korea for having a dastardly role in an alleged chemical weapons massacre in Syria. As if the two countries could not be demonized enough. The latest spin of the “axis of evil” suggests Washington is hell-bent on war. Demonize, dehumanize, destroy. That’s the logic being throttled by the Trump administration toward both North Korea and Syria. This week war hawk US Senator Lyndsey Graham after a dinner with President Trump  referred  to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un as a  “nutjob,”  while Trump earlier  labeled  Syrian leader Bashar Assad an  “animal.” Now the two  “evil dictators”  are bonded in US media reports for complicity in the alleged chemical weapons attack earlier this month in Syria’s Idlib Province, where it is claimed Assad’s armed forces dropped toxic munitions on civilians, killing up to 80. The supplier of the alleged chemical weapons in Syria is the...

Imagine that you lead the US deep state, and you are observing the real-time flow of Western technology, industry and next-generation skills to the East with alarm. How will you reverse this trend with one master stroke and temporarily staunch the decline of Pax Americana? Mathew Maavak, 19:58 25.04.2017 A rapid socio-economic meltdown across Asia might produce this hypothetical outcome, and this is where the current North Korean “crisis” may provide an opening gambit. Amidst “rising tensions” on the Korean Peninsula – while South Koreans are concerned with noodles, not nukes – the United States has pre-emptively decided what is best for the region. But the US war machinery is vacillating for good reasons and is unable to get its narrative and  geography  right. On April 11, President Donald J. Trump supposedly despatched an “armada” to counter North Korean provocations, right after striking Syria. Yet the “armada” led by...