Hero British taxi driver ‘locked suicide bomber in his car’ as friends say he only needed stitches and is already home: Cops confirm blast outside Liverpool hospital WAS terror incident
Excerpt:
A taxi exploded as it pulled up outside Liverpool Women’s Hospital yesterday, killing the one male passenger
The explosion came at 10:59am, seconds before the 11am Remembrance minute’s silence was due to be held
Counter-terror police are leading the investigation amid fears the passenger who died was a suicide bomber
Taxi driver David Perry was hailed hero by friends who said he locked the ‘suspicious’ man in his car
Friends said that the passenger originally wanted taking to Liverpool’s Remembrance Sunday service nearby
Three men - aged 21, 26 and 29 - were arrested under Terrorism Act in raids in Liverpool yesterday afternoon
Police activity continued across Liverpool into this morning with homes evacuated by armed officers
Mr Perry suffered relatively minor injuries and has already been released from hospital, friends said last night
NEW: Confirmed Bannon has been transported inside the district courthouse via the underground garage in an unmarked vehicle. No cameras were there to capture, but a member of his entourage told crews stationed at Marshall Plaza. Bannon’s team appears to be debating which exit he will depart following the hearing on criminal contempt charges. Also appear to be assessing sites for potential press comments after hearing via @NicoleSganga— Catherine Herridge (@CBS_Herridge) November 15, 2021
Assad Expels IRGC Commander as He Returns to the Arab Fold
https://www.jihadwatch.org/2021/11/assad-expels-irgc-commander-as-he-returns-to-the-arab-fold
Excerpt:
Bashar Assad has been engaged in a delicate dance with Arab states that once shunned him. They recognize that he has won the Syrian civil war and there is little point in keeping him in Coventry; their aim now is to weaken the Syrian ties with Iran. The UAE has been at the forefront of efforts by Arab states to normalize ties with Damascus, and earlier this year it called for Syria to be readmitted to the Arab League. It reopened its embassy in Damascus three years ago. And now the U.A.E. Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed — the most senior Emirati dignitary to visit Syria in the decade since the eruption of a civil war – has been in talks with Bashar Assad, in the first high-level meeting between the Syrian leader and a high-ranking Arab official since the civil war began.
Egypt has also taken steps toward normalizing relations with Syria. A renewal of diplomatic ties began with a meeting between Egypt’s Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry and his Syrian counterpart, Faisal Mekdad, on Sept. 24, for the first time in nearly 10 years. The meeting took place at the headquarters of the Permanent Mission of Egypt at the United Nations in New York on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly meeting, as part of a broader move by Arab countries to reintegrate Syria into the Arab world after ties had been cut since the outbreak of the civil war in 2011. The Kuwaiti Foreign Minister also met with Mekdad at the same venue.
Jordan has been actively lobbying within the Arab League for the re-admission of Syria. On October 3, the country’s official carrier, Royal Jordanian Airlines, resumed direct flights to Damascus for the first time in nearly a decade. On October 4, Bashar Assad called King Abdullah on the phone for their first conversation in ten years. This call resulted in Jordan’s decision to renew diplomatic ties with Syria. It is now engaged in talks with Damascus on the renewal of the extensive economic ties between the two countries that had been severed when the civil war broke out, and Jordan sided with the rebels.
In addition to Jordan, the U.A.E., Bahrain, and Oman have now reestablished diplomatic ties with Syria.
Even Saudi Arabia has been moving toward reopening ties with Syria. In March 2021, Syrian Tourism Minister Mohammad Rami Radwan Martini attended a conference in Riyadh, becoming the first Syrian official to make a public visit to the kingdom since 2011. In May,Saudi Arabia reopened direct communications with Syria, after a visit to Damascus by the head of Saudi intelligence, Lieutenant-General Khalid al-Humaidan. There he met President Assad and the head of the National Security Office, Major General Ali Mamlouk.
What does this all mean? It means that the Arab states that once supported the insurrection against Assad have concluded that he has won the civil war, and there is no benefit to be gained from continuing to keep Syria at arm’s length.
They’ve concluded, too, that it’s better to welcome Assad back into the Arab fold, and to try to loosen his alliance with Iran. Those ties made sense for Syria when Assad so desperately needed critical military and financial support during the ten-year war; he received more than $30 billion, as well as rockets, missiles, and drones from Iran. Tehran saw Syria as part of a “Shi’a crescent” that it was attempting to build, with help from allies, including the Houthis in Yemen, the Kata’ib Hezbollah militia in Iraq, the Alawite army in Syria, and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Iran recognized the Alawites who rule Syria as fellow Shi’a; thus, Tehran concluded, they would be the natural, and permanent, allies of the Islamic Republic against the Sunni Arabs.
Iran miscalculated. Now the civil war is won, and Syria no longer has such a need for Iranian help. The tug of Arab ethnicity is turning out to be stronger than the sectarian tie between Alawites and Twelver Shi’ites. What better way for Assad to please his fellow Arabs, and hasten his country’s return to the fold, than by dramatically distancing himself from Iran? And that is exactly what he has done. A report on his “excluding” – that is banishing from Syria – the IRGC commander, is here.
A major rift has opened between Syrian President Bashar Assad and the head of Iran’s terrorist army in Syria, Arabic-language media reported Wednesday [Nov. 10].
According to the Saudi news outlet Al Hadath, a source described as familiar with the issue said that Assad and other high-ranking members of the Syrian regime have “excluded” Mustafa Jawad Ghafari, head of Iran’s terrorist Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps-Quds Force in Syria.
The word “excluded” means that IRGC commander Ghafari has been expelled from the country, sent packing to Iran. One wonders how the Supreme Leader will react to what he will no doubt see as an act of lèse-majesté by Assad. How dare he cross the Supreme Leader? Doesn’t the lanky ophthalmologist know he owes his victory to Iran?
The Quds Force has helped prop up Assad’s regime since a revolt against the dictator in 2011 led to an ongoing civil war.
But Assad — it bears repeating — no longer needs that Quds Force. Iranian interference in Syria has become, for Assad, infuriating, both because the Iranians have violated Syria’s sovereignty and because they have turned Syria into an unwilling theatre of the war between Iran and Israel.
Al Hadath stated that, according to the source, Assad considers Ghafari’s various activities to be a violation of Syria’s sovereignty.
These activities include bypassing Syrian customs, smuggling goods in order to build an Iran-dominated “black market,” exploiting Syrian national resources, looting national assets, and evading taxes.
The Quds Force in Syria has created an economic state-within-the-state for the personal enrichment of its members. It imports goods from Iran, smuggling them in so as to avoid paying Syrian customs duties, and then selling them to Syrians in a “black market” at prices lower than what the Syrian-made goods sell for. The Quds force has also, according to Assad, “exploited Syrian national resources,” which may refer to its buying up, at rock-bottom prices, Syrian resource companies, and even properties abandoned by Syrians who fled abroad. Everything from phosphates to marble may be bought up cheaply, Assad may have reason to believe, and then sent out the country for sale, enriching the grasping members of the Quds Force in Syria. That Quds Force not only has avoided paying customs duties on the goods it smuggles into Syria, but apparently pays no taxes to the Syrian government on its profits from selling those goods.
Assad is also angered that the Quds Force has violated its commitments not to deploy forces in certain parts of Syria, which has in turn prompted Israeli air strikes on Syrian territory.
By placing its troops and weaponry in places that the Syrians had declared off-limits, the Quds Force has managed to put not only its own troops, but Syrians, too, in danger of Israeli missiles and airstrikes. And that is exactly what has happened. The Israelis have conducted hundreds of strikes on Iranian bases. Many of those attacks have also hit Syrian soldiers and weaponry. When, for example, Israel hit the Iranian headquarters at the Damascus airport, where senior IRGC officials are based, and which is used to coordinate shipments from Iran to its allies in Syria, Syrian troops, and a significant part of Syria’s main airport, were also hit. Israel has said it holds Syria responsible for hosting the Iranians. The Quds Forces are lightning rods for Israeli attacks, but the ensuing damage, and loss of life, is seldom limited to the Iranians. The Iranians and Syrians often share bases; their weapons — both Syrian and Iranian — are similarly stored in those bases; even supposing it could, the IAF does not stop to make distinctions between Syria is not keen to be dragged repeatedly into the gunsights of Israeli pilots because of the presence of Quds bases.
Syria’s state media said on Monday that its air defenses had intercepted an Israeli missile strike in its central and coastal regions, the latest in a number of recent reports of Israeli strikes.
Here, as one example, is what happened when there was an attack on Israeli troops in the Golan. Israel responded thus:
The Israeli military said fighter jets hit multiple targets belonging to Iran’s elite Quds force, including surface-to-air missiles, weapons warehouses and military bases. It said a number of Syrian aerial defense batteries were also destroyed after an air defense missile was fired.
The death toll included five Syrian troops, 16 Iranian and Iran-backed fighters, and two Syrian civilians.
The Syrian Observatory said the airstrikes targeted Quds Force arms depots in the Damascus suburbs of Kisweh and Qudsaya. Abdurrahman said several other areas were targeted in Wednesday’s strikes, including the Mazzeh air base in Damascus, where air defense units are stationed.
In other words, although Quds forces were the Israeli target, Syrians were also killed and Syrian aerial defense batteries destroyed.
Perhaps most damning in Assad’s eyes is that Ghafari has presided over Quds Force actions against the US and Israel. The dictator believes that an attack on American targets on Oct. 20 by militias controlled by Iran almost dragged Syria into a war….
The drone attack on an American base in Syria on Oct. 20 was launched, without Syrian permission, by members of the Quds Force in Syria. No casualties resulted, but had there been, there would certainly have been a devastating response by the Americans that would not have spared Syrian military and bases. Syrian and Iranian troops are often found on the same bases and an attack aimed at Quds forces – by the U.S. or Israel — cannot always avoid causing casualties among the Syrians.
…Assad will not tolerate the Quds Force attacking either American or Israeli targets without his express permission. Assad has won his civil war, but he must still worry about attacks on Syrian bases and weapons by the Israelis and Americans in retaliation for attacks that the Syrians had nothing to do with. How can he control the IRGC? He has made a start, by summarily expelling from the country the IRGC commander. That should get Tehran’s attention, and make them realize they are no longer seen by Assad as necessary to his survival.
….Now Assad has entered a new phase of the conflict. Iran was a necessary ally during the civil war, providing both military aid and $30 billion to keep the Syrian economy afloat, but now Assad is looking ahead to beginning the post-war reconstruction, which will cost $350- $400 billion. That kind of money can come only from the rich Gulf Arab states – Saudi Arabia, the U.A.E., Kuwait. Iran is in no position to offer help on that scale; in any case, its economy is reeling and it has had to cut aid even to Hezbollah.
In Tehran, they must now be tasting wormwood and gall. How can Assad be so ungrateful for all the Islamic Republic has done for him? If Iran were to threaten to pull out the IRGC troops from Syria altogether, a threat that once might have alarmed Assad, he would now welcome their departure. If he needs a foreign military ally for intermittent help in the handful of areas where opposition fighters remain active, the Russians are ready and, unlike the Iranians, are not about to get Syria involved in a conflict with Israel or America.
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Interesting events in the ME, the Shia crescent looks more like a heroin user’s dream for the mad mullahs. Iran should know that Muslims always side with the strong horse and with Jo and the Ho’s mess in DC the lifeline they thought the Kenyan sluts would give them look tenuous at present. As Syria moves away from Iran it will be interesting to see what Israel will do in relation to Iran. Will Russia be more of an ally to Syria and distance itself from Iran? Wonder what the American Perfumed Princes from the military industrial complex are thinking?