Al Nusra: Al Qaeda’s Syria Offensive

The terror group’s Syrian front, al Nusra, is not only attacking Assad, but building a base from which it can threaten U.S. interests in the region. 

Al Qaeda’s franchise in Syria, just one year old, is now the fastest growing al Qaeda front in the world, attracting fighters from across the Islamic world. Jabhat al Nusra, translated variously as the Victory Front or the Support Front for the Syrian People, was founded in January 2012, almost a year after the first demonstrations against the dictatorship of President Basher al Assad. It was created with the assistance of the al Qaeda franchise in Iraq that was formed nearly a decade ago during the American invasion. The Iraqi base provided a safe haven for setting up the front in Syria and still provides sanctuary for the Syrian group to this day.

China underbids Raytheon proposal for Turkey’s new Missile Defense System

From Hurriyet Daily News:  The race for Turkey’s missile tender, worth $4 billion, is warming up, with China bidding below $3 billion and thus forcing the U.S. to decrease its offer in order to stay in the competition, anonymous sources have claimed.

Despite representatives of Raytheon declining to comment on the tender process, according to the sources the U.S. firm has been working hard to rehabilitate its offer for the Patriot system. . . .

For the estimated $4 billion contract, the pan-European company Eurosam, maker of the Surface-to-Air Missile Platform/Terrain Aster 30 system,

Angelina Jolie Visits Syrian Refugees In Iraq

UNHCR Special Envoy Angelina Jolie has hailed the Iraqi government’s willingness to host Syrian refugees fleeing violence and said she hoped all Syrians seeking asylum in Iraq would be welcomed.

“I want to highlight the noble efforts of the Iraqi government and the people of Iraq to support Syrian refugees,” said Jolie. “At this juncture, it is critical that Iraq receives urgent international support and continues to welcome refugees across its borders.”

In the Iraqi capital of Baghdad on Saturday, Jolie met with senior government officials and spent time with Iraqis, until recently refugees in Syria, who have returned to Iraq after fleeing violence in their places of former refuge. She spent today meeting Syrian refugees in the Domiz camp in northern Iraq. She also met officials of the Kurdistan Regional Government, including Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani and Interior Minister Karim Sinjari as well as the governors of Erbil and Dohuk. Many of the officials she met were former refugees. “We know how it feels,” one official told Jolie.

As Syrian Conflict Rages, France Examines Potential Terror Risks

French security officials reveal to TIME evidence of aspiring militants leaving France for Syria to join Islamists battling the Assad regime — and warn this conflict risks joining Afghanistan, Iraq, and Yemen as a training ground for future terrorists.

As the civil war grinds on between loyalists of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and rebel forces fighting to depose him, concerns are rising the conflict may become a magnet for aspiring jihadists in Europe. Those apprehensions were expressed to TIME this week by French counter-terrorism officials, who outlined reliable intelligence information and one established case of French youths travelling to Syria to fight with Islamist militants. That nub of evidence, they say,

The End of Pax Adana

Although Turkey is not an Arab country, the Arab Spring is shaping Turkish affairs in important ways. Political changes in the country’s neighborhood have ended the equilibrium between Syria, Turkey, and Iran over the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a group that has waged a violent campaign against Turkey for decades. This has meant the end of the Pax Adana, a regional balance characterized by the Syrian and Iranian promise not to support the PKK.

In 1998, Damascus signed a protocol with Ankara in the southern Turkish city of Adana promising to cease its support for the PKK. Iran joined in on that consensus in 2003. Now, Syrian and Iranian support for the PKK is back in the spotlight as Syria’s disintegration and Turkish-Iranian competition demolish the foundations of the former status-quo.

Lords of Chaos Rule the Middle East

This week’s call began with our five participants learning that President Morsi of Egypt had just sacked the head of that country’s armed forces, Field Marshal Tantawi. Score: Muslim Brotherhood 1, SCAF 0 (with outflows from Cairo to numbered bank accounts in Zurich, Switzerland increasing by the hour). The news contributed to a general atmosphere of martial headiness that pleasurably affected everyone except Amos Harel, who writes for Ha’aretz, and is therefore more vocationally attuned to guilt than to pleasure, and Pepe Escobar, who was enjoying dim sum in Hong Kong.

The panelists seemed to agree that the fluid and chaotic situation in the Eastern Mediterranean and the rapidly dwindling pre-Islamist-takeover interregnum in Egypt both argued in favor of the likelihood of an Israeli strike on Iran.

A war of words between Turkish and Iranian leaders

A war of words between Turkish and Iranian leaders intensified Thursday, threatening to delay or even scuttle a new round of talks between Iran and world powers, and raising fresh doubt about whether Tehran will bargain over its disputed nuclear program.

One day after Iranian leaders ruled out talks in Istanbul next week because of Turkey’s position on the Syrian uprising, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused Iran of dishonesty.

“It is necessary to act honestly,” Erdogan said at a news conference in Ankara, Turkey, according to Reuters. The Iranians “continue to lose prestige in the world because of a lack of honesty.”

The Bomb and the Bomber

If Iran goes nuclear it will change our world.

An Iranian atom bomb will force Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt to acquire their own atom bombs. Thus a multipolar nuclear arena will be established in the most volatile region on earth. Sooner or later, this unprecedented development will produce a nuclear event. The world we know will cease to be the world we know after Tehran, Riyadh, Cairo or Tel Aviv become the 21st century’s Hiroshima.