Episode 118 - What's Iran's Plan for Iraq and is ISIS Metastasizing?

What's Iran doing in Iraq, and is ISIS metastasizing around the globe?  All that coming up on today's Hot Zone.

 

Well folks, it's another beautiful day on the farm, and here I am making you another podcast.  I just want to take moment and let you know how much I appreciate all you who support the podcast on Patreon.  Those of you who have stepped up and joined forces with the Podcast to try to do good around the globe as I bring you the news of the wars and disasters I cover are so encouraging.  Frankly It's just so humbling.  And I want you all to know I'm keeping track of your generosity and am using it to continue helping the people I've reported on.  Here's an example:  These two girls from Venezuela - Yessica and her sister Oris, were helped back in April to move from the border region in Cucuta where they were living on the street.  We got them bus tickets to a city called Pereira on the other side of Colombia, where they had some relatives they could live with.  That was step one.  They we sent more money to help them get a place of their own and now they are seeking work permits that will let them actually get real jobs.  

 

This mother - Catherine, was working as a porter and had to leave her kids unsupervised playing on the street while she worked, but with your help we got her set up with her own little business so now she can sell things and stay with her kids.  

 

Bottom line you are making a difference with your contributions to the podcast.  So thank you.  In a few weeks I'm headed to Afghanistan and will be over there for a couple of weeks.  There is more happening there than you likely know about, because the media hasn't been covering it all that much.  But with 15,000 US troops on the ground, well, I think we ought to know, so I'm going to go spend some time with them and bring you the scoop from on the ground.  

 

Okay, let's talk about what's happening in Iraq - the Iranians have been busy trying to strengthen their grip on that country, and you have to remember that Iran is Shia muslim, and everything south of about Kirkuk in Iraq is also Shia Muslim.  So there's an affinity there.  North of Kirkuk is Kurdistan, and Western Iraq is made up of Sunni, Yezidi, Turkmen, Assyrian Christians, Caldeans, Druze and others.  That's a bit of a generalization but it helps to understand the shia/sunni divide especially.  

 

 

"Credible threat" from Iran came out two weeks ago - we talked to Erick Stakelbeck about that in Ep 112.

Drone strikes on Saudi Arabian Oil,  

moving of Aircraft carriers into the gulf

lots of harsh words between US and Iran

US Embassy Baghdad pulls people out

Coalition Maj. Gen. Chris Ghika says there is no increased threat from the PMUs.

But PMUS aren't the only threat.

 

Last week the State Department issued the security alert to the “non-essentials” in Baghdad and Erbil, recommending they “depart Iraq by commercial transportation as soon as possible, avoid U.S. facilities within Iraq, monitor local media for updates, review personal security plans, remain aware of surroundings.”

 

An earlier security alert on May 12 advised all U.S. citizens of heightened tensions in Iraq and the requirement to remain vigilant. It recommended not traveling to Iraq, avoiding places known as U.S. citizen gathering points, keeping a low profile etc.

 

Then Sunday night a rocket was fired at the Green Zone. 

What is green zone?

 

Was the general wrong?  Not really.  

Back on Episode 64 we interviewed Anne Speckhard, and she was in Baghdad when the missile came in.  

Article in the Daily Beast claims a Senior IRaqi official told them the rocket was fired by iranian-backed hezbollah,

makes the case that Iran is testing america by a series of pin-prick attacks, trying to provoke us?

US intel agencies reportedly knew of the threat in IRaq, and even knew about Iranian backed forces moving missiles around bases where US forces are housed.  Apparently Mike Pompeo on his unannounced visit to IRaq last week asked the IRaqi government to reign in the PMUs...so you could say the British general who said there was no problem was just doing what Generals are supposed to do - give a briefing to the press without actually giving away anything they are doing.

 

I guess it remains to be seen what is going to happen between the US and Iran, but one thing we do know is that IRaq is going to be a point of friction between the two countries in the process of finding out.  Iran desperately wants to control what happens there and likely sees everything happenening in Iraq as part of a proxy war against the United States.  

 

For his part, I think Trump mostly is taking the right approach - tough talk, and be willing to back it up with force if you have to.  I think if Iran doubts his willingness to let the missiles fly, they might find that to be a costly miscalculation.

 

Now let's move on to talk about ISIS for a minute.  I think it's pretty well established that the cancerous tumor that was the Islamic State caliphate in IRaq and Syria has been cut out and removed.  But nobody really thinks the cancer has been defeated.  Since the terror group is now essentially back to being an insurgency, they are doing their best to spread their evil ideology around the globe, and with some success.  We've talked about many of these hot zones before - ISIS attacks in Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Kenya, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Libya, Europe and even the United States.  They seem to be really good at turning disaffected and lonely muslim men into lone wolves, and in franchising their brand as it were across the globe.  

 

Now word comes out of india and Pakistan that ISIS is declaring another new caliphate location - which they call the province of Hind.  

 

This is a region that spans parts of India and Pakistan.  Now there is some interesting history behind this.  This region was once called Khorasan, and take a look at this iSIS recruiting video I found online that talks about the importance of this area.

 

So remember, ISIS is a Sunni organization and Iran is Shia - they are enemies.  So these ISIS muftis think Iran will need to go away or at least get busy in a big war with the United States so that they'll be too otherwise occupied to stop the ISIS armies from marching from Afghanistan to Iraq, which they call "el quds".  

 

Now Indian and pakistani security forces say there is no new caliphate beginning in their countries.  So all of this is likely just propaganda, but ISIS has proven that it can carry out or at least motivate attacks on churches from the Philippines, to Egypt, to Sri Lanka and Europe.  And there have been some pretty massive terror attacks in India as well, not all of them attributed to Muslim extremists, but records show at least 400 people have died every year in terrrorist incidents in India, and there have been at least four major terror attacks there this year.  

 

One of the things we learned from the Mumbai terror attacks carried out by muslim extremists 11 years ago, in which almost 200 people were killed and hundreds more injured is that these kinds of attacks are the hardest to combat.  They are called massive multicell terror attacks, and that's where a team of terrorists coordinates to hit multiple locations at once to create mass chaos and confusion, and to bring a city to a standstill, which makes it very difficult for emergency services to respond to.  9/11 was the ultimate massive multicell attack, and one of the things we learned from that was that the US needed a separate cell network specifically for first responders, since the common cell network gets easily overwhelmed in times of crisis.

 

Think about it, emergency personnel from dozens of different state, local and federal agencies all converging on an emergency, each of them with different tactics, techniques and procedures, different radio frequencies, levels of training, etc, and all trying to address the same event - it's a huge problem and we've seen how that inability to seamlessly work together has cost lives, from Mumbai to Miami to Parkland to San Bernadino.  

 

Well a friend of mine who is a legend in the Special Forces community decided to try and do something about that.  He started a training center called DARC.  Check it out.

 

We need to never allow ourselves to take for granted the men and women who give their all to protect us, and they do so day in and day out, while you are working, while you are sleeping and they do it for too little pay.  In reality we can't afford to pay them what they are worth, but respect costs nothing.  And they should have all the respect we can offer.  

 

That's it for today's podcast.  Thanks for watching.  

 

End notes:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-qaLnOR9QI

https://thedefensepost.com/2019/05/15/islamic-state-pakistan-province-al-hind/