U.S. Forces Conducted Live Fire Drills With Mortars, Anti-Tank Weapons In Syria’s Al-Tanaf (Photos)

Lol. You talk like you have personal authority on what goes on here, relax man ! And what’s with your obsession with Al-Tanf anyway ? I see you gesticulating like a crazy US fanboy every time it’s mentionned here. It’s deep into Syrian soil, none of your business,internal matters ;-)

FYI, The SAA, or Iran,or Russia don’t care about that symbolic outpost anymore ,they even built an alternative border-crossing next to it together complete with roads etc… they just contain it now.

Technically it’s an empty,irrelevant desert area surrounded by governmentl forces and their allies from all sides watching its every entry point. On regular instances when they try something fancy, they either get shot and torn apart form the ground or by get blwon out by Russian airstrikes, plus pathetically got several of their member and officers captured on some recent instances.

And the IDF or even the US have done exactly nothing to help or avenge those,on any such occasions.

These clowns won’t dare go past their security zone anymore after the deadly interceptions I mentionned for quite some time. They’re basically sitting and tanning in a damn hot area just to say we’re still fighting”… yeah my butt. You burn US taxpayer money for zero strategic relevance and that’s about it.

Besides, what’s the relation with you Israelis ? At most it’s between Russians/Syrians/Iranians/Rebels/Americans here. You wouldn’t even venture past the Golan area with ground troops, and Tanf has nothing to do with you even geographically, what are you trippin on ? Daraa all the way to Tanf ? and you signal the cavalry ? should I bring my Valkirie tape ?

It may sound like a joke, but if U.S forces will ask for help then it’s our obligation to assist them on the ground, Jordan would also support them.

And that will forever remain theoretical for the likes of you to fantasize and pretend about.

If the US want to invade a country, they do it themselves, they don’t need a satellite or subsidiary, so that situation will never occur. Besides, even assuming it does, you think Russians will simply wait with their hands crossed while you de-facto demolish their long-term investment in Syria by forcing a situation where they openly have to let their strategic ally get trampled by thousands of your men spanning roughly 30 to 40% of their territory? you think people will just sit by in all these cities just because you have air cover ? this is nuts, plain and simple.

For reminders, Turkey thought it could do the exact same and immediately got its armored columns pulverized by their air-force, 50-60 soldiers were slaughtered in one go and Putin personally called Erdogan not to apologize, but to confirm he won’t let that kind of things happen again. Since then the Islamist Turkish dog calmed down big time and let the SAA achieve all its objectives in its last major campaign, and grabbed the targeted piece of land to its last inch. Same will happen of Israel if they start literally walking on Syria from end to end as you project.

Again, the Israeli brass knows how to avoir impossible situation, that’s why they won’t ever do what you claim. They know the limits of their power, are highly pragmatic despite a fiery tone in political declarations.

Anyway the US happens to be a military superpower, so they take matters into their own hands. Just like Bolton said of Trump in his upcoming book “we told them we’re ok with them unilaterally attacking Iran, but we also knew they didn’t have the capabilities or ressources to achieve that on their own anyway”.

Well I agree gryzor, war between Israel and Syria should be avoided. But tell me, when they support Hezbollah and Iranian militias at our border, and when I say they I mean Syrian soldiers. How should we respond to that? should we just accept it? no way. If they help their allies on the ground against us, we can do the same for the U.S and Al-Tanf is not so far from the border. I don’t see Russian forces facing Israeli tanks or airforce just to save Assad, I may be wrong but it will be a lose-lose situation. So the best Russia can do is to make sure no one enters the 55KM zone and push the Iranians away from our border, not by words but actions.

We’ve had that discussion many times before, and you know I disagree IZ. They did never start hostilities nor did they provocatively directly attack your soldiers or the border areas ever since the civil war started. Why on earth would they try to open a new front on top of their internal collapse anyway, that one any sane mind would wonder. And that’s why it didn’t happen.

What’s that “support for Hezbollah” you keep on relentlessly pointing at ? it anything, it’s the other way around, Hezbollah dispatched an expeditionary force to Syria at the height of its involvement to quell AQ-linked factions. And they have drastically lowered their contingent once the peak of the fight subsided and their objectives achieved.

The Russians have done even more than you asked and led the Iranians out of a 85 to 100km line away from the Golan area and Lavrov officially stated it. Despite that, the Israeli cabinet has kept using that depleted excuse to keep on hurting regular SAA forces every once in a while just to keep Syria on the ground as long as possible. Let’s not beat around the bush, we all know what they want, and they barely hide it themselves anymore : a perpetually depleted and demoralized Syria, so that they can consolidate their theft of water , look for more oil and gas that they extract completely illegally, and enlarge existing settlements in the Occupied Golan, all of which they kickstarted precisely when Assad started to crumbled under the weight of the civil war, go figure that timing :)

Anyway Israel started all that mess when they decided past 2011 to support Salafist anti-Assad paramilitaries in setting up camp in their side of the Occupied Golan as early as 2011. Past 2012 and until the Russians put an end to that in 2015, the IDF regularly bombed approaching SAA units trying to dislodge these extremists.

True the Iranians used Syria’s lack of strength and manpower to plug the gap in that area , but they focused their operation on anti-Assad fighters, never did they think adding Israel to the list of their worries at a time where they’re Allawite ally had lost 85% of its territory to terrorist groups linked to either the Muslim Brother.

Same for Hezbollah. Everywhere they intervened, they did it against the likes of Al-Nusra, and achieved spectacular results eradicating them all along their border with Syria, to the stupefaction of Western countries their popularity bounced back in their country as well.

Hezbollah never once fired a rocket, big or small, guided or not, past the Separation line ever since the Israeli withdrawal in 2000. Not without Israel first attacking and/or killing its troops. They are a defensive organization by nature, going against Israel and give it the excuses it wants to invade southern Lebanon and grab the Litani again is not among their plans. Even the events leading to the 2006 conflagration are still hugely contested and Israel has been completely unable to prove its claims that Hezbollah units attacked first. The UNIFIL disagrees with their thesis.

It’s not about blaming who did things first to whom, we need to look at the present situation and try to de-escalate it. For example, in the latest incident 4 Iranian backed fighters tried to plant a bomb at our border fence and were killed, then we had to strike back SAA targets in response. So who’s to blame here? Iran or Israel? you tell me.

At the contrary, getting back to the point of origin asks the question of who’s legitimate here in the first place. The whole situation stems from Israeli willingness to weaken and if possible to destroy Syria in any way it can. The civil war was only the latest opportunity to date.

You talk about facts on the ground, let’s go all the way :

-Israel occupies a part of the Syrian Golan and has illegally annexed it, thus prevents Syria from finally signing a Peace Treaty with it and stay technically at war with Damascus. -It used the Syrian civil war to fuel unrest and further destabilize both that border area and Syria as a country, while it also started extracting Syrian ressources via illegal shady deals wit US firms since 2012. This is hard facts. -It has never been able to provide verifiable proof of its supposed enemies actions other than with such blurry, grainy grey-scale videos provided directly by their Intelligence Services depicting actions that makes absolutely no sense for either the SAA, or Iran, who wouldn’t be in their right minds providing Israel with exactly the kind of crude excuses to further erode their accomplishments there.

Do we have clear proof, identification, pictures even ? the IDF’s PR branch love to do grandiose press conference in situations like these whenever they have a modicum of evidence there. For instance in Gaza when they seize Iranian weapons shipments (that I also oppose, for reminders, that works both ways here).

Why don’t they explain their regular contact that were photographed by the UN observation force there for years meeting with local rebel commanders ?

How about the other side regularly seizing large weapon caches from militants around Idlib with medical item, foodstuff and Israeli-produced weapons and hebrew markings all over ? what do you make of that ?

They systematically invite UN observers to come in and confirm that, yet , as I said, Washington and Europe always block such initiatives.

Sorry but this will never be proof. The IDF can ask for a UN-supported inquiry about every such incident, pretty much like Lebanon and Syria do routinely while being ignored because of Washington’s pressure and vetoes. The UNIFIL has done wonder to defuse situations on the southern Separation Line, why not do it in Syria ? Moscow’s Putin, a very Israeli-friendly leader as you’ll admit, has time and again offered to do just that and would support any initiative.

Even if assuming that everything you say is true at the border and Iran/Hezb/Syria actively want to advance projects against Israel, the first thing they would want to do is to stay quiet and out of the radar.

Why on Earth would any of these actors try to plant a bomb a blow up a cheap piece of border fence ? Why ? even if successful, what would be the tactical benefit other than to provide casus belli to hawkish Israelis and get their asses handed to them ?

Let’s be serious for a moment… sometimes it’s a “stray bullet”, another time it’s a “stray mortar”, in all cases unverified . Next thing you know they’ll one day strike the SAA because they heard a man shouting too loud on the other side at night…

I don’t have all the answers to your legit questions, I know we have made many mistakes during this civil war, but Assad letting Iran use Syria as an operation base against us, would be a mistake just like Lebanon is helping Hezbollah. We don’t need war, there is not a real conflict between the states anymore except for the Golan, but that can be negotiated like maybe 50-50 deal. You ask why would they plant a bomb? I don’t know, just judge for yourself. https://finance.yahoo.com/video/militant-bomb-squad-hit-golan-130441354.html

Yes, such a deal on the Golan would make Syria a neutral nation in the region for whatever concerns Israel, just like Jordan and Egypt are today, I agree. The Golan issue must be negotiated diplomatically, and not through war.

But for that to happen, future Israeli cabinets should refrain from doing what Bibi’s has done best : compete in the number of times their officials are caught saying that “The Golan is forever Israeli and only that” on public record. That does not help in giving incentive to anyone in charge in Syria for a peaceful solution to their longstanding feud.

I’ve read that very article and many other similar one. “Israeli sources claim that, Israeli military report provided no more details”, that’s exactly what I meant. Scant evidence at best, suspicious material otherwise.

If you admit that you committed mistakes (I rather call that “abuses” since those were calculated action to unilaterally weaken a neighbor that had previously done nothing against you for decades) then you should not take everything Israel’s military or political circles say at face value , let alone o passionately claim that Syrians and Lebanese take all the blame at every corner.

Had the GCC, US, Europe not armed and funded anti-Assad militias, Iranians or even Russian wouldn’t have put one stop into the country today.

Had Israel not contributed big time to destabilization on its shared border with Syria by sheltering Jihadist paramilitaries and covered them with airstrikes, Iranians or Hezbollah wouldn’t have been mobilized in the Quneitra region in the first place.

For every abuse, there is a price. The Israeli “pricetag policy” should go both ways in your mind, if you want to better understand your foes. Just my two cents.

I’m not saying Iran didn’t also use the opportunity of the war to settle more a thousand mile away from its homeland, but the matter of the fact is that unlike you guys, Iranians were legally and officially invited by the host country to come in at a time of dire existential need that Israel significantly contributed to create. They have a mutual defense pact, and that’s how geopolitics works between allies.

It makes their legitimacy different than yours in nature. Yet I will not caution the entirety of their action in here, granted as well, since by definition I oppose clerical rule and theocratic regimes, but that is a philosophical/political standpoint, not applied to that theater where Israel’s position happens to be invalid from head to toe considering its own abusive posture and acts.