Middle East Update 6 Oct. 2015

Ezekiel 38:13 (KJV)

Sheba, and Dedan, and the merchants of Tarshish, with all the young lions thereof, shall say unto thee, Art thou come to take a spoil? hast thou gathered thy company to take a prey? to carry away silver and gold, to take away cattle and goods, to take a great spoil?

2 Kings 21:14 (KJV)

And I will forsake the remnant of mine inheritance, and deliver them into the hand of their enemies; and they shall become a prey and a spoil to all their enemies;

Isaiah 42:24 (KJV)

Who gave Jacob for a spoil, and Israel to the robbers? did not the Lord, he against whom we have sinned? for they would not walk in his ways, neither were they obedient unto his law.

• Ezekiel 26:12 (KJV)

  And they shall make a spoil of thy riches, and make a prey of thy merchandise: and they shall break down thy walls, and destroy thy pleasant houses: and they shall lay thy stones and thy timber and thy dust in the midst of the water.

• Isaiah 24:3 (KJV)

  The land shall be utterly emptied, and utterly spoiled: for the Lord hath spoken this word.

Below are the Middle East headlines for 6 Oct.

S-300s will enforce Syrian and northern Israel "No Fly Zone".

The Russian deputy Army chief is due to arrive in Israel shortly.

Netanyahu warns nations about giving Hezbollah nuclear arms.

Arab violence continues in Israel. 

It appears the U.S. military is becoming irrelevant in the Middle Eas. 

Chinese J-15 fighters "flying sharks" (below) will soon join the Russian air campaign over Syria and Iraq has given Moscow the use of the Al Taqaddum Air Base at Habbaniyah, 74 km west of Baghdad.

As US President Barack Obama welcomed Chinese President Xi Jinping to the White House on Friday, Sept. 25, and spoke of the friendship between the two countries, the Chinese aircraft carrier Liaoning-CV-16 (below) docked at the Syrian port of Tartus, accompanied by a guided missile cruiser.

My sources tell me the Chinese aircraft carrier passed through the Suez Canal on Sept. 22, one day after the summit in Moscow between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. The Chinese have one active aircraft carrier and one under construction.

My Israeli sources tell me Putin made no mention of the Chinese warship entering the eastern Mediterranean or its destination to Netanyahu. The Russian and Chinese intervention has upended the entire strategic situation surrounding the Syrian conflict. It, adds a new global dimension to Moscow and Tehran’s military support for Assad. It also strengthens Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in his determination to turn the nuclear deal concluded in July into a tool for isolating the US politically, militarily and economically in the Middle East, rather than a milestone on the road to a breakthrough in ties with Iran, as the Obama administration had hoped.

My sources tell me the Chinese are preparing for a prolonged stay in Syria. The carrier put into Tartus minus its aircraft contingent. The warplanes and helicopters should be in place on its decks by mid-November - flying in directly from China via Iran or transported by giant Russian transports from China through Iranian and Iraqi airspace.

This explains the urgency of establishing a Russian-Syria-Iranian “military command and control center” in Baghdad in the last couple of days. This mechanism, plus the Russian officers sighted in Baghdad, indicates that the Russian military presence is not limited to Syria but also includes Iraq.

The "command and control center" is necessary to begin working with Iranian-backed Shiite militias fighting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. But more immediately, it is urgently needed to control the heavy traffic of Russian, Iranian and Chinese military flights transiting Iraqi air space.

Our sources report that the Chinese will be sending out to Syria a squadron of J-15 Flying Shark fighters, some for takeoff positions on the carrier’s decks, the rest to be stationed at the Russian airbase near Latakia. The Chinese will also deploy Z-18F anti-submarine helicopters (below) and Z-18J airborne early warning helicopters (above) . In addition, Beijing will consign at least 1,000 marines to fight alongside their counterparts from Russia and Iran against terrorist groups, including ISIS.  

My military sources tell me that just as Russian marines will be instructed to single out rebel militias with recruits from Chechnya and the Caucasus, the Chinese marines will seek out and destroy Uighur fighters from the northern predominantly Muslim Chinese province of Xinjiang. In the same way that Putin has no wish to see the Chechen fighters back in Russia, so too Chinese President Xi wants to prevent the Uighurs from returning home from the Syrian battlefields.