One of the members of an Iranian senior official security squad has been arrested on espionage charges, informed sources have said.
According to the sources, the bodyguard was seized last week on charges of espionage and anti-security activities, Jahan News reported on Thursday. He has been working as a bodyguard in the security team for several years.
The bodyguard was identified and detained along with some other spy rings that had extensive espionage activities. The detainees are currently being interrogated and the case will be handed to the Judiciary as soon as it is completed.
Russia has a contract to provide Syria with powerful MiG fighter jets but has not begun delivering the planes, according to a Russian newspaper report.
Kommersant cited the head of Russia's state-run United Aircraft Corporation, Alexei Fyodorov, as saying that a 2007 contract to sell MiG-31E interceptor fighters to Syria has not entered into force.
The paper said Russian arms sales officials have denied that such a contract exists.
The speedy MiG-31E can fire simultaneously at several targets up to 180 kilometers away. Deliveries to Syria would be liable to alter the balance of power in the region.
Kommersant cited Fyodorov as saying a contract to provide Syria with Mig-29M fighters is being implemented.
Continued on Page 47
Posted by: Fred ||
09/04/2009 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11151 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
But unless they send skilled pilots they are simply aerial tragets for the IAF.
#2
...Given the -31s capabilities (it's simply an uprated Mig-25), all this does is bring Sryia up to about 1985 or so.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
09/04/2009 12:05 Comments ||
Top||
#3
Meh. My money is on the Izzies destroying them on the ground if anything happens anyway.
Posted by: Mike N. ||
09/04/2009 12:21 Comments ||
Top||
#4
Hehe.. if Syrians buy Mig31's then Israel is not their main enemy. Mig-31 are long range very high altitude fighters with almost no maneuverality.
Posted by: Large Snerong7311 ||
09/04/2009 17:40 Comments ||
Top||
#5
Now now, Snerong, ev'ryone knows that a MiG-31 is better than a MiG-29. It's got two more numbers. How can it not be better when it's got two more numbers, riddle me that!
Posted by: Steve White ||
09/04/2009 18:05 Comments ||
Top||
#6
it's even a higher prime number!
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/04/2009 18:10 Comments ||
Top||
#7
Hehe.. if Syrians buy Mig31's then Israel is not their main enemy. Mig-31 are long range very high altitude fighters with almost no maneuverality.
Well, think of what they could do to a strike group returning from Iran.
[Iran Press TV Latest] Iraqi Premier Nouri al-Maliki has called on neighboring Syria to explain alleged granting of refuge to suspected bombers wanted by Iraq.
"Why must they insist on sheltering the armed organizations and those wanted by Iraqi courts and Interpol on Syrian lands?" Maliki was quoted by his office as saying.
The Iraqi leader added "neighboring countries" could no longer use the excuse of Iraq's occupation by US forces for backing insurgents, since American forces left Iraqi cities in June.
Iraq and Syria continue to exchange insults following the August 19 bombings at Baghdad's finance and foreign ministries that left about 100 people killed and hundreds others injured.
On Sunday, Iraq aired a confession from a suspected al-Qaeda militant who accused Syrian intelligence agents of training foreign fighters like him in a camp before sending them to fight in conflict-plagued Iraq.
The dispute comes after a thaw in relations between Syria and Iraq earlier this year. The Syrian foreign minister Walid al-Muallem traveled to Baghdad in March and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki paid a visit to Damascus the day before the terrorist assaults.
Continued on Page 47
Posted by: Fred ||
09/04/2009 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11143 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Syria
#1
The leftie "Iraq is a victory for Iran brigade" are now saying (see Mark Lynch in FP) that the iraqis are falsely accusing Syria, on Irans behest, to under cut the optician's talks with the US. Nice package huh - ties together the meme that we fought the Iraq war to benefit Iran, with the meme that Syria is innocent, and that the talks are going swimmingly. elegant as it is, I find it a bit of a stretch. If its false, and maliki is either telling the truth, or lying for other reasons, it would imply that Iraq is closer to US interests and further from Irans than advertised.
Posted by: liberal hawk ||
09/04/2009 10:15 Comments ||
Top||
[Al Arabiya Latest] Iran's parliament approved on Thursday 18 ministers, including the first-ever woman, and rejected three in President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's proposed new 21-member cabinet following his disputed re-election in June, state radio reported.
Ahmadinejad, who had four of his first-choice nominees rejected by the assembly in 2005, has three months to propose new candidates to replace those voted down by the 290-seat parliament.
But the woman set to head the health ministry, Marzieh Vahid Dastjerdi, had been expected to be confirmed after she presented an elaborate four-year plan on Tuesday.
Parliament also approved Ahmad Vahidi, a man Argentina says was involved in the 1994 bombing of a Buenos Aires Jewish center that killed 85 people, after five days of heated debate that saw several nominees opposed by conservative lawmakers.
MPs voted against energy, education and welfare ministers, but the cabinet can still start working and Ahmadinejad has scheduled its first meeting for Sunday, state radio said.
Continued on Page 47
Posted by: Fred ||
09/04/2009 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11136 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Iran
Hezbollah was keeping chemical weapons in the arms stockpile which exploded more than a month ago in southern Lebanon, the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Siyasa reported on Thursday.
European sources quoted in the article also said that three out of the eight Hezbollah operatives who were killed in the blast died after coming in contact with the chemicals.
According to Al-Siyasa, the Lebanese militant organization attempted to keep Lebanese Army personnel as well as UNIFIL forces away from the blast site in order to cover up any evidence.
The Kuwaiti paper, known for its staunch opposition to Hezbollah, said the militant organization had been stockpiling chemical weapons in Baalbek as well as north and south of the Litani River as of December 2008.
The article also stated that Iran had recently sent new kinds of chemical weapons, as well as thousands of gas masks providing protection from chemical and biological weapons via Syrian airports.
The militant organization also reportedly received a system capable of warning against substances used in weapons of mass destruction as part of its Iran supply.
Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, prohibits Hezbollah from engaging in military activities in south Lebanon and forbids weapon smuggling to the group.
After the July 14 explosion in an abandoned building in Khirbet Silim, about 9 miles from the Israeli border, Israel accused Iran and Syria of violating those conditions by sending weapons to Hezbollah.
Deputy Hezbollah leader Sheik Naim Kassem had commented on Israeli accusations, saying there was "no violation of Resolution 1701."
"What happened ... is a normal incident that has to do with leftover shells that had been collected during and after Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000," Kassem added.
Continued on Page 47
Posted by: Fred ||
09/04/2009 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11134 views]
Top|| File under: Hezbollah
#1
While this is not an unbelievable story it is a bit odd that this is the only place it has been reported. If this report is true it SHOULD be a big story. And if this report is true, the lack of reporting should also be a big story.
And is Kassem trying to say the shells were abandoned Israeli munitions (whether chemical or not)?
#2
most western MSM dont read the Kuwaiti papers, afaict.
Haaretz, for all its dovishness, is in the region, and DOES read the Kuwaiti papers (or else at least is in touch with folks in Israel and the arab world who do read the Kuwaiti papers)
Now that its in Haaretz, which IS read by the western MSM, we will see what we will see.
Posted by: liberal hawk ||
09/04/2009 10:00 Comments ||
Top||
#3
We'll 'see' absolutely nothing.
MSM is hell-bent on propping up this unbelieveably pathetic puppet and won't do a damned thing to sidetrack his ME ambitions, and certainly won't report anything that portrays HZB as the agressor (Israel is the enemy, according to liberals and this administration).
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Al Arabiya Latest] Iran's parliament approved on Thursday 18 ministers, including the first-ever woman, and rejected three in President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's proposed new 21-member cabinet following his disputed re-election in June, state radio reported.
Hezbollah was keeping chemical weapons in the arms stockpile which exploded more than a month ago in southern Lebanon, the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Siyasa reported on Thursday. 
