The Ukrainians are still using them, IIRC. Maybe they could find a new home.'''
Russian forces securing a Syrian Su-24 position, it's unclear if Russia intends to claim the jets for themselves. Russia donated a number of Su-24M2s to the Syrians, upon them being withdrawn from Russian service.
Военный Осведомитель
Для тех, кто переживал о судьбе сирийских Су-24МК2. Да, их асадовцы тоже бросили. Наши ребята эту оплошность исправили. «Новым властям» машины не достаются.t.me
Middle East Defence & Security
- Thread starter MaenZ
- Start date
It's a little more complex than that. Right now Russian UCAVs are striking Ukrainian forces in the Kursk border area with UAVs and munitions developed with Israeli help. In point of fact if Russia and NATO end up at war, weapons develop with Israeli assistance will be used against NATO forces. I'm reasonably confident Elbit is no longer camped out in the Urals, but what year did they stop?
Absolutely. Ex-Syrian MiG-29s and Su-24s would help Ukraine a lot. Though it's an open question whether Israel will leave them intact if they fall into rebel hands.
Big_Zucchini
Well-Known Member
The IAI Searcher drone deal is more an exception than the rule. There was general thawing out between Russia and the west, and that was part of an attempt to shift things into more friendly territory but it never progressed beyond that one deal which was for equipment considered obsolete by Israel anyway.It's a little more complex than that. Right now Russian UCAVs are striking Ukrainian forces in the Kursk border area with UAVs and munitions developed with Israeli help. In point of fact if Russia and NATO end up at war, weapons develop with Israeli assistance will be used against NATO forces. I'm reasonably confident Elbit is no longer camped out in the Urals, but what year did they stop?
Plenty of things were different before the war and Russia was just another client. The French sold thermals that were used for Russian tanks (Thales (Catherine-FC) / JSC Peleng) for example. Eyebrows were raised but the deals went ahead.It's a little more complex than that. Right now Russian UCAVs are striking Ukrainian forces in the Kursk border area with UAVs and munitions developed with Israeli help. In point of fact if Russia and NATO end up at war, weapons develop with Israeli assistance will be used against NATO forces. I'm reasonably confident Elbit is no longer camped out in the Urals, but what year did they stop?
What is relevant is the current context. Russia was in Syria and supported Assad for its own self serving strategic interests (access to a warm water port on the Med, airbases to support operations in Africa, skin in the game to influence geopolitics in ME), not for any great love for the man himself.
Would Israel be happy if Russia exits? I'm sure they will be. While Russia is not a direct enemy of Israel, one less variable and player in the region is better since it is one less consideration.
Except... it wasn't just the one deal. Elbit camped out by the Ural Civil Aviation Plant for years. And this was after relations started to get frosty with Europe again. Iirc the US even got upset that Israel was allegedly supplying US tech to Russia in violation of sanctions. And this is just the part we can see. There were other... maneuvers. There's a reason Israel wouldn't sell UAVs to Ukraine even post 2014. Let me ask you this, when did Elbit stop cooperation on the Forpost-RU and the family of UCAV munitions being integrated on it?
Israel and Russia has a relationship behind the scenes. They're not exactly allies, and it's probably an uneasy partnership at best. But they're definitely not enemies. Not based on their mutual behavior. They're on different sides of the current global cleavage but Israel will sell upgraded pitchforks to hell itself if it's in their interest to do so.
France was selling Russia warships and iirc the SENIT 9. Russia actually had good relations with France even after the events of '14. This current war of course tossed all that out the window, yet another reason for why it was a bad idea to invade. But I digress.
On a side note, you said "before the war". But which war to do you mean? The current one that started in 2022? Or the one '14-'16? The timeline here shows a fairly substantial difference. Russian defense cooperation with Italy and France was winding down post Crimea. But the Forpost-RU is all after that.
Sure and in this regard Russia is different to every other player in the region who do it for the love of the men they support. Especially the US with their support of the Syrian Kurds. Russia supported Assad because Russia was very short on client states and Assad's Syria was one of the last few remaining. If Assad had managed to reclaim Syria's oil wealth, it would have been a boon to Russia as he would have spent that wealth on Russian rail infrastructure, and military hardware, and whatever else Russia was keen to export, presumably a bunch of Ladas and Ural trucks (though the Syrians were for some reason partial to the GAZ). Russia also supported Assad because there was no other viable option for the Mediterranean base. Libya was a total mess, and everyone else politely said no including Algeria. In other words the current defeat isn't that bad for Russia if they can keep the bases. They might even profit from this if the new Islamist Syria gets control of the oil wealth and wants to shop for weapons while being sanctioned by every civilized country for the usual reasons.
It depends on what else accompanies Russia's exit. I suspect all things being equal Israel might prefer Russian bases not to be there.
Should we still be calling them rebels? They're now the nearest thing Syria has to a national government. Assad's fled, & his army has pretty much either gone home or changed sides. The "rebels" appear to be largely focused on restoring the civil administration & some kind of rule of law, including reining in their own members.
Good point. What should we call them though? They're also still engaged in combat with the SDF and while I think it's unlikely the SDF will ultimately take Damascus, Syria remains divided.
Yes, it's not clear. Ah well, reality's often messy.
Big_Zucchini
Well-Known Member
America's seems to have expanded its territorial ambitions to the Middle East with Trump's plan to relocate 2 million Palestinians and effectively take over the Gaza strip. Trump loves real estate and frankly his plans to acquire and re-develop the Gaza strip maybe the most Trump thing ever. Panama, Greenland, Canada and now this. Just checking that it isn't April 1st.
www.abc.net.au
Trump's Gaza plan has the potential to spark disaster on a huge scale
Donald Trump was a fierce critic of America's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — yet today, there he was, promising a new American excursion into the Middle East with the potential to spark disaster on a similar scale.
www.abc.net.au
Trump is looking at Gaza like a real estate development project and is just evicting the tenants as part of the redevelopment.
He is less President but more CEO of America trying to cut deals. Sending prisoners to El Salvador for a cost is literally outsourcing, Greenland is a M&A exercise and Panama is just him trying to strong arm his logistics partners. Heck, DOGE is pure corporate cost cutting.
He is less President but more CEO of America trying to cut deals. Sending prisoners to El Salvador for a cost is literally outsourcing, Greenland is a M&A exercise and Panama is just him trying to strong arm his logistics partners. Heck, DOGE is pure corporate cost cutting.
John Fedup
The Bunker Group
Investing with a convicted felon, what could possibly go wrong?
Criminal enterprises can be very lucrative.Investing with a convicted felon, what could possibly go wrong?
All jokes aside though, there seems to be no clear path forward right now. Who is going to evict the tenants?
Ananda
The Bunker Group
No Joke on this, he is seriously expecting Egypt and Jordan to do it. In white house interview he is insist the Gulf financing the removal and rebuild project and both Egypt and Jordan move them. I believe on that interview he is said Jordan and Egypt will do it despite a journalist say they won't do it.
So just like @koxinga and I put, he is behaving as this is like Real Estate redevelopment project. He's behaving as CEO first then a President. He put business proposal project and then strong armed others to crowd funding the investment and outsourcing the relocation.
How the Arabs streets (thus neigbours Arabs) going to react on this, is seems not what he believes as US concerns. Well commercial CEO act that, as the ground situation is what outsourcing 'field' contractors concerns, not the head office.
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What happens when they don't? He expected Mexico to pay for a border wall and that didn't exactly work out.
Ananda
The Bunker Group
Guessing what is in Trump's mind is already big business. Some market players that I know of in North American desks win considerable margin, when they follow Analysts that betting Trump will delay the tariff to Mexico and Canada when both neighbors give in to his demand in strengthen actions on border controls.
So personally this is also can be part of his initial volley to open bargaining position. Again he's so far acting as businessman/CEO then politicians. He is in my opinion approaching international politics like international business deals. For that increasingly market analysts also see that. He's behaving like the way he's running Trump Corporations on US administration. On the middle east matter just like with Canada, Mexico and China, he's opening volley of threats to find bargaining possition.
Big_Zucchini
Well-Known Member
Re: Trump Gaza Plan.
On the surface, it is presented as a plan to allow either temporary or permanent (depending who you ask) voluntary relocation of Gazans to several different locations, chiefly Egypt and Jordan with whom they share a border (later on Jordan).
I personally wouldn't advise taking it literally. If we go back to 2019, we see a similar rhetoric. Israel's Netanyahu, with Trump's greenlight, announced plans to annex the Jordan Valley as seen below.
Such move would actually be of significant strategic benefits for Israel, including and primarily a reduction in arms flow into the J&S area. But the plan disappeared as quickly as it appeared. The UAE demanded not to go through with it, and conditioned a normalization agreement with Israel on a 6 month postponement to this plan. Over 5 years later and it wasn't implemented.
The purpose, as it seems, was to legitimize normalization by portraying MBZ as some savior.
We are seeing some similarities now. The Arab world panicked, Egypt, Jordan, and friends coming up with their own solutions. This is great for Israel. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict can be easily summed up as a proxy war waged by the Arab world against Israel, and despite everyone losing interest, they keep it alive because they'd rather Israel deal with it than them.
The Arab world looking for solution is a success on Trump's part to change a half a century old equation.
It's difficult to guess what Trump might want to get out of this. Maybe going for anything that's just not a repeat of the post-2005 cycles? Maybe he wants Egypt and Jordan to reduce the burden on Israel?
Or maybe he actually does want Gaza to be emptied? I'd also caution about ruling out this possibility. Whether or not it's favorable to the US and its allies, Trump seems determined to end the high profile conflicts (Russia-Ukraine, Iran-proxies-Israel). But Israeli-Palestinian conflicts aren't the type that happens once in several decades and is a shock to everyone. They happen whenever local terrorist groups start plateauing in terms of force buildup. In the run-up to October 7th, Israel and Hamas could go 2 major rounds in a single presidential term. Even if we were to say Trump has only personal interests at heart, such frequent wars on his watch are not a good look, and therefore in his interest to resolve.
The only surefire way I know to reduce friction between the Palestinians and Israel to a negligible amount, is to solve the geographical problem. i.e. them being mere kilometers from one another's population centers.
Gaza is in ruins. It's impossible to rebuild, if one cares for proper building standards. The collapse of the tunnel system forces any reconstruction process to start with excavation and rebuilding of foundations. That's long, expensive, and already puts the locals in such a state of suffering even when disregarding frequent wars.
Egypt and Jordan can solve the issue by accepting the Palestinians from Gaza and J&S respectively. The primary concern, however, is their regimes' stability. Egypt is a state within a state. The Army rules there. If Sisi and the army end up butting heads over policy on Gaza, he may end up imprisoned or un-alived.
Jordan is a failed state. Its population is estimated to be majority Palestinian, or at least a sizable minority. An influx of 3 million into Jordan would put Jordan in a 2 front war - providing necessities to all, and maintaining the king's rule.
It would not be easy to convince them, but then again, they don't have to take in everyone.
The strategic situation for Israel puts it in a tough spot. It cannot handle having Gaza and J&S populated with Palestinians that are already well armed and within spitting distance of Israel's population centers. October 7th, and later the incursion into Lebanon in September 2024, both demonstrated it quite well. Hamas's October 7th was to be dwarfed by what could have been done on other fronts.
Simultaneously, IDF faces a severe manpower shortage. It needs to shorten the borders fast. And at 5% defense expenditure in peace time already, it cannot afford to double that for a war that breaks out every couple years.
Israel has high capacity to absorb security challenges, but if given enough time, this could reach a boiling point and even a limited (non military) conflict with Egypt and Jordan if they continue blocking passage.
Gaza is of course not isolated in this. J&S is an even bigger challenge, and there are estimates that Israel will soon have to operate there to root out terror in a much greater intensity. Since October 7th the IDF deployed new assets like drones and aircraft to bombard targets in J&S.
And if Hamas and other terrorist orgs manage to overthrow the PA, as they have already established control over Jenin, the IDF may have to reach Gaza-like intensity and solution.
Finally, regardless of what Trump intends, he is by far the friendliest president Israel had in a while. A wise leader in Israel (which Netanyahu is not) would capitalize on that to expand the Abraham Accords, dismantle Iran's nuclear program for the near future, and start even a limited evacuation of Gaza.
Final words:
We are approaching the 2nd phase of the ceasefire, and right now we're hearing reports that the 2 babies - Kfir and Ariel, may have been executed by Hamas in captivity. On a strategic-political level, their rumored deaths change nothing. But the 2nd phase is a milestone ahead of which Israel and the US must find points of leverage to secure the release of remaining hostages, and this adds another option that Trump's Gaza plan is intended to serve that.
www.jpost.com
On the surface, it is presented as a plan to allow either temporary or permanent (depending who you ask) voluntary relocation of Gazans to several different locations, chiefly Egypt and Jordan with whom they share a border (later on Jordan).
I personally wouldn't advise taking it literally. If we go back to 2019, we see a similar rhetoric. Israel's Netanyahu, with Trump's greenlight, announced plans to annex the Jordan Valley as seen below.
Such move would actually be of significant strategic benefits for Israel, including and primarily a reduction in arms flow into the J&S area. But the plan disappeared as quickly as it appeared. The UAE demanded not to go through with it, and conditioned a normalization agreement with Israel on a 6 month postponement to this plan. Over 5 years later and it wasn't implemented.
The purpose, as it seems, was to legitimize normalization by portraying MBZ as some savior.
We are seeing some similarities now. The Arab world panicked, Egypt, Jordan, and friends coming up with their own solutions. This is great for Israel. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict can be easily summed up as a proxy war waged by the Arab world against Israel, and despite everyone losing interest, they keep it alive because they'd rather Israel deal with it than them.
The Arab world looking for solution is a success on Trump's part to change a half a century old equation.
It's difficult to guess what Trump might want to get out of this. Maybe going for anything that's just not a repeat of the post-2005 cycles? Maybe he wants Egypt and Jordan to reduce the burden on Israel?
Or maybe he actually does want Gaza to be emptied? I'd also caution about ruling out this possibility. Whether or not it's favorable to the US and its allies, Trump seems determined to end the high profile conflicts (Russia-Ukraine, Iran-proxies-Israel). But Israeli-Palestinian conflicts aren't the type that happens once in several decades and is a shock to everyone. They happen whenever local terrorist groups start plateauing in terms of force buildup. In the run-up to October 7th, Israel and Hamas could go 2 major rounds in a single presidential term. Even if we were to say Trump has only personal interests at heart, such frequent wars on his watch are not a good look, and therefore in his interest to resolve.
The only surefire way I know to reduce friction between the Palestinians and Israel to a negligible amount, is to solve the geographical problem. i.e. them being mere kilometers from one another's population centers.
Gaza is in ruins. It's impossible to rebuild, if one cares for proper building standards. The collapse of the tunnel system forces any reconstruction process to start with excavation and rebuilding of foundations. That's long, expensive, and already puts the locals in such a state of suffering even when disregarding frequent wars.
Egypt and Jordan can solve the issue by accepting the Palestinians from Gaza and J&S respectively. The primary concern, however, is their regimes' stability. Egypt is a state within a state. The Army rules there. If Sisi and the army end up butting heads over policy on Gaza, he may end up imprisoned or un-alived.
Jordan is a failed state. Its population is estimated to be majority Palestinian, or at least a sizable minority. An influx of 3 million into Jordan would put Jordan in a 2 front war - providing necessities to all, and maintaining the king's rule.
It would not be easy to convince them, but then again, they don't have to take in everyone.
The strategic situation for Israel puts it in a tough spot. It cannot handle having Gaza and J&S populated with Palestinians that are already well armed and within spitting distance of Israel's population centers. October 7th, and later the incursion into Lebanon in September 2024, both demonstrated it quite well. Hamas's October 7th was to be dwarfed by what could have been done on other fronts.
Simultaneously, IDF faces a severe manpower shortage. It needs to shorten the borders fast. And at 5% defense expenditure in peace time already, it cannot afford to double that for a war that breaks out every couple years.
Israel has high capacity to absorb security challenges, but if given enough time, this could reach a boiling point and even a limited (non military) conflict with Egypt and Jordan if they continue blocking passage.
Gaza is of course not isolated in this. J&S is an even bigger challenge, and there are estimates that Israel will soon have to operate there to root out terror in a much greater intensity. Since October 7th the IDF deployed new assets like drones and aircraft to bombard targets in J&S.
And if Hamas and other terrorist orgs manage to overthrow the PA, as they have already established control over Jenin, the IDF may have to reach Gaza-like intensity and solution.
Finally, regardless of what Trump intends, he is by far the friendliest president Israel had in a while. A wise leader in Israel (which Netanyahu is not) would capitalize on that to expand the Abraham Accords, dismantle Iran's nuclear program for the near future, and start even a limited evacuation of Gaza.
Final words:
We are approaching the 2nd phase of the ceasefire, and right now we're hearing reports that the 2 babies - Kfir and Ariel, may have been executed by Hamas in captivity. On a strategic-political level, their rumored deaths change nothing. But the 2nd phase is a milestone ahead of which Israel and the US must find points of leverage to secure the release of remaining hostages, and this adds another option that Trump's Gaza plan is intended to serve that.
Bibas family 'in turmoil,' add journey not over until official confirmation received
The Bibas family said that they have not yet received any official confirmation on Shiri and the children's fate, and until they do, the "journey is not over."
www.jpost.com
John Fedup
The Bunker Group
@Big_Zucchini ...Trump might be Israels's friendliest president in awhile but if he continues to disrupt the current economic and geopolitical order as well as creating domestic chaos, America may become an isolationist C-F incapable of being an ally to Israel or most of the Western world for that matter.
Big_Zucchini
Well-Known Member
I personally think a hawkish POTUS, especially during a time of peak global conflict, is a good thing. I don't see it as disruptive.
Long before these wars started, the axis operated influence campaigns across the west. Seems to me that Biden was complacent, while Trump seems to at least do some work about it.
I'd much rather see Tiktok banned, affiliation with terrorist orgs outlawed, and Qatar branded an enemy state. But even a small step is a step.