{"id":57405,"date":"2017-11-09T18:05:12","date_gmt":"2017-11-09T16:05:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=57405"},"modified":"2017-11-09T17:00:16","modified_gmt":"2017-11-09T15:00:16","slug":"17-05-22","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=57405","title":{"rendered":"Iranian Control of Kurdish Mountain Poses Serious Threat to Israel"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>Iranian Control of Strategic Kurdish Mountain Poses Serious Threat to Israel, Top Security Official Says<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n

Ben Cohen<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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Iranian-backed Hashd al-Shaabi fighters in Kurdistan\u2019s Sinjar region. Photo: File.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Iranian control of a strategically significant Kurdish area near the border between Iraq and Syria represents a grave security threat to Israel, a senior Kurdish security official told The Algemeiner on Wednesday.<\/span><\/p>\n

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that Iran had coveted the mountainous Sinjar region \u2014 which spans from northwestern Iraq into eastern Syria \u2014 for \u201cat least ten years.\u201d In 2014, Sinjar was conquered by ISIS terrorists who went on to commit genocide and other war crimes against the region\u2019s ancient Yazidi minority. After ISIS was driven out of the area by Kurdish peshmerga this year, Iranian-backed paramilitaries, among them the Hashd al-Shaabi, the Badr Organization and the Khorasani Brigades, began attacking the Kurds for control of the newly-liberated lands.<\/span><\/p>\n

The same paramilitaries played a central role in the Iranian-coordinated assault on Kurdistan last month, following a 93 percent vote in favor of independence in the September 25 Kurdish referendum.<\/span><\/p>\n

The official added that he had received reports claiming the Khorasani Brigades, an Iraqi Shia group affiliated with Iran\u2019s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), were building a \u201cmilitary base\u201d on Mount Sinjar \u2013 at 4,800 ft, the region\u2019s highest point. Kurdish media outlets have also reported on a continued stream of Iraqi army officers and Hashd al-Shaabi fighters onto the mountain and in the town of Sinjar beneath it. Hashd al Shaabi\u2019s commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis \u2013 designated for terrorism by the US State Department \u2013 has been sighted in the area on several occasions.<\/span><\/p>\n

The area contains several Yazidi holy sites, including the Sharfadin shrine on Mount Sinjar itself. \u201cThis is an important place for all of us as Kurds,\u201d the Kurdish official said. \u201cThe area is known for its Yazidi population, and there are Muslims and Christians there too. But it is also a place that presents a threat to Israel, and to other countries in the region.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The nature of that threat, according to the official, was demonstrated during the First Gulf War in 1991, when there was a consistent high-level Iraqi military presence on Mount Sinjar, even though the area was never targeted by Western coalition aircraft during the conflict. Some have claimed that the Iraqis launched their Scud missile attacks on Israel and Saudi Arabia during that conflict from Mount Sinjar \u2014 although Tel Aviv, which lies about 500 miles to the west, would have been out of range of even the most advanced Scuds at the time.<\/span><\/p>\n

Numerous eyewitness reports confirm that significant Iraqi military activity was taking place on Mount Sinjar going back to the late 1970s, when Saddam Hussein\u2019s regime began testing missiles at a facility there. In an article published in May, the Israeli journalist Seth Frantzman quoted two Kurdish witnesses who recalled that in 1991 there had been \u201cred fire\u201d while \u201cIraq was bombarding Israel from the mountain.\u201d Frantzman also quoted a sergeant from Britain\u2019s elite SAS regiment, who said that he too had seen \u201ca great big ball of light\u2026a fireball\u201d on Mount Sinjar, as well as Scott Ritter, a former UN weapons inspector who reported that the Iraqi army had cordoned off the entire Sinjar region during the 1991 war, and that one Iraqi had told him, \u201cSinjar is the key.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Almost thirty years on, vast improvements in ballistic missile technology mean that Israeli is well within firing distance from Mount Sinjar. A new ballistic missile unveiled by the Tehran regime in September, the BM-25 Khorramshahr, has a range of 2,000 miles \u2014 creating a potential nightmare scenario for the Israelis as they attempt to deal with the arsenal of 150,000 missiles controlled by Hezbollah, Iran\u2019s Lebanese proxy, at the same time.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIf you control the mountain, you can control the area,\u201d the Kurdish official said. \u201cIran can launch an attack on Tel Aviv, and it now has a clear corridor through which to supply its other proxies, like Hezbollah.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The official added there was growing concern over ethnic cleansing now being carried out by Shia paramilitaries in the territories taken from the Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga last month.<\/span><\/p>\n

A burned-out Kurdish store in the town of Tuz Khurmatu alongside an untouched property marked as belonging to a member of the Shia Turkoman community. Photo: The Algemeiner.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

New photos from Tuz Khurmatu, an ethnically diverse town seized by the Hashd al-Shaabi on October 16, suggest that houses and stores have been marked according to the background of their owner. One image showed a burned-out Kurdish grocery store alongside an untouched home marked as belonging to a family from the Shia Turkoman minority. More than 35,000 refugees have fled the fighting in the town.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Iranian Control of Strategic Kurdish Mountain Poses Serious Threat to Israel, Top Security Official Says Ben Cohen Iranian-backed Hashd al-Shaabi fighters in Kurdistan\u2019s Sinjar region. Photo: File. Iranian control of a strategically significant Kurdish area near the border between Iraq and Syria represents a grave security threat to Israel, a senior Kurdish security official told […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57405"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=57405"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57405\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57414,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57405\/revisions\/57414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}