DEBKA

Hadi al-Amiri, commander of the strongest Iraqi Shiite militia, the Badr Brigades, said Wednesday, May 31, that his forces are preparing to enter Syria. The advanced capabilities of this powerful Iranian-led militia, would tilt the Syrian war strongly in Iran’s favor, with alarming ramifications for the US, Israel and Jordan.

Al-Amri, in making this announcement, cited Iran’s new slogan: “Iraq’s security will be maintained only if Syria’s security is preserved.” In other words, the Syrian conflict would end only when pro-Iranian Shiite militias, including Hizballah, control Syria like they control Iraq.
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T. Belman. Trump’s rejection of globalism necessarily meant rejection of the European elites as well. There is no way Europe can do without the US. They aren’t prepared to go it alone. How would they stop Russian expansionism without the US. Europe must align itself with Trump, not the other way around.

A split has emerged between the U.S. and its European allies. And there’s probably no going back.

BY JEET HEER, THE NEW REPUBLIC

Like a jilted spouse who has finally had enough, Western Europe is going its own way. German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced the split on Sunday, shortly after President Donald Trump concluded an official visit to the continent that created a deep rift in the heart of NATO. “The times when we could fully rely on others are to some extent over—I experienced that in the last few days,” Merkel declared, speaking at a Bavarian beer hall rally. “We Europeans must really take our destiny into our own hands.” At the end of her speech she took a swig from an oversized beer mug, smiling, as if relieved to be done with it. Read more…

Trevor Loudon exposes what’s happened to the American left

WORLD NET DAILY

The Democratic Party once produced presidents such as Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy. Major party leaders were fierce opponents of mass immigration because they recognized the negative impact it had on wages.

And America’s center-left party presented itself as a friend to American workers, fighting for their interests against corporate bosses.
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By GEORGE MELLOAN, NY SUN

Shortly before the Six-Day War broke out, I attended an Israeli Defense Forces demonstration of military prowess at a site outside Tel Aviv. We foreign reporters were unimpressed as young Israeli recruits scrambled clumsily over the sand dues.
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By Prof Efraim, Inbar, BESA

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Despite mounting international pressure, Israel must follow up on its recent declaration to build in and around Jerusalem, particularly in Area E1, which connects the capital to the settlement of Maaleh Adumim. Creating continuous Jewish settlement in that area is necessary to enable Israel to have secure access to the strategic Jordan Valley.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu must ignore the Pavlovian response of the international community against building in Jerusalem, particularly in Area E1. The fate of the Jewish State depends largely upon the government’s ability to take immediate action and to populate the area that links Jerusalem to Maaleh Adumim with thousands of Jews.
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AXIOS

President Trump has made his decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accord, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the decision. Details on how the withdrawal will be executed are being worked out by a small team including EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt. They’re deciding on whether to initiate a full, formal withdrawal — which could take 3 years — or exit the underlying United Nations climate change treaty, which would be faster but more extreme.

Why this matters: Pulling out of Paris is the biggest thing Trump could do to unravel Obama’s climate legacy. It sends a combative signal to the rest of the world that America doesn’t prioritize climate change and threatens to unravel the ambition of the entire deal.

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Blast rips through diplomatic quarter of Afghan capital, damaging French, German embassies, as resurgent Taliban launch ‘spring offensive’

AFP

KABUL, Afghanistan — At least 80 people were killed and 350 wounded when a massive bomb tore through Kabul’s strongly fortified diplomatic quarter during the Wednesday morning rush hour, Afghan officials said.

Health ministry spokesman Waheed Majroh gave the toll, which was confirmed by a second health official and the government media office, as the interior ministry urged Kabul residents to donate blood.

Bodies littered the scene and a Read more…

Secretary of Defense James Mattis told CBS News Sunday night, May 28, that the fight against the Islamic State (ISIS) jihadist group has “accelerated” and shifted to “annihilation tactics.”

This assertion does not square with the indirect talks the United States is secretly conducting with ISIS for its commanders and most of its operational strength to quit Raqqa, its former de facto Syrian capital, and relocate in Al Mayadeen and Abu Kamal in southeastern Syria.
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by Jonathan Spyer, The Jerusalem Post

Events taking place in a remote stretch of southeast Syrian desert in recent days reveal the current direction of US Middle East strategy.

An observable ratcheting up of US and allied air and special forces activity in eastern Syria is currently under way. This in turn appears to derive from a new, hard-nosed understanding of the nature of the strategic game in the large, strife-ridden area covering what was once Syria and Iraq.

On Thursday, May 18th, US aircraft launched strikes on a column of Assad regime vehicles including tanks and earth-movers, 18 miles from the town of al-Tanf, on the Syrian-Iraqi border. The strikes took place after the vehicles entered an agreed deconfliction zone around the town. US and British special forces are currently training “vetted partner forces,” i.e. Syrian Sunni Arab rebels, in the town.
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This political chess game has just begun, and the opening moves have given the Muslim world an advantage. Israel, beware.

By Meir Jolovitz, INN

The irony was hard to miss. The headlines throughout the free world this week were quite similar, each a version of the following: President Trump asks the Muslim world to unite against terror. His thirty-five minute speech was the essence of the inability to accept reality. In what is sure to be called by some his ‘magnum opus,’ it was rather a case of historical amnesia.

With the lights shining brightly on his much-anticipated visit to the Middle East, Trump addressed the leaders of fifty Muslim-majority nations gathered in Saudi Arabia and decided to distance – and divorce – himself from the ‘apology tour’ untaken eight years before by his predecessor. For those who wanted so much to see a new American foreign policy as a road to peace, it required the suspension, or loss, of objectivity. And many seemed willing. For the moment.
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