Alternative Insight
Iran's Copper-Plated Bullets
The effectiveness of the United States government's manipulation of the media and its citizens to support errant policies became obvious during a conversation that preceded a meeting at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington D.C. A remark that "Assad should leave," provoked a retaliatory. "It's a given that he will leave. It's only a question of when." The same person followed the retaliation with "Iran is helping to keep him in; the Alawites are Shi'is and Iran helps all Shi'is."These refrains closely follow media suggestionsAre Alawites Shi'is and does Iran help all Shi'is? The Ayatollahs have not assisted the Shi'is in Bahrain, many of whom are direct descendants of Iranians. As for Alawites being Shi'is, some of their practices are related to the Shi'a, but it is not plausible that the Iranian Shi'is would consider the Alawites as fellow Muslims.
From the Look Lex Encyclopedia
In their (Alawite) view, Ali, cousin and son-in-law of Muhammad, is the bearer of divine essence, and the second most elevated prophet (second only to Muhammad). )
The Alawites have 7 pillars in their religion. Five of these are similar to other Muslims, (the creed, the prayers, alms, pilgrimage to Mecca and fasting during the month of Ramadan), but the Alawites consider these as symbols, and therefore they do not practice what other Muslims consider as duties. The other 2 pillars are jihad, holy struggle, and waliya (devotion to Ali, and struggle against his enemies).
The Alawites celebrate the same festivals as most other Shi'is, like Idu l-Fitr, Idu l-Kabir and Ashura. But they also celebrate some of the same festivals as the Christians, like Christmas and Epiphany, as well as Nawruz, which originally is the Zoroastrian New Year.Similar to the belief that most characterizes the Shi'is, the Alawites, in a confused manner, recognize Ali (from where Alawite is derived) as the true heir to Muhammad. They are also "twelvers," those who believe in twelve divinely ordained leaders, known as the Twelve Imams. However, their attribution toward Ali is more complex. "Alawites regard Ali as the incarnation of the deity in the divine triad. As such, Ali is the Meaning; Muhammad, whom Ali created of his own light, is the Name; and Salman the Persian is the Gate. Alawi catechesis is expressed in the formula: 'I turn to the Gate; I bow before the Name; I adore the Meaning.' An Alawi prays in a manner patterned after the shahada (Muslim declaration of belief): 'I testify that there is no God but Ali.'" (http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/intro/islam-alawi.htm)
Muslims pray with "There is no god but God, and Muhammad is the messenger of God."
Shi'a Islam adds "and Ali is the wali (viceregent) of God"
Alawi Islam indicates that Ali is a deity.Can the lack of practicing the five (5) pillars of Islam, especially not attending Mosque to pray, qualify a person as a Muslim? Isn't it heresy to the Mullahs from Qom for a "Muslim" to superimpose on Muhammad, who Shi'is consider to be the messenger of God, the worship of Ali as a deity? Alawites also drink wine vociferously, a behavior that invites arrest in Iran. It is difficult to believe that Iran disregards Alawites less than it disregards Sunnis.
The oft repeated and never proved statement that the Islamic Republic is involved in the suppression of the Syrian opposition highlights media reports.
By Jonathon Burch, Mar 29, 2012
ANTAKYA, Turkey (Reuters) - The Syrian rebel fighter pulled a small copper-plated bullet from his trouser pocket, offering it as supporting evidence as he leveled charges of Iranian involvement in President Bashar al-Assad's army crackdown."These are what they are firing on us," rebel fighter Ayham told Reuters outside the Reyhanli refugee camp in Turkey's southern Hatay province, where thousands of Syrians have fled.
"These are Iranian bullets. I have done my military service, I know the Syrian army does not use these bullets," he said.
It might be little more than a wild guess, but it says a lot about people's view of Iran hereabouts, one clearly shared in Western capitals. During a U.N. Security Council briefing last week, the United States and Britain accused Iran of shipping weapons to Syria they said were being used against the Syrian people.
American and European security officials say Iran provides a broad array of assistance to Assad to help suppress anti-government protests, including high-tech surveillance technology. Iranian security officials have also traveled to Syria to advise Assad how to counter dissent, they said, with some staying on in Syria to advise Assad's forces.
It might need a ballistics expert to say where the bullet Ayham showed had come from, but Syrians speak Arabic, and witnesses told Reuters some of the gunmen operating alongside Assad's army were speaking another language. Not knowing Farsi, they could not identify that language, but made their own assumptions.
"It isn't just Syrian soldiers shooting at us, they have Iranians fighting with them too," said 23-year-old Khaled, another fighter in Reyhanli, overlooking the border with his homeland.
The men did not look like local people, from the village, in the way they dressed or comported themselves.
"We know they are Iranian, because they look Iranian and they are not speaking Arabic," he said.
The article ended with the usual qualification: "Though the accusations against Iran have been around since the early days of the one-year-old uprising, they are hard to verify as the Syrian government does not allow independent journalists and rights groups to enter Syria, except under closely controlled conditions." In simple language, the reports have not ben verified.
Logic tells us that Iranian involvement in the insurrection is preposterous.
One copper-plated bullet, which can be bought on the world market and is only assumed to be identified with Iran, marks the Islamic Republic as the culprit in the Syrian uprisings; one copper-plated bullet compared to the airplanes, tanks, drones, ballistic missiles and myriads of other weapons the United States furnishes to nations throughout the Middle East and North Africa for regimes to protect themselves.Also, it is doubtful that Syria needs a few copper-plated bullets from Iran to add to its arsenal of millions of projectiles. The Syrian army, which uses a small percentage of its tanks and personnel in attempts to halt the rebellion, has as much firepower as the Iranian army.
Syria has a fully equipped army of 304,000 and an active reserve of 450,500
Syria fields 4,950 Tanks and 2,160 towed artillery.
Syria has 830 aircraft. (Global Firepower-Syria)
Iran military consists of 545,000 under arms and another 650,000 in reserves.
Iran has 1,793 tanks and 1,575 towed artillery pieces.
The Iranian air force has 1030 aircraft. (Global Firepower-Iran)Is it necessary for Syria, which has sufficient armaments, to solicit assistance from an Iran, which has 3.5 times its population and not much more of a military?
As for Syrian intelligence agents assisting Syria, that is even more dubious.
Why would Syria invite assistance from foreigners who have no knowledge of the physical, cultural and logistical mechanisms that support the rebels, who have no proven expertise in internal warfare (not just protest suppression), who don't speak Arabic, and would only antagonize the populace against the government for providing the intelligence? No intelligence agency can be that counterproductive.Charges leveled against Hezbollah are equally spurious.
Haaretz, 06.04.12
Iran, Hezbollah significantly increase aid to Syria's Assad, by Amos Harel
The reports say that Iranian officers and Hezbollah militants have supplied arms to Syrian troops and trained them, to aid Assad in his months-long effort to crack down on anti-regime protests in the country. They also show that Hezbollah fighters were killed in clashes with rebel forces.Iran and Hezbollah have significantly stepped up support for embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad, Western intelligence reports have revealed.
Israeli defense officials told Haaretz this week that the potential fall of the Assad regime prompted Iran and Hezbollah to increase their involvement in the Syrian crisis. Iranian and Hezbollah assistance to Assad also includes the training of Syrian troops in urban warfare, as well as drone operations.
Note that the "intelligence reports" are actually from "Israeli defense officials." Isn't it in Israel's interest to charge Iran and Hezbollah with complicity in defeating the Syrian opposition? "Training of Syrian troops in urban warfare?" Do Hezbollah and Iran know more than Syria about urban warfare? What do either know about drone operations and why does the Syrian army have a need to know about drone operations? The Assads have fought numerous urban battles. Iran and Hezbollah have only been engaged in street battles. The Syrian military's urban warfare strategy is simple - long range artillery and tanks shell rebellious neighborhoods - not a very complicated strategy. Besides, is it beneficial for Hezbollah to send a few recruits to add to an army of 300,000 and invite world hostility against its organization?
Here is another article:
Simon Tisdall and foreign staff in Damascus
The Guardian, Sunday 8 May 2011
Iran has been helping the Syrian regime crack down on protesters, according to diplomatic sources.
Iran is playing an increasingly active role in helping the Syrian regime in its crackdown on pro-democracy protesters, according to western diplomatic sources in Damascus.The claim came as Syria's security forces backed by tanks intensified operations to suppress unrest in three new flashpoint towns on Sunday and it was confirmed that four women had been shot dead in the first use of force against an all-female demonstration.
A senior western diplomat in Damascus expanded on assertions, first made by White House officials last month, that Iran is advising president Bashar al-Assad's government on how to crush dissent.
The diplomat pointed to a "significant" increase in the number of Iranian personnel in Syria since protests began in mid-March. Mass arrests in door-to-door raids, similar to those that helped to crush Iran's "green revolution" in 2009, have been stepped up in the past week.
Note that the article starts with "according to diplomatic sources," and then quotes one unknown and unidentified "senior western diplomat." Evidently, Assad doesn't know how to ring doorbells and make unconfirmed mass arrests. His security forces need "special instruction" from a foreign entity to ring doorbells and knock down doors.
The exaggerated and loose play with unconfirmed reports characterizes all confrontations with manufactured enemies.. A militaristic right wing spoke effortlessly, as if it were a given, of China manipulating North Vietnam to fight against the United States. The obvious facts that China was not friendly with Ho Chi Minh, halted all trains delivering arms from the Soviet Union to the Vietnamese, and even fought a war against Vietnam in 1979 did not deter the conspiracy theorists.
Iran has replaced the People's Republic as the public "whipping boy." In Iraq, in Afghanistan, in the Israeli/Palestine conflict, and now in Syria, we hear a consistent refrain of Iranian interference. U.S. District Judge George B. Daniels ruling "that Iran and Hezbollah materially and directly supported al Qaeda in the September 11, 2001 attacks and are legally responsible for damages to hundreds of family members of 9/11 victims who are plaintiffs in the case," follow the pattern of unsubstantiated stories becoming facts and the illogical dominating the rational. Gareth porter in an article Crackpot Anti-Islam Activists, "Serial Fabricators" and the Tale of Iran and 9/11 , 29 December 2011, Truthout | Report, cleverly challenges the trial testimony. Thought demolishes the verdict.
Iranian Abolghasem Mesbahi, one of several dissidents, such as Iraq's Ahmed Abdel Hadi Chalabi, who supplied false intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapon programs, and Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, known as "Curveball", an Iraqi whose claim that he had worked as a chemical engineer at a plant that manufactured mobile biological weapons was subsequently proven false, provided principal testimony that convinced Judge Daniels in his decision. Some of the testimony was obviously spurious.
Mesbahi said that in 2000 Iran used front companies to obtain a Boeing 757- 767-777 flight simulator for training the terrorists. Several qualifications with that statement: (1) The chronologies of the paths taken by the 9/11 terrorists have not indicated any time spent in Iran from year 2000 until the fatal day. The Free Republic and The CyberCemetery (an archive of government websites from defunct government agencies and commissions that issued their final reports), both follow all the conspirators, and neither has any of them in Iran during that period. (2) If Iran could provide flight simulation, then why did the Mullahs not provide actual airplane flight training? Would not that have been preferable to exposing the conspirators in the United states? (3) Why would Iran use a front company (was that proven) to purchase the flight simulator for any reason except that they could not purchase it by any other means? Is it mysterious for a nation that has a thirty five airlines to purchase trainers for popular airplanes that can be bought on a secondary market.
Another dubious testimony came from members of the 9/11 Commission staff, who "testified that Iran aided the hijackers by concealing their travel through Iran to access al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan. Iranian border inspectors refrained from stamping the passports of 8 to 10 of the 9/11 hijackers because evidence of travel through Iran would have prevented the hijackers from obtaining visas at U.S. embassies abroad or gaining entry into the United States." (1) How would the Iranians know these individuals were planning an attack and needed U.S. visas? (2) It is doubtful that the passports used by the 9/11 conspirators were the same as the passports with which they traveled before and not specially prepared before their entries into the United States.(3) The proposition that Shi'a Iran would have any dealings with Saudi Arab Salafists is strange. Al Qaeda elements treat Shi'is as heretics. Neither trusts the other. The Islamic Republic and Al Qaeda cooperating in a plan to attack the United States is as likely as Israel and Hamas planning a joint attack against Iran.
If all this seems serious but harmless, contemplate the decisive role the spurious reports play in influencing the public to support contrived policies. It is also uncomfortable to note how the desperate urgings of an aggrieved populace are used to generate hate and to support attacks on others while attacks on the violated continue unimpeded. The Syrian opposition might learn that their "greatest supporters" don't fully absorb the pleas and violence; they prefer to use the Syrian tragedy to gain support for committing violence against others.
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