Last Wednesday there was a massive explosion on a ship at Dubai’s Jebel Ali Port. The blast shook the city, and the fireball was seen for miles around. Although authorities are explaining it away saying it was “friction and extreme heat”, it was 1:00 a.m. and the ship was already in port. This has all the fingerprints of an attack. If you want to hear my take on the explosion, watch my Breaking News Update.
Much of the Middle East is in turmoil. The reason? No electricity. In Iran, extreme heat reaching well over 50°C/122°F has caused a demand for power that far exceeds the supply. Large swaths of the country are either without electricity or experiencing regular power outages. This has caused unprecedented infighting within the new presidential administration. It also has people taking to the streets, some even demanding “death to the dictator” referring to Ayatollah Khamenei. You can learn much more about this crisis by watching my most recent Middle East Update.
Because Iran is a power source for other countries, their situation has had terrible consequences in surrounding nations, particularly Iraq. For the first time since the Gulf War, power went out at Baghdad airport. Water is scarce and there is no electricity for refrigerators. People are suffering. The situation is made that much worse by militia groups who have blown up more than 70 high voltage towers in order to make the misery worse.
After satellite photos appeared showing significant damage to a centrifuge production factory, Iran was forced to retract their earlier claim that a late June sabotage attack was thwarted. The pics, which showed a huge portion of the roof missing, led Iranian cabinet spokesman Ali Rabiei to explain that a small hole had been made in the roof, so they had to remove the entire roof to make the repair. Rabiei also took time to blame Israel for the attack, to which Israel informally responded, with a shrug of its shoulders, “Centrifuge? What’s a centrifuge?”
An increase in drone attacks in Iraq has the U.S. concerned. These UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) are especially dangerous because they can fly under radar coverage. On Monday, a drone was shot down at Ein al-Assad air base at Baghdad, near the U.S. embassy which is on site, with no casualties. The next day, a drone laden with explosives hit the airport in Erbil as it targeted the U.S. base on the grounds. Rocket attacks also continue. Yesterday, fourteen rockets hit the Ein al-Assad air base, wounding two people. Then, this morning, another two rockets were fired at the embassy. One was diverted by the embassy’s anti-rocket system and the other fell harmlessly outside the perimeter.
Meanwhile, just across the border in Syria, the U.S. base at the al-Omar oil field came under rocket attack. Iraqi militias claim that these attacks are in retaliation for the U.S. strikes on the Iraq-Syria border which targeted refrigerated trucks that were carrying missiles into Iraq.
All these attacks are part of a greater strategy by Iran to create a Shi’ite land-bridge to Syria and Lebanon, in order to shuttle weapons and people. In order to effect this plan, the U.S. must be out of the way. These attacks are part of the pressure being applied to make that happen. It will be interesting to watch what the current U.S. administration will do in response. I talk more about this in my most recent Middle East Update. Interestingly, the origins of this northern Syria/Iraq weapons network plays a small role in my upcoming thriller, Operation Joktan.
If Iran is hoping to see the U.S. completely out of Iraq and Syria, a quick look at Afghanistan will give them hope. The U.S. military slipped out of Bagram Airfield in the wee hours of Friday morning, leaving the Afghan military to discover the disappearance three hours later. When they went, they left behind 3.5 million items, including bottled water, MREs, thousands of civilian vehicles without their keys, and hundreds of armored vehicles. They also bequeathed to the Afghan military 5,000 Taliban prisoners.
Israeli fighter jets attacked a Hamas terrorist weapons manufacturing site last Thursday night. The strike came in retaliation for the recommencing after a two-week hiatus of incendiary balloons being sent over the border from Gaza into Israel. The strikes then continued over the weekend.
It is hard to imagine how peace will ever come between Israel and the Palestinians. While Israel has held forth overture after overture, the Palestinian Authority and Hamas have refused every offer. Instead, what we find taking place in Gaza is a camp called “Pioneers of Liberation”. At this camp, children and teens are trained in handling weapons and attacking Israeli police. This is their way of ensuring that their hate will be generational.
In good news, for the first time in 25 years, a Royal Moroccan military plane has landed in Israel. The C-130 descended to a runway at Hatzor Air Base near Ashdod in order to participate in a multinational air force exercise later this month. Peace just keeps breaking out!
