© REUTERS
Benjamin Netanyahu climbs out after a visit inside the Rahav, the fifth submarine in the fleet, after it arrived in Haifa port January 12, 2016.
China will operate Haifa port, near Israel's alleged nuclear-armed submarines, and it seems no one in Israel thought about the strategic ramifications
Shaul Horev dropped a bombshell, but hardly anyone noticed. Horev, an Israel Defense Forces reservist brigadier general who has served, among other posts, as the navy chief of staff and chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, is currently director of the Research Center for Maritime Policy and Strategy at the University of Haifa. At the end of August, the center held a conference, to which participants from the United States were invited, to examine security issues relating to Israel and the Mediterranean region.
In an interview with the religious-Zionist media outlet
Arutz Sheva, Prof. Horev noted that one topic that came up at the event was Chinese investments in Mediterranean ports, and in Israel in particular. Pointing out that
a Chinese company will soon start operating Haifa Port, he said that Israel needs to create a mechanism that will examine Chinese investments to ensure that they do not put Israel's security interests at risk.
"When China acquires ports," Horev said, "it does so under the guise of maintaining a trade route from the Indian Ocean via the Suez Canal to Europe, such as the port of Piraeus in Greece. Does an economic horizon like this have a security impact? We are not weighing that possibility sufficiently.
One of the senior American figures at the conference raised the question of whether the U.S. Sixth Fleet can see Haifa as a home port. In light of the Chinese takeover, the question is no longer on the agenda."
Comment: We wonder if this was just a blunder from someone on the Israeli chain of command, or if Israel has got an idea about who's going to be 'the last global power standing'. Speaking of which:
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross: China is 'out of bullets' to retaliate against Trump's new tariffs
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said Tuesday that new U.S. tariffs on China are aimed at modifying Beijing's behavior and leveling the playing field for American companies competing there.
Ross appeared on CNBC the morning after the administration announced that President Donald Trump will impose 10 percent tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports, with those duties rising to 25 percent at the end of the year.
In response, China said it has no choice but to retaliate, accusing the U.S. of not being sincere. China said talks on an equal footing are the only way to resolve the issue.
China is "out of bullets" to retaliate because its imports to the U.S. are nearly four times larger than the U.S. exports to China, Ross said on "Squawk Box." [...]
Israel may see which way the wind is blowing (Eurasian integration supplanting US hegemony), but it will undoubtedly seek to ensure ITS version of Eurasian integration (in which Iran, for instance, remains underdeveloped) prevails.
Which, long-term, is pie-in-the-sky unlikely. Sadly, before that horizon even gets here, Israel and friends may have wrecked the chessboard for everyone.
Comment: This was a threat. The message was "we can decapitate the Syrian govt if we damn well want to."
One day later, the Israelis launched what appears to be a coordinated operation with the French military to confuse Syrian air defence systems into shooting down a friendly plane. That may not have been specifically intended; we might have learned today that Russian S-400s took out a Turkish jet, or attacked a US ship. But the provocation certainly was done with a view to provoking something in order to 'alter the facts on the ground'.
Step-by-step the Israelis are taking increasingly overt actions that betray the pretexts used to justify their - and wider Western - intervention in Syria. With the false-flag chemical attack ruse rumbled, they just went ahead and attacked Syrian positions close to the frontline with al-Qaeda/ISIS proxy forces.
This time they're not even bothering to claim that they were attacking 'Iranian' positions in Syria. They executed an explicit attack against multiple Syrian positions, coupled with a barely-veiled attack directly against Russian forces. Its purpose may have been to somehow torpedo yesterday's landmark deal between Turkey and Russia, which the West - because it was calling for 'peace' in Idlib - had no choice but to publicly support.
Thankfully, Russia didn't respond rashly, as usual. Israel may try something like this again, and cause even greater 'accidental fire' - like a Russian missile hitting an American target, for example. At which point the US is 'embroiled' deeper in Syria and has 'just cause' for remaining there. That is apparently what is uppermost in Putin's mind; leaving the US with no 'just cause' for its heavy military presence in the Middle East.