Connect with us

Middle East

POLITICO: Pentagon knew about attack at the airport gate hours before

Published

on

main hq pentagon washington dc

[brid autoplay=”true” video=”851213″ player=”23886″ title=”Sara%20Carter%20’Blood%20Will%20Be%20On%20Biden’s%20Hands’%20If%20Americans%20Die%20In%20Afghanistan” duration=”286″ description=”Sara Carter, Fox News contributor, and Peter Hegseth, Fox News Co-Host, discuss American’s in Afghanistan on ‘Hannity.'” uploaddate=”2021-08-25″ thumbnailurl=”//cdn.brid.tv/live/partners/18168/thumb/851213_t_1629894499.png” contentUrl=”//cdn.brid.tv/live/partners/18168/sd/851213.mp4″]


By Jenny Goldsberry

Top Pentagon officials knew about the attack Hamid Karzai International Airport about 24 hours before it happened. According to a report from Politico Monday, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin warned world leaders around the world to prepare for an imminent “mass casualty event.” Pakistan’s ISIS K ultimately committed the suicide bombing.

The news organization received detailed notes from three classified phone calls. That Wednesday, at about 4:30 PM in Afghanistan, Austin relayed his concerns.

“I don’t believe people get the incredible amount of risk on the ground,” Austin said then.

Later, at about 12:30 AM in Afghanistan, officials talked about the high risk at Abbey Gate. This was the gate Americans were instructed to gather at to enter the airport. They attempted to close it, but their British allies needed it open for the accelerated evacuation of their personnel. Previously, they had been based out of Baron Hotel.

Politico’s source released these notes much earlier, but the Department of Defense prevented them from publishing them any sooner than Monday.

Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby called it an “unlawful disclosure” in a statement. “As soon as we became aware of the material divulged to the reporter, we engaged Politico at the highest levels to prevent the publication of information that would put our troops and our operations at the airport at greater risk,” Kirby said. “We condemn the unlawful disclosure of classified information and oppose the publication of a story based on it while a dangerous operation is ongoing.”

The White House did not comment to Politico.

Since then, two ISIS K targets were killed in a U.S. counterterrorism operation.

Read the full article here.

You can follow Jenny Goldsberry on Twitter @jennyjournalism.

You may like

Continue Reading

Israel

Biden Administration Sacrificing Saudi-Israel Deal on Altar of Palestinian Statehood

Published

on

Saudi crown prince

Iran kicked out one-third of its nuclear inspectors. The Biden administration is on the verge of getting Iran to release five hostages in exchange for unfreezing $6 billion of Iranian cash, and potentially five Iranian prisoners held in US custody. As Iran is on the march, a breakthrough in Middle East peace can’t come fast enough.

The best way to check Iranian ambitions in the region would be the normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel. While such a deal would be “tectonic,” the Biden administration is destroying the prospects for normalization because it continues to be obsessed with linking the deal to Palestinian nationalism.

More than any of the known Palestinian demands to date, the Biden administration is fixated on Palestinian statehood. And the administration continues to browbeat Israel on that point. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has recently claimed that both Saudi Arabia and the Biden administration view a two-state solution an important piece to any deal. Previously, Blinken told Israel’s minister of strategic affairs, Ron Dermer, that Israel would be “misreading the situation” if it doesn’t think that significant concessions to the Palestinians would be required to broker a Saudi-Israel deal. White House National Security Council spokesman Jake Sullivan also told Dermer that that Israel will need to give significant concessions to the Palestinians so that the Biden administration can sell the deal to Democrats in Congress.

One unconfirmed Saudi press report stated that the Saudis have walked away from talks, due to concerns that Israel wouldn’t agree to placate the Palestinians. However, both an American and an Israeli official have asserted that that report is false.

What is more likely is that the Saudis are taking a pragmatic, not absolutist, approach to a Palestinian track. According to an unnamed Arab official who is familiar with recent talks between Saudi Arabia and the Palestinian Authority (PA) earlier this month, Saudi Arabia is now communicating to the PA that it is willing to abandon the two-state solution as a pre-condition for normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel, and that the PA needs to acclimate its demands to that fact. Additionally, Saudi Arabia has proposed to re-start aid to the PA, halted since 2016, in efforts to get the PA to at least tacitly support normalization.

The Israeli response to Palestinian nationalism is much more publicly opposed. Israeli National Security Advisor Tzachi Hanegbi has rejected the idea of Palestinian statehood as part of the deal. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said the concept of Israeli concessions to the Palestinians as a part of normalization is “a fiction” as such a deal “has nothing to do with Judea and Samaria [commonly referred to in the West as the ‘West Bank’].”

Israel’s hostility to Palestinian nationalism is well founded. As the Oslo Accords turn 30 years old, the so called “peace process” has failed to bring peace to Israel, as Israel has had to defend itself against at least five warsand countless smaller violent conflicts against the Palestinians since 1993. PA President Mahmoud Abbas continued to show his true bigoted face with a recent anti-Semitic diatribe, part and parcel of the systemic anti-Semitism and incitement to violence of the PA.

The Biden administration continues to stand in the way of Saudi Arabia’s normalization of relations with Israel, as it continues to pursue maximalist demands on Palestinian statehood. This is a non-starter for Israel, and not a top concern for Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia, like Israel, is primarily focused on using the deal to leverage its strength against Iran – as Saudi Arabia is looking to secure US support for advanced weapons, a NATO-like alliance, and civilian nuclear energy. In order to make a sustainable counterweight against Iranian aggression, the Biden administration must jettison its demands for Palestinian statehood, and at the very least answer Saudi concerns with a serious counter-offer. Failure to buttress Israel, Saudi Arabia and our Gulf allies will likely result in a resurgent Iran.

You may like

Continue Reading
Advertisement
-->

Trending Now

Advertisement

Trending