{"id":1556,"date":"2013-05-18T13:50:30","date_gmt":"2013-05-18T19:50:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/?p=1556"},"modified":"2013-05-20T13:53:00","modified_gmt":"2013-05-20T19:53:00","slug":"cia-chief-john-brennan-makes-surprise-israel-visit-for-syria-talks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/cia-chief-john-brennan-makes-surprise-israel-visit-for-syria-talks\/","title":{"rendered":"CIA chief John Brennan makes surprise Israel visit for Syria talks"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3>Unannounced meeting with PM Netanyahu and senior Israeli figures comes amid concerns over Syrian weapons<\/h3>\n<p>by Harriet Sherwood, The Guardian<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/world\/2013\/may\/17\/cia-chief-israel-syria-visit\">click here for original article<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The\u00a0<a title=\"More from guardian.co.uk on CIA\" href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/world\/cia\">CIA<\/a>\u00a0chief has made an unexpected visit to\u00a0<a title=\"More from guardian.co.uk on Israel\" href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/world\/israel\">Israel<\/a>\u00a0to meet senior political and military figures to discuss the deteriorating security situation in neighbouring\u00a0<a title=\"More from guardian.co.uk on Syria\" href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/world\/syria\">Syria<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"More from guardian.co.uk on John Brennan\" href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/world\/john-brennan\">John Brennan<\/a>, who took up his post two months ago, met the Israeli prime minister,\u00a0<a title=\"More from guardian.co.uk on Binyamin Netanyahu\" href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/world\/binyamin-netanyahu\">Binyamin Netanyahu<\/a>, defence minister, Moshe Ya&#8217;alon, military chief of staff, Benny Gantz, and Mossad chief, Tamir Pardo, according to reports in Israel media.<\/p>\n<p>The unannounced meetings followed two Israeli air strikes on weapons stores near Damascus a fortnight ago. Israel has repeatedly warned it will take action to prevent advanced or chemical weapons being transferred to the Syrian regime&#8217;s Lebanese ally, Hezbollah, or falling into the hands of jihadist groups fighting alongside the Syrian opposition.<\/p>\n<p>According to a report in the Israeli paper Yedioth Ahronoth, the visit stemmed from &#8220;the American fear of escalation in the region against the backdrop of [Hezbollah leader Hassan] Nasrallah&#8217;s threats to act against Israel in the Golan Heights and the American sense that Israel is disappointed by the ineffectuality of the\u00a0<a title=\"More from guardian.co.uk on Obama administration\" href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/world\/obama-administration\">Obama administration<\/a>\u00a0with regard to the ongoing deterioration in Syria.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It is assessed that Brennan was sent to Israel to co-ordinate a joint policy between the two countries and prevent Israel from taking action on its own in Syria.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>On Wednesday, the\u00a0<a title=\"\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2013\/05\/16\/world\/middleeast\/israeli-official-signals-possibility-of-more-syria-strikes.html\">New York Times quoted a senior Israeli official<\/a>\u00a0as saying the Jewish state was considering further strikes to prevent the transfer of advanced weaponry to Islamist militants in the region. &#8220;If Syrian President Assad reacts by attacking Israel, or tries to strike Israel through his terrorist proxies, he will risk forfeiting his regime, for Israel will retaliate,&#8221; the official \u2013 thought to be a high-level political figure \u2013 said.<\/p>\n<p>The Syrian government has warned it will retaliate against further military action by Israel, which would risk embroiling the US ally in a regional conflict.<\/p>\n<p>Two shells landed in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights this week. An unknown Palestinian group, the Abdul Qader al-Husseini brigades,\u00a0<a title=\"\" href=\"http:\/\/www.jpost.com\/Defense\/Palestinian-group-lay-claim-to-rocket-fire-in-Golan-313308\">said it had fired the missiles<\/a>, which, if true, would make it the first time Israeli-controlled territory had been targeted. &#8220;We are avenging all our martyrs that we lost in our war with the Zionist enemy,&#8221; the brigades said.<\/p>\n<p>Three observers with Undof, the UN peacekeeping force in the Golan, were abducted by Syrian opposition forces and later released on Wednesday, the third such incident in the past two months.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Unannounced meeting with PM Netanyahu and senior Israeli figures comes amid concerns over Syrian weapons by Harriet Sherwood, The Guardian click here for original article The\u00a0CIA\u00a0chief has made an unexpected visit to\u00a0Israel\u00a0to meet senior political and military figures to discuss the deteriorating security situation in neighbouring\u00a0Syria. John Brennan, who took up his post two months [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1557,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/CIA-chief-John-Brennan-008.jpg?fit=460%2C276&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1556"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1556\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1558,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1556\/revisions\/1558"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}