{"id":46142,"date":"2019-05-15T08:25:51","date_gmt":"2019-05-15T13:25:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=46142"},"modified":"2019-05-15T08:25:55","modified_gmt":"2019-05-15T13:25:55","slug":"top-british-commander-in-rare-public-dispute-with-us-over-iran-intelligence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=46142","title":{"rendered":"Top British Commander In Rare Public Dispute With US Over Iran Intelligence"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/news\/2019-05-15\/top-british-commander-rare-public-dispute-us-over-iran-intelligence\">Top British Commander In Rare Public Dispute With US Over Iran Intelligence<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">An awkward public exchange unfolded between the US military and its closest allied military coalition force during a Pentagon press conference on Tuesday wherein a top British commander in charge of anti-ISIS coalition forces rebuked White House claims on the heightened Iran threat.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>\u201cNo \u2013 there\u2019s been no increased threat from Iranian-backed forces in Iraq and Syria,\u201d&nbsp;<\/strong>British Army Maj. Gen. Christopher Ghika, a deputy head of the US-led coalition, asserted confidently in a&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.defense.gov\/Watch\/Live-Events\/#\/?currentVideo=19911\">video<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.defense.gov\/Watch\/Live-Events\/#\/?currentVideo=19911\">link briefing<\/a>&nbsp;from Baghdad to the Pentagon in response to a CNN question. \u201cWe\u2019re aware of that presence, clearly. And we monitor them along with a whole range of others because that\u2019s the environment we\u2019re in. We are monitoring the Shia militia groups. I think you\u2019re referring to carefully and&nbsp;<strong>if the threat level seems to go up then we\u2019ll raise our force protection measures accordingly<\/strong>.\u201d<a href=\"https:\/\/zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b792-20bd8d8fa069.storage.googleapis.com\/s3fs-public\/inline-images\/centcom%20British%20gen.png?itok=SBNKigKQ\"><em>British Army Maj. Gen. Christopher Ghika during the Pentagon briefing Tuesday. screenshot via OIR\/US Army<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The British commander&#8217;s words prompted a rare and swift rebuke from the US side hours later into the evening when US Central Command (CENTCOM) issued its own statement slamming Gen. Ghika&#8217;s words as inaccurate, insisting coalition troops in Iraq and Syria were an a &#8220;high level of alert&#8221; due to the &#8220;Iran threat&#8221;.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>\u201cRecent comments from OIR\u2019s deputy commander run counter to the identified credible threats available to intelligence from US and allies regarding Iranian-backed forces in the region,\u201d&nbsp;<\/strong>the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.thedailybeast.com\/centcom-slaps-down-top-uk-general-who-said-iran-threat-had-not-increased\">CENTCOM statement&nbsp;said<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cUS Central Command, in coordination with OIR, has increased the force posture level for all service members assigned to OIR in Iraq and Syria. As a result, OIR is now at&nbsp;<strong>a high level of alert<\/strong>&nbsp;as we continue to closely monitor credible and possibly imminent threats to US forces in Iraq.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Top British Commander In Rare Public Dispute With US Over Iran Intelligence An awkward public exchange unfolded between the US military and its closest allied military coalition force during a Pentagon press conference on Tuesday wherein a top British commander in charge of anti-ISIS coalition forces rebuked White House claims on the heightened Iran threat.&nbsp; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[93,25870,145,441,442,25869,776,14829],"class_list":["post-46142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-britain","tag-christopher-ghika","tag-cnn","tag-iran","tag-iraq","tag-military-intelligence","tag-syria","tag-us-central-command"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46142"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46142\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46143,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46142\/revisions\/46143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}