/CIG/ Telegram | Counter Intelligence Global

🇮🇱🇮🇶🇮🇷🇮🇶 - The Iraqi government and Iranian-backed Shiite militias received two unusual warning messages over the past two weeks — one from an Arab country that maintains good relations with both the US and Iran, and another from a Western intelligence agency — containing 'serious' information about an imminent, large-scale Israeli military strike in Iraq. The messages warned that 'the threat level is extremely serious', and that Israel is now saying it has received a green light from the US to act unilaterally in the Iraqi theater of operations. A Western diplomat said that the impression U.S. officials were getting from Iraqi officials was that they were underestimating the reality of the situation and needed to make decisive decisions to avoid risks. - Asharq Al Awsat | @thewarreporterr

With Iran out of the picture, Israel will effectively annex Lebanon south of the Litani River, southern Syria up to the suburbs of Damascus, and most likely Gaza and the West Bank. This would clear the way for Lebanon, Syria, and Saudi Arabia to join the Abraham Accords, which Netanyahu intends to refashion into a military alliance. Israel will remain the only nuclear power in the Middle East, retain its qualitative military hardware edge over its allies, and dominate the Middle East. At this point, they will remove themselves from the "golden handcuffs" of US aid and pursue strategic autonomy from the United States. Since Israel is holding elections in the spring and Netanyahu is still attempting to secure a pardon from the Israeli president, it would seem that strikes against Iran are most likely to take place in the first few months of 2026.

Netanyahu is confirmed to visit President Trump for the 5th time this year on December 29th where it is reported he will ask the United States to participate in a second air campaign against Iran to diminish their ballistic missile arsenal. As I said earlier in the year, this was the inevitable outcome of the 12-day War because Operation Midnight Hammer made nuclear diplomacy almost impossible and because Israel continues to seek the comprehensive, strategic defeat of Iran. Israel is looking to compel the disarmament of Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq, and to deliver a decisive blow against Iran's ability to strike Israel with ballistic missiles. This is all part of Israel's 3-prong plan to destroy Iran's military capabilities: its nuclear stockpile, proxy network, and missile arsenal. In 2023-2024, Israel crippled Hamas, Hezbollah, and ousted Assad, in 2025 they rendered Natanz and Fordow inoperable. Once the proxy network is dismantled and Iran's missile-building capacity is destroyed, Iran will be completely defenseless and unable to retaliate against Israel for a decapitation strike on the Islamic regime or covert regime change efforts.

🛡 🇺🇦 🇷🇺 Ukraine lost 87% of its Abrams tanks in under two years. Australia's 49 replacement tanks arrive as the 68-ton breakthrough weapon has been forced into a different role It is now used not as a spearpoint but a "shielded hammer" — only surviving in a symphony of sensors, jammers, and screens. https://euromaidanpress.com/2025/12/19/australia-completes-delivery-of-49-abrams-tanks-now-they-must-survive-the-drones/

📝 🇺🇸 🇨🇳 The U.S. crackdown on Latin America is largely about pushing China out of the neighborhood and pivoting to a strategy of hemispheric defense instead of trying to contain China on its own turf. The trends in the below map in Latin America are unacceptable to Washington: 📎 MazMHussain

🇿🇦 🇺🇸 Joost Strydom on X:

INTERNATIONAL FRIENDS; an Explanation of my toast, if you are not familiar with the Great Trek. My ancestors moved away from British colonial rule imposed on them towards freedom. This is why we Orania is important to us. Freedom cannot be given or grabbed, it must be BUILT. And building something is a conscious decision. @WietsJBuys

📎 Joost Strydom

What is Patriot Front's goal? ⭐️ Visit our FAQ section: patriotfront.us/#faq ⭐️ See what we do, and why: patriotfront.us/action

📝 🇺🇸 🏴‍☠️ "We're seeing literally the breakdown of the rules of law on the high seas." - Sal Mercogliano 📎 What's Going on With Shipping

For future reference if/when Russian, Chinese tankers are impounded.

📖 🚢 'Consider those big, fat, slow ships.' 📝 Excerpt from Peter Zeihan's The End of the World Is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization  "Quick war story, in this case, the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s: By 1983 the conflict had reached a stalemate, inducing both countries to fling missiles at one another’s shipping in attempts to strangle their opponent economically. Altogether some three hundred vessels were struck. About fifty were disabled, and a dozen sunk.Compared to the size of global shipping at the time, it was barely a footnote. But that handful of events nearly destroyed the global . . . insurance sector Imagine if a similar event were to occur today"

🇺🇸 🇨🇳 🇻🇪 The U.S. Seized a Second Tanker from Venezuela | Sanctioned Oil in the Crosshairs 🚢 In this episode, Sal Mercogliano — a maritime historian at Campbell University and former merchant mariner — discusses the United States seizure of the MT Centuries off the coast of Venezuela on December 20, 2035 📎 Sal Mercogliano

🇺🇸 🇨🇳 🇻🇪 The boarding and seizing of Centuries, unlike SKIPPER, will raise issues regarding the legality and authoriity for the U.S. boarding. - Sal Mercogliano MT Centuries IMO: 9206310 is Panama-flagged, Hong Kong-owned, and does not have any sanctions from OFAC or any other country. She has moved sanctioned cargo in the past and has conducted questionable ship-to-ship transfers at sea. The ship came in from Singapore and started spoofing AIS on 24 Nov off the northern coast of Brazil. The ship loaded 1.7 M bbls of Merey crude at the Jose Terminal on Dec 9 which is in violation of U.S. sanctions. CENTURIES appears to have: ▶️ Valid registry: Panama ▶️Not clear insurance: American Steamship Owners Mutual P&I up to Nov 2024 ▶️Classification: Overseas Marine Since the ship has valid registration, Art 110 (d) of UNCLOS does not apply. What we dont know is if the US obtained permission from Panama to board the ship and potentially seize the ship. There are a lot of questions as the U.S. expands this program against tankers servicing Venezuela. 📎 Sal Mercogliano

🇺🇸 🇨🇳 🇻🇪 The vessel, which was flying a Panamanian flag, was not on a list of tankers under U.S. sanctions. 🛢 But the vessel involved in the recent boarding, called the Centuries, is not on a list of tankers under U.S. sanctions that is publicly maintained by the Treasury Department. Industry sources said the cargo belongs to an established China-based oil trader with a history of taking Venezuelan crude oil to Chinese refineries. 🇵🇦 International law states a ship may be boarded if there are reasonable grounds to believe it is not legitimately registered to the state whose flag it is flying. The U.S. official said that the Coast Guard was trying to determine if the tanker’s Panama registration was valid. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/20/us/politics/us-coast-guard-venezuela-oil-tanker.html

🇺🇸 🇻🇪 🇨🇳 In a pre-dawn action early this morning on Dec. 20, the US Coast Guard with the support of the Department of War apprehended an oil tanker that was last docked in Venezuela. 📎 Secretary Kristi Noem

🇺🇸 🇻🇪 🇨🇳 The U.S. Coast Guard, with assistance from Navy, interdicted and seized the Panamanian-flagged, Chinese-owned sanctioned crude oil supertanker M/T CENTURIES, today in the Southern Caribbean Sea, off the coast of Venezuela, as the Trump Administration escalates its campaign of pressure against the the Government of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, officials told the Wall Street Journal. Previous reports that the ship was the Comoros Islands-flagged, Indian-owned tanker M/T DIANCHI, appear to have been false, though the vessel does remain a target of sanctions and is currently operating off the coast of Venezuela. 📎 OSINTdefender

🇺🇸🇵🇸⚡️ — The U.S. has drafted a 32-page Gaza reconstruction plan dubbed “Project Sunrise,” aimed at rebuilding the devastated territory into a high-tech coastal metropolis, according to WSJ. ➡️ The plan was developed over the past 45 days by a team led by Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, with involvement from senior White House aide Josh Gruenbaum, input from Israeli officials, and consultations with private contractors. The proposal was compiled as a “sensitive but unclassified” PowerPoint presentation. ➡️ The blueprint envisions transforming Gaza from “tents to penthouses” and “poverty to prosperity,” but leaves major gaps: it does not say where Gaza’s roughly 2 million displaced residents would live during reconstruction, does not identify specific funding countries or companies, and assumes a stable post-war political and security environment that U.S. officials acknowledge may never materialize. ➡️ The total projected cost is $112.1 billion over 10 years. The U.S. would act as an “anchor” backer, covering about 20% of the cost through grants and debt guarantees. ➡️ U.S. officials told WSJ that the plan has already been shown to prospective donors, including wealthy Gulf states, Turkey, and Egypt.

🇺🇸 🇨🇳 Trump: "We have to be unified. China is unified because they have one vote -- that's President Xi. He says 'do it' and that's the end of that. We have a different system." 📎 unusual_whales

🏴‍☠️ 🇺🇸 🇻🇪 The "Blockade" [or Embargo] of Venezuela | John Paul Jones Edition In this episode, Sal Mercogliano — a maritime historian at Campbell University and former merchant mariner — discusses President Donald Trump's announcement of a "Blockade" of Venezuela and what it means for shipping. 📎 What's Going on With Shipping?

🛰 🌏 🏴‍☠️ "It never ceases to amaze me how much you can get away with on the open ocean. 🔶️ Beyond the fascinating fact that there are still places one can hide from a government in 2024, better global coverage of the kind of data needed to fill in the black areas of the map, would certainly be in the public interest. 🔶️ 'Here There Be Monsters' is a choice, and better (or cheaper) data would help OSINT investigators, researchers, environmental advocates, and public agencies in poorer countries, track and understand the problems caused by these dark vessels." 📎 Michael Cruickshank

🛰 🌏 🏴‍☠️ "You might think that in a time of satellite megaconstellations all of the Earth's surface would be imaged regularly, & if something big happened, we'd see it. ⬛️ Well, you'd be wrong... 🔶️ The truth is that most well-known EO satellites don't image areas of the ocean away from land. 🔶️ It is surprisingly difficult to get an exact answer for 'why' here. I've heard different combinations of power-saving, downlink limitations, & land-optimized instrumentation. 🔶️ It's worth noting here, that I am talking about satellites with a high enough resolution to monitor human activity on the open ocean (eg. vessels), not lower resolution sats that monitor sea state or help with weather forecasting (eg. Sentinel-3). 🔶️ The coverage of major EO satellite platforms used by OSINT researchers, including Sentinel-1, Sentinel-2, and Landsat can be seen below. 🔶️ The (non-open-source) PlanetScope constellation of Dove/SuperDove satellites, is also frequently used by OSINT researchers and covers coastal areas, the Mediterranean, Persian Gulf, and South China Sea. Govt. clients may be able to access more areas. 🔶️ Outside of these platforms (and the areas they cover), your only option would be to task a high-resolution optical or SAR satellite to image an area of the ocean at an extremely high cost. Moreover, you would need forewarning about where/when something was about to happen. 🔶️ Notably, the same trade-offs (likely) exist for current generation spy satellites, in that high resolution = narrow field of view, and thus necessitates foreknowledge when combined with the limitations imposed by orbital mechanics. 🔶️ The end result of this is that >50% of the Earth's surface is simply unmonitored in any useful way. A ship with its AIS transponder off, or spoofed, can simply disappear. Illegal cargos can be traded, sanctions can be dodged, and fisheries plundered." 📎 Michael Cruickshank