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Page added on May 5, 2013
Israel Targeted Iranian Missiles in Syrian Attack
The airstrike that Israeli warplanes carried out in Syria overnight on Thursday was directed at a shipment of advanced surface-to-surface missiles from Iran that Israel believed was intended for Hezbollah, the militant Lebanese organization, American officials said Saturday.
It was the second time in four months that Israel has carried out an attack in Syria intended to disrupt the pipeline of weapons that runs from there to Hezbollah. And the raid highlighted the mounting stakes for Hezbollah and Israel as Syria becomes more chaotic.
Iran and Hezbollah have both backed President Bashar al-Assad in the Syrian civil war, now in its third year. But as fighting in Syria escalates, they also have a powerful interest in expediting the delivery of advanced weapons to Hezbollah in case Mr. Assad loses his grip on power and Syria ceases to be an effective channel for funneling weapons from Iran.
The missiles that were the target of the Israeli raid had been shipped from Iran and were being stored in a warehouse at Damascus International Airport when they were struck, according to an American official.
Iran has sought to use the threat of a Hezbollah missile attack against Israeli territory as a means of building up its ally and deterring Israel from conducting airstrikes on Iranian nuclear installations that Israeli and American officials believe are part of an Iranian nuclear weapons program.
In Lebanon, some analysts said they believed that a strong Hezbollah could also emerge as a powerful ally for Mr. Assad if he is forced to abandon Damascus, the Syrian capital, and take refuge in a rump Iranian-backed state on the Syrian coast, a region that abuts the Hezbollah-controlled northern Bekaa Valley.
“The relationship between Hezbollah and the Assad regime is stronger now,” said Talal Atrissi, a professor at Lebanese University in Beirut who has good relations with Hezbollah. If Mr. Assad falls, Hezbollah knows the axis of Syria, Hezbollah and Iran will be greatly weakened, he said.
Israel, for its part, has repeatedly cautioned that it will not allow Hezbollah to receive “game changing” weapons that could threaten the Israeli heartland even if a new Syrian government takes power.
As the Obama administration considers how to dissuade Mr. Assad from ordering a chemical weapons attack — the use of such weapons, the White House has said, would cross a “red line” — Israel, by striking the warehouse, is clearly showing that it is prepared to stand behind the red lines it has set.
“The Israelis are saying, ‘O.K., whichever way the civil war is going, we are going to keep our red lines, which are different from Obama’s,’ ” said Ehud Yaari, an Israel-based fellow of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
On Friday, SANA, the official Syrian news agency, reported an attack on the Damascus airport by Syrian rebels firing rockets at an aircraft and fuel dump — an account that American officials say may have been intended to obscure the fact that the target was a warehouse full of missiles.
An American official, who asked not to be identified because he was discussing intelligence reports, said the targeted shipment consisted of Iranian-made Fateh-110’s — a mobile, accurate, solid-fueled missile that has the range to strike Tel Aviv and much of Israel from southern Lebanon, and that represents a considerable improvement over the liquid-fueled Scud missile. Two prominent Israeli defense analysts said the shipment included Scud D’s, a missile that Syrians have developed from Russian weapons with a range of up to 422 miles — long enough to reach Eilat, in southernmost Israel, from Lebanon.
Syrian forces loyal to Mr. Assad have used Fateh-110 missiles against the Syrian opposition. Some American officials are unsure whether the new shipment was intended for use by Hezbollah or by the Assad government, which is believed to be running low on missiles in its bloody civil war. But one American official said the warehouse that was struck in the Israeli attack was believed to be under the control of operatives from Hezbollah and Iran’s paramilitary Quds Force.
Hezbollah is now believed to have more missiles and fighters than it had before its 2006 battle with Israel, when Hezbollah missiles forced a third of Israel’s population into shelters and hit as far south as Haifa. A Pentagon official said in 2010 that Hezbollah’s arsenal was believed to include a small number of Fateh-110s, and additional shipments would add to Hezbollah’s striking power.
In carrying out Friday’s raid, Israeli warplanes fired air-to-ground weapons, apparently staying clear of Syrian airspace and operating in the skies over neighboring Lebanon.
A spokesman for the Israeli Embassy in Washington declined to acknowledge the attack, saying only in a statement, “Israel is determined to prevent the transfer of chemical weapons or other game-changing weaponry by the Syrian regime to terrorists, especially to Hezbollah in Lebanon.”
In late January, Israel carried out a similar airstrike in Syria, which it also refused to publicly confirm, that used similar tactics, including a route over Lebanon, according to a former senior American official. The January attack was against a convoy carrying SA-17 antiaircraft weapons, which were supplied by Russia. The transfer of those weapons to Hezbollah would jeopardize the Israeli Air Force’s ability to operate over Lebanon.
Israel’s official silence reveals the broader dilemma it faces in how to handle Syria’s upheaval. After 40 years of quiet on its northeastern border, Israel is now deeply worried about violence spilling over into its territory and about a post-Assad Syria being a vast, ungoverned area controlled by Islamist or jihadist groups, with no central authority to control militant activity.
But leaders in Jerusalem believe that they have few options beyond the targeted airstrikes, seeing greater military intervention as likely to backfire by uniting anti-Israel forces.
President Obama, who is traveling in Central America, said Israel was entitled to defend itself from its enemies.
“The Israelis, justifiably, have to guard against the transfer of advanced weaponry to terrorist organizations like Hezbollah,” he told the Spanish-language TV station Telemundo.
Few experts expect the Israeli airstrike to put an end to Iran’s attempts to ship arms to Syria and its Hezbollah ally. Jonathan Spyer, an expert on Syria and Hezbollah at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, Israel, predicted more attempts to transfer weapons — and Israeli efforts to stop them.
“Clearly Hezbollah is hoping to benefit from its engagement in Syria, and clearly Israel is committed to preventing that,” said Mr. Spyer, who noted that Israel was taking a “calculated risk” that its limited intervention would provoke only a limited response, if any.
Certainly, nothing in recent comments by Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, suggested that his organization would pull back from its support of Mr. Assad or its alliance with Iran.
Days before the Israeli strike, Mr. Nasrallah issued some of his strongest statements yet of support for Mr. Assad, edging closer to confirming what the Obama administration has already reported: that Hezbollah is backing him militarily, not merely tolerating border crossings by some of its members to defend Lebanese citizens in Syria, as Hezbollah has officially maintained.
Mr. Nasrallah said Hezbollah — using the word “we” — would not allow Syria to fall to an armed assault that he said was backed by the United States and Israel, and added that the party was defending civilians of all sects in Qusayr, a city in Homs Province near the Lebanese border, where rebels say Hezbollah has led recent battles against them.
9 Comments on "Israel Targeted Iranian Missiles in Syrian Attack"
Plantagenet on Sun, 5th May 2013 12:58 am
It was moronic for Obama to blather on about “red lines” and then to back down when his “red line” was crossed.
Countries like Japan and Israel now know they can’t count on the Obama administration to honor its pledges to defend them. That inevitably results in events like the Israelis acting unilaterally to protect themselves.
BillT on Sun, 5th May 2013 3:16 am
Protect themselves? Really? Or promote the war they want? They are so set on bringing about their Armageddon that they will use anyone and everyone to accomplish it. That is what happens when religion gets too powerful. What would the US do if Russia and china decided to give Texas and the Louisiana Purchase back to Mexico just because the Mexicans claimed that it was theirs and was taken from them in the past? I vet they wouldn’t like it either. Israel exists because a bunch of white guys decided that a few million people should move into a neighborhood of millions that hated them. They knew that it would promote constant war. So they could sell weapons to both sides.
Take away the illegal nukes that Israel has and see what happens. Or give an equal number to the Iranians and see how quick the Israelis back off. If Israel is so important, why do more jews live OUTSIDE of Israel? Fear? Greed? Both?
Gates Outcast on Sun, 5th May 2013 3:39 am
It is sad for the average Joe like us who lives in those countries, who wants peace, and a decent job to support his family. I always thought religion was created by the dark side, May the 4th be with you all.
Arthur on Sun, 5th May 2013 8:06 am
Israel had zero problems with Syria for decades, now they have decided to help blow the country up. What do they hope to achieve? Being surrounded by monolithic Sunni fundamentalism, that’s what. Good luck with that. Since the fate of Israel and the US are strongly tied, you can severely doubt if Israel will survive 2025.
DC on Sun, 5th May 2013 9:08 am
Its hard to tell from the way this article is phrased. Has Israel attacked a civilian airport using standoff weapons? The part about the missiles being stored at DIA, is likely bogus, The US and Israel have long wanted to attack civilian airports in Syria in order to terrorize the population and cause even more economic damage. Sounds like the ‘missiles’ being there was just a pretext to attack the civilian air-travel system in Syria.
Arthur on Sun, 5th May 2013 10:03 am
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Clean_Break:_A_New_Strategy_for_Securing_the_Realm
This is the core document formulating the strategy behind it all. It is written in 1996 by the kosher gang that runs the US since a century and for a few years more:
“Former United States Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle was the “Study Group Leader”, but the final report included ideas from James Colbert, Charles Fairbanks, Jr., Robert Loewenberg, Douglas Feith, David Wurmser, and Meyrav Wurmser.”
The fact that it is written in 1996 explains why it is such a desaster:
– written before the rise of the internet (9/11 truth, Arab Spring)
– written by people with zero understanding of resource depletion (cheap oil is essential for neocon US global hegemony aspirations)
– written by ‘power animals’ who think that the days of ‘unipolar moment’ has arrived and that the US can reign supreme, now that the USSR is history and China still a baby. This is no longer true in 2013 in a world with 500m Europeans united under 1 currency, a consolidated Russia and coming super power China.
What is their message?
“it is advocating an aggressive new policy including the removal of Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq, and the containment of Syria by engaging in proxy warfare and highlighting their possession of “weapons of mass destruction”.”
All that happened, c.q. is happening today. The Clean Break document is closely related to the PNAC document, also written by the same kosher gang, that was ‘thinking aloud’ about how a ‘new Pearl Harbour’ could inject into the American public a sense of ‘terrorist threat’. And bin Laden was so kind to deliver that Pearl Harbour on the neocon’s doorstep, if one is so stupid to believe that box cutter crowd story, that only could have been carried out by security agencies like the CIA and Mossad, once you accept the obvious fact that WTC was blown up, to ensure the 3k critical mass deaths, mirroring the real Pearl Harbour of 1941, that was sufficient to mobilize the isolationalist American public into WW2.
My intuition is that the kosher gang is trying to set the entire ME on fire to bring about WW3 and limited nuclear war, that should bring world government, run by institutions as defined by the same kosher gang, meaning One World, with no borders, ‘anti-racism’ and holocaust religion. It would be the communist dream come true. And a nightmare for European civilization that would come to an end.
It was exactly the same strategy that brought about American hegemony after WW2.
But as the saying goes: ‘first time a tragedy, second time a farce’. There will be no world government located in Jeruzalem. Instead Palestine will became a sorry outpost in a neo-Ottoman empire and ‘proposition nation’ and perceived NWO blueprint and ‘melting pot’ USA will boil over and become balkanized as the world will run out of steam to enable centralized global government.
BillT on Sun, 5th May 2013 11:30 am
“… the world will run out of steam to enable centralized global government …”
Or, the total collapse of the global financial system will bring it about in desperation. We shall see.
Arthur on Sun, 5th May 2013 7:30 pm
http://rt.com/news/israel-syria-air-strike-842/
Syria suggests it could retaliate against Israel. OMG… I vividly remember the six day war of 1967. Israel knows it always can fall back on the US.
Arthur on Sun, 5th May 2013 10:53 pm
Quotes from:
http://www.voltairenet.org/article178401.html
Kennedy, the Lobby and the Bomb
the Department of Justice, under the authority of Attorney General Robert Kennedy, ordered the American Zionist Council to register as “agents of a foreign government,” subject to the requirements of the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938 (the Council renamed itself into AIPAC).
In 1960, John Kennedy himself received a financial aid offer from the Israeli lobby for his presidential campaign. He decoded Abraham Feinberg’s proposal for his journalist friend Charles Bartlett in the following terms: “We know your campaign is in trouble. We’re willing to pay your bills if you’ll let us have control of your Middle East policy.” Bartlett recalls Kennedy’s promise that “if he ever did get to be President, he was going to do something about it [4].”
All government efforts to stymie the corruption of American democracy by Israeli agents were stopped short by Kennedy’s assassination.
In 2007, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt demonstrated in their book The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy that AIPAC and less prominent pro-Israel lobbies were the main cause of the war in Iraq.
**********************
Arthur: the Kennedy clan was the last serious resistance against the Lobby and they all got assasinated. Since 1963 the US is literally owned by the Lobby and if the American population does not resist they will end up in the Gulag. The Constitution is the only protection against such a scenario and that is being eroded on a daily basis.
Today RT openly suggested that Boston was a false flag. I just watched parts of the Canadian documentary about 9/11, the 5th Estate. Now more than half of the US citizens thinks that the US government had at least foreknowledge and let it happen anyway.