« Breaking News »
DEBKAfile May 29, 2013, 10:44 PM (GMT+02:00)
State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Wednesday night it was "unacceptable" and "dangerous" for Hizballah to send fighters into Syria."We demand that Hizballah withdraw its fighters from Syria immediately," she said at a regular daily news briefing.
Separately, The White House announced Wednesday that President Barack Obama has not ruled out the idea of a no-fly zone over Syria. "Every option available to the president remains on the table when it comes to our policy towards Syria. That of course includes the possibility of a no-fly zone," White House spokesman Jay Carney told a news briefing.
« Breaking News »
DEBKAfile May 29, 2013, 1:37 PM (GMT+02:00)
Wednesday morning, the Israeli Home Front rehearsed a chemical-tipped missile attack on a Jerusalem suburb. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who watched, said the exercise is designed to protect Israeli civilians “from the threats pilling up around us.” Israel’s home front is the best protected in the world but also the most threatened, he said: “We must make sure that defense is in place before an attack.” With him at the exercise was Home Front minister Gilead Erdan and IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Ganz.
« Breaking News »
DEBKAfile May 29, 2013, 8:51 AM (GMT+02:00)
A giant Russian military transport landed in Latakia Tuesday carrying 60 tons of “humanitarian aid to Syria,” DEBKAfile reports. The nature of this cargo is unknown, but it is likely to be the opposite of humanitarian, given Moscow’s expanding military assistance to Bashar Assad and intervention in the Syrian civil war. Tuesday, Moscow termed its dispatch of S-300 anti-air missiles to Assad “a stabilizing factor” for dissuading “hotheads” from entering the conflict.
http://www.debka.com/article/23001/Israeli-forebodings-over-widening-Russian-Hizballah-Iraqi-intervention-in-Syria-
Forebodings were voiced Wednesday, May 29, by senior Israeli military officers in the face of the widening military intervention in the Syria civil war by Russia, Iran, Hizballah and latterly Iraq too. They have made Syria’s civil war the platform for a Russian contest against the West and a ladder up which Iran and its proxy Hizballah are climbing to top Middle East regional power spot.
Russia, Iran and Hizballah are winning the contest by default against an unresisting US-led West and a hesitant Israel.
A senior IDF officer acknowledged on Wednesday, May 29, that Israel’s government and military leaders are at a loss on how to proceed. They have yet to recover from the calamitous miscalculation that Bashar Assad’s days were numbered to which they clung stubbornly for almost eighteen months.
Even today, some spokesmen refer to a “disintegrating Syria,” thereby losing sight of the major strategic and military changes overtaking the country that are entirely to Israel’s detriment as well as eroding its options against a nuclear Iran.
At a time that the US and Israel should be using their heaviest military guns to slow Iran’s race for a nuclear bomb, Tehran with Moscow's backing has brought its military assets up close to Israel’s borders in Syria and Lebanon and openly threatens to use them.
Unlike Syria and Iran, Israel can’t count on military intervention against an aggressor by supportive big powers. According to DEBKAfile's Washington sources, no part of the Obama administration, including its military and intelligence arms, favors military action in Syria.
Even the direct evidence of chemical warfare already afoot in Syria is unavailing.
In Addis Ababa, US Secretary of State John Kerry repeated the administration’s mantra Wednesday by denying “concrete evidence” of the use of chemical weapons in Syria.
The Secretary and the rest of NATO were deaf to the vivid testimony brought to Le Monde Wednesday by two reporters, who risked their necks by spending two months concealed in the Jobar district of Damascus. They discovered Russia or Iran had developed a chemical weapon that does not explode. The release of its poisonous gases sounds like popping the top off a can of soda and has "no odor, no smoke, not even a whistle to indicate the release of a toxic gas."
So what does happen?
The Le Monde reporters provided a graphic first-hand description.
"The men cough violently. Their eyes burn, their pupils shrink, their vision blurs. Soon they experience difficulty breathing, sometimes in the extreme; they begin to vomit or lose consciousness. The fighters worst affected need to be evacuated before they suffocate."
Wednesday morning, the Israeli Home Front rehearsed an attack on a Jerusalem suburb by a chemical-tipped missile.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who watched, said the exercise is designed to protect Israeli civilians “from the threats pilling up around us.” Israel’s home front is the best protected in the world but also the most threatened, he said: “We must make sure that defense is in place before an attack.
Tuesday, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon voiced his certainty that the Syrian President would not use chemical weapons against Israel or treat Israelis the way he treats his own people. There is no indication that anyone in the region intends to challenge us any time soon with unconventional weapons, said the defense minister.
DEBKAfile’s military sources find Ya’alon’s comment delusory. They don’t see why Assad would treat Israelis differently from his own people – especially since the IDF has presented him with no real deterrent. After all, none of Israel's three air strikes in January and May stopped the flow of Hizballah fighters into Syria. And meanwhile, Syrian and Hizballah leaders are declaring loud and clear that a war front against Israel is already operating from the Syrian Golan and Lebanon.
The question is who in Israel is listening. And what is being done to make sure that Assad will be prevented from using chemical weapons against Israeli military and civilian targets at a time of his convenience.
The spate of events in the last 48 hours is troubling - to say the least.
Monday, US Senator John McCain was reported to have paid a secret visit to Syria. What did this "visit" consist of? DEBKAfile reports: The senator entered Syria from Turkey through the Kilis corridor which is the main supply route for the rebels in Aleppo, one of the few still under their control. McCain penetrated some 300 meters into Syria, had his picture taken, and left.
A US publication reported Wednesday that President Barack Obama had ordered the Pentagon to draw up plans to establish no-fly zones over Syria against Syrian warplanes. The Pentagon thereupon issued a denial: “There are no new American operational plans,” said the spokesman.
Moscow’s response was ready in place even before the report was published.
Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said the S-300 anti-air missiles that Russia was supplying the Assad regime were a "stabilizing factor" that could dissuade "some hotheads" from entering the conflict.
In the grades Moscow handed out for foreign interventionists: The US and Israel and their leaders were "hotheads" while Moscow, the calm, rational stabilizer.
In that capacity, DEBKAfile's military and intelligence sources reveal that a huge Russian cargo plane landed in Latakia airport Wednesday with 60 tons of "humanitarian aid for Syria."
The nature of this cargo was not disclosed, but the last thing it must have been was “humanitarian” given the massive military aid Moscow is extending Assad’s army.
Moscow also knocked on the head the timorous decision by European Union foreign ministers Tuesday to lift the arms embargo for Syrian rebels, which they carefully combined with a decision not to send them weapons.
In sum, the US is not doing anything to help the rebels, Europe is not sending arms, the rebels’ Persian Gulf patrons have bowed to pressure from Washington and slashed their weapons aid, while Israel declares it wants no part of the Syrian civil war – even after it assumed the calamitous proportions of a world power contest with Israel’s arch foes gaining the upper hand.
So who is feeding the flames of the Syrian conflict with a generous supply of military hardware? Who but Russia, the self-styled "stabilizing factor”
The Free Syrian Army’s Supreme Commander Gen. Salem Idris made a desperate show of bravado Wednesday, by threatening to strike Hizballah strongholds in Lebanon if Hassan Nasrallah does not pull his brigades out of Syria within 24 hours.
Hizballah knows perfectly well that Gen. Salem is starved of weapons, just he knows that the US, Europe or Israel will not interfere with the stream of fighting strength he is pumping into Syria.
At worst, a few rockets will hit Hizballah centers in Beirut and the Beqaa Valley. Early Tuesday morning, the rebels tried to ambush Hizballah forces near the eastern town of Arsal. Their operation went badly wrong and mistakenly killed three Lebanese soldiers manning an army checkpoint.
The senior Israeli officer interviewed by DEBKAfile put all these forebodings into words when he said: "A military and strategic catastrophe for the West and Israel is in full flight in Syria, and no one in Washington or Jerusalem is lifting a finger. Israel’s government and military heads never imagined that the Syrian war would take this turn. But we had better wake up at this eleventh hour - before it is too late.”
The Coming Israeli-Russian War?
Posted on 05/29/2013 by Juan Cole
Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon bluntly threatened the Russian Federation on Tuesday, saying that if Moscow followed through on its plan to send the S-300 air defense system to Syria, Israel would bomb the arrays. Since the systems will be accompanied by Russian experts, any Israeli strike on them could well kill Russian personnel and create a crisis between nuclear states not seen since India and Pakistan played atomic chicken in 2002.
Israel is afraid that the missiles could fall into the hands of opposition forces such as the al-Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front, and could be fired at civilian Israeli jets. They are likely also afraid that if the regime were on the verge of falling, they might be transferred to Hizbullah and so constrain Israeli freedom of movement in southern Lebanon.
At the same time, Sergei Ryabkov, the deputy foreign minister of the Russian Federation, said that the European Union’s inability to extend the ban on exporting weapons to Syria would only accelerate shipment of the S-300s.
Ryabkov said of the air defense array,
“I can only say that we are going ahead with it. We believe that such steps go a long way to restraining some ‘hot-heads’ from exploring scenarios in which this conflict could be given an international character with participation of outside forces.”
(The European Union just failed to extend a weapons ban on Syria that was strongly supported by Sweden, Austria and the Czech Republic but opposed by France and Britain. Although the latter two have not said that they will now supply the rebels with weaponry, they may well take that step, and no longer face an impediment from the EU. Russia’s Putin is said to be angry about the change.)
Russia Today reports:
In other words, as I wrote at Truthdig, Russian President Vladimir Putin is determined to shore up the Baath regime of Bashar al-Assad, and increasingly sees strengthening the latter’s air defenses as key to regime survival. Such a strengthening does not help against the rebel Free Syrian Army, which has no air force, but against any future Western plan for a no-fly zone and against Israeli air strikes (interestingly Ryabkov did not mention Israel, but its actions are clear part of what Putin is pushing back against). Putin takes a very dim view of what NATO did in Libya and is determined to prevent a repeat of that intervention against a client state of Russia. He is also concerned that Israeli air strikes on Syria could weaken the fragile government in Damascus.
Unless the Russians or the Israelis blink, they have by their rhetoric put themselves on a potential war footing.
Yaalon is an Israeli Neoconservative of sorts, who was fired as Army Chief of Staff in 2005 for opposing the Israeli withdrawal of settlements from the Gaza Strip. He later joined the far right Likud Party. He has called the Palestinians a “cancer” and said Israel had to consider killing Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In short, he is a bit erratic and a hothead, which is not what you would like to see in the defense minister of a nuclear-armed state.
It is hard to know how determined Moscow is on its course. Some Russian experts don’t believe that the S-300s will actually be sent, or that they can be sent before the comprehensive peace conference planned by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and US Secretary of State John Kerry. Other Russian experts are pessimistic that this conference will actually get off the ground, given the disarray in rebel ranks and ambivalence of neighboring states.
But Ryabkov seems to have been signaling that Putin is determined to prevent Western or Israeli bombings of the regime, and that is the main impetus to supplying the S-300s at this time. If he is to be taken seriously, then Putin could well call Israel’s bluff. At that point, Yaalon will have to risk escalation with Russia or quietly accept that Syria is the latter’s sphere of influence, not Tel Aviv’s. Either step will represent a big change in the geopolitics of the Middle East.
Given that both Israel and Russia are nuclear states, and given the complete US backing for Israel, conflict between those two is extremely dangerous for the world and for the United States. 1973 was probably the last time the US went on nuclear alert, and it was because of the danger that the Soviet Union might intervene in the 1973 War (in which Yaalon fought, and during which Putin was just a college student–he joined the KGB in 1975).
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2013/05/201352954449403614.html
  | ||
Besides supplying Syria with arms, Russia has been sending humanitarian aid to the violence-ravaged country [Reuters]
| ||
Israel has said it will act if Russia delivers promised anti-aircraft missiles to its ally Syria, in an apparent allusion to another air raid on the neighbouring country.
Moshe Yaalon, Israeli defence minister, issued his warning on Tuesday shortly after a senior official in Moscow said the Russian government reserved the right to provide Syria with state-of-the-art S-300 air defence missiles
"As far as we are concerned, that is a threat," Yaalon said.
"At this stage I can't say there is an escalation. The shipments have not been sent on their way yet. And I hope that they will not be sent.
"But if, by misfortune, they arrive in Syria, we will know what to do."
Yaalon's comments were made before Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, ordered his cabinet to stay silent on the issue, according to public radio.
Earlier this month, Israel launched air raids inside Syria targeting what sources said were arms destined for the Lebanese Shia armed group Hezbollah, whose fighters have entered the conflict alongside the Syrian army.
Tensions were further stirred after the EU decided in a meeting in Brussels on Monday to lift an embargo on supplying weapons to Syria's rebels.
Syria's government joined its ally Russia in condemning the EU decision as an "obstruction" to peace efforts, while accusing the bloc of supporting and encouraging "terrorists".
The US, however, said it supported the EU move as a show of "full support" for the rebels, despite its own refusal to provide arms it fears will end up in what it believes to be extremist hands in Syria.
The lifting of the embargo "sends a message to the Assad regime that support for the opposition is only going to increase", Patrick Ventrell, US state department spokesman, said.
Russia said the S-300 missiles it planned to deliver to Syria were part of existing contracts.
"We consider these supplies a stabilising factor," Sergei Ryabkov, deputy foreign minister, said, adding they could act as a deterrent against foreign intervention.
Syria already possesses Russian-made air defences. The S-300s would expand Syria's capabilities, allowing it to counter air raids launched from foreign airspace as well.
Russia has been the key ally of Bashar al-Assad's government, protecting it from any UN Security Council action despite the civil war there that has claimed over 94,000 lives.
Both Russia and Iran remain Syria’s main weapon suppliers.
Call to include Iran
In a related diplomatic development, Russia said on Tuesday it was imperative for Iran to join the so-called Geneva 2 peace conference on Syria.
The planned conference in the Swiss city, backed by both US and Russia, aims to bring both the Syrian government and the opposition to the table to negotiate an end to the country's 26-month conflict.
France has already rejected the idea of Iran taking part, while the US has responded to Russia's proposal with scepticism.
An exact date for the conference has not been set yet because of what Russia described as a lack of unity among Syria's opposition.
A week into talks among Syria’s opposition in the Turkish city of Istanbul - aimed at presenting a united front on the conference - has further exhibited their divisions.
The opposition Syrian National Coalition has yet to come up with an official position on whether it is joining the peace conference or not.
Coalition members and other dissidents say progress at the meeting has been ground to a halt by conflicting bids for influence by Saudi Arabia, which reportedly wants to water down the Muslim Brotherhood's strong role in the opposition coalition, and Qatar, which apparently wants to protect the influential group's clout.
Opposition leaders have said they will only participate in talks if Assad's departure from power tops the agenda, a demand Assad and his Russian backers have rejected.
Israeli DM Threatens to Attack Russian ShipsDefensive Shipments a 'Threat'
by Jason Ditz, May 28, 2013
Israel’s long-standing habit of making bellicose threats in the face of neighbors potentially acquiring defensive weapons has reached a new level today, with Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon threatening to attack Russian ships in the Mediterranean if they attempt to deliver anti-aircraft weapons to Syria.
 Russia has had a long-standing contract with Syria to provide anti-aircraft defensive systems, and the Assad government is keen to get those shipments completed in the wake of repeated Israeli air strikes against them. The Russian S-300 system, the best the Russian government sells, is seen as being able to foil Israeli attacks.
Israel has struggled to justify its opposition to the deliveries, making ridiculous predictions of a dystopian future in which the whole region is a no-fly zone because Syria is attacking random planes for no reason. Syria’s existing arsenal would be able to do this at any rate, and it doesn’t. The obvious reason for acquiring the S-300 is to stop the Israeli attacks, and that’s also the obvious reason for Israeli opposition. It’s just not likely to convince the Russians.
A similar round of Israeli rhetoric was seen over several years related to Iran, with Israeli officials first claiming they had super-secret electronics that would render all S-300′s useless worldwide and render Russian airspace defenseless. They later revised that claim and insisted those defensive weapons were an “existential threat” to Israel. After that didn’t work either, they threatened massive retaliatory arms sales to “Russia’s enemies.”
The question of the latest threats is just how desperately Israel wants to keep its overwhelming military superiority over the entire region, and whether the prospect of one of its would-be victims acquiring defensive equipment is such a threat to their long-term strategy that it warrants risking a war with Russia. Logic would suggest it doesn’t.
Syrian Rebels Stole UN Armored Personnel CarriersIsrael Warns 'Virtually Indestructible' Vehicles Could Be Used for Attacks
by Jason Ditz, May 28, 2013
The Yarmouk Martyrs Brigade’s only real claim to fame within the Syrian rebellion has been that they twice inexplicably kidnapped a bunch of UN troops, then held them for several days before releasing them.
 But the group is apparently getting pretty good equipment by carjacking UN troops, and the most recent UN report reveals that four vehicles have been lost to them, including two heavily armored personnel carriers.
The APCs have sparked concerns from Israeli military experts amid claims that they are “virtually indestructible.” Since the Islamist rebels have a grudge against Israel as well as Syria, they warn the vehicles could be used to attack the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
The vehicles were identified as RG-31 Nyalas, a BAE-made APC popular across the world for its durability. Meant to survive two TM-57 anti-tank mines at once, the vehicles are extremely sturdy, but by no means indestructible, as particularly large IEDs have destroyed several of the US military’s RG-31′s in Iraq and Afghanistan over the years.
The “threat” posed by the rebel faction having two of these seems minimal since they aren’t particularly fast (covered in steel armor) or super-heavily armed in and of themselves, and are more designed to safely transport troops to and from battles. With two of the vehicles the rebels could conceivably load 16-20 fighters comfortably within, but this hardly constitutes an invasion force.
| ||
No comments:
Post a Comment