Oren: Israel will act if Hezbollah gets Syrian WMDs
Oren: Israel will act if Hezbollah gets Sy… JPost – Middle East.
Israel will act if Syria passes chemical weapons into Hezbollah’s hands, Israeli ambassador to Washington Michael Oren warned on Sunday.
“We have a very clear red line about those weapons passing into the wrong hands,” Oren told Fox News.
“Were those weapons to pass into the wrong hands, into Hezbollah’s hands for example, that would be a game changer for us.” Armed with chemical weapons and a large cache of rockets, Oren said, the terrorist group could kill “thousands of people.”
Syria has one of the world’s largest chemical weapons arsenals, according to Leonard Spector, executive director of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies based in Washington. Syria’s arms cache includes “traditional chemical agents, such as mustard, and more modern nerve agents, such as sarin, and possibly persistent nerve agents, such as VX,” he told the BBC on Tuesday.
While Damascus has never confirmed that it has chemical weapons, it has insisted that it would never use them against its own people.
The Israeli red lines differ from those set by US President Barack Obama, who issued a warning to Syrian President Bashar Assad on Monday not to use such weapons against opposition forces.
“The use of chemical weapons is and would be totally unacceptable and if you make the tragic mistake of using these weapons, there will be consequences and you will be held accountable,” Obama said.
Noting strong cooperation between Israel and the US on the issue, Oren said “We support the (US) president’s red lines as well.”
Addressing the presence of al-Qaida elements in the Syrian opposition, Oren said, “The jihadi presence is big and getting bigger, and the longer the conflict goes on there, the bigger it will get.”
US Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford warned on Thursday that extremists were gaining influence in the Syrian opposition, saying such groups had “little by little been gaining influence among the armed opposition.”
Extremist elements, which are still a minority among the opposition, pose “an obstacle to finding the political solution that Syria needs,” he said.
On Saturday, British Foreign Secretary William Hague said he has seen “some evidence” that Assad’s regime is preparing to use chemical weapons against the rebels, AFP reported.”We have seen some evidence of that,” Hague said to reporters in Manama at a regional security conference.
“We and the US, as I said in parliament this week, have seen some evidence of that and that is why we have issued strong warnings about it. We have done so directly to the Syrian regime,” AFP quoted him as saying.
Sources in Iraq say Assad’s inner circle is engaged in “intensive debate” between those who advocate using chemical weapons as a last resort and those who warn of the dangers of such a step, Kuwaiti daily Al-Seyassah reported on Thursday.US intelligence officials also intercepted one communication within the last six months they believe was from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’s elite extraterritorial unit, the Qods Force, according to the Washington Post. That communication reportedly urged Syrian regime members to use its supplies of Sarin nerve gas against rebels and the civilians supporting them in Homs.
Tehran, which has much to lose if Assad falls, has been accused by the US in the past week of continuing to ship arms to the Syrian regime via Iraqi airspace. The Syrian opposition has also accused the Revolutionary Guards of providing military assistance to Assad.
Joana Paraszczuk, Hilary Leila Kreiger and Reuters contributed to this report.
WarSclerotic 
December 10, 2012 at 1:05 PM
In a previous post Thunderbunny had quite a good idea of a chat room where we could all meet at a certain time for a live chat discussion.
December 10, 2012 at 1:37 PM
I’ll look into seeing if there’s a way to incorporate one on the site.
December 10, 2012 at 2:06 PM
security IRGC monitor this site,it will have to be very secure,but sounds like a great idea
December 10, 2012 at 2:58 PM
No chat room widget is available for wordpress.com. However, I have added “recent comments” on the left under recent posts on the home page.
December 10, 2012 at 4:16 PM
IRGC…..what could they possibly gain from our discussions? Intelligence? Identities? Locations?
December 10, 2012 at 4:52 PM
A very lot steve,i shudder at the consequences this is a very real war,many of us may be targeted
December 10, 2012 at 6:10 PM
That’s just paranoid. Besides, wordpress isn’t exactly secure. Assume they have your IP address and e-mail address already. I highly doubt they would send an assassination hit squad out to your house unless you are an Iranian or Syrian feeding intelligence to the outside world from inside Syria or Iran where they WOULD care.
December 10, 2012 at 7:04 PM
they definitely dont have my email or ip,what i mean is they have an ip and email but here just dead ends..were in europe the terrorists are very active here, i have already been targeted twice,and nearly died the second time,i was lucky
December 10, 2012 at 7:04 PM
I agree with Thunder…but just in case, I’ll continue to wear my Glock.
December 10, 2012 at 7:26 PM
Justice, I fear not the IRGC going after me.
I fear me going after the IRGC.
Maybe they scavenge the comments in hope to find some ideas or hints.
Loose lips sink ships.
And so they maybe hope to find a comment from someone who knows something and talks about things he shouldn’ talk about.
Believe it or not. Some years ago I visited a forum for armed forced frequently and some of these guys sometimes said things that should in my view never have been said in public forums.
December 10, 2012 at 7:26 PM
i think the thing here is we often discuss rumors,a lot of on the ground itel is gathered from monitoring sites like this,we cant carry guns in europe,its easy to feel safe from 10.000 miles away,paranoid is better than injured
December 10, 2012 at 9:04 PM
You’re right too, Justice. I cannot imagine what it’s like from 10,000 miles away. All I can do is pray for your safety. As for legal carry of a firearm here in the States, if Obummer had his way, he would disarm us all.
December 10, 2012 at 4:10 PM
Today’s Debka says they already moved chemical weapons to Hizballah for ‘safe keeping’. If the are correct, the red line has been crossed.
December 10, 2012 at 4:37 PM
According to Debka, Hizballah had chemical weapons ready to use back in the 2006 war but never got around to using them when Israel never launched a full scale ground war.
Debka also reported that part of Saddam’s WMD arsenal was sent to the Bakaa Valley in Lebanon.
December 10, 2012 at 7:14 PM
Debka is not the most trusworthy source.
In this case I trust Oren.
Also if this 2006 report were true, I believe the IDF would have acted in one way or another. I don’t believe that they would allow them to keep the chemicals if they would know about it.
December 10, 2012 at 7:20 PM
Who is Oren, AR?
December 10, 2012 at 8:21 PM
Michael Oren is the ambassador of Israel to the USA.
December 10, 2012 at 8:16 PM
Steve, did you asked me?
December 10, 2012 at 9:12 PM
Yes, but I should have known the answer to that one. I’m sure he has more credibility than Susan Rice.
December 10, 2012 at 9:40 PM
Other than that he is Israel’s ambassador to the US I don’t know who he is.
On the other hand, I have read some debka articles who turned out to be not true.
Offtopic but very relevant to the general discussion about Syria and chemical weapons.
We should be very concerned about these weapons falling into the hands of the Syrian rebels, because many of them are nothing more than jihadis and terrorists.
http://www.jihadwatch.org/ has today these articles:
“Syrian jihadist rebels make child behead prisoner” (very graphic video)
“Syrian rebels demand Islamic caliphate, praise bin Laden and Taliban”
“Syria: Muslim lovers of death celebrate “marriage” of three “martyrs” with “virgins of Paradise””
December 11, 2012 at 2:23 AM
http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/121012-636561-obama-moves-syria-chemical-weapons-red-line.htm
December 10, 2012 at 8:49 PM
The name of the game is deterrence. Even if Hezbollah has WMD devices, it won’t use them. In certain conditions, the starting israeli blow in a future war, will target those depots and their long range missiles silos. Any use , by any factor, of WMD against Israel will bring the obliterate of that factor. The real problem here is the terror anti Assad fighters that might get some of those weapons. This is why special allies forces are now operating on the ground in Syria, monitoring the situation.