WarSclerotic

Escalation in Syria coming out of the shadows.

Israeli-Iranian proxy war in Syria is coming out of the shadows during this weekend as Israel bombs Hezbollah targets in Syria, set to mobilize ground forces confronting the recent Iranian deployment near the Israeli-Lebanese-Syrian border triangle, following Obama’s declaration that US boots on the ground in Syria are unlikely.

The Shadow war in greater Syria we described yesterday continues to escalate by the hour during this weekend of early May 2013. According to American sources the Israeli air force carried out strikes against a number of targets in Syria. allegedly this was done remotely using standoff weapons from Lebanese air space starting Friday and continuing up until early Saturday, May 3. Israeli officials confirmed the attack during Saturday, May 4, and claimed the target was a convoy of advanced missiles meant to be shipped over to Hezbollah in Lebanon. This repeats the pattern of the previous raid in late January on the Jamaria biochemical complex near Damascus, when the raid on a Hezbollah missile convoy was used as a distraction for the more important raid on the high value fixed target in Jamaria.

Rumors continued to surface regarding the use of chemical weapons by either side of the Syrian civil (war which is in fact a proxy war between NATO and the SCO), which has become a hot potato recently due to purely political reasons emanating from the foolish ‘murky red lines’ policy of both the American and Israeli governments who publicly committed themselves to actions they knew would be very difficult to implement if push comes to shove regarding Either Iran’s nuclear program or Syria’s chemical stockpiles. This explains the bizarre skirmish between the Israeli military Intelligence and senior US officials regarding the alleged use of chemical agents in Syria following defense secretary Hagel’s visit in Israel recently (which according to some sources was meant to dissuade the Israelis from a unilateral strike on Iran).

Obama’s recent declaration that he has no serious intention to invade Syria conforms with his policies so far of using regional proxies as cannon fodder , thus all the speculations about a repeat of the Iraqi scenario seem detached from reality, as this would contradict the modus operandi of the Trilateral faction which controls Obama till date. It is therefore reasonable to assume that Obama is interested in letting the particular fractal of this war, namely the Iranian-Israeli one, come out of the shadows at this point in time, while the wider context of the American-Russian power play in the Levant is pushed aside for the moment.

Lebanese sources continued to report during Saturday about IDF ground movements in the vicinity of the border triangle, confronting the recent deployment of several brigades of Iranian Basij troops in the area (the Basij is an ideologically motivated elite militia of the Ayatollah regime, roughly comparable to the Nazi SS or the Soviet NKVD during WWII). This is done under the cover of the current division level reservist mobilization drill which should expand to live fire maneuvers in the beginning of the coming week. Further to these developments, the IDF has recently reactivated deserted outposts in the Golan front, following a long overhaul of the fortifications in that front and the installation of a new and improved border fence. While the Golan deployment seems defensive in nature (supposedly vs. further attempts by FSA to drag Israel into a direct ground war against the Syrian army by conducting border provocations), actual ground skirmishes are more likely to happen either in Southern Lebanon or in the border triangle, which might escalate to a direct confrontation between IDF and Basij troops.

Another possibility which can’t be ruled out is a chemical attack by Hezbollah on Israel (either real or staged by a “mysterious” third party (like the drone incident last week), compounded by the failure of Israel to defend itself that would lead to a rigged ‘invitation’ for further western military intervention, i.e. extending the French presence in the Lebanon towards its re-occupation by France, likewise NATO’s naval presence in the vicinity of Lebanon’s offshore gas fields which was jump started by the rigged Israeli defeat in Lebanon in summer 2006.

It’s not clear at this point why the Israeli defense establishment agrees to be used as cannon fodder by the American strategists. Perhaps this is based on the vain hope that eventually this will lead to an American attack on Iran or at least to a green light for an Israeli raid with American back-up. However this seems to go against the developing American trend of engaging the Mullah regime in prolonged diplomatic tango (probably a covert backroom deal) of allowing them to push forward with the nuclear program undisturbed so as long as they don’t conduct a nuclear test and don’t declare themselves to be a military nuclear power(by the way, this is precisely how the Nixon administration dealt with the Israeli nuclear program back at the time). This shouldn’t matter much to the Mullahs because these functions are already taken care of on their behalf by North Korea. Further developments in this highly volatile sector remain to be seen during the coming days and weeks.

This entry was posted on May 4, 2013 at 3:20 PM and is filed under Uncategorized. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.