WarSclerotic

Analysis: Israel may be ready for more active military role in Syria – World News.

US officials: Gov’t fully supports Israeli attacks – Israel News, Ynetnews.

United States government officials told the NBC network that the government fully supports Israel’s alleged attacks in Syria.

At the same time, Deputy White House Spokesperson Josh Earnest told reporters President Barack Obama believes Israel is justifiably concerned about the threat posed by Hezbollah obtaining advanced weapons systems, including missiles. (Yitzhak Benhorin, Washington)

Netanyahu heads to China, despite tension after airstrikes on Syria | The Times of Israel.

( This was what I’ve been waiting for.  For those concerned about Israel, if Bibi is comfortable flying to China, I dare say we’re allowed a good night’s sleep. – JW )  

 !  כל הכבוד לצה”ל

Assad’s deputy FM calls Israeli attacks a ‘declaration of war’; Iron Dome batteries deployed in Haifa and Safed; Haifa airport closed; Israelis urged to ‘go about business as usual’

By Stuart Winer and Times of Israel staff May 5, 2013, 6:54 pm

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends the inauguration ceremony of a new interchange named after his father Benzion, west of the Beit Hanina Arab neighborhood of Jerusalem, on May 5, 2013. (photo credit: Flash 90)

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu headed to China on Sunday evening, despite a security alert in northern Israel following two reported Israeli airstrikes in Syria on Iranian missile shipments en route to Hezbollah.

Syria’s Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad warned Sunday that the Friday and Sunday airstrikes constituted an Israeli “declaration of war.” And a pro-Hezbollah TV station in Lebanon claimed that Syria had deployed missiles directed at Israel, and that a decision had been taken in principle to respond to the airstrikes.

Israel deployed two Iron Dome anti-missile batteries, in Safed and Haifa, and Haifa Mayor Yonah Yahav ordered preparations in his city for the possibility of Syrian retaliation. Israel also closed off its airspace in the north, halting flights to and from Haifa’s airport through Thursday. The Iron Dome system has proved highly effective in stopping short-range rocket fire, intercepting 84 percent of the incoming rockets from Gaza it aimed at during Operation Pillar of Defense last November.

Still, Netanyahu’s decision to go ahead with his China trip — he had canceled twice previously, irritating Beijing — was designed in part to underline Israel’s desire to maintain relative calm, and avoid a further escalation of hostilities, analysts said. Channel 2 Arab affairs analyst Ehud Yaari said there were “no specific Syrian threats of retaliation.”

Speaking after an emergency meeting of the Israeli cabinet, Tourism Minister Uzi Landau (Yisrael Beytenu) said that it was “essential” that Israel maintain its policy of preventing “certain weaponry from reaching terrorist groups,” but did not formally confirm Israeli responsibility for the strikes. He urged Israelis to “go about their business as usual.”

Israel was hopeful that Syria would “get the message” and stop facilitating Iran’s weapon transfers to Iran, Israeli analysts said, which would obviate the need for further Israeli strikes. But Giora Eiland, a retired general and former national security adviser, said the regime of President Bashar Assad was now “so weak,” it might not be able to refuse Iranian and Hezbollah pressure for weapons transfers.

Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad. (screen capture: Youtube/Channel4News)

Mekdad made his “declaration of war” statement during an interview with CNN on Sunday morning, hours after Israel reportedly struck military targets on the outskirts of Damascus for the second time in 48 hours.

Mekdad also asserted that the attacks reflected an alliance between Islamic terrorists fighting against Assad’s regime and Israel, and warned that Syria would retaliate as and when it saw fit.

Syrian officials made similar threats after an alleged Israeli airstrike on a weapons convey near the Lebanese-Syrian border at the end of January 2013.

The Foreign Ministry in Damascus stated that the strikes “killed and wounded several people.” In a letter sent to the United Nations and the UN Security Council, the ministry also said that the “Israeli aggression… caused widespread destruction.”

Syria’s Information Minister Omran al-Zoubi said soon afterward that “all options are open” for Syria to respond to the attacks, which he claimed conclusively demonstrated the alliance between “the terrorists, infidels and Zionists” fighting the Assad regime. However, al-Zoubi also said the regime’s priority was to battle the forces inside Syria that were challenging the regime, and he denied claims in some Arab media that an Israeli plane had been shot down by Syrian forces and two pilots captured.

Egypt and the Arab League condemned the strike, with Cairo’s Foreign Ministry saying it was against any infraction of the sovereignty of Arab countries.

A Syrian state TV report claimed Israeli rockets hit a military research site on the outskirts of the capital at about 2 a.m., while an unnamed Israeli official told AFP the target was a shipment of Iranian made Fatah-110 missiles that were on their way from Syria to Hezbollah terrorists.

Netanyahu convened the security cabinet on Sunday afternoon to discuss the escalating hostilities with Syria. He delayed his Sunday evening departure for China by two hours in order to participate in the meeting.

The fact that Netanyahu was nonetheless going ahead with the China trip, diplomatic sources said, underlined Israel’s intention to de-escalate tensions with Syria. Furthermore, the sources said, the fact that Israel was privately stressing that the missiles hit in the strike came from Iran, and were intended for Hezbollah, and that Israel reportedly did not enter Syrian airspace but rather carried out the strikes from inside Lebanese air space, was intended to reduce the focus on Syria and thus reduce the likelihood of a Syrian military response.

Army Radio reported Israeli concerns that Hezbollah might seek further Iranian missile shipments, and said the security establishment was therefore remaining on alert.

Israel’s Channel 2 said Sunday evening that Hezbollah was engaging in “psychological warfare,” trying to further escalate tensions between Israel and Syria. The Assad regime was deploying long-range missiles to face Israel, and would now seek even more energetically to supply Hezbollah with unprecedentedly advanced weaponry, Hezbollah claimed, according to the Channel 2 report, which noted that there was no confirmation of these assertions.

There were no official Syrian reports on casualty numbers in either of the two strikes Friday and Sunday. An unconfirmed report on the Russia Today website cited a local Syrian journalist reporting “rumors on Syrian social media” that 300 or more soldiers stationed at military bases on Mount Qassiyoun near Damascus were killed. “Many Syrians are calling for retaliation as the possibility of a full-scale war with Israel is speculated upon,” this unconfirmed report further claimed.

Activists opposed to the Assad regime reported that a blast hit an ammunition depot in the Qassiyoun mountains late Saturday. It was not clear if that reported incident was related to any Israeli activity. According to a Syrian official who spoke to Al Arabiya, the Syrian regime uses its bases on the mountain to fire missiles at rebel targets in Damascus.

MK Tzachi Hanegbi (Likud), a former chairman of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, said Sunday it was unlikely Syria would hit back at Israel, but did not rule this out. “A Syrian retaliation is always an option,” he conceded, “but apparently it was deemed to be a long shot.”

“Iran is testing Israel’s and the US’s determination to uphold ‘red lines.’ And what it is seeing in Syria is that at least some of the actors take red lines seriously,” said former IDF intelligence chief Amos Yadlin.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman condemned Sunday’s Israeli airstrike, but gave no hint of a possible stronger response from Tehran or its allies. Ramin Mehmanparast urged countries in the region to remain united against Israel.

“As a Muslim nation, we back Syria, and if there is need for training we will provide them with the training, but won’t have any active involvement in the operations,” Iranian general Ahmad Reza Pourdastan said in remarks reported by the official IRNA news agency.

“The Syrian army has accumulated experience during years of conflict with the Zionist regime and is able to defend itself and doesn’t need foreign assistance,” he added.

Uzi Rubin, a missile expert and former Defense Ministry official, told the Associated Press that if the target of the reported strikes was a consignment of Fatah-110 missiles, then such weaponry did constitute a “game-changer”: Fired from Syria or south Lebanon, these missiles, he said, could reach almost anywhere in Israel with high accuracy.

“All countries have to look after their own national security, of course, and are able to take actions to protect their own national security,” Britain’s Foreign Secretary William Hague told Sky News Sunday.

He said the attack showed that Syria’s two-year-long civil war risked spreading outside its borders to engulf the entire region, and argued it was time to consider lifting the arms embargo on Syria’s opposition.

“The longer this goes on, the stronger the case becomes for lifting the arms embargoes on the National Coalition, on the Syrian opposition, if we’re left with no other alternative to that,” Hague said.

AP contributed to this report.

Syria’s army is not quite what Israelis have been led to believe – Diplomacy & Defense – Israel News | Haaretz Daily Newspaper.

( “The Syrian Army today is little more than a militia dedicated to propping up the regime.”    Wow… –  JW )

In the shadow of two purported Israeli attacks in Damascus, it is clear that the Syrian Army has not been seriously preparing for war against Israel for quite a while.

IDF soldiers on the Syria-Israel border. Photo by Yaron Kaminsky

For nearly four decades, generations of IDF fighters have been training in the Golan Heights to push back a Syrian attack. For 39 years, since the end of the Yom Kippur War, the Israeli-Syrian front has remained calm. Now, in the space of four months, three air-strikes around Damascus have been ascribed to Israel, and the Syrian cannons which supposedly target Israeli bases and villages in the Golan are silent.

Where are the masses of artillery, the ballistic missiles, armored divisions and commando battalions? Every foot-soldier in the Golani Brigade learns to recite the details of the Syrian order-of-forces in enemy-recognition lessons and reservists acquaint themselves with their positions for the day it comes.

Of course, the last two years of civil war has significantly degraded the Syrian Army – but to the extent that it has lost any capability of responding, even symbolically, to the Zionist enemy’s bombardment of their capital city?

So far there has been no response to the two strikes that occurred over the weekend, just as there was no response to the bombing in January. While as a precaution, an Iron Dome battery has been deployed to the north, it seems that Israel is not expecting retaliation. How else could one explain Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu‘s sticking to his plan of spending five days this week on a working visit to China?

The question of why the Syrians have not responded joins another query that has been being asked for many months now, actually for nearly two years: How come, despite tens of thousands of desertions and armed uprisings throughout the country, reinforced by thousands of Jihadist fighters from around the world, entire units of the Syrian Army are still intact and fighting to keep Assad’s regime in place? Israeli intelligence officers who confidently announced in 2011 that Assad had only a few weeks left have, long ago, given up predicting his downfall.

“You Israelis have turned the Syrian Army into something much more frightening that it really is,” says a member of the Free Syrian Army who is currently in Europe trying to drum up more significant Western support. “The regime also said to the Syrian people for years that the army is there to fight the Zionist enemy,” he said. “But in reality, the military capabilities were neglected and they focused on making the army an organization of internal repression. Most of the units have very old and faulty equipment and those that did get relatively new tanks and armored cars are loyal Alawite units, which are responsible foremostly with protecting the regime.”

The neglect of the offensive capabilities of the Syrian Air Force is evident by the fact that the fighter-jets being used to bomb the rebels are not the relatively new ones that entered service in the 1990s, but ancient Mig-21 and Mig-23s, mainly over 30 years old and in some cases over 40.

The fragility of the Syrian lines on the Golan Heights were already noticeable eight years ago during the Second Lebanon War, when the Syrian Commando units that the IDF were expecting to see spread out across the border disappeared. They were almost certainly redeployed to bases nearer Damascus so as not to be harmed if the war boiled over from southern Lebanon. IDF soldiers serving on Mount Hermon in the snowy winter months saw it even earlier, when they watched as Syrian soldiers – without suitable clothing or shelter – froze to death. In intelligence briefings, they were told that these were cannon-fodder conscripts, while the elite forces were being kept for war. This assessment was not baseless, but it seems now very likely that the IDF exaggerated the threat posed by the Syrians, especially in recent years.

This is partly due to the trauma of the Yom Kippur War when Israel was caught unawares by the Egyptians in Sinai and the Syrians on the Golan. In any case, it is much easier, even for the best intelligence agencies, to count the number of tanks and artillery barrels than to assess their level of maintenance and the motivation of the operators. Nearly every year, when the IDF fought a battle to enlarge its budget, it had little interest in admitting that the only significant enemy-state that remains on Israel’s borders does not field an especially fearsome army any longer and that the quality of its arms systems and the level of training have seriously eroded through long years of economic depression. Acknowledging that could have led to the closure of IDF armored divisions. In any case, now it’s clear that the Syrian Army has not been seriously preparing for war against Israel for quite a while.

This doesn’t mean that Assad no longer has the capability to cause significant damage to the Israeli home-front, with ballistic missiles (some with chemical warheads) – and there is always the possibility that Hezbollah would do that for him, though right now the Lebanese movement is itself getting stuck in Syria, fighting the rebels in an effort to keep its ally in power. But using that capability to hurt Israel would undoubtedly lead to a devastating Israeli counter-attack, which would expose the fact that, beyond its missiles, the Syrian Army today is little more than a militia dedicated to propping up the regime.

Despite hostile Syrian rhetoric, Israel hoping to avoid further escalation in hostilities | The Times of Israel.

Assad’s deputy FM calls Israeli airstrikes ‘declaration of war’; Damascus tells UN of fatalities in Israeli attacks, says Israel is fighting regime together with Islamic terrorists; Netanyahu convenes top ministers, deploys Iron Dome, but intends to go ahead with China trip

Syria’s Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad warned Sunday that recent Israeli airstrikes on facilities near Damascus constituted an Israeli “declaration of war.”

Mekdad’s comments prompted concern in Israel about a possible escalation of hostilities between Israel and Syria, and Israel was said to be braced for all possibilities. But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was still intending to head to China for four days on Sunday night, in what was partly a demonstrative desire to play down the likelihood of escalation.

Mekdad made the statement during an interview with CNN on Sunday, hours after Israel reportedly struck military targets on the outskirts of Damascus for the second time in 48 hours.

The Foreign Ministry in Damascus stated in a letter to the United Nations that the strikes “killed and wounded several people.”

Syria’s Information Minister Omran al-Zoubi said soon afterward that “all options are open” for Syria to respond to the attacks, which he claimed conclusively demonstrated the alliance between “the terrorists, infidels and Zionists” fighting the regime of President Bashar Assad. Still, in more moderate tones, al-Zoubi also said the regime’s priority was to battle the forces inside Syria that were challenging the regime, and he denied claims in some Arab media that an Israeli plane had been shot down by Syrian forces and two pilots captured.

Mekdad had also asserted that the attacks reflected an alliance between Islamic terrorists fighting against Assad’s regime and Israel, and warned that Syria would retaliate as and when it saw fit.

Syrian officials made similar threats after an alleged Israeli airstrike on a weapons convey near the Lebanese-Syrian border at the end of January 2013.

The Foreign Ministry in Damascus said the attacks aimed “to give direct military support to terrorist groups” fighting the government.

In its letter sent to the United Nations and the UN Security Council, the ministry also said that the “Israeli aggression” killed and wounded several people and “caused widespread destruction.”

Egypt and the Arab League condemned the strike, with Cairo’s Foreign Ministry saying it was against any infraction of the sovereignty of Arab countries.

Apparently bracing for possible retaliation, Israel deployed two Iron Dome missile defense batteries in the north of the country on Sunday morning, hours after it reportedly struck a shipment of Iranian missiles bound for Hezbollah near Damascus.

One Iron Dome battery was deployed in Safed and the other in Haifa. The Iron Dome system has proved highly effective in stopping short-range rocket fire, intercepting 84 percent of the incoming rockets from Gaza it aimed at during Operation Pillar of Defense last November.

A Syrian state TV report claimed Israeli rockets hit a military research site on the outskirts of the capital at about 2 a.m., while an unnamed Israeli official told AFP the target was a shipment of Iranian made Fatah-110 missiles that were on their way from Syria to Hezbollah terrorists.

Netanyahu convened his security cabinet on Sunday afternoon to discuss the escalating hostilities with Syria. He delayed his scheduled Sunday evening departure for China by two hours in order to participate in the meeting.

The fact that Netanyahu was nonetheless going ahead with the China trip, diplomatic sources said, underlined Israel’s intention to de-escalate tensions with Syria. Furthermore, the sources said, the fact that Israel was privately stressing that the missiles hit in the strike came from Iran, and were intended for Hezbollah, and that Israel reportedly did not enter Syrian airspace but rather carried out the strikes from inside Lebanese air space, was intended to reduce the focus on Syria and thus reduce the likelihood of a Syrian military response.

Army Radio reported Israeli concerns that Hezbollah might seek further Iranian missile shipments, and said the security establishment was therefore remaining on alert.

Israel’s Channel 2 said Sunday evening that Hezbollah was engaging in “psychological warfare,” trying to further escalate tensions between Israel and Syria. The Assad regime was deploying long-range missiles to face Israel, and would now seek even more energetically to supply Hezbollah with unprecedentedly advanced weaponry, Hezbollah claimed, according to the Channel 2 report, which noted that there was no confirmation of these assertions.

There were no official Syrian reports on casualty numbers in either of the two strikes Friday and Sunday. An unconfirmed report on the Russia Today website cited a local Syrian journalist reporting “rumors on Syrian social media” that 300 or more soldiers stationed at military bases on Mount Qassiyoun near Damascus were killed. “Many Syrians are calling for retaliation as the possibility of a full-scale war with Israel is speculated upon,” this unconfirmed report further claimed.

Activists opposed to the Assad regime reported that a blast hit an ammunition depot in the Qassiyoun mountains late Saturday. It was not clear if that reported incident was related to any Israeli activity. According to a Syrian official who spoke to Al Arabiya, the Syrian regime uses its bases on the mountain to fire missiles at rebel targets in Damascus.

MK Tzachi Hanegbi (Likud), a former chairman of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, said Sunday it was unlikely Syria would hit back at Israel, but did not rule this out. “A Syrian retaliation is always an option,” he conceded, “but apparently it was deemed to be a long shot.”

“Iran is testing Israel’s and the US’s determination to uphold ‘red lines.’ And what it is seeing in Syria is that at least some of the actors take red lines seriously,” said former IDF intelligence chief Amos Yadlin.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman condemned Sunday’s Israeli airstrike, but gave no hint of a possible stronger response from Tehran or its allies.

Ramin Mehmanparast was quoted Sunday by the semiofficial Fars news agency denouncing the attack on the Iranian missiles, which were believed en route to Iranian-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon. His were the first Iranian comments since Israel launched a first round of airstrikes on Friday.

Mehmanparast urged countries in the region to remain united against Israel.

“As a Muslim nation, we back Syria, and if there is need for training we will provide them with the training, but won’t have any active involvement in the operations,” Iranian general Ahmad Reza Pourdastan said in remarks reported by the official IRNA news agency.

“The Syrian army has accumulated experience during years of conflict with the Zionist regime and is able to defend itself and doesn’t need foreign assistance,” he added.

Uzi Rubin, a missile expert and former Defense Ministry official, told the Associated Press that if the target of the reported strikes was a consignment of Fatah-110 missiles, then such weaponry did constitute a “game-changer”: Fired from Syria or south Lebanon, these missiles, he said, could reach almost anywhere in Israel with high accuracy.

“All countries have to look after their own national security, of course, and are able to take actions to protect their own national security,” Britain’s Foreign Secretary William Hague told Sky News Sunday.

He said the attack showed that Syria’s two-year-long civil war risked spreading outside its borders to engulf the entire region, and argued it was time to consider lifting the arms embargo on Syria’s opposition.

“The longer this goes on, the stronger the case becomes for lifting the arms embargoes on the National Coalition, on the Syrian opposition, if we’re left with no other alternative to that,” Hague said.

AP contributed to this report.

Haifa mayor orders preparations for possible Syrian retaliation | The Times of Israel.

Following Israel’s reported strike at targets near Damascus, Yona Yahav holds urgent meetings with authority representatives

An Iron Dome battery stationed in the north near the city of Haifa, January 2013. (photo credit Avishag Shaar Yashuv/Flash 90)

Haifa’s mayor ordered the northern city to increase its preparedness and gear up to defend itself against a possible retaliatory attack after Israeli planes reportedly hit targets inside Syria twice over the past three days.

Yona Yahav held meetings in order to coordinate the city’s positions with the Home Front Command, police, fire department and MDA. Procedures for opening shelters and absorption centers were discussed as well.

Get The Times of Israel’s Daily Edition by email
and never miss our top stories   Free Sign up!

The move follows the placing of two Iron Dome batteries in northern Israel by the Israel Defense Forces on Sunday, amid reports that Syria saw the strikes as a “declaration of war.”

“City Hall is a body which residents approach in case of emergency and we must prepare accordingly,” Yahav said.

Two weeks ago, the Knesset held a special meeting on protecting the city’s large chemical stores, an attack on which could lead to thousands of deaths.

Late last month, Israeli planes shot down a drone off the coast near the city, thought to have been sent by Hezbollah or Iran. Hezbollah denied sending the unmanned aircraft.

Several days later, the army called up thousands of soldiers for a surprise drill in the north.

One Iron Dome battery was deployed in Safed and the other in Haifa. The Iron Dome system has proved highly effective in stopping short-range rocket fire, intercepting 84 percent of the incoming rockets from Gaza it aimed at during Operation Pillar of Defense last November.

On Sunday, Israeli planes reportedly hit targets near Damascus, days after jets struck a weapons transfer at Damascus airport, according to unnamed American and Israeli officials.

Army Radio reported Israeli concerns that Hezbollah might seek further Iranian missile shipments, and said the security establishment was therefore remaining on alert.

There were no official Syrian reports on casualty numbers in either of the two strikes Friday and Sunday. An unconfirmed report on the Russia Today website cited a local Syrian journalist reporting “rumors on Syrian social media” that 300 or more soldiers stationed at military bases on Mount Qassiyoun near Damascus were killed.

“Many Syrians are calling for retaliation as the possibility of a full-scale war with Israel is speculated upon,” the unconfirmed report said.

Syria’s deputy foreign minister Faisal Mekdad warned Sunday that recent Israeli airstrikes on facilities near Damascus constituted an Israeli “declaration of war.”

Syrian officials made similar threats after an alleged Israeli airstrike on a weapons convey near the Lebanese-Syrian border at the end of January 2013.

At that time Israel also positioned Iron Dome batteries in the north, though there were no responses from Syria or Lebanese ally Hezbollah.

The Foreign Ministry in Damascus said the attacks aimed “to give direct military support to terrorist groups” fighting the government.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened his security cabinet on Sunday afternoon to discuss the escalating hostilities with Syria. He slightly delayed his scheduled Sunday evening departure for China in order to participate in the meeting.

In a brief comment apparently related to the airstrike, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday, “My father taught me that the greatest responsibility we bear is to ensure Israel’s security and to fortify its future.” The prime minister, speaking at a ceremony dedicating a Jerusalem road junction in memory of his father Benzion, did not elaborate.

Activists opposed to the Assad regime reported that a blast hit an ammunition depot in the Qassiyoun mountains late Saturday. It was not clear if that reported incident was related to any Israeli activity. According to a Syrian official who spoke to Al Arabiya, the Syrian regime uses its bases on the mountain to fire missiles at rebel targets in Damascus.

After Strikes in Syria, Concerns About an Escalation of Fighting – NYTimes.com.

By ANNE BARNARD, JODI RUDOREN and ISABEL KERSHNER

BEIRUT — A series of explosions that hit just west of Damascus early Sunday, sending fiery mushroom-shaped clouds towering over the landmark Mount Qasioun and brightening the night sky above the city, left the region concerned about an unexpected escalation in the Syrian war.

The Syrian government immediately blamed Israel for the explosions, whose power appeared to far outstrip that of any weapons in the rebel arsenal; many Damascus residents said the attack was by far the most fearsome near the capital in more than two years of fighting.

The Syrian deputy foreign minister said on CNN that he considered the airstrikes “an act of war.” Israeli officials refused to confirm the strikes, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu avoided any mention of the developments in Syria in his remarks at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting Sunday. But the Israeli military deployed two of its Iron Dome missile-defense batteries in northern cities, and Mr. Netanyahu delayed by two hours his evening departure for China so he could convene his security cabinet.

If carried out by Israel, the attack would be the third in Syria by that country this year and the second in two days; an American official said a more limited strike early Friday at Damascus International Airport was meant to destroy weapons being sent from Iran to the Lebanese Shiite militia and the political party Hezbollah, an aim similar to that of an Israeli strike in January.

But the explosions that struck Damascus on Sunday, shaking the ground across the city, appeared to be of far greater magnitude and potentially broader political and military significance.

The attack raised the possibility that Israel, even if merely intending to pursue its own national security goals, could be providing a major psychological and perhaps military assist to Syrian rebels, who over the last several weeks have faced losses in a series of government offensives around Damascus and the city of Homs to the north.

Within hours of Sunday’s explosions, the rebel Damascus Military Council sought to capitalize. The council issued a statement calling on all fighters in the area to work together, put aside rivalries and mount focused attacks on government forces that so far have kept a solid hold on Damascus, the capital.

Still, military analysts said Sunday’s attacks by themselves were not likely to tip the balance between the rebels and the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad. And Louay Mekdad, a spokesman for the Supreme Military Council, considered Washington’s best option for a military ally among the rebels, discounted claims by some rebel groups that they would take advantage of the airstrikes to escalate their attacks on the Syrian government.

Video posted online on Sunday showed multiple explosions hitting the area west of the Syrian capital, which is home an array of crucial military installations. According to residents in the area and Syrian opposition groups, the attacks struck bases of the army’s elite fighting units as well as a research center that American officials have said is the country’s main facility for chemical weapons development.

Not all those assertions were confirmed by the Syrian government, which said only that the research center in Jamraya had been hit.

Syrian state television said the explosions confirmed what the government has been contending all along: that the rebels are part of an American-Israeli conspiracy to target Mr. Assad for his support of Palestinians and opposition to Western policies in the Middle East.

While being seen as allies of Israel could tarnish the rebels in Syrian eyes, the rebels could also point to the strikes as proof of their government’s hypocrisy. A frequent refrain among fighters and activists has been that while the government’s security forces and military failed to prevent the Israeli strikes — and for that matter have not clashed with Israel since 1973 — they have killed tens of thousands of Syrians and jailed many more in order to hold onto power.

Some rebels and activists say openly that they consider Mr. Assad a far higher-priority target than Israel, while making clear that they do not embrace Israel.

The main exile Syrian opposition coalition walked that line carefully in a statement issued after the bombings, blaming the government for allowing attacks by “external occupying forces.”

“The regime has used its forces to suppress the popular demands of the people for change, weakening Syrian defense, and thus allowing external occupying forces to hit Syrian locations,” the statement said. “Israel’s actions, including its pre-emptive attacks to weaken Syrian defenses, demonstrate a fear of losing the years of peace that the Assad regime provided for Israel.”

Some opposition fighters, in a conflict that has taken on an increasingly sectarian cast, have said that for the Sunni-led rebellion, their greatest enemy is not Israel but Shiite Iran and Hezbollah, the closest allies of Mr. Assad’s government. In recent weeks, sectarian rhetoric has heightened against Shiites and Alawites, a related sect to which Mr. Assad belongs.

Government supporters also portrayed the rebellion as driven by extremist Sunni Muslim ideologies like Wahhabism. The opposition has accused Alawite and Shiite militias of carrying out massacres of Sunni Muslims, including in the last two weeks in the Damascus suburbs and in Baniyas, a mostly-Sunni area in the largely Alawite coastal region.

Iran’s defense minister, travelling inside the country with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, accused the United States of “giving the green light” for the airstrikes. General Ahmad Vahidi told Iran’s semiofficial Fars News agency that is becoming “increasingly clear” to Iran that Israel and Syrian rebels are working together in trying to bring down the Assad government.

“These attacks reveal the close relations between the mercenary terrorists and their supporters, the Zionist regime,” he said. While Mr. Vahidi did not elaborate, Iranian officials have often accused Syrian rebel forces of providing assistance and intelligence on the ground, facilitating Israeli airstrikes.

While Israeli government and military officials refused to confirm or to take any responsibility for the strikes, one senior Israeli official who spoke on the condition of anonymity said that he did not think that Israel was entering a war with Syria and suggested that Syria was unlikely to respond.

President Bashar al-Assad “has his own problems,” the official noted. “He doesn’t need Israel in the mess.”

Similarly, the official said that he did not think Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite organization that is backed by Iran and supports Mr. Assad would respond. “Hezbollah, as far as understood, has no intention of opening a war in Israel,” the official said, adding that Hezbollah was keeping its Iranian-supplied weapons for the day that Iran thinks it may be attacked by Israel or the United States.

Israeli experts said that Israel had no interest in getting involved in the Syrian conflict beyond looking after Israel’s own, immediate interests, and that the latest strikes appeared to have more to do with Israel’s cardinal standoff against Iran.

“This shouldn’t be seen as Israel intervening on behalf of the rebels or against Bashar,” said Jonathan Spyer, a senior research fellow at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya. “This is an escalation in a conflict we know about, and that is the conflict between Israel and Iran, the long shadow war, as people call it. This is an incident in that war.”

However, “one has to ask oneself about Israel’s calculus,” Mr. Spyer said. “Obviously there is a risk in that at a certain point, a response becomes more likely.”

Professor Moshe Maoz of the Hebrew University said that Iran was now the crucial actor regarding how things might unfold.

“If Hezbollah gets a green light from Iran to retaliate, Israel won’t remain idle and it could lead to regional war,” he said. “The decision is probably to be taken in Tehran.”

Israeli analysts said that Mr. Assad would be wary of retaliating against Israel, aware that Israel could strike back at his assets with far more firepower than the rebels in Syria can muster. At the same time, they said, Israel was taking a calculated risk because the more frequent and stronger strikes, the more likely they could at some point lead to a reaction.

Professor Eyal Zisser of Tel Aviv University said of the strikes, “It is the kind of thing that you know how it begins, but not how it ends.”

“Israel is still not involved in the war in Syria,” he added, “but it is getting closer.”

Egypt, Arab League condemn attacks in Syria | Maan News Agency.

( Just for laughs… The Platonic form of hypocrisy. – JW )

Obama and Netanyahu’s new red line – Israel Opinion, Ynetnews.

( There is no source (basis) for pretty much everything said in this article.  It may be true, but all indications I’ve seen are to the contrary. – JW )

Ron Ben-Yishai

Analysis: Israeli government banking on US promise to strike Iran should diplomacy, sanctions fail to stop nuke program

Tehran and Damascus view the contradicting assessments made by senior Israeli and American officials as a sign of diplomatic weakness in the Western camp. It indicates to them that there is a problem in gathering intelligence and a fear of anything that even smells of military action.

It is safe to assume that the ayatollahs, headed by Khamenei, and senior Assad regime officials understand now they can continue stretching the rope when it comes to unconventional weapons and substances and that the red lines laid down by the US and Israel are no more than a suggestion. The Israeli public (and most likely the American public as well) is confused and concerned. The civilians sense that the institutions in Jerusalem and Washington do not know how close Iran is to a nuclear bomb, or are hiding the truth from the public. They also sense that their leaders have not decided if, or how, the dangers posed by Syria’s vast chemical weapons stockpile can be neutralized.

What’s really frustrating is that the actual situation, at least according to the more credible intelligence assessments, is not that bad – at least according to the latest, most credible intelligence assessments. It can be said with a high degree of certainty that while Iran does have the technological capabilities to produce within a few months enough weapons-grade material for one atomic bomb, it does not yet possess the proven capabilities to build the weapon itself – meaning the bomb or warhead. Moreover, at this point the Iranians are refraining from producing the amount of weapons-grade uranium required to fuel even a prototype of an atomic bomb. Instead, they are working to improve their technical and technological capabilities in order to able to produce weapons-grade material and build a bomb within a short period of time, if and when the supreme leader decides that the time has come take the nuclear program to the next level.

It’s a little complicated, so in order to simplify things let’s say that at this point the regime in Tehran is focusing on improving its ability to produce an atomic bomb, but at the same time it is showing that it does not want to implement these capabilities. This assessment is supported by updated information obtained by the International Atomic Energy Agency and Western intelligence. According to these estimations, a year, maybe even three, will pass from the moment Khamenei decides he wants to possess a nuclear bomb until this decision is actually implemented.

Revolutionary Guards protecting Natanz nuclear plant (Photo: AP)

So what is the basis of the claim that the decision on whether or not to attack Iran must be reached by the end of 2013? The answer is that by the end of this year Iran may cross the red line set by Netanyahu at the UN General Assembly. This red line is 240 kilograms of 20%-enriched uranium, which is enough for the production of one nuclear warhead if it is enriched to a 90% fissile purity level. Netanyahu said this red line may be crossed by the summer, but the all the figures indicate it is doubtful Tehran will cross Bibi’s red line this year.

However, the mere act of presenting a red line caused damage to Israel’s interests. The entire world is waiting to see what Israel will do in case the IAEA announces that Iran has accumulated 240 kg of 20%-enriched uranium. If Israel does not act, its credibility and deterrence will be further eroded – not only in the eyes of Iran, but also in the eyes of other regional enemies that are waiting for the first sign of weakness from the Jewish state. It must be remembered that Israel already lost some of its credibility when it moved the red line upwards. It happened sometime in 2012, when Ehud Barak and Netanyahu suddenly stopped talking about the “zone of immunity” as a red line which, if crossed, would justify a go-it-alone Israeli strike. Instead, they began talking about uranium enriched to a 20% fissile purity level.

Nuclear facility at Fordo (Photo: EPA)

The reason for this change in rhetoric is simple: At the time Iran had already crossed Israel’s original red line when it began activating the underground nuclear facility at Fordo, thus placing its nuclear program in the “immunity zone.” Recently, following Barak’s departure from the Defense Ministry, Netanyahu once again moved the red line upwards. This time he acted wisely and did it secretly during a meeting with Barack Obama. According to various reports, the American president and the Israeli PM agreed on a new plan to block Iran’s nuclear program, which calls for narrowing the gap between the Israelis and American red lines. Obama moved his red line down, Netanyahu moved his up. Meaning, Netanyahu’s previous red line, as presented during his UN speech, is no longer valid. Although, because of the secrecy, it is hard to ascertain whether a new Israeli red line even exists or whether it was replaced by an Israeli-American agreement to reach a joint decision regarding the possible use of military force against Iran.

Obama promised Netanyahu that if diplomatic efforts fail and the economic sanctions do not dissuade Iran from moving forward with its nuclear program and taking direct steps toward building an atomic bomb, the US would act military to thwart these efforts.

The American leader also gave Netanyahu the “yellow light” for a unilateral operation against Iran. The light will turn green should the Israeli government conclude, after consulting with Washington, that is must bomb Iran in order to defend itself. Israel’s promise to consult with the US prior to a go-it-alone attack will secure Washington’s diplomatic, military and logistical support – even if the White House believes the time has not yet come for military action in Iran. During his meeting with Obama, Netanyahu clarified that Israel realizes the US has superior capabilities which can delay or even destroy Iran’s nuclear program – capabilities Israel does not have. Therefore, Israel prefers to wait for America to act on its own against Iran. Should Israel feel that it must act unilaterally, it wants to do so only after informing the US of its plans in advance, thus securing America’s assistance.

Netanyahu and the Israeli government decided to fully trust America’s commitment to use military force against Iran should all the other options to stop Iran’s nuclear program fail.

If Syria fails to repond to Israel attack, it will look weak | GulfNews.com.