WarSclerotic

Official: Israel may not have answer to Syrian missiles – Israel News, Ynetnews.

Ex-Military Intelligence senior worried Iron Dome may fail against strike on Tel Aviv. ‘Assad losing control of arsenal,’ claims Major-General (res.) Dayan. Russian long-range missiles shipment raises tensions

The Media Line

Israelis awoke to reports that Syrian President Bashar Assad has placed advanced surface-to-surface Tishreen missiles on standby with orders to strike at Tel Aviv if Israel launches another air strike on Syrian targets.

The report was based on reconnaissance satellite photos said to show preparations for the deployment of the missiles, which Israeli analysts say could cause extensive damage to the country.

“I’m not sure Israel has an answer to some of the missiles which the Syrians have and I’m not sure that the (anti-missile system) Iron Dome can be successful here,” Mordechai Kedar, a former senior military intelligence official and professor of Middle East Studies at Bar Ilan University told The Media Line.

Russian S-300 missiles (Archive Photo: AFP)

“So Israel might be exposed to all kinds of attacks by Syria which could use weapons which are not allowed,” he said referring to chemical weapons.

“In short, Israel might face a very big problem, especially where there are large concentrations of population like Tel Aviv,” he continued. The difference between this and all out war with what’s left of the Syrian regime is very close.”

But other experts believe that Syrian President Bashar Assad is not interested in opening another front against Israel while engaged in his battle to survive.

“Syria today is much weaker than it used to be and it will take a long time to regain its military strength,” Major-General (res.) Uzi Dayan, former head of Israel’s National Security Council, told The Media Line. “Assad is losing more and more control of the periphery of the country and parts of his arsenal.”

From Israel’s perspective, he says, the best option for now is for the stalemate between Assad and rebel fighters to continue.

“We don’t want to take sides in what’s happening in Syria but we also don’t want to do anything to accelerate the fall of Assad,” Dayan said. “It’s not good guys vs. bad guys.”

Israel has still not confirmed it was behind two recent strikes on weapons that were reportedly on their way to Hezbollah terrorists in south Lebanon. But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his cabinet that Israel will do whatever is necessary to stop Hizbullah from obtaining more advanced missiles.

“Our policy is to stop, as much as possible, any leaks of advanced weaponry to Hezbollah and other terrorist organizations,” Netanyahu said. “We will continue to act to ensure the security interests of the citizens of Israel.”

Israel is also concerned about the S-300 Russian air defense system which Moscow has pledged to deliver to Syria. Netanyahu himself flew to Russia last week in a failed mission to try and stop the sale.

“These weapons are dangerous,” senior Defense Ministry official Amos Gilad said. “If Hezbollah and Iran support Syria, why shouldn’t (the Syrians) transfer these weapons to Hezbollah? It’s a threat to us, a threat to the Americans and a threat to the Persian Gulf.”

The reference to the Persian Gulf seemed to be implying that Iran could also gain control of this system, either from Hezbollah or directly from Russia.

According to Kedar, it is even possible that Iran could take over Syria if it feels its proxy, Bashar Assad, is losing his grip on Syria.

“Iran can very easily send troops into Syria to take this country (Syria) because Iraq would allow Iranian troops to cross through on their way into Syria,” Kedar said. “This is a feasible scenario. Though the world will object and condemn it, I don’t see any other army which would try to invade Syria only to fight the Iranian army.”

Both Kedar and Dayan say the Assad regime will eventually fall, although it could take many more months. Yet, from Israel’s perspective, what will come after Assad may be even worse.

This article was written by Linda Gradstein

Israel Hayom | Hezbollah steps up fighting in Syria, Israel threatens more strikes.

Israel Hayom | Russian rock, American hard place.

Hezbollah suffers heavy losses in Syria – Israel News, Ynetnews.

At least 20 members of Shiite group fighting alongside Syrian troops killed in battles in Qusair. Meanwhile, IDF post observes firing directed at Israel from Syrian side of border

Yoav Zitun, Maor Buchnik

An IDF observation post in the border area in the Golan Heights reported detecting small arms firing from the Syrian side of the border at an open area in Israel. No injuries or damage were reported.

A complaint was lodged with the United Nations. The army is checking whether fire had indeed been directed at Israel.

Meanwhile, Al-Arabiya TV reported that at least 20 Hezbollah fighters were killed in battles in the Syrian rebel-held town of Qusair. Their bodies were transported to hospitals in Beirut. One of those killed was senior Hezbollah official Fadi al-Jazar.

According to the report, al-Jazar had previously been held in Israel and released as part of a prisoner exchange deal. In addition, 62 wounded, many of them Hezbollah combatants, were taken to hospitals in Lebanon.

Rebels in Qusair (Photo: AP)

On Sunday, Syrian troops aided by Hezbollah launched a massive assault on the rebel-held city near the Lebanese border.

Speaking from Qusair, activist Hadi Abdallah said Syrian warplanes bombed Qusair in the morning and shells were hitting the town at a rate of up to 50 a minute. At least 52 people were killed, he said.

“The army is hitting Qusair with tanks and artillery from the north and east while Hezbollah is firing mortar rounds and multiple rocket launchers from the south and west,” he said.

“Most of the dead are civilians killed by the shelling.”

The region near the Orontos River has been segregated into Sunni and Shiite villages in the civil war that grew out of protests against Syrian President Bashar Assad.

It is vital for Assad, who belongs to the Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, to keep open a route from Shiite Hezbollah’s strongholds in the Bekaa to areas near Syria’s Mediterranean coast inhabited by co-religionist Alawites.

ESR | May 20, 2013 | Iran fears growing Israel-Azerbaijan cooperation.

By Lt.-Col. (ret.) Michael Segall
web posted May 20, 2013

The visit to Israel in April 2013 by Azeri Foreign Minister Elmar Mamadyarov, which involved meetings with the president, prime minister, and security officials including the defense minister, again intensified Tehran’s concerns over the growing ties between Jerusalem and Baku, both of which view Iran as a threat, albeit to different extents.

A telegram sent by the U.S. embassy in Baku at the beginning of 2009 said the Israeli-Azeri relationship was largely hidden from view and that Azeri President Ilham Aliyev had described it as “an iceberg, nine-tenths of it is below the surface.” Since then, considerable security, political, and economic elements have been added to this relationship, only aggravating Tehran’s fears about the more covert aspects.

This tightening of Israeli-Azeri relations augments Iran’s sense of encirclement, which had indeed diminished since the United States’ exit from Iraq (on Iran’s western border) but still exists. To the south, foreign forces are active in the Persian Gulf; the base of the U.S. Fifth Fleet is in Bahrain. To the east, NATO is still operating in Afghanistan. And to the north, in Azerbaijan, Iran views the “Israeli threat” as the most tangible of all, both in terms of a platform for a military attack and a base for intelligence gathering and special operations against Iran, which claims the assassins of its nuclear scientists came from Azerbaijan.

Furthermore, Iran, after its fleeting honeymoon with Ankara, sees the gradually improving Israeli-Turkish relations under U.S. patronage as yet another threat. Moreover, Azerbaijan, which is a member of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), has no embassy in Israel but is the source of a large part of the oil that Israel consumes.

Backyard Games

The newspaper Jomhouri Eslami, which is identified with Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president and presidential hopeful for the presidential election in June 2013 and head of the Expediency Council, wrote that Mamadyarov’s visit to Israel and high-level meetings there had ramped up tensions among the nations of the Caspian Sea littoral, and that the visit had occurred precisely as Azerbaijan was covering up its trade and political relations with Israel (“the Zionist entity”). The paper surveys Israeli companies’ involvement in Azerbaijan and asserts:

Israel’s activity and presence in Azerbaijan on the northern border of Iran is aimed at exerting pressure on Iran and conducting security and intelligence activity against it and at getting prepared for the delusion of bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities….Because of its strategic location, Azerbaijan offers Israel a springboard for espionage, military activity, and assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists.

The paper also refers to the military contracts signed between the two states, amounting to “$1.6 billion in defensive missiles and UAVs.” The article goes on to claim that Israel has also infiltrated Azerbaijan’s cultural-religious activity in an effort to distance it from its Shiite heritage. “In the last few years [former Azeri President] Heydar Aliyev and his son [President] Ilham Aliyev have steadily contaminated this nation by launching anti-Islamic and Zionist programs [such as] the Eurovision contests, all with the aim of eliminating Islam and secularizing Azerbaijan.”

At the end of 2012, the Iranian satellite TV channel reported in English that

Following a rise in the U.S. radar activities in the Astara Rayon region in Azerbaijan and the presence of Israeli military advisors, Azerbaijan has been using Orbiter ultra-light drones to carry out operations along the border with Iran and Karabakh…. Azerbaijan also uses Hermes-450 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for control and surveillance missions.

In recent months, Iran has stepped up critical public tone toward Baku’s “incautious” policy and growing ties with Israel and the West – particularly the United States. Meanwhile, it continues its covert subversive activity in Azerbaijan including by means of Lebanese Hizbullah, which is providing assistance to local terrorist and espionage cells. Iran’s aim is to build an infrastructure for retaliation there in case it is attacked, and also to try and influence Azerbaijan’s domestic political arena. Azerbaijan, for its part, is wary of this Iranian activity, which is directed at both foreign (Israeli and U.S.) interests and local political activists, and in recent years has arrested a number of Iranians, Hizbullah operatives, and local activists on suspicion of involvement in terror and subversion.

A Forward Attack Base

Iran’s progress in its nuclear program and the failure of the nuclear talks with the West have raised Tehran’s threshold of sensitivity about a military attack on its nuclear facilities, and it increasingly fears that Azerbaijan may serve as a base for such a strike. Notably, a 2012 article in Foreign Policy quoted senior U.S. intelligence officials saying Azerbaijan would serve as a base for attacking Iran or for rescue operations after an Israeli attack.4 In a 2012 meeting in Iran between Azeri Defense Minister Safar Abiyev and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Abiyev asserted: “The Republic of Azerbaijan, like always in the past, will never permit any country to take advantage of its land, or air, against the Islamic Republic of Iran, which we consider our brother and friend country.” Ahmadinejad, for his part, visited Azerbaijan in October 2010 for the summit of the Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO).

Saeed Jalili, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) and Khamenei’s representative on the council and top nuclear negotiator, met in late April 2013 with the visiting secretary of the National Security Council of Azerbaijan and warned him of “Western powers’ efforts to destabilize certain countries [meaning Azerbaijan] in order to prepare the ground for their presence and secure their own interests in those countries…. Examples of such actions can be found in the color revolutions and some regional countries like Syria.” Jalili said that “opportunities and mutual threats” could set the stage for more cooperation between Tehran and Baku in various cultural, political and economic fields. In February 2013, Jalili met with the Azeri president and declared that Iran and Azerbaijan would not allow countries from outside the region to affect their relationship.

A Common and Problematic Heritage

Azerbaijan borders two countries that have aspirations to recreate their glorious past: Iran, once the center of the Persian Empire, of which Azerbaijan was part; and Turkey, whose current leaders aspire to regain the power of the Ottoman Empire, at least in terms of political influence and leadership of the Muslim states. Between these two “giants” and the various regional and ethnic conflicts related to them, Azerbaijan seeks to pursue an independent, cautious foreign policy that takes into account the constraints stemming from its geostrategic location.

The issue of Azerbaijan’s political, military, and economic relations with the West since it gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 adds an additional security-strategic layer to Azeri-Iranian ethnic-religious tensions. The two countries share a similar ethnic-religious heritage. According to several assessments, in northwestern Iran there now live close to twenty-five million Azeris, forming the country’s largest minority; Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is of Azeri extraction and so is opposition leader Mir Hossein Musawi.

Both countries are Shiite, and both have territorial claims that in times of quiet are almost not mooted but in times of crisis again rise to the surface. Some in Iran refuse to accept the loss of the province of northern Azerbaijan, which was conquered by the Russian Empire at the beginning of the nineteenth century as part of its conquests of the Transcaucasus region, and they still see it as a historical Iranian province, though usually repressing such aspirations.

In 1813 and 1828, the Persian Qajar dynasty could not withstand the Russian armies and was forced to sign the Gulistan and Turkmenchay agreements, which divested the Persian Empire of Georgia and the lands that today are Armenia and Azerbaijan. In today’s Iran, these humiliating agreements are still synonyms for bowing to foreign forces and part of a legacy that the Islamic regime still seeks to replace with an ethos of independence and resistance to foreign forces at any price.

Greater Azerbaijan

Many in Azerbaijan have adopted a more or less dogmatically secular way of life, to Islamic Iran’s disappointment, after almost seventy years of secularization under the Soviet Union. At the same time, many still view the region of Iranian Azerbaijan, what they call “southern Azerbaijan,” as a part of greater Azerbaijan, and the considerable portion of the Azeri people who live there as entitled to their own language and independence. Iran, of course, opposes this, and recently stepped up arrests of Azeri activists in its territory because of what it called their “setting up illegal groups and anti-regime propaganda.” Ethnic tensions also arise at soccer matches. For example, during a match last March between the Tractor Sazi team from Tabriz in northwestern Iran and the Al-Jazira team from the UAE, tensions erupted after a number of Azeri-Iranian fans waved a sign saying “South Azerbaijan [i.e., northwestern Iran] isn’t Iran.”

After a conference in Azerbaijan where participants called to annex the Azeri-populated areas of northwestern Iran, Iran bitterly criticized the participants and the Azeri leadership for facilitating the gathering. The Azeri ambassador in Tehran was summoned to the Foreign Ministry for a severe reprimand, and was called on not to allow any more such conferences on Azeri soil since they could deal a fatal blow to the two states’ relations. The spokesman of the public relations department in Iran’s Baku embassy condemned the conference and said that “despite Tehran’s policy of promoting friendly ties with Baku and although Tehran respects Azerbaijan’s sovereignty and does not interfere in its internal affairs, certain anti-Iran elements have unfortunately carried out hostile and offensive measures by stressing unfounded territorial claims against Iranian sovereignty.” In December 2012, the Iranian embassy in Baku denounced anti-Iranian remarks made during the Convention of the World Azerbaijanis in Baku and called the event a “plot aimed at harming the friendly relations between Tehran and Baku” and at promoting “international Zionism and global arrogance.”

Members of the Majlis (parliament) in Iran were even less restrained in their response. Mansour Haqiqatpour, head of the Majlis National Security Committee, said that residents of several cities in Azerbaijan, including Baku, who were separated from Iran during the Qajar reign and its war with Russia, had expressed interest in returning to the Iranian fold and that Iranian residents of Ardabil, Tabriz, Urmia, and Zanjan (which have Azeri minority populations) had expressed their willingness to respond harshly to the actions of the Azeri government and announced their readiness to reclaim the towns stolen from Iran during the Qajar dynasty. In a similar vein, Ardabil’s representative in the Majlis, Kamal Aladeen Firmouzan, said a referendum was needed on whether to restore Azerbaijan to Iran and claimed that Azerbaijan’s citizens openly and strongly desired this. He asserted that the “abominable” United States and Israel, along with the “Wahabi regime” (Saudi Arabia), had succeeded to penetrate deeply into Azerbaijan, and hence Azeri politicians had started to show sympathy for “traitorous and separatist elements and groups.”

Hussein Shariatmadari, editor of the newspaper Kayhan, which generally reflects Khamenei’s positions, also proposed appealing to Azeri officials to hold a referendum among the residents of the areas that had been “taken” from Iran, in which they would be asked if they wanted to be annexed to Iran. Shariatmadari called this a “logical and basic step toward democracy” and claimed Azerbaijan’s residents yearned to become part of Iran again. He said the conference that was held in Baku, which demanded independence for Iran’s large Azeri minority, was only one of many steps Baku was taking to subvert the Azeri people’s religious feelings and their affection for Iran.

Religion and State

From time to time Iran criticizes the Azeri government’s anti-religious policy and its measures against activists who seek to enforce the dress code that is practiced by Iranian Shiites. Last year more than half the Majlis members voted for a motion of condemnation after the death of activist Vaqif Abdullayev. They claimed he had died for promoting the dress code and said he had “sacrificed his life after he was subject to torture for defending religious values.” The motion also criticized the holding of the Eurovision 2012 Song Contest in Baku, calling it a display of immorality. The head of the Tabriz Religious Seminary, Hojjat al-Eslam Seyyed Hussein Seyyedi-Sani, asserted that:

the Eurovision that is held in the Islamic and historic city of Baku will lead to a definite clash between the values of the West and those of Islam….By hosting the contest Azerbaijan is seeking to disguise its real face [of religiosity] and create a false pose of democracy and human rights….One can see in the contest a Zionist plot aimed at dividing Azerbaijan and distancing it from its Islamic heritage.

He also condemned the gay pride parade that was held there.

Complex Relations

In 2012, the pro-reformist Iranian newspaper Aftab analyzed the complex Iranian-Azeri relationship. The paper claimed that, while in recent decades the two states had tried to conduct a careful policy and avoid exacerbating tensions, it appeared that in recent years this approach was not working. The deterioration was evidenced in harsh verbal attacks, the summoning of ambassadors, and derogatory statements by senior military and political officials. Aftab discussed the influence of the Arab Spring on the Azeri opposition, the anti-religious measures of the government, and the tightening of relations with the West and Israel, asserting that all this had fostered growing tension and misunderstanding between Iran and Azerbaijan.

The paper also said that, in the wake of the Arab Spring, Azerbaijan had accused Iran of boosting its support for Shiite pro-Islamic opposition groups; strengthened its measures against religious activists and especially those with political tendencies; prohibited the wearing of the hijab in schools and universities, while taking many other steps against religious activity that had sparked protest among various elements in Iran; and, finally, expanded its security cooperation with Israel, causing relations with Iran to suffer.

On the one hand, the paper sums up, the two states’ stable relations in recent decades were influenced by the basic factors of geography, common cultural-religious characteristics, transportation, and trade relations (which continue to exist and develop even today) – all this despite Azerbaijan’s far-reaching secularization, the struggle over energy sources, and Israel. On the other hand, dynamic factors and events in the geostrategic environment had had negative effects and fostered tensions.

A Change in Policy

In sum, Iran is conducting its relations with Azerbaijan with great wariness. Its hopes that Azerbaijan, which was liberated from the yoke of the Soviet Union, would choose Iran as a model were quickly dashed when Baku instead chose a secular-Western direction. Baku’s insistence on taking this independent course and enhancing its relations with Israel precisely when the nuclear crisis is reaching its apogee has aggravated the two states’ relations, with harsh statements coming from Tehran – even as the two states keep trying to project an atmosphere of relations as usual. The Azeri foreign minister’s visit to Israel certainly set off warning lights in Tehran.

Iranian-Azeri relations are being influenced more and more by the geostrategic environment and less by the basic factors that had shaped these relations for decades. So far Iran, amid severe Western sanctions and a sense of isolation, has gone no further than verbal attacks and subversive activities in Azerbaijan. Iran has constant friction with the West in the Persian Gulf, and the West takes this friction into consideration in its possible escalation scenarios over the Iranian nuclear program. Iran has threatened several times to block the Strait of Hormuz and attack American bases in the Gulf States. In the context of such scenarios, Azerbaijan has not yet attained a central place on the West’s agenda. Russia, too, has to be included in the broader picture; it takes great interest in what happens in the southern Caucasus and in that regard is likely sooner or later to break its silence.

The very strong Iranian reaction to the anti-Iranian conferences in Baku (including calls to annex Azerbaijan) and the Azeri foreign minister’s visit to Israel, which put the two states’ heretofore covert relations out in the open, suggest that Iran could change its policy and may even open a front with the West in Azerbaijan. Iran could also escalate its responses to Azerbaijan’s measures; it views the country as a real threat not only in the military-security sphere (i.e., to its nuclear facilities) but also in the economic and, particularly, energy domain.

Thus, the geostrategic changes now occurring may lead Tehran to revise its policy – from a combination of implied threats, careful diplomacy, and economic inducements to a more menacing, resolute stance toward what Iran sees as the threat posed by Azerbaijan. This, among other things, could include renewed attempts to strike Israeli and Western targets (including military ones) in Azerbaijan. In 2008, 2011, and 2012, Iranian terrorist cells were uncovered there that planned to hit Jewish, Israeli, and American targets in the country, including assassinating the Israeli ambassador and attacking Chabad’s Ohr Avner Jewish school in Baku.

IDF Lt.-Col. (ret.) Michael (Mickey) Segall, an expert on strategic issues with a focus on Iran, terrorism, and the Middle East, is a senior analyst at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and the Terrogence Company.

Hezbollah preparing to attack Israel, commander says.

Terror group reportedly now has sophisticated Russian weapons

Published: 10 hours ago

Tabnak, an outlet of Iran’s Islamic regime, said an unidentified Hezbollah commander, in an interview with the Kuwaiti paper Alrai, thanked Syrian President Bashar Assad for keeping his promise to provide those weapons to Hezbollah.

“The weapons given to Hezbollah will change the balance of power,” he said.

“We have in recent days done extensive operations for reconnaissance on Israel’s central and sensitive military and infrastructural installations in different areas and also on Israel’s commando posts and peacekeeping forces in the Golan Heights,” he said, “to prepare for the coming battle with the occupying regime.”

The commander revealed some of the weapons given by Syria to Hezbollah, including Pantsir (SA-22 Greyhound) surface-to-air missiles, SAM 5 surface-to-air missiles and the Russian anti-tank Kornet missiles. However, the commander also hinted that soon Hezbollah will receive the advanced and dreaded ship-killer Yakhont missiles from Assad.

U.S. officials, British Prime Minister David Cameron and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had urged Russian President Vladimir Putin not to go ahead with his arms sales to Syria, including the S-300 antiaircraft system and the feared Yakhont cruise missiles. But despite their pleas, Russian officials said they were honoring contracts with Syria, and those weapons Russia will send to Syria may eventually wind up in the hands of Hezbollah and Iran.

The Hezbollah commander also said that Assad has ordered formation of resistance forces similar to Hezbollah, arming them with various weapons, for the confrontation with Israel.

On May 9, days after Israeli warplanes struck shipments of advanced Iranian weapons on the outskirts of Damascus intended for Hezbollah, the terrorist group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, boasted that Syria will supply “game-changing” weapons to Hezbollah.

“The attack carried out by the Zionist regime (in Syria) will shorten this fake regime’s life,” Iranian Defense Minister Gen. Ahmad Vahidi warned Israel after the Israeli attack.

Meanwhile, the British Sunday Times reported Sunday that Syria has begun deploying advanced surface-to-surface missiles aimed at Tel Aviv to be launched if Israeli warplanes strike inside Syria again.

According to a source within the Iranian intelligence apparatus, there is now little hope the Assad regime can be saved, hence the panic by Russia in arming Assad with further sophisticated weapons in a warning to U.S. and NATO to stay out of the conflict. He said Iran’s rapid shipment of sophisticated weapons to Hezbollah is part of that strategy. By reinforcing its arsenal, Hezbollah can strike all of Israel and, as a last resort, engage Israel from within Syria, further complicating the already-chaotic region.

Israel, worried about the disintegration of Syria and the further arming of Hezbollah, has warned continuously that giving “game-changing” weapons to Hezbollah is its red line.

Despite the open Iranian threats against Israel, the source said, regime officials have no intention of engaging the Jewish state directly unless America launches a direct attack against Syria or if there is an attack on Iran. In fact, he said, Iranian officials are worried about Israel attacking their nuclear facilities as Iran seeks to create a nuclear-armed state that would then become untouchable.

However, Iranians have devised several plans to engage Israel through their forces in Syria and their proxies, such as Hezbollah, to draw the Jewish state into a wider conflict should Israel continue to attack Syrian armaments facilities.

The source added that the regime also has devised plans for terrorist attacks against Israel, the U.S. homeland and their interests around the world as a warning to leave Syria alone and to stop the pressure on the Islamic regime because of its illicit nuclear program. The fall of Assad, they think, would be a culmination of an effort to then target the clerical regime in Iran.

As reported exclusively on WND on May 13, Iran not only has formed a new coalition of terrorist masterminds among its Quds Forces, Hezbollah and al-Qaida to attack the U.S. homeland, but has also given the go-ahead for three imminent operations within the U.S. to change the perception of security in America, which it believes has helped empower America’s actions in the Middle East.

Before confronting Syria, Hezbollah Israel should consider saving its energy for Iran – Israel News | Haaretz Daily Newspaper.

Israel will have to tread very carefully if it wants to avoid confrontation with Syria and Hezbollah, particularly as as global forces begin to intervene, and as Iran elections approach.

By Amos Harel | May.19, 2013 | 11:28 PM | 7

Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon tours the Golan Heights. Photo by Gil Eliyahu

Israel made an effort Sunday to clarify its position on the increasingly messy situation in Syria. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly declared that the Israel Defense Forces would act, if necessary, to foil the smuggling of weapons from Syria to Hezbollah in Lebanon. At the same time, Netanyahu’s associates made sure to explain that Israel’s position on the civil war remains unchanged: It will not intervene on behalf of either side, but will only act if its own interests are affected.

Netanyahu’s announcement came after a series of contradictory, mostly superfluous leaks from Israeli sources to the foreign press. Most prominent among them was the explicit warning to Syrian President Bashar Assad that appeared in The New York Times, to the effect that Israel would topple his regime if he dared respond to Israeli air strikes on weapons caches or convoys on his territory. A few days later, an Israeli diplomat was quoted in the British Times as saying the opposite, basically that Israel has no interest in overthrowing Assad, because the Islamic groups that would replace the dictator will be far worse.

Added to these reports were a bunch of stories in the American media, apparently coming from administration sources, regarding modern weapons Russia is poised to give Syria, while Sunday it was even reported by the Sunday Times’ reporter in Israel that Assad had ordered his army to aim SM600 (Tishreen) missiles at Israeli targets.

So what does Israel really want? More or less what the latest, most correct version of the leaks says: minimum intervention in Syria, unless it crosses one of Netanyahu’s red lines, primarily the transfer of advanced weapons to Hezbollah. These would include advanced anti-aircraft missiles, accurate ground-to-ground missiles, Yakhont shore-to-sea missiles or chemical weapons.

But it may be more difficult for Netanyahu to back up his latest threat, at least compared to the ease with which the three previous air strikes ­ for which Israel never took responsibility ­ were carried out.

The Assad regime has been spreading enough hints of his intention to strike back if Israel bombs it. The Syrian president could, for example, fire a missile at a strategic Israeli target ­ an infrastructure installation or anair force base ­ and present Netanyahu with a dilemma of his own: respond and risk escalation, or absorb the blow and stand down. Thus, in a flash, a tactical problem (the smuggling of weapons into Lebanon) could become a strategic challenge (the risk of a war between Israel and Syria).

Netanyahu has to take something else into account. If the possibility of an attack on Iran returns to the agenda after the presidential elections there next month, the question will be what Israel will consider more urgent. Wearing down the IDF in a confrontation with Syria and Hezbollah will make it more difficult to focus its energies later in the year against Iran.

Assad liable to respond

Though as far as is known Assad isn’t interested in a confrontation with Israel, evidence is increasing that he is liable to respond to any strikes on his territory. Aiming Tishreen missiles at Israel is not one of those responses, however. Israeli security sources say there is nothing to these reports. Syrian missile batteries already have data about Israeli targets programmed into them, and there is no reason to assume that these missiles will be deployed in the field and exposed to attack before Syria makes a decision to act, the sources say.

Meanwhile, Assad’s forces apparently scored a military achievement when they overcame most of the rebel opposition in the town of Quseir. The town offers partial control of the road that links Damascus with Homs and to the Alawite enclave in the country’s northwest. It is also close to the rebel’s supply route from the Lebanese border.

Still, the Israeli security establishment is not overly impressed with local improvements in the Syrian army’s position. The basic intelligence assessment remains that Assad’s position is irreversible; that he has lost control over most of what’s going on in his country’s territory, which continues to crumble into separate districts, ruled by rival clans and sects.

Russia is planning to convene an international conference next month on the situation in Syria. As of now, the chances of such a conference achieving anything are minuscule. All the signs show that Syria will continue to bleed and this murderous dispute will lead to increasing involvement by outside forces ­ Russia, Turkey, Iran, the Arab states supporting the rebels (Qatar, which backs the Muslim Brotherhood, and Saudi Arabia, which supports the radical Salafist groups). Perhaps, under extreme circumstances, the United States and Europe would get involved as well.

As the situation gets more complicated, Israel will have to be extra careful so as not to be sucked in.

Syrian-Hizballah’s capture of Qusayr opens direct weapons route to Lebanon.

Syrian forces seize al-Qusayr

Shortly after Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu pledged Sunday, May 19, to maintain Israeli operations in Syria against the passage of advanced Iranian weapons to the Lebanese Hizballah, Syrian troops and their Hizballah comrades stormed Al-Qasayr, the northwestern town which commands the high road from Syrian Homs to Lebanon’s Hermel Mountains.
This was a major victory: Iranian arms for Hizballah can now go through from Syria to destination unobstructed.
In more than two years of battling the Assad regime, this was one of the rebels’ most devastating losses after three weeks of bitter fighting and the last of a whole row of recent setbacks.
Bashar Assad in contrast has gained huge advantages from his al Qusayr victory, as debkafile’s military sources report:

1. It cuts off the Syrian rebels’ main supply and communications route via Lebanon through which their Arab backers Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE to send them fighters, arms and funds.
2.  Rebel positions in the nearby town of Homs become increasingly vulnerable, as the Syrian army regains control of the main highway links between Damascus, Homs and Aleppo.
3.  After the rebels were pushed out of Al-Qasayr, Turkey remains their only accessible source of supplies.
However, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has made a sudden U-turn. He had promised publicly to lobby for no-fly zones in his meeting with President Barack Obama at the White House Friday, May 17, to shield rebel forces in different parts of the country from Syrian air strikes. Instead, Edrogan threw his support between the international conference sponsored by Washington and Moscow for resolving the Syrian conflict.

This told the rebels that the supportive Turkish channel was closing down.
It is obvious to them that the conference can only succeed if Washington comes over to the Russian-Iranian-Hizballah side and agrees to the perpetuation of the Assad party’s role in any future government.

As yet, neither of the contestants has agreed to attend the conference for which no date has been set. However, Turkish backing and arms supplies through its territory are expected to shrink progressively to squeeze the rebels into accepting a formula which would be tantamount to bowing to the defeat of their uprising.

4. For Israel, the fall of al Qusayr means that while rebel supply routes are shut down, supply routes open up for the free movement of Iranian weapons from Syria straight to HIzballah strongholds in Lebanon. This would be Hizballah’s reward for its military aid to Assad’s army.

If Prime Minister Netanyahu was serious about his promise Sunday to cut off Hizballah’s weapon routes from Syria, he has three primary options to choose from – none of them easy, to say the least.

a)  Military intervention in al Qusayr before the Syrian army and Hizballah clinch their takeover of this strategic byway town. This would catapult Israel into full-blown war with Syria and Hizballah and is therefore a non-starter.
b)  Bombardment of the convoys carrying arms from Syria to Lebanon.
This won’t do much good. Having learned its lesson from the three Israeli air strikes against arms convoys and depots this year, Syria has now transferred the hardware disassembled into component parts and passed them out among smuggling rings ato move them under cover of dark into Lebanon.
c)  Attacks on the destination of those weapons – Hizballah depots in the Hermel – after their delivery. This would almost certainly trigger Hizballah war action against Israel.

Intertwined fates: The Lebanon-Syria-Iran axis | JPost | Israel News.