WarSclerotic

Analysts: Weak U.S. Action in Syria Could Embolden Assad, Iran | Jewish & Israel News Algemeiner.com.

As the world waited on Wednesday for the U.S. government to make a decision over whether or not to launch an attack on the regime of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad after he crossed President Obama’s declared “red line” by using chemical weapons, residents of the region prepared for a possible fallout from a strike, armies maneuvered their troops, and analysts questioned U.S. resolve for carrying out a strike on Syria with enough force to send a decisive message.

In the Middle East, residents were on edge. In Israel, long lines gathered for government issued gas mask kits and syringes of atropine, an antidote for chemical weapons poisoning. One distribution center was mobbed, and gas mask kits were looted. Israeli MKs pointed to a recent budget cut of NIS 1.3 billion ($364 million) of funding, now needed to supply the 4 out of 10 Israelis who still don’t own gas masks. In Kiryat Shemona, in the north of Israel, along the country’s border with Lebanon and Syria, 140 bomb shelters were opened by local authorities, Israel’s Channel 2 reported. Additionally, the Israel Defense Forces called up reserve soldiers and placed an additional Iron Dome missile defense battery in the north. In Turkey, missile batteries were pointed in the direction of Syria, according to Turkish daily Today’s Zaman. In Lebanon, a former AFP correspondent who blogs at Syria Deeply, a news website created to cover the crisis in the country, told Twitter followers: “Everyone getting mentally prepared for strikes over here […] It’s like watching a slow motion car accident.”

Over the last three days, in Amman, Jordan, defense chiefs and generals from 10 nations, including Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Jordan, Qatar, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, met with U.S. General Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, to discuss their response to the Syrian chemical weapons use, but no information had been shared by the allied military forces on Wednesday.

On the ground, the U.S. has 1,000 troops based in Jordan, including a headquarters unit, and an F-16 fighter detachment, at Jordan’s Mafraq air base, as well as Patriot anti-missile systems at two sites in the kingdom, according to a report from U.S. Army newspaper Stars and Stripes, published Sunday.

The USS Kearsarge, a Marine amphibious assault ship, is reported to be approaching Aqaba— Jordan’s sole port—and the U.S. Navy has deployed an extra destroyer to the eastern Mediterranean, bringing to four the number of warships in the area capable of firing cruise missiles against land targets, according to Stars and Stripes.

The Jordanian military, numbering 120,000 troops, has deployed combat units to the border with Syria to prevent a spillover of the ongoing fighting between Assad and Syrian rebel groups, and manage the Syrian refugees — about 600,000 so far — who have fled across the frontier into Jordan.

The Syrian regime has responded to the allied “drums of war” and growing military build up in the Mediterranean, with threats of their own for reprisals against Israel and promises that Moscow will respond  in the country’s defense. Iran’s Director-General at the Parliament for International Affairs, Hossein Sheikholeslam, told the country’s national FARS news agency, “No military attack will be waged against Syria. Yet, if such an incident takes place, which is impossible, the Zionist regime will be the first victim of a military attack.”

Mohammad Esmayeeli, member of the Iranian parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, told FARS, “The U.S., as well as the western and Arab states and certain regional countries, are beating the drums of war, but they should know that this is not to their benefit. If [it] starts a war with Syria, the U.S. will not achieve its desired and needed results. Russia will likely stand up to these threats.”

Amid the ratcheting escalation the onus now falls on U.S. President Barack Obama, who, analysts said, needs to follow through on what he laid out by declaring the use of chemical weapons as his “red line” for Syria.

“Perhaps for the fourth time now, Assad’s used chemicals weapons, and this was just the most egregious,” said Dr. Michael Makovsky, newly appointed  CEO of JINSA, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, a non-profit that brings leaders of the U.S. Armed Forces and their supporters into contact with the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and Israel, in an interview with The Algemeiner. “Obama has said that is the ‘red line’ with serious consequences, so now the world is waiting to see how Obama responds.”

“I can appreciate that Obama doesn’t want to be seen like [previous U.S. President George W.] Bush and overreact, but the ‘red line’ he set was chemical weapons, and that’s what we have here,” said Dr. Makovsky, who was the former Foreign Policy Director for the Bipartisan Policy Center think tank,  where he specialized in Iran policy. “This is an opportunity for the Obama administration to show serious mettle; a lot of people are going to be watching this strike, particularly in Iran.”

“If the U.S. does not strike a serious blow, it doesn’t do serious damage, doesn’t impact chemical weapons capability, doesn’t impact the regime’s abilities, it could boomerang to Iran’s benefit. Another limited strike could actually embolden Assad and the Iranians,” Dr. Makovsky said.

The question of how much force might be expected was assuaged Wednesday by Obama administration leaks to the media that called for ‘limited’ cruise missile strikes, likely fired by U.S. ships rather than planes.

“A big response is needed to preserve U.S. deterrence, but too big means risk escalation,” said Eytan Sosnovich, a former Middle East analyst for the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, who plotted out a decision process tree that Obama’s “red line” might have led him towards. Unfortunately, Sosnovich pointed out, Obama “should have thought it all out before drawing the red line.”

A “limited strike” with only cruise missiles shows “a more nervous approach,” like [former President Bill] “Clinton in Tanzania,” Dr. Makovsky said, “as Israelis would use airplanes, as they have to attack certain installations or truck convoys, so it will be very important to watch out what kind of attack is launched, and what that signals. The U.S. needs to send a serious signal that chemical weapons can’t be used, that countries can’t go against UN Security Council resolutions, regarding chemical weapons, and, by extension, for Iran, nuclear weapons. The big game here is Iran.”

Obama affirms Assad to blame, but officials say gas attack intel incomplete | The Times of Israel.

Statement from US president comes as Washington and London appear to back off quick action against Damascus

President Barack Obama during the G-8 summit in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland, on Tuesday, June 18, 2013 (photo credit: AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama on Wednesday declared unequivocally that the United States has “concluded” that the Syrian government carried out a deadly chemical weapons attack on civilians. Yet US intelligence officials say questions remain about whether the attack could be linked to Syrian President Bashar Assad or high officials in his government.

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Obama did not present any direct evidence to back up his assertion that the Syrian government bears responsibility for the attack. US. officials were searching for additional intelligence to bolster the case for a strike against Assad’s military infrastructure and rule out the possibility that a rogue element of the Syrian military could have used the weapons on its own authority.

While Obama said he is still evaluating possible military retaliation, he vowed that any American response would send a “strong signal” to Assad.

“We have concluded that the Syrian government in fact carried these out,” Obama said during an interview with “NewsHour” on PBS. “And if that’s so, then there need to be international consequences.”

New hurdles emerged that appeared to slow the formation of an international coalition that could use military force to punish Syria. Earlier Wednesday, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council failed to reach an agreement on a draft resolution from the British seeking authorization for the use of force. Russia, as expected, objected to international intervention.

Obama administration officials said they would take action against the Syrian government even without the backing of allies or the United Nations because diplomatic paralysis must not prevent a response to the alleged chemical weapons attack outside the Syrian capital last week.

British Prime Minister David Cameron promised British lawmakers he would not go to war until a UN chemical weapons team on the ground in Syria has a chance to report its findings, pushing the U.K.’s involvement in any potential strike until next week at the earliest. Cameron called an emergency meeting of Parliament on Thursday to vote on whether to endorse international action against Syria.

Even so, British Foreign Secretary William Hague suggested that US military action need not be constrained by Britain. “The United States are able to make their own decisions,” he told reporters late Wednesday, just after speaking with Secretary of State John Kerry.

More intelligence was being sought by US officials. While a lower-level Syrian military commanders’ communications discussing a chemical attack had been intercepted, they don’t specifically link the attack to an official senior enough to tie the killings to Assad himself, according to one U.S. intelligence official and two other US officials. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the intelligence publicly.

The White House ideally wants intelligence that links the attack directly to Assad or someone in his inner circle, to rule out the possibility that a rogue element of the military acting without Assad’s authorization.

That quest for added intelligence has delayed the release of the report by the Office of the Director for National Intelligence laying out evidence against Assad. The report was promised earlier this week by administration officials.

The CIA and the Pentagon have been working to gather more human intelligence tying Assad to the attack, relying on the intelligence services of Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Israel, the officials said. The administration was planning a teleconference briefing Thursday on Syria for leaders of the House and Senate and national security committees in both parties, U.S. officials and congressional aides said.

Both the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency have their own human sources — the rebel commanders and others who cross the border to brief CIA and defense intelligence officers at training camps in Jordan and Turkey. But their operation is much smaller than some of the other intelligence services, and it takes longer for their contacts to make their way overland.

The CIA, the Pentagon, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence all declined to comment on the intelligence picture, and the White House did not respond to requests for comment.

Obama said he was not seeking a lengthy, open-ended conflict in Syria, indicating that any US response would be limited in scope. But he argued that Syria’s use of chemical weapons not only violated international norms, but threatened “America’s core self-interest.”

“We do have to make sure that when countries break international norms on weapons like chemical weapons that could threaten us, that they are held accountable,” he said.

Laying out a legal justification for a US response, Obama said Syria was violating the Geneva Protocols, an agreement signed in 1925 in the wake of World War I to ban the use of chemical gases. The White House has also cited the Chemical Weapons Convention, a 1992 agreement that builds on the Geneva Protocols by prohibiting the development and stockpiling of chemical weapons.

Syria is a party to the original Geneva accord, but not the latter chemical weapons agreement.

Syria, which sits on one of the world’s largest stockpiles of chemical weapons, has denied the charges. Moreover, Syria’s UN ambassador, Bashar Ja’afari, is demanding that United Nations experts investigate three alleged chemical weapons attacks against Syrian soldiers. He said the attacks occurred on Aug. 22, 24 and 25 in three suburbs of the Syrian capital and dozens of soldiers are being treated for inhaling nerve gas.

He also blamed Israel for pushing the US into intervening militarily in the two-year-old civil war.

Certain members of Congress are expected to get a classified U.S. intelligence report laying out the case against Assad. An unclassified version is to be made public. Officials say it won’t have any detail that would jeopardize sources and methods.

Some lawmakers have argued that Congress must authorize any military action unless there has been an attack on the U.S. or the existence of an eminent threat to the US Both Democrats and Republicans on Wednesday pressed the White House to provide a clear explanation of how military action would secure US objectives.

Specifically, in a letter to Obama, House Speaker John Boehner asked him to make his case to Congress and the public about how military action would “secure American national security interests, preserve America’s credibility, deter the future use of chemical weapons, and, critically, be a part of our broader policy and strategy.”

Boehner said it was “essential you address on what basis any use of force would be legally justified.”

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Times of Israel staff, AP White House Correspondent Julie Pace in Washington and Associated Press writers Raphael Satter and Greg Katz in London contributed to this report.

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press.

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