Israeli warplanes carrying out airstrikes on a shipment of Iranian arms to Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas in Syria managed to evade Syrian air-defense missiles but the incident is a graphic demonstration of how the war has the potential to further inflame the region.
There are likely to be further Israeli airstrikes against Hezbollah in Syria, reflecting deepening Israeli concerns that Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and their Lebanese ally are establishing a new front on the divided Golan Heights from which to fight the Jewish state.
These developments are increasing the chances of a miscalculation that could trigger a war that both sides insist they do not want. As tensions mount amid an unprecedented cluster of interlocking conflicts across the hair-trigger region, clashes like the aerial action over Palmyra could easily escalate out of control.
The Israeli airstrikes climaxed after weeks of verbal threats from all sides, aggravated originally by the administration of U.S. President Donald Trumpvowing to roll back Iran's influence across the Middle East.
Israel has signaled repeatedly that it would not allow Iran to establish a permanent presence in Syria nor permit Hezbollah to obtain game-changing weapons, such as advanced air-defense systems, anti-ship missiles and long-range guided missiles.
Israel first launched airstrikes against suspected Hezbollah arms consignments in January 2013. Since then there have been at least 19 airstrikes, most of them in the Damascus area and further north in the Qalamoun region where there are a large number of Syrian military bases, including missile sites.
Israel's March 16 operation, involving four jet fighters, was its deepest strike inside Syria since 2013. The Israeli jets flew north over Lebanon's Bekaa Valley, Hezbollah's heartland, before entering Syrian air space and launching several missiles, reportedly at a convoy carrying unspecified weapons for Hezbollah.
The target was in the Palmyra area of northeastern Syria and several reports claimed the convoy originated from the T-4 airbase at Tiyas, west of the oasis town. In response, Syria launched at least four anti-aircraft missiles, believed to be relatively antiquated Russian-built SA-5s.
Syria claimed one aircraft was shot down and another damaged. Israel insisted all four aircraft returned safely.
Unusually, Israel deployed an Arrow anti-missile system for the first time in a combat situation to shoot down a Syrian missile that entered Israeli airspace. Fragments of the Arrow missile, which is designed to shoot down ballistic missiles at high altitudes, landed inside Jordan.
This, along with the air raid sirens and sound of explosions in the night sky above Jerusalem, apparently compelled Israel to publicly admit for the first time that its aircraft had struck targets inside Syria.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made no secret that there may be more such attacks.
"When we identify attempts to transfer advanced arms to Hezbollah and we have intelligence information and we have the operational plan, we act to prevent it," he said. "That's what happened and that's what will happen."
The T-4 airbase is not an obvious location for gathering armaments destined for Hezbollah. It lacks underground facilities and is relatively distant from the Lebanese border. The main locations in Syria for Hezbollah arms repositories are believed to be in military bases near Adra and Qutayfah north of Damascus.
In the past, Iranian weapons for Hezbollah have supposedly been flown into Damascus airport or the nearby Mezzeh airbase. However, Israeli airstrikes at facilities at those locations as well as Qutayfah may have spurred Iran to seek to outmaneuver the watchful Israelis by using T-4.
Even so, T-4 is at least 175 miles from the Lebanese border over open terrain, making any arms vulnerable to Israeli interception.
In earlier Israeli airstrikes in Syria, Damascus either publicly condemned the attacks or ignored them. However, the question now is whether the decision to launch anti-aircraft missiles at the Israeli jets was a one-off gesture of displeasure or whether it marks a change in policy.
Bashar Jaafari, Syria's U.N. envoy, said the Palmyra strike "changed the rules of the game" and that Israel should "think a million times from now on" before staging more attacks.
Israel, however, continues to signal its determination to target advanced weapons destined for Hezbollah. Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Liebermanwarned after the March 16 clash that the Israeli Air Force would wipe out Syria's air-defense system if its jets were targeted again.
With the Assad regime gaining the upper hand in much of Syria against rebel forces and with Iran and Hezbollah eyeing the Golan as a springboard against Israel, the risk of miscalculation is growing.
Hezbollah and Israel know only too well from experiences dating to the 1990s how easily a minor incident can quickly escalate out of control — such as in July 2006 when a Hezbollah border raid in south Lebanon triggered a massive Israeli response that flared into a highly destructive 34-day war.
JAPANESE lawmakers are calling for new laws to allow Tokyo to launch pre-emptive strikes against an increasingly aggressive Kim Jong-un.
The maniacal tyrant has angered the entire region with recent missile tests as he seeks to develop his nuclear warheads.
Hiroshi Imazu, the head of Japan's ruling party, told The Washington Post: "Japan can't just wait until its destroyed.
"It's legally possible for Japan to strike an enemy base that's launching a missile at us, but we don't have the equipment or capability."
Discussions surrounding the law change were supported by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and defence minister Gen Nakatani.
Nakatani told the paper: "I believe that we should consider having the capacity to strike."
Japan's current constitution, created in the wake of the Second World War, means it is illegal for the country to launch an attack - it can only go to war in self-defence.
But a group of influential politicians are lobbying for the law change that would allow them to take the front foot against North Korea.
Just hours ago it was reported Kim Jong-un was preparing another nuke test to commemorate his dead grandad's birthday.
There has been increased activity at the Punggye-ri nuclear test site in North Korea leading experts to believe the country’s next nuclear test is imminent, according to the Yonhap news agency.
Kim Jong-un recently threatened to reduce the US “to ashes” as tensions with North Korea continue to increase.
Towards the end of a press briefing in Russia late last week, Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova made several comments about Russia's frustrations with the Obama State Department over leaking diplomatic plans the United States had asked Russia to keep secret, and then issued what can only be construed as a warning in response to the flood of highly classified information finding it's way from the US Intelligence Community to the media.
The US Department of State has more than once asked us not to announce planned visits until the last minute. This is not our tradition. We have been operating openly for years, but we have respected the requests we have received from our colleagues in Washington in the past few years. But what happened after that? First, the US Department of State asked us to keep the planned visit quiet and not to announce it until the last possible minute, until we coordinated the date. We did as they asked. But a day or two later the information was leaked by the US State Department and sometimes by the US administration. Frankly, this put Russia and the media in a strange situation, because they didn’t know who to believe – the official agencies or the many leaks.
Zakharova left the door open to diplomacy, implying that this behavior may have been unique to the Obama State Department:
It is difficult to say if this diplomatic communication is a US tradition or the latest technique. As I said, such cases in our relations with the US Department of State have become a bad tradition over the past few years.
In regards to the leaks of highly classified information making it's way out of the US Intelligence Community concerning Russia, a stern warning was issued:
Also, I would like to say that if the practice of leaking information that concerns not just the United States but also Russia, which has become a tradition in Washington in the past few years, continues, there will come a day when the media will publish leaks about the things that Washington asked us to keep secret, for example, things that happened during President Obama’s terms in office.
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