The initial announcement on Wednesday that
Israeli jets had bombed a target on the border
between Syria and Lebanon recalled how the news of
the Israeli raid on the Syrian nuclear reactor was
broken. Back then, the Syrian government first
said that Israeli planes had breached Syrian air
space and "dropped ammunition in the desert".
Now, too, Lebanese military sources
initially claimed that "12 Israeli warplanes had
violated Lebanese airspace in less than 24 hours".
Subsequent leaks, however, are starting to reveal
a much bigger picture.
Unnamed "regional
security officials" quoted by the Associated Press
claimed that the target of the attack was a convoy
carrying Russian SA-17 anti-aircraft missiles.
Subsequently, Syrian state
television reported that a
"military research center" had been struck not far
from the capital Damascus, killing two soldiers
and injuring five. By Wednesday evening, further
reports claimed that the facility in the Jermana
area had been used to produce and store chemical
weapons.
The influential US-based analysis
firm Stratfor provided more details in a report:
Four Israeli aircraft entered
Lebanese airspace around 4:30 p.m. the evening
of Jan. 29, but were relieved four hours later
by other aircraft. Then at 2 a.m. the next day,
these aircraft were replaced by yet another
group, which remained in Lebanese airspace until
about 8 a.m.. The duration of the operation is
significant. The Israelis clearly anticipated a
target to appear in a specific window of time;
bombing a fixed target would not necessitate a
prolonged mission. ... The ultimate objective of
the strike remains unknown. It could have been
meant to take out an actual convoy of
surface-to-air missile systems that challenge
Israeli air superiority. Just as plausible is
that it was meant as a warning to discourage
Hezbollah from transferring weapons into Lebanon
as the Syria crisis continues to
degrade.
We can expect that more
details about the raid will emerge in the coming
days and weeks, and it is possible that its scope
will prove more extensive than currently believed.
In the case of the Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007,
it took months before the full truth came to
light.
On the one hand, experts say that,
based on the available information, it is unlikely
Israel attacked a shipment of active chemical
weapons. "The chances that someone was able to
bomb a chemical weapons convoy without causing
significant environmental damage is very small,"
said Dany Shoham, an expert on chemical and
biological weapons in the Middle East at the
Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies in an
interview with The Times of Israel. [1]
On
the other hand, the attack on a Syrian military
facility is more difficult to evaluate. The
Israeli government issued several urgent warnings
over the past week about the possibility of Syrian
chemical weapons falling into the hands of the
Lebanese militant organization Hezbollah, and for
several days made preparations for a military
operation. At least two Iron Dome anti-missile
batteries were stationed in the northern part of
Israel, and, according to reports in the Israeli
press, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak cut
short a foreign trip on Sunday.
On
Tuesday, hours before the raid, the Israeli air
force chief, General Amir Eshel, said Israel was
engaged in "a campaign between wars" in which it
was doing its best "to keep [our] efforts beneath
the level at which war breaks out".
A
consignment of advanced conventional weapons, such
as the SA-17 anti-aircraft missiles, could also
have triggered the military response. "These are
no less troubling than chemical weapons," said
Giora Eiland, a former Israeli National Security
advisor, in an interview with the Washington Post.
"They are more widespread and not as tightly
controlled by the regime, so they can fall into
the hands of Hezbollah."
Experts caution
that there is more to come. "The bigger problem is
that this wasn't a one-time event," wrote the
Israeli analyst Amos Harel in the daily Ha'aretz.
"The worse Assad's position grows, the more
attempts Hezbollah will make to grab whatever
weapons it can get its hands on."
The
international background to the operation is also
significant. On Saturday, ostensibly in response
to Israel's warnings and the heightened regional
tensions, a top Iranian politician and diplomat
said that "[an] attack on Syria is considered [an]
attack on Iran and Iran's allies". Some reports in
the Israeli press claim that Iran may have
intentionally engineered the clash - by crossing
an Israeli red line - to draw attention away from
the civil war in Syria (which has so far cost more
than 60,000 lives) and the Iranian nuclear
program.
Meanwhile, Russia - another
staunch Syrian ally - is reportedly conducting
"the largest [naval] exercise since the
dissolution of the Soviet Union" off Syria's
coast. [2]
According to reports in
Ha'aretz, the United States recently placed
upgraded F-22 stealth fighters in the UAE [3] and
"asked Jordan and Turkey to take action if Syria
uses chemical weapons". [4]
Amid the
increasing disintegration of central authority in
Syria and several mysterious explosions in Lebanon
in the past few weeks, tensions in the Levant are
at a high. It is hard to tell how likely a
regional war is in the near future, but it is
clear that the Israeli operation on Tuesday night
was a major development.
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