Israel and Syria brace for regional war between mid-Dec. 2011 and mid-Jan 2012
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report December 5, 2011, 2:41 PM (GMT+02:00)
The actions and words of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Syrian ruler Bashar Assad in the last 72 hours indicate they are poised for a regional war, including an attack on Iran, for some time between December 2011 and January 2012.
In their different ways, both have posted road signs to the fast-approaching conflict as DEBKAfile's Middle East sources disclose:
1. Saturday, Dec. 3, Syria staged a large-scale military exercise in the eastern town of Palmyra, which was interpreted by Western and Israeli pundits as notice to its neighbors, primarily Turkey and Israel, that the uprising against the Assad regime had not fractured its sophisticated missile capabilities.
DEBKAfile's military sources advise attaching more credibility to the official Damascus statement of Sunday, Dec. 4: "The Syrian army has staged a live-fire drill in the eastern part of the country under war-like circumstances with the aim of testing its missile weaponry in confronting any attack."
Videotapes of the exercise, briefly carried on the Internet early Monday before they were removed by an unseen hand, support this statement. They showed a four-stage exercise, in which missile fire was a minor feature. Its focus was on the massive firing of self-propelled 120mm cannon, brigade-strength practice of 600mm and 300mm multiple launch rocket systems (MLRS), offensive movements of Syrian armored brigades backed by ground-to-ground missiles with short 150-200 kilometer ranges. They drilled tactics for repelling enemy reinforcements rushed to combat arenas.
All this added up to is an impressive Syrian demonstration of its ability to ward off an attack on Syrian soil by turning a defensive array into an offensive push for taking the battle over into the aggressor's territory, whether the Turkish or Israeli armies or a combined Arab League force backed by NATO.
2. Israel made its rejoinder to the Syrian war message 24 hours later.
Addressing a ceremony honoring the memory of for Israel's founding father David Ben-Gurion, Netanyahu recalled how 63 years ago, Ben-Gurion declared the foundation of the State of Israel in defiance of pressures from most of Western leaders and a majority of his own party. They warned him that he would trigger a combined Arab attack to destroy the fledgling state just three years after the end of World War II.
But fortunately for us, said the prime minister, Ben-Gurion stood up to the pressure and went through with his decision, otherwise Israel would not be here today.
"There are times," said Netanyahu, "when a decision may carry a heavy price, but the price for not deciding would be heavier."
"I want to believe," he said, "we will always have the courage and resolve for the right decisions to safeguard our future and security."
Although he did not mention Iran, it was not hard to infer that the prime minister was referring to a decision to exercise Israel's military option against Iran's nuclear program in the face of crushing pressure from Washington and insistent advice of certain Israeli security veterans.
Defense minister Ehud Barak, who was standing behind the prime minister's shoulder, was as tense as a coiled spring.
3. Six hours later, Netanyahu dropped a bombshell on the domestic political scene: He announced his Likud party would hold elections, including primaries, before January 31, 2012 - two years before schedule and a year before Israel's next general election. As head of one of the most stable and long-lived coalition governments ever to have ruled Israel, he is under no pressing domestic need of a demonstration of leadership at this time.
4. In the last two weeks, the Netanyahu government has been subjected to acerbic criticism on the part of one Obama administration official after another. They have presented Israel as having fallen into the hands of right-wing extremists who are engaged in a mad race to suppress the judiciary and diminish the civil rights of women and children – not to mention Palestinians.
Secretary of State of Hillary Clinton went to unimaginable lengths when she likened Israel to Iran because fringe ultraorthodox group's in a couple of suburbs in Jerusalem and Bnei Brak were fighting for gender segregation on public transport against the government and the courts.
She was clearly aiming to undermine the Netanyahu government's democratic credentials - and therefore his moral legitimacy - for going to war to halt Iran's attainment of a nuclear weapon.
4. The unusually powerful US and Russian naval buildups in the waters around Syria and Iran.
Washington sought in late November to give the impression that the George H.W. Bush Carrier Strike Group was anchored off Marseilles, when it was spotted in the eastern Mediterranean opposite Syria.
Moscowthen rushed to Syria's defense by airlifting 72 anti-ship Yakhont missiles (Western-coded SSN-26) to Damascus. These water-skimming weapons can hit naval targets at a distance of 300 kilometers.
After that the Bush, whose freedom to approach Syrian or Lebanese shores, had been curtailed by the new weapon reaching Syria, departed to an unknown destination, while the USS Carl Vinson strike group took up position opposite Iran.
Moscowis also playing hide and seek with its only air carrier Admiral Kuznetsov. It was announced that the vessel would set sail for the Mediterranean on Dec. 6. But on Nov. 25, it was sighted passing Malta and chugging past Cyprus four days later on its way to join the flotilla of three Russian guided missile destroyers already anchored off Syria.
Neither the United States nor Russia would have concentrated two powerful fleets in the proximity of Syria and Iran unless they were certain a military conflagration was imminent. While any of the prime movers, Washington, Moscow, Tehran, Israel or Bashar Assad, may at the last moment step back from the brink of a regional war, at the moment, there is no sign of this happening.
źródło: www.debka.com
Iran's Guards on war footing – London. Spy drone capture is US, Israel setback
DEBKAfile Special Report December 6, 2011, 6:56 AM (GMT+02:00)
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has placed the Revolutionary Guards on a war footing amid fears that the West and Israel are about to attack their nuclear program, the London Telegraph, which has good ties with British intelligence, reported early Tuesday, Dec. 6.
Monday, DEBKAfile reported increasing indications that the Middle East is set for war, including an attack on Iran, between mid-December 2011 and mid-January 2012.
In obedience to Khamenei's directive to take all necessary measures to protect the regime, the Guards chief Gen. Mohammed Ali Jaafari has raised the operational readiness status of the country's forces in preparation for external strikes and covert attacks. He ordered Iran's arsenal of long-range Shahab missiles redistributed to secret sites around the country where they would be safe from enemy attack and could be used to launch retaliatory strikes; Guards units scattered to preset defense lines and air force "rapid reaction units" deployed after carrying out extensive exercises for responding to an enemy air attack on nuclear and strategic military targets.
Saturday, Dec. 3, Israel's defense minister Ehud Barak, when asked about a covert war against Iran, denied it was taking place. Twenty-hours later, this clandestine war peaked in a major coup for Iran, its capture of the sophisticated US RQ-170 Sentinel stealth reconnaissance drone. Tehran reported that, apart from slight damage, the aircraft was shot down complete with all its top-secret electronic systems in working condition.
An American military source confirmed that Iran had the RQ-170, but added there was "absolutely no indication the drone was shot down."
This leads to the conclusion that the Iranians were able to control the drone from a distance (over Afghanistan) and guide it across the border to land to Iran, say DEBKAfile's military sources. The slight damage would then apply to the wings and may have been caused when it was brought in to land by an Iranian crew unused to handling an electronic warfare craft.
Our sources add that possession of the drone is more than just a major intelligence coup for Tehran; it has acquired an important military edge before any overt military operation has been launched. Western and Israeli war planners now have cause to fear that Iran has penetrated the heart of their most secret intelligence and electronic technological hardware for striking its nuclear infrastructure. If Tehran is capable of reaching out and guiding an American stealth drone into landing from a distance, it may also be able to control the systems of other aircraft, manned or unmanned.
This feat recalls Hizballah's surprise attack on an Israeli missile boat in the 2006 Lebanon war when its Chinese-made shore-to-ship C-802 missile was enabled by Iranian-manned coastal radar interference to override the ship's advanced electronic defense systems and so put the Israeli Navy out of action within range of the Lebanese coast.
According to an expert quoted by the Telegraph's senior military commentator Con Coughlin, the campaign of assassinations, cyber war and sabotage of recent weeks "looks like the 21st century form of war.
źródło: www.debka.com
Użytkownik nazgul edytował ten post 06.12.2011 - 11:25
