Safriz
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Israel launches air strikes on Syria
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Syrian Lion
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BeyondHeretic
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chuck hagel
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/05/world/middleeast/israel-syria.html?hp&_r=0
Israel Bombs Syria as the U.S. Weighs Its Own Options
WASHINGTON — Israel aircraft bombed a target in Syria overnight Thursday, an Obama administration official said Friday night, as United States officials said they were considering military options, including carrying out their own airstrikes.
American officials did not provide details on the target of the Israeli strike. The Associated Press quoted Israeli officials Saturday as saying the target of the raid was a shipment of advanced missiles bound for the Hezbollah Shiite militia in Lebanon. While saying the shipment did not include chemical arms, the official described the missiles as “game changing,” an apparent reference to the capability of the missiles.
In late January, Israel carried out airstrikes against SA-17 antiaircraft weapons, which the Israelis feared were about to be moved to Hezbollah.
Israel has been worried that chemical weapons and advanced arms might be transferred to Hezbollah from Syria, and the Israeli military has made clear that it is prepared to take action to stop such shipments.
“Chemicals maybe get a lot of press and attention, but one of the clear things worrying us is advanced conventional weapons,” said one senior Israeli official, speaking on the condition he not be named because he was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
President Bashar al-Assad of Syria has long had a close relationship with Hezbollah, and Syria has been a gateway for shipping Iranian weapons to the militia.
Hezbollah has sent trainers and advisers to Syria to help Mr. Assad with his war against the Syrian opposition, American officials say, and Syrian opposition officials report that Hezbollah fighters are also involved in the conflict.
The Lebanese government confirmed on Saturday the Israeli warplanes flew over its airspace overnight Thursday, circling over Beirut and its suburbs, although it was not immediately clear if they were the same jets that carried out the raid in Syria.
A spokesman for the Israeli Embassy in Washington declined on Friday night to comment on the Israeli attack, which was first reported by CNN, saying only in a statement, “Israel is determined to prevent the transfer of chemical weapons or other game-changing weaponry by the Syrian regime to terrorists, specially to Hezbollah in Lebanon.”
Avi Issacharoff, an Israeli defense analyst, wrote on the news site Walla.com that it was no surprise that Syria and Hezbollah did not acknowledge the strike.
“Any admission by either Syria or Hezbollah that the Israeli Air Force had attacked a weapons convoy, which would obligate them to retaliate, would only serve to paint them into a corner,” Mr. Issacharoff wrote. “The Syrian army currently lacks the manpower to face Israel on the ground—and certainly not in the air. A conflagration with the IDF is liable to result in the loss of the only advantage that Assad has over the opposition forces—the Syrian Air Force.”
The Israeli attack came as the Obama administration — as part of its examination of possible responses to obtaining conclusive proof that Mr. Assad has used chemical weapons — is considering military options with allies. Those options include attacking Syria’s antiaircraft systems, military aircraft and some of its missile fleet, according to senior officials from several countries.
Those officials say that attacking the chemical stockpiles directly has been all but ruled out. “You could cause exactly the disaster you are trying to prevent,” a senior Israeli military official said in an interview last week in Tel Aviv.
But attacking Mr. Assad’s main delivery systems, the officials say, would curtail his ability to transport those weapons any significant distance. “This wouldn’t stop him from using it on a village, or just releasing it on the ground, or handing something to Hezbollah,” said one European official who has been involved in the conversations. “But it would limit the damage greatly.”
The topic was alluded to on Thursday, when Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel met with his British counterpart and talked about “the need for new options” if Mr. Assad used his chemical arsenal, the officials said. But while the military has been developing and refining options for the White House for months, the discussion appears to have taken a new turn, officials say, in the struggle to determine whether the suspected use of sarin gas near Aleppo and Damascus last month was a prelude to greater use of such weapons.
"There are a lot of options on the table, and they’re generally carrying equal weight at the moment,” a senior administration official said Friday. He declined to discuss the others, though Mr. Hagel talked on Thursday about arming rebel groups
So far, President Obama has been reluctant to get involved in the Syrian conflict. He has ruled out placing American forces on the ground, a stance he reiterated on Friday at a new conference in San José, Costa Rica, where he was meeting with Latin American leaders.
Mr. Obama told reporters he did not foresee a situation in which “American boots on the ground in Syria would not only be good for America but also would be good for Syria,” adding that he had consulted with leaders in the Mideast who agree.
When asked in recent days whether recent evidence of chemical weapons use in Syria crossed the “red line” he set in August, Mr. Obama described questions he would need to have answered — including when and how chemical weapons were used — before he would take action. Even then, he made clear, he may choose something well short of military action.
By Israeli estimates, Syria has 15 to 20 major chemical weapons sites, many near airfields that would make transport by plane relatively easy. Military planners say they would want to avoid hitting the chemicals for fear of creating toxic sites that could injure or kill civilians.
Ideally, one American commander said, the stockpiles would be surrounded, protected and then incinerated, much as the United States has done with its chemical arsenal. But that takes years, and as one official said, “We don’t have years, and we can’t keep troops there.”
That is why attacking the delivery systems seems like the next best option to many in the administration. Israel was believed to be behind an attack on some Syrian missiles in February as they were about to be transported, presumably to Hezbollah. On Wednesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Israeli lawmakers that a Hezbollah missile attack, using chemical weapons, was one of his chief concerns.
If Mr. Obama and his allies proceeded with an attack on air defenses, missiles and the Syrian Air Force, they would most likely use Tomahawk cruise missiles launched from ships in the eastern Mediterranean and fighter jets that might be able to fire missiles without entering Syrian airspace. But it is unclear how effective those would be.
Mr. Obama has always made clear that any action should be taken with allies and neighbors. But NATO has been reluctant, and Russia, which keeps a naval base in Syria, has been opposed. Israeli officials have said that they do not want to go into Syria, fearing that any Israeli attack would fuel Mr. Assad’s argument that the civil war in his country is the result of foreign provocations. Some Israeli officials have argued that the Arab League should be in the vanguard of any attack, but it has shown little interest in direct military intervention in the Syrian conflict.
That has left the same trio that led the attack on Libya in 2011: the United States, Britain and France. There has been constant discussion among their militaries about “options of every kind,” one official involved in the talks said this week. “Clearly, an airstrike would be much more complex than in Libya,” the official said, noting that most of the targets there were in the desert.
The deliberations on how to respond militarily to any confirmed use of chemical weapons was taking place against the backdrop of some of the most intense conventional fighting in the two-year-old Syrian conflict, which has left more than 70,000 people dead.
Opposition activists and fighters in Syria accused Mr. Assad’s military of carrying out attacks for the second straight day on the Mediterranean seaport of Baniyas and the village of Bayda, where dozens of civilians, including children, were found dead Thursday, some stabbed and burned. The National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, the main anti-Assad political group, said in a statement that the attacks constituted another war crime.
Syria’s official SANA news agency said nothing about civilian killings in Baniyas or Bayda in its dispatches on the fighting, asserting that its forces had “destroyed a number of terrorists’ dens and gatherings in several areas, killing and injuring many terrorists.” It also said insurgents had lobbed mortar shells at the Damascus airport.
Israel Bombs Syria as the U.S. Weighs Its Own Options
WASHINGTON — Israel aircraft bombed a target in Syria overnight Thursday, an Obama administration official said Friday night, as United States officials said they were considering military options, including carrying out their own airstrikes.
American officials did not provide details on the target of the Israeli strike. The Associated Press quoted Israeli officials Saturday as saying the target of the raid was a shipment of advanced missiles bound for the Hezbollah Shiite militia in Lebanon. While saying the shipment did not include chemical arms, the official described the missiles as “game changing,” an apparent reference to the capability of the missiles.
In late January, Israel carried out airstrikes against SA-17 antiaircraft weapons, which the Israelis feared were about to be moved to Hezbollah.
Israel has been worried that chemical weapons and advanced arms might be transferred to Hezbollah from Syria, and the Israeli military has made clear that it is prepared to take action to stop such shipments.
“Chemicals maybe get a lot of press and attention, but one of the clear things worrying us is advanced conventional weapons,” said one senior Israeli official, speaking on the condition he not be named because he was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
President Bashar al-Assad of Syria has long had a close relationship with Hezbollah, and Syria has been a gateway for shipping Iranian weapons to the militia.
Hezbollah has sent trainers and advisers to Syria to help Mr. Assad with his war against the Syrian opposition, American officials say, and Syrian opposition officials report that Hezbollah fighters are also involved in the conflict.
The Lebanese government confirmed on Saturday the Israeli warplanes flew over its airspace overnight Thursday, circling over Beirut and its suburbs, although it was not immediately clear if they were the same jets that carried out the raid in Syria.
A spokesman for the Israeli Embassy in Washington declined on Friday night to comment on the Israeli attack, which was first reported by CNN, saying only in a statement, “Israel is determined to prevent the transfer of chemical weapons or other game-changing weaponry by the Syrian regime to terrorists, specially to Hezbollah in Lebanon.”
Avi Issacharoff, an Israeli defense analyst, wrote on the news site Walla.com that it was no surprise that Syria and Hezbollah did not acknowledge the strike.
“Any admission by either Syria or Hezbollah that the Israeli Air Force had attacked a weapons convoy, which would obligate them to retaliate, would only serve to paint them into a corner,” Mr. Issacharoff wrote. “The Syrian army currently lacks the manpower to face Israel on the ground—and certainly not in the air. A conflagration with the IDF is liable to result in the loss of the only advantage that Assad has over the opposition forces—the Syrian Air Force.”
The Israeli attack came as the Obama administration — as part of its examination of possible responses to obtaining conclusive proof that Mr. Assad has used chemical weapons — is considering military options with allies. Those options include attacking Syria’s antiaircraft systems, military aircraft and some of its missile fleet, according to senior officials from several countries.
Those officials say that attacking the chemical stockpiles directly has been all but ruled out. “You could cause exactly the disaster you are trying to prevent,” a senior Israeli military official said in an interview last week in Tel Aviv.
But attacking Mr. Assad’s main delivery systems, the officials say, would curtail his ability to transport those weapons any significant distance. “This wouldn’t stop him from using it on a village, or just releasing it on the ground, or handing something to Hezbollah,” said one European official who has been involved in the conversations. “But it would limit the damage greatly.”
The topic was alluded to on Thursday, when Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel met with his British counterpart and talked about “the need for new options” if Mr. Assad used his chemical arsenal, the officials said. But while the military has been developing and refining options for the White House for months, the discussion appears to have taken a new turn, officials say, in the struggle to determine whether the suspected use of sarin gas near Aleppo and Damascus last month was a prelude to greater use of such weapons.
"There are a lot of options on the table, and they’re generally carrying equal weight at the moment,” a senior administration official said Friday. He declined to discuss the others, though Mr. Hagel talked on Thursday about arming rebel groups
So far, President Obama has been reluctant to get involved in the Syrian conflict. He has ruled out placing American forces on the ground, a stance he reiterated on Friday at a new conference in San José, Costa Rica, where he was meeting with Latin American leaders.
Mr. Obama told reporters he did not foresee a situation in which “American boots on the ground in Syria would not only be good for America but also would be good for Syria,” adding that he had consulted with leaders in the Mideast who agree.
When asked in recent days whether recent evidence of chemical weapons use in Syria crossed the “red line” he set in August, Mr. Obama described questions he would need to have answered — including when and how chemical weapons were used — before he would take action. Even then, he made clear, he may choose something well short of military action.
By Israeli estimates, Syria has 15 to 20 major chemical weapons sites, many near airfields that would make transport by plane relatively easy. Military planners say they would want to avoid hitting the chemicals for fear of creating toxic sites that could injure or kill civilians.
Ideally, one American commander said, the stockpiles would be surrounded, protected and then incinerated, much as the United States has done with its chemical arsenal. But that takes years, and as one official said, “We don’t have years, and we can’t keep troops there.”
That is why attacking the delivery systems seems like the next best option to many in the administration. Israel was believed to be behind an attack on some Syrian missiles in February as they were about to be transported, presumably to Hezbollah. On Wednesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Israeli lawmakers that a Hezbollah missile attack, using chemical weapons, was one of his chief concerns.
If Mr. Obama and his allies proceeded with an attack on air defenses, missiles and the Syrian Air Force, they would most likely use Tomahawk cruise missiles launched from ships in the eastern Mediterranean and fighter jets that might be able to fire missiles without entering Syrian airspace. But it is unclear how effective those would be.
Mr. Obama has always made clear that any action should be taken with allies and neighbors. But NATO has been reluctant, and Russia, which keeps a naval base in Syria, has been opposed. Israeli officials have said that they do not want to go into Syria, fearing that any Israeli attack would fuel Mr. Assad’s argument that the civil war in his country is the result of foreign provocations. Some Israeli officials have argued that the Arab League should be in the vanguard of any attack, but it has shown little interest in direct military intervention in the Syrian conflict.
That has left the same trio that led the attack on Libya in 2011: the United States, Britain and France. There has been constant discussion among their militaries about “options of every kind,” one official involved in the talks said this week. “Clearly, an airstrike would be much more complex than in Libya,” the official said, noting that most of the targets there were in the desert.
The deliberations on how to respond militarily to any confirmed use of chemical weapons was taking place against the backdrop of some of the most intense conventional fighting in the two-year-old Syrian conflict, which has left more than 70,000 people dead.
Opposition activists and fighters in Syria accused Mr. Assad’s military of carrying out attacks for the second straight day on the Mediterranean seaport of Baniyas and the village of Bayda, where dozens of civilians, including children, were found dead Thursday, some stabbed and burned. The National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, the main anti-Assad political group, said in a statement that the attacks constituted another war crime.
Syria’s official SANA news agency said nothing about civilian killings in Baniyas or Bayda in its dispatches on the fighting, asserting that its forces had “destroyed a number of terrorists’ dens and gatherings in several areas, killing and injuring many terrorists.” It also said insurgents had lobbed mortar shells at the Damascus airport.
ResurgentIran
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If true, it seems Israel wants to lure Syria into a war, considering how bad things are going for the rebels.
Shahin Vatani
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Israel/USA/Turkey/Saudi/Al-Qaeda alliance in full effect.
Doesn't matter. Assad is handing the rebel's asśes to them on a plate.
Doesn't matter. Assad is handing the rebel's asśes to them on a plate.
ResurgentIran
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At least that alliance is not as masked/conceiled, as it may once have been.
And anyone who dont recognize this axis, needs to get their head examined.
Shahin Vatani
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There will always be sheep in this world who fail to see what is happening right before their eyes.
Sashan
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An Israeli airstrike against Syria was targeting a shipment of advanced missiles bound for the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, Israeli officials confirmed on Saturday.
It was the second Israeli strike this year against Syria and the latest salvo in its long-running effort to disrupt Hezbollah’s quest to build an arsenal capable of defending against Israel’s air force and spreading destruction inside the Jewish state.
Israel confirms airstrike on Syria, says targeted arms shipment - The Hindu
It was the second Israeli strike this year against Syria and the latest salvo in its long-running effort to disrupt Hezbollah’s quest to build an arsenal capable of defending against Israel’s air force and spreading destruction inside the Jewish state.
Israel confirms airstrike on Syria, says targeted arms shipment - The Hindu
Can't believe how naive and stupid the Israeli government and military establishment is. For now , these FSA rebels want to target Iranians and other Shias ,so they are an asset to Israel. Once these FSA terrorists are done with destroying Syria and launching a rape wave against minority women , they will get back to their most cherished dream of liberating Jerusalem from the "infidels". These are the very same group of people who support Hamas and carry out occasional bomb strikes in Israeli cities. Israel supporting FSA is like India inviting Kashmiri terrorists to carry out blasts in Mumbai 
Abu Hashem
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If Israel was capable of intercepting weapons shipments hezbollah would be throwing rocks and sticks. Hezbollah is most likely already in possession of 'game changing' weapons. This is Israels chance to try and save it's allies in Syria. The FSA, Jabut al Nusra, and other Israeli/American allies are being beaten severely in Syria. Israel knows that the only way they are successful in this is if Bashar leaves. A destroyed Syria with Bashar is still a victory for Syria. If Bashar wins this conflict, Israel can expect to live in a state of fear unlike anything they have ever been through before.
Hezbollah already possess radar guided SA8, they took it off the tanks tracks and mounted it on a pick-up truck.
This is nothing more than another provocation to see if the SAA will make a mistake which would justify another zionist war.
Hezbollah already possess radar guided SA8, they took it off the tanks tracks and mounted it on a pick-up truck.
This is nothing more than another provocation to see if the SAA will make a mistake which would justify another zionist war.
Tamil American
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Paging 500, Solomon, and all PDF Zios...
Yzd Khalifa
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Absolutely not. The Israeli Airstrike reflects how concerned/frustrated they really are when it comes to Hezbollah or maybe Al-Nusrah in the future.
I might agree with you on the argument that Hezbollah already possess a hard-core stocks ,and they are trying to prevent them from acquiring more and more. Don't worry about AlQedea, both of them share a common enemy and they will never drag one another for a fight. Take it from a man who does that for living. Terrorists like AlQedea or AlNusrah will settle if with Hezbollah to go after Israel.
I can see that the Israelis are now in deep water.
I might agree with you on the argument that Hezbollah already possess a hard-core stocks ,and they are trying to prevent them from acquiring more and more. Don't worry about AlQedea, both of them share a common enemy and they will never drag one another for a fight. Take it from a man who does that for living. Terrorists like AlQedea or AlNusrah will settle if with Hezbollah to go after Israel.
I can see that the Israelis are now in deep water.
Falcon29
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You're right. I'm pretty sure they got some through if not hundreds already. But Israel is now sort of preventing them from a foundation. They don't want them to expand their capabilities to a point where Hezbollah will have their air defense as effective as their rocket foundation.
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