Posted on 05/06/2013 5:36:58 AM PDT by Former Fetus
With three airstrikes against Syria since January, Israel has inserted itself forcefully into the Arab Spring's most intractable conflict, heightening fears that Syria's civil war could spiral into a regional conflagration.
The bombings of targets near the Syrian capital — including two strikes in a 48-hour period beginning Friday — represent a risk-laden strategy based on the calculation that retaliatory attacks against Israel by Syria or its allies are unlikely. Still the bombings inevitably raised the specter of a broader regional war in the heart of the volatile Middle East.
But even as some Israeli officials confirmed their military's involvement in Sunday's pre-dawn assault on a reported weapons compound, they insisted their goals in Syria are narrow, and portrayed the engagement as defensive and largely unrelated to the two-year uprising against Syrian President Bashar Assad.
Rather than trying to weaken Assad or tilt the scales for either side, Israelis say they have an eye on the prospective next war — against the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, which is backed by both Iran and Syria.
The aim of the airstrikes, Israeli officials say, is to prevent Syria's advanced weaponry, much of it made in Iran, from being transferred to Lebanon and Hezbollah.
>>SNIP<<
"The bombing of Syria is really more of a test of Iran than Assad," said Moshe Maoz, a Hebrew University professor and Syria expert. "Israel is testing the patience and strategy of Iran and wants to see Iran's reaction, which might help if Israel attacks Iran itself one day."
(Excerpt) Read more at jewishworldreview.com ...
I think they’re trying to remove those weapons as a threat in the event that Assad falls and AQ wins again. The Libyan Arab Spring, courtesy of Obama, released thousands and thousands of different kinds of weapons into the hands of AQ.
There were a sizable number of Republicans in the Amen Corner.
>> The aim of the airstrikes, Israeli officials say, is to prevent Syria’s advanced weaponry, much of it made in Iran, from being transferred to Lebanon and Hezbollah.
It seems so obvious that Israel is telling the simple truth here... yet the media is falling all over themselves to accuse them of other agendas.
Meanwhile, it’s so obvious that Obama is *lying* every time the blue-lipped Kenyan monkey opens his mouth about Syria, Benghazi, etc... but the press defends his credibility like a father defends the virginity of his daughter.
“Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!” — Is. 5:20
Killed US border agents from US weapons.
Murdered US Ambassador and staff troops at the hands of Clinton and Obama
Many soldiers killed inside the Afghanistan compound attack through gross incompetence.
How many killed and maimed in Boston due to Obama’s incompetence?
How many at Ft. Hood killed and maimed?
And how many others killed that have been covered up?
Boy, that Obama sure is a great community organizer!
Its a good thing for everyone that Israel is using the opportunity of some regular Arab infighting to clean up some nasty weapons that are lying around
i think they're trying to destroy them because they're liable to eventually likely to be turned on Israel no matter who wins, or even if anyone wins. Hezbollah, Al-Queda, or a desperate Assad are all equally likely to attack Israel.
bttt
Amen to that and I hope that the weapons of mass destruction were destroyed in the huge blast north of Damascus. So many terrorist and communist organizations are headquartered in Damascus and must be sought out and destroyed.
Only democrats believe the lies of this regime. I hate to say it but believe that this administration is the undoing of a once great country.
I think Isreal’s strategy should be to keep the war is Syria going for a decade or two.
Absolutely, although I think Assad is the least likely to attack Israel, if only because he’s realistic enough to know he’d lose.
But the oddly routine nature of his response to the destruction of those weapons (just a standard fulmination of declaring war against Israel, meaningless since they had already declared war against it some time ago!) actually leads me to think that he was possibly prepared for this in advance and not that averse to it. He knows he doesn’t have enough military power to secure those weapons, and if AQ gets to them, it will be all over for him. Israel, on the other hand, is not interested in ending up in charge of Syria and just wants stability.
Obama has a pretty impressive terrorist track record when you really sit down and tally it up as you have done. Strange that none of our press or elected officials seem to be able to connect the dots.
If you’d like to be on or off, please FR mail me.
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And should Assad prevail, prevent their movement to Hizbollah. And prevent transfer of the delivery systems, it’s already suspected they have chem/bio weapons. For all his humanitarian failings, and despite being at war with Israel, Assad has been relatively quiet for decades, preferring to act through Lebanon. Any new government, it’s realistic to assume that could change.
Getting rid of some chemicals and weapons is a good deal for Israel. Wish Lebanese good Christian people would leave Lebanon and Israel bomb it into never never land. That’s the only way they will continue to exist. Then, Iran has to go probably by nuclear blast or many bunker buster bombs.
“Arab infighting”
Been going on for centuries and is better described as Muslim internecine squabbles. Turning into wars sometimes which makes the infidels happy.
“Israel has inserted itself forcefully into the Arab Spring’s most intractable conflict, heightening fears that Syria’s civil war could spiral into a regional conflagration.”
It - the goings on in Syria - were and are and have been part of a regional conflagration that has been behind many of the Middle East open conflicts for decades. The “spiral” has been going on for decades.
The failure, in the media and the west, is the failure to admit it is only tangentially territorial. It is really nothing more or less than the modern resurgence of the ages old Sunni-Shia divide within Islam.
In this era that divide has the modern radical fundamentalist Wahabi Sunni clerics of Saudi Arabia and their MB allies on one side, and the modern radical fundamentalist Shia theocrats in Iran and their allies - whereever they can make them, on the other side.
Their are truly no “white hats” on either side from the perspective of western values and the western value system.
It is a race where the U.S. really does not have long-term shared-values allies in the running.
The same is true in Syria itself.
Thanks Former Fetus.
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