Israel pretends to bomb Syria!

for those who hate clicking:

Syria has today lodged a formal complaint with the United Nations after several Israeli fighter planes made an airstrike inside its borders last Thursday.

Witnesses last week said that Syrian air defenses began shooting at the jets after they entered Syrian airspace in the northern part of the country, near the Turkish border. Syria’s UN ambassador, Bashar Jaafari, says that Israel is trying to provoke a response from Syria so that it can escalate military confrontation between the two countries, who are technically at war with each other.

Earlier this year, Syria paid Russia one billion dollars for a new air defense system, called Pantsyr. The United States has shown concern that parts of the system could be resold to Syria’s ally, Iran — who the US accuses of trying to develop nuclear weapons and destabilizing US forces in Iraq. Both Russia and Syria have have denied that any such resale is in the works, but last Thursday’s attack by Israel — America’s strongest ally in the region — could be a deliberate test of Pantsyr’s capabilities.

That the Israeli jets escaped unscathed could show that Iran’s future defense system is vulnerable.

OH FOR FUCKS SAKE PEOPLE OF THE FUCKING WORLD CAN'T WE ALL JUST GET ALONG!!

By the way, this is what I hope will turn into a daily (morning) podcast of international news, written by me. So this thread also serves as shameless spam!

It's about things that I think are important but which don't make their way up to the top of the headline stack. And because it's really meant to be a podcast it's written in a style that is better heard than read.

The text will probably no longer appear once I start making the podcasts available. I welcome any feedback or ideas you've got.

That is interesting.

I don't think that fits the military definition of an "airstrike" though (doesn't a target actually have to be attacked?). The planes just flew in Syrian airspace and didn't actually fire on anything, right? Nonetheless, I wouldn't be surprised at all if it was some kind of test and/or warning.

Sorry, nevermind, I found references in other articles to an unspecified desert target being struck - though it's not clear whether there was actually anything on the spot that was hit:

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/903398.html

NY Times: IAF recently photographed nuclear facilities in Syria
By Barak Ravid, Avi Issacharoff and Amos Harel, Haaretz Correspondents and News Agencies

The New York Times on Wednesday quoted a Bush Administration official as saying Israel recently photographed possible nuclear installations in Syria.

The comments come amid ongoing silence in Israel regarding Damascus' allegations that the Israel Air Force fired missiles at ground targets deep in Syria during an overflight last week.

"One Bush administration official said Israel had recently carried out reconnaissance flights over Syria, taking pictures of possible nuclear installations that Israeli officials believed might have been supplied with material from North Korea," the paper wrote. "The administration official said Israeli officials believed that North Korea might be unloading some of its nuclear material on Syria"
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"The Israelis think North Korea is selling to Iran and Syria what little they have left," the New York Times quoted the official as saying.

Despite Israel's silence, media reports began surfacing Tuesday of U.S. officials confirming the IAF had indeed carried out an air strike.

The New York Times quoted a Defense Department official as saying the IAF struck at least one target in northeastern Syria, but said it was unclear what the target was and what was the extent of the damage.

Syria has also said nothing was hit and there was no damage. The CNN television network reported Tuesday, however, that the Israeli government is "very happy with the successful operation."

Senior correspondent Christian Amanpour, citing Middle Eastern and Washington sources, said aircraft and possibly even ground forces, which may have directed the planes to their target, took part in the operation.

The attack left "a big hole in the desert," the report said.

CNN said U.S. government and military sources said they were "happy to have Israel convey to both Syria and Iran the message that they can get in and out and strike when necessary."

Israel possibly targeted weapons intended for delivery to Hezbollah inside Syria a week ago, CNN quoted the sources as saying.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's aides said they were not interested in commenting on the incident.

Also Wednesday, a Lebanese minister said his country experienced communications disruptions following the reported IAF incursion into Syria.

Lebanon's Communications Minister Marwan Hamadeh told Al-Mustaqbal television that, following an extensive inquiry with cellular telephone companies and the Lebanese military, it was determined that the disruptions were caused by satellites and from sources out at sea.

Hamadeh did not go into further details regarding the source of the disruptions, but said that they communications all but returned to normal after about five days.

Syria's UN envoy: Our response has not yet come
Meanwhile, Syria's envoy to the United Nations said Wednesday that Damascus was reserving the right to determine the timing and manner of its response to the alleged air strike.

"The Syrian response has not yet come," said Bashar al-Jaafari, in an interview with BBC Arabic.

On Tuesday, Syria complained to the UN about "aggression and violation of sovereignty," al-Jaafari said.

The ambassador said Damascus made its complaint in two letters to the UN secretary general and the president of the Security Council. The letters said the Israel Air Force action violated the 1974 disengagement agreement that was reached after the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

Al-Jaafari said Israel had violated Syrian air space and dropped munitions. But he denied that Israel had landed troops on the ground inside Syria.

"This is absolutely not true," he said, adding the reports were an attempt to show that Israel could land troops wherever it wants.

The only countries that have expressed solidarity with Syria are Iran and North Korea. Russia issued a condemnation of sorts.

There was also something about the fighters having dropped some fuel tanks in Turkey, which seems weird.

At this point nobody really has said what the jets were going after specifically, if anything.

I have been reading a fair bit about this since last week. One suggstion is that the Israeli jets did actually bomb something in northern Syria... some kind of resupply thing to Hezbollah or something. My take on it, though, is that they were just farming cock.

Yeah, my money is on test run/show of power. But I suppose it's also possible that Syria doesn't want to admit what it was that Israel hit.

A lot of articles refer to Israel "dropping munitions". That means "bombing", right?

And am I also right in suspecting that this show of power/dropping of munitions/bombing/airstrike completely contravenes all sorts of treaties and agreements?

I mean, imagine Israel's response if Syria did this!

your bit said they were 'at war'... so i guess not?

xpost

your bit said they were 'at war'... so i guess not?

they are at war in a sense, but they agreed a ceasefire after the last round of conflict, which would mean that neither Syria nor Israel is meant to launch military operations against the other. They are probably also not meant to arm other people who might or might or might not attack the other.

assuming this is an actual flyover/bombing, you would have to question Israel's timing. There has been a lot of sabre rattling emanating from Isrel over the last while with respect to Syria, with various Israeli analysts suggesting that war with Syria might happen this summer. More recently the Israel government has moved to dampen that tension. Maybe they don't think that flying over Syria increases tension, or maybe they have decided they would like a war after all.

so there IS a ceasefire? i had a hard time figuring out 1) if there was one in effect and 2) what its terms were

"Pantsyr" - This story could be pun gold.

I think there have been no major hostilities between Israel and Syria since 1982, and I think they ended in some kind of ceasefire (probably of the "stop shooting, for now" kind).

There was a guy at my wife's family's dinner last night who had worked in the defense industry and who had also worked in some capacity for the Bush I admin who spoke as though he had it on authority that Israel had struck some kind of weapons shipment that was being transported through Syria to Hezbollah. I'm not convinced though - having grown up in DC I'm used to hearing people speak as though they have some inside source when they're just passing rumors. I'm also used to Israelis pretending they know what they're talking about.

Debka suggests it was more likely an operation to test the air defense systems.

http://debka.com/article.php?aid=1301

I don't mean to ignore Tracer Hand's international law concerns, I'm just more concerned with what this might be building up to. And neither nation has much history of respect for international law, and international condemnations don't seem to have had much effect.

Hi Hurting - I address this very aspect in my blog! HINT HINT. It is suspected by some that this self-same air defense system will get shipped to Iran. So to go further out on a limb, one could easily imagine that this is a test of IRAN'S air defense system -- the one they haven't got yet, but will.

I was going to link to Debka myself but then I realized that it is essentially a propaganda organ.

Debka is a site to be 100% trusted.

Well I do trust the Mossad. I just don't trust them to be honest.

i forgot the word "not" before "to be 100% trusted"..

I know you addressed it in your blog, I'm just adding another source - I'm saying I think you're probably right about this as a proxy test of Iran's future defenses.

I do think it's interesting that certain *anonymous* US officials are getting quoted in various papers saying that Israel destroyed a weapons shipment.

I mean seeing firsthand the effect that has on the dinner table talk of a bunch of Israelis - you know, everyone's reassured that of course Israel did the right thing and had a good reason to do it and it's just like that Osirak reactor attack, etc.

theres also a rumour that they bomb a shipment of nuclear weapon coming from north korea.
that make sense because:
north korea condemned the operation and, Israel wouldnt take a risk of doing such a thing in Syria land at this fragile times, if it wasnt crucial,and nuclear weapon is crucial.

than again,the story will be clear in the next week or two to come.

It will??

Yeah, i was gonna say

I mean the players are:

- Israel
- Syria
- probably Iran
- probably the US
- an outside chance of North Korea

What an open, straight-shooting bunch!

Oh and Russia, the guys who sold Syria the air defense system in the first place. Who swear up and down that there's no deal to send any of it to Iran. Even though it was probably Iran's money that bought it all in the first place.

some leaks will get combined by the press to the "truth" of what happend

This is actually making me think a lot about the role of whispering campaigns in political propaganda. I've heard so many conversations among Israelis where there's the one person who knows someone with real government connections who knows what *really happened*, and of course it was a 100% successful operation because Israeli intelligence is completely infallible and its military is the greatest fighting force in the world.

I like DV's questions:

What if Syria hasn't installed the system yet? What if it's not fully operational? What if they haven't had time to read the manuals?

They did just get the kit in this summer, after all.

Other speculation is that the Turkish/Syrian border is one of the few flight plans available to Israeli fighter planes who want to get to Iran. This could have been a test of that, too.

"Israeli intelligence is completely infallible and its military is the greatest fighting force in the world."
almost no one think like that in Israel, esp. after the war with Lebanon.

believe me, the myth is much stronger than the damage done to it by Hezbollah.

not from where i seat.
the myth might be true for some arab people (though not all) , but Israelies arent so sure as before,
it all begun to crumble slowly afer 73'.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/7f/IWC_2007_Martian_Invasion_of_Earth.jpg

Israel wouldnt take a risk of doing such a thing in Syria land at this fragile times

You know, I had always been a big believer in this sort of thinking -- nations are rational actors, decisions are weighed on pretty serious levels, etc. -- but that faith has really crumbled over the past decade.

This is a test of the Syrian air defense system. It is only a test. Had this been an actual bombing run, you would be instructed where in your area to turn for misinformation.

a meta question - the Guardian reports a complete news blackout on this in Israel, d-notice style: http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,2170766,00.html

Yes, the Ha'aretz web site has had several reports on the matter. Does this mean that the restrictions only apply to Israeli print media, or that the Ha'aretz web site is published outside Israel and therefore not subject to military censorship, or that the Guardian is fibbing?

My current thinking is that there is a so-what quality to all of this. As both the Syrians and Israelis are downplaying it (and the Israelis are still pulling forces back from the Golan, I understand) it is probably not a prelude to war with Syria. Maybe they bombed something, maybe they did not. Maybe it was a test of the Syrian air defence system, or maybe it wasn't. But meh.

there's a difference between 'downplaying' something and covering it up, no?

Maybe it was a test of the Syrian air defence system, or maybe it wasn't. But meh.

but if it *wasn't* that (and if they inserted a commando team, i guess it wasn't), and it was in fact an attack on a specific target, and the syrians say they are considering their response... how is that 'meh'?

I just asked the Syria analyst at my work, and she says ...

Nobody knows. Syria's complaint to UN was half-hearted. She thinks the Syrians possible don't want people knowing what was bombed. But is sceptical about nuclear link.

There's not a "news blackout", it's that the Israeli government is keeping completely schtum. (Except for all the leaks, presumably: 1) it's North Korean nuclear material 2) it's arms shipments destined for Hezbollah 3) 4) etc. ) Which goes to show you just how much reporting on the Israeli military utterly depends on official sources.

From what I've read this silence is fairly unprecedented.

One theory I've read is that Israeli silence allows Syria to not respond, which has the ring of truth to it.

One thing is for sure, it's not *nothing*. Israel doesn't make its most aggressive overflight since the early 1980s for nothing.

It's interesting to me that this came the same week Syria closed its borders to the majority of fleeing Iraqi refugees. (It's probably a coincidence.)

And France now saying war with Iran is possible, at the same time DefSec Gates says "all options are on the table". Jeema-nee.

and the syrians say they are considering their response... how is that 'meh'?

The Syrians do a lot of considering.

Does anyone remember an odd news story over the summer, where a Syrian army base exploded? The Syrians said that it was to do with explosives becoming unstable due to high temperatures, with no outside agency involved, and everyone left it at that. I remember thinking this was all a bit strange, as to admit that your explosives just blow up in high summer temperatures implies that your soldiers are a bunch of fuckwits who can't handle their stuff. Which of course they may be, but still.

One theory I've read is that Israeli silence allows Syria to not respond, which has the ring of truth to it.

There might well be something to this. Begin was widely criticised for making cheap political capital out of Osirak, so maybe wily old Olmert is playing a more careful game.

Well I do trust the Mossad. I just don't trust them to be honest.

this is the same Mossad that fed completely fictitious information to Netanhyahu when he was prime minister, in the hope of provoking him into launching a war, so yeah, I would not trust them to be honest either.

Hey DV you're right about the news blackout -- I'm sorry.

"The updated order, good through September 30, requires reporters to seek written approval from the censor before publishing anything on the incident."

http://washingtonbureau.typepad.com/jerusalem/

Translation of latest order for Israel's Military Censor:

1. From the moment of the publication of this order, the publication of the following type of information is forbidden without written approval of the main censor prior to publication: publication in direct or indirect manner of all information, description or details -- be it in allusive or direct manner -- on the activities of the IDF that have happened or are in the process of happening in enemy territory. This includes any link between the state of Israel and events that occur in enemy territory.

2. The information banned above includes any information that may have been published on radio, television, Internet, either by journalists or by officials.

3. This order concerns all information communicated officially or off-record by political and military officials.

4. This order is valid until 30 September 2007

Hey DV you're right about the news blackout

it's the Guardian that's right, not me.

it must be funny in Israel - presumably people can access news stuff on the internet about this even if there is nothing in the local papers or on TV.

"it must be funny in Israel - presumably people can access news stuff on the internet about this even if there is nothing in the local papers or on TV."

thres a LOT on local paper and tv, no worries.

and it always starts with:"according to foreign press"...
and than analyzing:"if that report is true so..." etc...

The blackout supposedly applies to foreign reporters in Israel, too.

In reality, few, if any, international reporters submit stories to the censor. In my two years here, which has included coverage of last summer's war with Hezbollah, I have never submitted a story to the Israeli censorship office.

the thing is,in this case the censorship don't need the stories to be deliverd,cause the reporters are fed by nameless leaks,so they are still just treated as rumours.

So you are in Israel, Zeno? Where?

tel aviv

that's where my wife is from

but I guess this is going to devolve into a small-talk thread derail if I keep going.

i spend more or less half of the month in tel aviv and the other half aboard,cause of work.

"dash" to your wife from tlv

crunkin in the tlv

theres also a rumour that they bomb a shipment of nuclear weapon coming from north korea. that make sense because:

No it doesn't. The experts on non-proliferation know Syria has not had the money or infrastructure to support a nuclear program.

What makes a little more sense is an orchestrated campaign by the Bush
administration to anonymously link North Korea, Syria and Iran into a sinister conspiracy, implying something -- but not actually resorting to the usual false claims of WMDs used to gin up fear and then enthusiasm for doing something rash and unrecoverable.

Debkafile publishes stories that are both interesting and true. However, the Debka stories which are interesting are not true and the true stories are not interesting.

I wouldn't put much stock in the worth of any anti-air defense system run by Syria (or Iran), no matter who made it and shipped it to them.

Little of this story made much sense when Glen Kessler of the Post produced it.

Upon reflection, the suggested activity -- a uranium enrichment pilot plant -- is precisely the type of facility that would not produce "dramatic satellite imagery". Indeed, it is the absence of an imagery signature that has frustrated the search for North Korea's uranium program. And the "restricted to a few senior officials" part of the narrative might be expanded to include "in the Office of the Vice President, Dick Cheney.

Priceless deja vu graf from Washington Post story on the issue. The only thing not in it is the "absence of proof is not proof of absence" line.

MY NEW THEORY:

The Israelis have actually just pretended to bomb Syria. The whole point of this is to make the government look like hardnuts, at a time when people might otherwise think they are a bit soft (owing to de-escalation of Syrian front). The Syrians are "considering responses" i.e. playing their part in the game.

Stratfor just sent this around. Hmm.

---

The Arab-Israeli region of the Middle East is filled with rumors of war. That is about as unusual as the rising of the sun, so normally it would not be worth mentioning. But like the proverbial broken clock that is right twice a day, such rumors occasionally will be true. In this case, we don’t know that they are true, and certainly it’s not the rumors that are driving us. But other things — minor and readily explicable individually — have drawn our attention to the possibility that something is happening.

The first thing that drew our attention was a minor, routine matter. Back in February, the United States started purchasing oil for its Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR). The SPR is a reserve of crude oil stored in underground salt domes. Back in February, it stood at 96.2 percent of capacity, which is pretty full as far as we are concerned. But the U.S. Department of Energy decided to increase its capacity. This move came in spite of record-high oil prices and the fact that the purchase would not help matters. It also came despite potential political fallout, since during times like these there is generally pressure to release reserves. Part of the step could have been the bureaucracy cranking away, and part of it could have been the feeling that the step didn’t make much difference. But part of it could have been based on real fears of a disruption in oil supplies. By itself, the move meant nothing. But it did cause us to become thoughtful.

Also in February, someone assassinated Imad Mughniyah, a leader of Hezbollah, in a car bomb explosion in Syria. It was assumed the Israelis had killed him, although there were some suspicions the Syrians might have had him killed for their own arcane reasons. In any case, Hezbollah publicly claimed the Israelis killed Mughniyah, and therefore it was expected the militant Shiite group would take revenge. In the past, Hezbollah responded not by attacking Israel but by attacking Jewish targets elsewhere, as in the Buenos Aires attacks of 1992 and 1994.

In March, the United States decided to dispatch the USS Cole, then under Sixth Fleet command, to Lebanese coastal waters. Washington later replaced it with two escorts from the Nassau (LHA-4) Expeditionary Strike Group (ESG), reportedly maintaining a minor naval presence in the area. (Most of the ESG, on a regularly scheduled deployment, is no more than a few days sail from the coast, as it remains in the Mediterranean Sea.) The reason given for the American naval presence was to serve as a warning to the Syrians not to involve themselves in Lebanese affairs. The exact mission of the naval presence off the Levantine coast — and the exact deterrent function it served — was not clear, but there they were. The Sixth Fleet has gone out of its way to park and maintain U.S. warships off the Lebanese coast.

Hezbollah leaders being killed by the Israelis and the presence of American ships off the shores of Mediterranean countries are not news in and of themselves. These things happen. The killing of Mughniyah is notable only to point out that as much as Israel might have wanted him dead, the Israelis knew this fight would escalate. But anyone would have known this. So all we know is that whoever killed Mughniyah wanted to trigger a conflict. The U.S. naval presence off the Levantine coast is notable in that Washington, rather busy with matters elsewhere, found the bandwidth to get involved here as well.

With the situation becoming tense, the Israelis announced in March that they would carry out an exercise in April called Turning Point 2. Once again, an Israeli military exercise is hardly interesting news. But the Syrians apparently got quite interested. After the announcement, the Syrians deployed three divisions — two armored, one mechanized — to the Lebanese-Syrian border in the Bekaa Valley, the western part of which is Hezbollah’s stronghold. The Syrians didn’t appear to be aggressive. Rather, they deployed these forces in a defensive posture, in a way walling off their part of the valley.

The Syrians are well aware that in the event of a conventional war with Israel, they would experience a short but exciting life, as they say. They thus are hardly going to attack Israel. The deployment therefore seemed intended to keep the Israelis on the Lebanese side of the border — on the apparent assumption the Israelis were going into the Bekaa Valley. Despite Israeli and Syrian denials of the Syrian troop buildup along the border, Stratfor sources maintain that the buildup in fact happened. Normally, Israel would be jumping at the chance to trumpet Syrian aggression in response to these troop movements, but, instead, the Israelis downplayed the buildup.

When the Israelis kicked off Turning Point 2, which we regard as a pretty interesting name, it turned out to be the largest exercise in Israeli history. It involved the entire country, and was designed to test civil defenses and the ability of the national command authority to continue to function in the event of an attack with unconventional weapons — chemical and nuclear, we would assume. This was a costly exercise. It also involved calling up reserves, some of them for the exercise, and, by some reports, others for deployment to the north against Syria. Israel does not call up reserves casually. Reserve call-ups are expensive and disrupt the civilian economy. These appear small, but in the environment of Turning Point 2, it would not be difficult to mobilize larger forces without being noticed.

The Syrians already were deeply concerned by the Israeli exercise. Eventually, the Lebanese government got worried, too, and started to evacuate some civilians from the South. Hezbollah, which still hadn’t retaliated for the Mughniyah assassination, also claimed the Israelis were about to attack it, and reportedly went on alert and mobilized its forces. The Americans, who normally issue warnings and cautions to everyone, said nothing to try to calm the situation. They just sat offshore on their ships.

It is noteworthy that Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak canceled a scheduled visit to Germany this week. The cancellation came immediately after the reports of the Syrian military redeployment were released. Obviously, Barak needed to be in Israel for Turning Point 2, but then he had known about the exercise for at least a month. Why cancel at the last minute? While we are discussing diplomacy, we note that U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney visited Oman — a country with close relations with Iran — and then was followed by U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. By itself not interesting, but why the high-level interest in Oman at this point?

Now let’s swing back to September 2007, when the Israelis bombed something in Syria near the Turkish border. As we discussed at the time, for some reason the Israelis refused to say what they had attacked. It made no sense for them not to trumpet what they carefully leaked — namely, that they had attacked a nuclear facility. Proving that Syria had a secret nuclear program would have been a public relations coup for Israel. Nevertheless, no public charges were leveled. And the Syrians remained awfully calm about the bombing.

Rumors now are swirling that the Israelis are about to reveal publicly that they in fact bombed a nuclear reactor provided to Syria by North Korea. But this news isn’t all that big. Also rumored is that the Israelis will claim Iranian complicity in building the reactor. And one Israeli TV station reported April 8 that Israel really had discovered Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, which it said had been smuggled to Syria.

Now why the Bush administration wouldn’t have trumpeted news of the Syrian reactor worldwide in September 2007 is beyond us, but there obviously were some reasons — assuming the TV report is true, which we have no way of establishing. In fact, we have no idea why the Israelis are choosing this moment to rehash the bombing of this site. But whatever their reason, it certainly raises a critical question. If the Syrians are developing a nuclear capability, what are the Israelis planning to do about it?

No one of these things, by itself, is of very great interest. And taken together they do not provide the means for a clear forecast. Nevertheless, a series of rather ordinary events, taken together, can constitute something significant. Tensions in the Middle East are moving well beyond the normal point, and given everything that is happening, events are moving to a point where someone is likely to take military action. Whether Hezbollah will carry out a retaliatory strike or Israel a pre-emptive strike in Lebanon, or whether the Israelis’ real target is Iran, tensions systematically have been ratcheted up to the point where we, in our simple way, are beginning to wonder whether something has to give.

All together, these events are fairly extraordinary. Ignoring all rhetoric — and the Israelis have gone out of their way to say that they are not looking for a fight — it would seem that each side, but particularly the Americans and Israelis, have gone out of their way to signal that they are expecting conflict. The Syrians have also signaled that they expect conflict, and Hezbollah always claims there is about to be conflict.

What is missing is this: who will fight whom, and why, and why now. The simple explanation is that Israel wants a second round with Hezbollah. But while that might be true, it doesn’t explain everything else that has happened. Most important, it doesn’t explain the simultaneous revelations about the bombing of Syria. It also doesn’t explain the U.S. naval deployment. Is the United States about to get involved in a war with Hezbollah, a war that the Israelis should handle themselves? Are the Israelis going to topple Syrian President Bashar al Assad — and then wind up with a Sunni government, or worse, an Israeli occupation of Syria? None of that makes a lot of sense.

In truth, all of this may dissolve into nothing much. In intelligence analysis, however, sometimes a set of not-fully-coherent facts must be reported, and that is what we are doing now. There is no clear pattern; there is no obvious direction this is taking. Nevertheless, when we string together events from February until now, we see a persistently escalating pattern of behavior. In fact, what we can say most clearly is that there is escalation, without being able to say what is the clear direction of the escalation or the purpose.

We would like to wrap this up with a crystal clear explanation and forecast. But we can’t. The motives of the various actors are opaque; and taken separately, the individual events all have quite innocent explanations. We are not prepared to say war is imminent, nor even what sort of war there would be. We are simply prepared to say that the course of events since February — and really since the September 2007 attack on Syria — have been startling, and they appear to be reaching some sort of hard-to-understand crescendo.

The bombing of Syria symbolizes our confusion. Why would Syria want a nuclear reactor and why put it on the border of Turkey, a country the Syrians aren’t particularly friendly with? If the Syrians had a nuclear reactor, why would the Israelis be coy about it? Why would the Americans? Having said nothing for months apart from careful leaks, why are the Israelis going to speak publicly now? And if what they are going to say is simply that the North Koreans provided the equipment, what’s the big deal? That was leaked months ago.

The events of September 2007 make no sense and have never made any sense. The events we have seen since February make no sense either. That is noteworthy, and we bring it to your attention. We are not saying that the events are meaningless. We are saying that we do not know their meaning. But we can’t help but regard them as ominous.

I haven't read a lot of Stratfor, but I get the feeling they're a little war-hungry. If Israel knew Syria had a nuclear reactor (meaning Bush too), we all would have heard about it a loooong time ago.

Yeah, I find it hard to see anything special about the aligning of those facts. Tensions be high in the Middle East. No shit.

lol at my sad, neglected "blog"

i was frequent visitor :(

srsly i thought it was a pretty cool idea, wish youd have kept it up/will startup again

This probably isn't the right Israel thread for this, but there's a good piece in the New Yorker this week about a half-Palestinian Barnard academic and the Mid-East tenure wars at Columbia. Not available on-line, apparently.

My wife's ex was one of the students behind that witch-hunt film. Double hiss.

I wish they had examined the Oman visits in a bit greater length. Both the VP and the Sec'y of Defense went to Oman lately? WTF?

I haven't read a lot of Stratfor, but I get the feeling they're a little war-hungry.

I first became aware of them during the Israel-Hezbollah war two years ago, during which they kept predicting an Israeli ground invasion that never happenend, so I have them pegged as know-nothing war nuts.

So far from what I've seen, I'm just not convinced Stratfor has better information or analytical ability than anyone else. They do an awful lot of supposing and hedging in situations where they just don't know enough about key variables -- either because the information is secret or because outcomes are unpredictable -- and I don't see that it gets them any closer to the truth.

They're definitely tea-leaf-reading elves rather than the voice of undisputed truth.

Both the VP and the Sec'y of Defense went to Oman lately? WTF?

what's the big deal? officials visit places all the time.

Yes, they do. I am glad you pointed that out.

Usually when officials visit a place there is an official reason. The official reason is not always the real reason, but sometimes the obvious weakness of the official explanation is a giveaway that something else is happening.

That is why I wished they'd have spent more time on explaining those visits. I heard nothing about them in the news and know nothing. If the official reason were that the Oman gov't is negotiating a huge (say $20 billion) arms purchase from the USA, then I would dismiss the visits as any kind of ominous sign.

If no official reason was given, or some crap reason, then one must wonder why the Sec'y of War (oops, I mean 'Defense') went, and not the SOS.

why should anyone take seriously the US intelligence establishment saying that Syria has a covert nuclear weapons programme?

it's more of a question of all the reasons they should pretend to take it seriously.

didn't hersh have a piece about this a couple of months ago?