"IT was just after midnight when the 69th Squadron of Israeli F15Is crossed the Syrian coast-line. On the ground, Syria’s formidable air defences went dead. An audacious raid on a Syrian target 50 miles from the Iraqi border was under way.At a rendezvous point on the ground, a Shaldag air force commando team was waiting to direct their laser beams at the target for the approaching jets. The team had arrived a day earlier, taking up position near a large underground depot. Soon the bunkers were in flames."
Some ten days ago Israel proved two very important points.
1- That when it comes to Israel's enemies imminent proliferation nuclear technology, diplomacy will take a back seat to an overt strike.
2- The Israeli's possess the tactical ability to defeat Syria's air defenses and so one presumes can defeat Iran's air defense system given it's inferiority to that of Syria's.
For all the dire predictions of President Bush waging war on Iran I remain convinced that the increasingly aggressive rhetoric coming from the administration is as much a means to contain an Israeli strike on Iran as anything else.
7 comments:
There's not a real alliance between the "Zionists" and the United States. If there was, the Hamas boyos would be hurting much much more than they currently are. Especially Hizbollah. The US still has a score to settle with them.
This was an undercovered story.
On another note, why should we assume the Iranian Air Force is worse than Syria's? I'm not familiar with the topic.
If you believe the Israeli Army, they supposedly have a credible deterrence against Hezbollah that they didn't have in 2006. Perhaps that gave them the feeling of security to launch this air strike.
I can't imagine what they were hitting though. The argument that it was nuclear material shipped from NK doesn't stand up.
http://joshualandis.com/blog/?p=371
ynmarsakar, how would you define a "real alliance?"
steve, I've taken the word of the article (and the intelligence it sourced) regarding Iran's lessor AD system. And I agree this bit of news was very much under reported. But then OJ got busted again and so...
adrian, I too have read contrary opinions regarding the feasibility of the nuke angle. One thing to bear in mind. The Israeli "official statement" originally claimed a strike on weapons shipments for Hezbollah. Later sources (Israeli and others) pointed to the NK nuke shipment as a "possibility."
Further, the Syrian government has (at the time of last nights post) refused to comment. Seems a tad cagey to me.
Your source seems to assume that all functional elements of nuclear proliferation are radioactive in nature. Have you read any more detail as to what exactly the compenent(s) destroyed might have entailed?
I am curious about the credible deterrence against Hezbollah bit. Seems more rhetoric than anything.
A real military alliance is where an attack on one is an attack on the other, and is thus responded to with the same force as if the homeland of the signatories were attacked directly and their own people killed. Thus if the US had a real alliance with Israel, any attack on US soil that killed US personnel would be seen as requiring immediate Israeli retaliation or counter-action and any attack on Israeli soil that killed Israelis would be met by instant United States punitive expeditions to prevent future attacks.
There is one minor clause though, which says that these mutual defense clauses are only called upon if one or the other party demands that it be so. Israel and the US has never demanded this of the other. This is the second reason why US-israeli doesn't have a real alliance. A real alliance implies that one nation needs the other. If Israel doesn't require the help of the US to directly attack their enemies nor vice a versa for the US, then what "mutual interests" are being served exactly? Little if any. Thus, it is not a real alliance.
Here is JImbo's analysis/speculation/derivation.
Link
ymarsakar, to my knowledge the Israeli military relies near exclusively on the US for both it's technology and maintnence. Further the operation in Syria was, effectively, passed unto US intelligence prior to it's execution.
I'd also toss an educated guess out that the US relies quite a bit on Israeli intelligence in the course of it's dealings, warfare or not, in the ME.
As for Jimbo's analysis, I was very much with him until the "Ehud Barak kicks ass" bit. I suspect the Likud party will be "kicking ass" soon under the tutelage of Benjamin Netanyahu.
ymarsakar, to my knowledge the Israeli military relies near exclusively on the US for both it's technology and maintnence.
You can say the same for pretty much any country that relies predominantly upon the US for protection. Israel at least uses their own armed forces to protect themselves and does not rely upon US aid, nor wish it. Both Germany and Japan would be helpless without the US, the former because they want to be helpless and useless and the latter because of Constitutional limits.
I'd also toss an educated guess out that the US relies quite a bit on Israeli intelligence in the course of it's dealings, warfare or not, in the ME.
The same is true for French and German intelligence. Nations can pass information to each other, but that does not a treaty of alliance make.
THe US neither used nor wanted Israeli help in Iraq, Gulf War 1 or OIF 1. Whatever sharing of information you have witnessed, is due to Cold War legacies. If you have an alliance of proxies set against the Soviet Union, do you remain an alliance when the Soviets are defeated?
At best, such Cold War legalices are frozen. The relationship between Israeli proxy and American distance fighter that was present as a thing of necessity in the Cold War was not a true alliance, although deals were made for convenience/survival sakes.
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