Assad may be cruising for a bruising

Tony Badran
NOW Lebanon
02 June '10

(And now from another major player, perhaps also a "Peace Activist", somewheres buried deep inside. Never mind. Y.)

If Damascus continues to arm Hezbollah, would the Israelis strike against Syria? Despite Israel’s past track record of overlooking Syrian malfeasance, there is reason to think the equation may have changed. Bashar al-Assad’s gamble that he would be immune, therefore, may be misreading Israeli and American thinking. He may in fact be inevitably placing himself in the path of an Israeli strike against Syria.

The Israelis have already indicated that they may be conceptualizing Syria’s role differently than in the past. The head of intelligence research in the Israel Defense Forces, Yossi Baidatz, for instance, has characterized the arms transfers to Hezbollah as an organized, officially-sanctioned process, not mere “smuggling.” Thus, arming Hezbollah has become an integral part of the Syrian regime’s military strategy, offering the proper context for understanding Bashar al-Assad’s recent dubbing of Syria as a “resistance state.”

The adjustment in framing Syria’s position in this equation comes in the midst of recent media reports that once again shined the spotlight on Damascus’s growing military integration with Hezbollah.

The first report appeared on May 27 in an exclusive story in the Syrian daily Al-Watan (owned by Assad’s cousin, Rami Makhlouf), immediately following the “Liberation Day” speech by Hezbollah’s Secretary General, Hassan Nasrallah. In the speech, Nasrallah threatened that, in the next war, Israel’s ports on the Mediterranean and possibly on the Red Sea would be targeted.

(Read full article)

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