Israel Sees Increased Hezbollah Capability

Alon Ben-David
Aviation Week
18 May '10
Posted before Chag

Israel is growing increasingly concerned about the deployment of Syrian-made M-600 missiles in Lebanon that are capable of accurately striking any point in Israel.

The 600-mm. solid-fuel M-600, which carries a 500-kg. (1,100-lb.) warhead, is a Syrian improvement to Iran’s Fateh-110 missile and has a range of more than 300 km. (185 mi.). But perhaps more critically, the weapon is fitted with a GPS-aided inertial navigation system, giving it an accuracy of better than 200 meters (655 ft.) circular error probable (CEP). This means that half the missiles fired will fall within a 200-meter circle of the intended target.

While Israel has been exposed to rocket fire for some time, those weapons have been largely unguided, minimizing the extent of damage. With the M-600, that could now change.

The combat arm of the militant Hezbollah organization has already deployed around 200 M-600 missiles in Lebanon, according to data presented by Avner Raz, chairman of Israel Military Industries, who spoke at the first international anti-ballistic missile conference in Israel on May 5.

“With that missile, Hezbollah is turning from a terror threat to a military one,” Uzi Rubin, former director of Israel’s ballistic missile defense organization told Aviation Week. “Hezbollah could shut down electricity and airports in Israel, obstruct the operation of the Israeli air force or the mobilization of the reserve army, and even interfere with the functionality of the General Staff in Tel Aviv.”

What’s more, “the deployment of Scud missiles by Hezbollah in Lebanon is just the tip of the iceberg,” Brig. Gen. Yossi Baidatz, head of research at military intelligence (MI), told the Knesset on May 4.

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Blindness to the Real Syrian Problem

Jennifer Rubin
Contentions/Commentary
22 April '10
Posted before Shabbat

Cliff May wonders whether Dianne Feinstein is dumb or just pretending to be. Feinstein on the shipment of missiles to Hezbollah and the potential for war, pronounces: “There’s only one thing that’s going to solve it, and that’s a two-state solution.” Thunk. As May observes, is it really possible that the “chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, believes that Hezbollah, Iran, and Syria would be satisfied with a two-state solution — assuming that one of those states is Israel”? Well, to be honest, that is not far removed from the claptrap we hear from the administration, which has reduced every issue to a pretext for “focusing” (haven’t we focused for decades?) on the non-existent peace process.

For a saner take on what is really at issue in Syria, read Lee Smith’s compelling piece on the SCUDs and what the administration is doing about that situation. The contrast to the prior administration is stark:

This past week was a bad one for those eager to reach out to Syria. It was reported that Damascus is believed to have transferred to Hezbollah Scud missiles that would be able to reach any part of Israel. “The threat that Syria might transfer more advanced weapons to Hezbollah has existed for a long time,” says Elliott Abrams, who oversaw Middle East affairs in the George W. Bush White House and is now a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “With respect to Scuds, it has been understood the Israelis would interdict such a shipment. I do not recall the Bush Administration ever expressing disagreement with that view.”

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SCUDs and Syria

Elliot Abrams
National Review Online
19 April '10

According to recent news stories, Israel believes that Syria is supplying SCUD missiles to Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon. Should Israel bomb Syria to stop them? As the charges and threats from both sides multiply, the story of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701 is worth recalling.

On Aug. 11, 2006, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 1701 as part of an effort to end the war then raging in Lebanon between Israeli and Hezbollah forces. The resolution was the product of long negotiations involving primarily the United States, France, and the governments of Israel and Lebanon. The final text made crystal clear — over and over — that supply of weaponry by Syria to Hezbollah was prohibited. Relevant provisions of the text read as follows:

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The View From Jerusalem

Why Israel is anxious about the Obama Administration.


Wall Street Journal
19 April '10

Imagine that you're an Israeli perusing the past week's headlines. Senior U.S. military officials have told Congress that Iran may be a year away from producing a bomb's worth of fissile material. Efforts to sanction Iran are again bogged down at the U.N., even as the sanctions are watered down to insignificance. And senior Israeli officials now say that Syria has supplied Hezbollah with Scud-D missiles that can hit every city in Israel with a one-ton warhead to an accuracy of 50 meters.

Oh, and now the Obama Administration seems increasingly of the view that Israel is the primary cause of instability in the Middle East. In a press conference last week, President Obama said the U.S. had a "vital national security interest" in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, on the theory that "when conflict breaks out . . . that ends up costing us significantly in terms of both blood and treasure."

The remark, which echoes previous comments by senior Administration and Pentagon officials, is being widely interpreted as presaging a concerted Administration effort to press even harder for an Israeli-Palestinian agreement over territory. After the recent flap over Jewish settlements north of Jerusalem, concern is growing that the U.S. wants Israel to return to its pre-1967 borders. At their narrowest, those borders give Israel a nine-mile margin between the West Bank and the Mediterranean Sea.

Israel could conceivably withdraw to something close to that border if it had credible assurances that a future Palestinian state would be peaceful, stable and well-governed. But the Palestinian reality today is that it is riven politically and geographically between two camps, one of which (Hamas) is armed by Iran and sworn to Israel's destruction.

As for Israel's other neighbors, Syria has further entrenched its alliance with Iran, despite repeated entreaties by the Administration and its allies in Congress; Egypt is entering a period of political transition; and Turkey has gone from being an Israeli ally to an adversary under its Islamist government. None of this can inspire much confidence among Israelis that the time is ripe to withdraw from the West Bank.

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Obama’s Syrian Policy Collapses

Jennifer Rubin
Contentions/Commentary
17 April '10

Obama’s Syrian engagement policy is in shambles. The decision to return our ambassador to Damascus has earned us the contempt of Bashar al-Assad and has done nothing to halt his embrace of Iran. We’ve now seen that Assad has upped the ante with the transfer of scud missiles to Hezbollah. This report suggests that the Obami then went a step further in the appeasement dance — calling off an Israeli attack:

Although US officials contacted by The National could not completely confirm that such [missile] technology had been transferred to Hizbollah by Syria, one official privy to intelligence briefings confirmed a story previously reported in the Israeli press that in the weeks before Senator John Kerry’s visit to Damascus on April 1, Israel almost bombed what it claimed was a convoy of advanced weaponry headed from Syrian military bases to Hizbollah along the shared border with Lebanon.

“I can’t promise you that planes were actually in the air, but it was close, very close,” said the official. “The White House had to talk them down from the attack and promised that Kerry would use strong language” with the Syrian president, Bashar Assad.

When asked about the outcome of the meeting between Mr Kerry and Mr Assad on the issue, the source tartly responded: “In light of where we are now, what do you think?”

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Syria Sends Long-Range Missiles to Hizballah But, Says State Department, Only "in part." So No Worries!

Barry Rubin
The Rubin Report
17 April '10

Once again, the Obama Administration has developed a new concept as an excuse for not taking action against a radical and aggressive action. Israel has charged on the basis of intelligence information--and the data in this kind of situation is excellent--that Syria has been shipping long-range missiles to Hizballah in Lebanon which can target Israeli cities. This has led to a raising of tensions and possibly might bring an Israeli air strike against the missiles.

Such an action is a clear violation of the U.S.-sponsored agreement ending the 2006 Israel-Hizballah war which dragged in Lebanon, of course, and resulted in much destruction there. This new development is thus a problem on the following grounds: it strengthens Hizballah, makes a future Hizballah attack on Israel more likely, makes an Israeli preemptive attack more likely, and emboldens Syria to violated agreements knowing the United States won't do anything.

This once again shows the trap involved in engaging dictators. No matter what Syria does--sending terrorists to kill Americans in Iraq being one item high on the list, moving closer to Iran, and so on--the U.S. government will turn a blind eye.

So the State Department has invented a new concept. Yes, missiles have been delivered, it explains, but only "in part." What does this mean? Perhaps the Syrians merely shipped Hizballah equipment or parts to repair and enhance missiles it delivered earlier in violation of the U.S.-sponsored ceasefire agreement. It is possible that it means the Syrians only delivered part of the number of missiles it promised.

What it comes down to is that the Syrians broke the agreement, says the State Department, but they didn't break it as much as they might have done. (Historical note: I can't help thinking of the Cuban missile crisis if, in 1962, the Kennedy Administration said that the Soviets had only shipped missiles to Cuba which could target the United States "in part," so it was ok.)

Bottom line: This is still a violation of the 2006 agreement but it allows the U.S. government to pretend nothing has happened and it need take no action. As I reported earlier, the French were clear on this issue and denounced the Syrian action. [Optional joke--Are the French now saying: The Americans have a cowardly foreign policy AND no good cheese?]

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Bashar Assad Takes the Measure of Barack Obama

Noah Pollak
Contentions/Commentary
13 April '10

There is an important story in today’s Wall Street Journal that says a lot about how the Middle East is changing in the era of smart diplomacy:

Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government has transferred long-range Scud missiles to the Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah in a move that threatens to alter the Middle East’s military balance, Israeli and U.S. officials alleged. …

Officials briefed on the intelligence said Israeli and American officials believe Lebanon transferred Scud D missiles to Hezbollah that were built with either North Korean or Russian technology.

The Scuds are believed to have a range of over 430 miles, placing Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Israel’s nuclear installations at Dimona all within range of Hezbollah’s military forces. …

Israeli officials said this week that Scud D missiles were “game-changing” armaments that marked a new escalation in the Mideast conflict. They charged Mr. Assad with further fusing Syria’s military command with Hezbollah’s and Iran’s and breaking clearly defined red-lines established by Israel’s defense forces.

The Scud-D has been around for decades; why is it being transferred to Hezbollah at this particular moment? There are two likely reasons: (1) the White House has become the most prominent Western critic of Israel, and Syria is confident that President Obama will not do much to either punish an Israeli enemy or speak clearly in Israel’s defense. (2) Under the Obama Doctrine, many enemies of America are treated with kindness in order to prove that they should not fear us, under the theory that once the fear is gone, there will be very little to obstruct the progression of smooth relations. The engagement policy thus requires the overlooking of all kinds of bad behavior.

Syria, it appears, has made an accurate calculation on both of the above counts.

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