Netanyahu’s real goal: put an end to Teheran’s plans
Il Giornale, May 6th, 2013
A clear message from Jerusalem: a nuclear Iran at the borders is not feasible, complicit with Damascus and allied with Hezbollah. No to the dream of a new Shiite State
Israeli warplanes rocked the outskirts of Damascus on Saturday night, which is not really that negligible. The Middle East, people in Israel, in Lebanon, and Syria are holding their breaths, the usual cursed war smell is travelling along the dessert wind at thousand miles an hour.
Syria's Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal al Mekdad told CNN that “Syria would respond in a manner of its own time and choosing… to the new Israeli attack … an attempt to raise the morale of the terrorist groups”;
Lebanon’s Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour defined the attack to the missiles headed to Hezbollah “a blatant violation of Lebanese sovereignty”, its army is on alert just like UNIFIL. Iran is calling to arms all Middle East States to resist to the assault which “will shorten the life of this fake regime"(Israel) and it declared its availability to help the Syrian army. Israel deployed two batteries of the excellent interception Iron Dome system on the border with Lebanon, but clearly, the major risk is not posed by Assad, engaged on the front of his domestic war against his own Sunni population, which already suffered the loss of 70 thousand people.
Assad would only act if forced to take part, in order to save himself, in a plan orchestrated by Iran, his ally, or rather his number one commander. This will happen if Ayatollahs decide to proceed on the way, that was paved by a secret meeting between Hezbollah chief Nasrallah, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamanei, and the commander of the Quds (Jerusalem) Force of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, Gen. Qasem Suleimani in mid-April. In order to understand what’s happening, let’s remind that the last attack followed suit to the operation carried out in the night from Thursday to Friday, when Israel struck a shipment of Fateh 110 missiles, Iranian-made lethal weapons bound to Hezbollah through Syria, which can carry chemical warheads.
This is certainly a meaningful action, but striking Damascus is something else, a deterrence action which brings us back to the topic of Obama’s “red line”. Obama had committed to Assad’s end had he used chemical weapons, or as it can be inferred, had he made available other game-changing weapons. Israel had already cautioned that it will not allow Hezbollah, who wish to erase it from the geographical map, to receive Scud D ballistic missiles, which can carry chemical warheads containing warfare agent VX to a distance of up to 680 kilometers. In other words, the weapons that Assad was ready to transfer to Hezbollah can hit both military facilities and civilians from Metullah all the way to Eilat, and they can be activated for instance from the Bekaa Valley by Hezbollah in a manner which would make it difficult to intercept them. The Arrow system is in fact capable of intercepting only a limited amount of incoming missiles. Hezbollah already have 70,000 rockets in its possession; evidently the intelligences of Israeli services required immediate action.
Why was Iran now so keen to supply fatal weapons to Hezbollah? Out of fear that their protégé, Assad, won’t soon be capable to do so, and that Hezbollah need to act now to put into effect the strategic plan of the Islamic State.
As mentioned above, this plan had been designed in Teheran in mid-April. Nasrallah’s last trip to Iran was in 2010, as traveling poses dangers to him. This time however his visit had a crucial importance: Syria can’t be lost. Even if Assad should be defeated, Syria would still be the basis of Iran’s strategy, secured by the militias, the Hezbollah. According to Shapira, a senior research associate at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, their plan is to create an Alawite mini-state capable to control from Damascus to a coastal stripe through a corridor all the way to Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley. An all Shiite State, including the Alawites. The ethnic cleansing against Sunnis through massacres in the coastal Syrian city of Baniyas appears to be the preparation to this plan. This Shiite state would enjoy the help of a popular sectarian army made up of 150,000 fighters, mainly recruited in Iran, Iraq and minimally in the Persian Gulf, people believing that yielding to Sunni is not an option. However, this war of factions didn’t take Israel into due consideration.
Israel can’t fathom to have a nuclear Iran at its borders, placed inside Syria, wed to the Hezbollah; it therefore sent a clear deterrence message, that according to excellent analyst Ron Ben Yishai was agreed by Netanyahu with Obama. This deterrence is certainly addressed to Assad so that he does not use weapons of mass destruction, as well as to Hezbollah so that they do not engage in rocket firing; but first and foremost it is addressed to Iran: “red line” reads the message, means “red line”, this also applies for the famous threshold of 140 kilograms of 40% enriched uranium in Ahmadinejad’s nuclear facilities. This Shiite expansionism plan had – before Assad’s war – been fostered through several economic, cultural and social encoragement measures directed to all the ones passing from Sunna to Shia. Israel doesn’t take sides. Currently the case at bar is Iran’s plans. Bibi is taking care of them today. Provided that Hezbollah don’t accidentally drop some rocket, in which case Lebanon would again be at bar.