The Syrian Missile Crisis: Threat of War Very Real

April 18, 2010 By

by Sean Osborne, Associate Director, Military Affairs

UPDATE 27 April 2010: Israel National News has an ominous banner headline this morning: “Syrian-Turkish Joint Army Drill Intensifies Threat to Israel.” A key early sentence in this report notes something which might appear to some, particularly non-Messianic Jews, as being a foreshadowing of the Ezekiel 38/39 Gog/Magog confederation: “Turkey also has established closer ties with Iran, and an Iranian-Turkish-Syrian-Lebanese axis would pose a monolithic threat to Israel from the north.”

Since Israel, for the most part, remains under “the terms of the covenant the LORD commanded Moses to make with the Israelites in Moab, in addition to the covenant he had made with them at Horeb,” and which gave them an unperceiving heart, blind eyes and deaf ears relative to the accurate interpretation of Biblical prophecy – Deuteronomy 29:4; Isaiah 29:10 and Romans 11:25 inclusive – the Jews today are to be forgiven for any prophetic misinterpretation of current events or things as they may appear to be unfolding as intimated in the above quoted sentence. Gog/Magog will occur after the war of Psalm 83 and Isaiah 17.

Another key sentence which catches my attention is this report is this one (emphasis added): “Syrian sources told the Kuwaiti daily Al-Rai that if Israel were to attack the Lebanon-based Hizbullah terrorist army, Syria would impose a naval blockade on Israel, using ground-to-sea missiles.”

The distance from southern most Syria to northernmost Israel is the same as that of the entire north-south dimension of Lebanon along its Mediterranean coastline – a distance of 140 miles. Given the specificity of the Syrian blockade threat to use ground-to-sea missiles, I must note that Syria is not known to possess any such “ground-to-sea” cruise missile. Syria possesses old Russian-made ship-to-ship cruise missiles (SS-N-2C (Styx) and SS-N-3b (Sepal)). Accordingly, short of deploying the entire Syrian naval fleet to Lebanese coastal waters, Syria must have quietly acquired a far more advanced naval cruise missile capability from either Iran, Russia or North Korea, or has deployed into Lebanon batteries of C-802 cruise missiles acquired from Iran.

Hmmm, purely speculation on my part, but what ever happened to the rumored clandestine cruise missile cargo on board the allegedly hijacked Russian vessel MV Arctic Sea seven months ago? Might Syria have received some Russian-made tactical purpose Kh-65E anti-shipping cruise missiles? Is this one of the “surprises” Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has told the Kuwaiti daily Al-Rai are store for Israel?

The Syrian’s also inherently threaten the non-combatant commercial shipping interests of many nations sailing the crowded waters of the Eastern Mediterranean. This threat is consistent with, and was probably crafted with or inspired by Iranian threats relative to the Strait of Hormuz at the head of the Persian Gulf.

UPDATE 26 April 2010: Additional research reveals that the SS-1C Scud-B ballistic missiles that Israel has declared were transferred from Syria to Lebanon may in fact be the Syrian-made M-600 ballistic missile system. The two systems are remarkably similar, if not identical, in their physical appearance. Compare this image of the Syrian M-600 missile with this image of a Scud-B. According to a pair of Naharnet reports from 14 January 2010, not only have these Syrian M-600s been transfered to Hezbollah, they were declared operational by Israeli defense sources. In fact, some of the exact same wording from the recent reports cited below occurs within the above linked January reports. It would appear from the recent reports that Israel’s government has served its final warning to both Syria, Lebanon and Hezbollah, and by extension, to Iran and the world at-large.

18 April 2010: The threat of a regional war involving Syria, Lebanon, Hezbollah and Israel is more ominous today that it has been at any time since the end of the brief summer war of 2006. The hair-trigger this time involves the reported Syrian delivery of WMD-capable SS-1C “Scud-B” ballistic missiles or, according to anonymous Israeli sources the SS-1E “Scud D,” to the Shi’a terrorist organization Hezbollah in Lebanon.

On Tuesday, 13 April 2010, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak went public in confirming the stunning news that the governments of Syria and Lebanon were in blatant and deliberate violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701 which brought a tenuous end to the Israel-Hezbollah war of July-August 2006. The bombshell news first reported by the Kuwaiti Al-Rai news agency was that Syria was in the process of transferring Scud ballistic missiles to Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Item 8 of UNSCR 1701 called for “no sales or supply of arms and related materiel to Lebanon except as authorized by its Government,” and Item 14 called for “the Government of Lebanon to secure its borders and other entry points to prevent the entry in Lebanon without its consent of arms or related materiel,” and Item 15(a) which decided “all States shall take the necessary measures to prevent, by their nationals or from their territories … The sale or supply to any entity or individual in Lebanon of arms and related materiel of all types, including weapons and ammunition, military vehicles and equipment, paramilitary equipment, and spare parts for the aforementioned, whether or not originating in their territories; and 15(b) The provision to any entity or individual in Lebanon of any technical training or assistance related to the provision, manufacture, maintenance or use of the items listed in subparagraph (a) above…”

With the reported transfer of Scud ballistic missiles and the training in Syria of Hezbollah troops on the operation and maintenance of these weapons Syria has been caught red-handed and in clear war-provoking violation of UNSCR 1701. The government of Lebanon shares in culpability due to its obvious complicity in the arming and training of Hezbollah’s forces due to its failure to control its national territory and borders. This is the most egregious violation of UNSCR 1701 to date, as evidenced by the wholesale re-arming of Hezbollah with even more advanced weapons (such as Syrian-made M-600 rockets and Russian-made Igla-S MANPADS) by Iran, Syria and possibly North Korea during the past 3 years and 7 months, and constitutes a rock-solid casus belli for Israel to immediately begin pre-emptively striking the missiles, and fixed targets related to the weapons transfer and associated training facilities in both Lebanon and Syria. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad bears the lion’s share of personal responsibility for provoking the threat of a regional war which could very rapidly escalate to a large-scale exchange of weapons of mass destruction in the Levant.

While rumors continue to circulate in major world capitals that the Syrian’s transferred top-of-the line SS-1E Scud-D (50 meter CEP) missiles to Hezbollah, no proof of has yet been made public to confirm the rumor. These missiles would give Hezbollah the capability ot act as a proxy for Iran in launching a preemptive or retaliatory strike against Israel’s Dimona nuclear complex should Israel strike Iranian nuclear targets in the near term.

Sans photographic or human intelligence proof of the Scud variant transferred to Hezbollah, my assessment is that Syria sent the SS-1C Scud-B variant to Hezbollah. Scud-Bs are 1960s-era missiles (obsolete for a modern army), and they would suit Hezbollah better because they’re very much a weapon of terror with a 900 meter CEP (Circular Error Probable). Scud-B can carry a thickened VX gas chemical warhead. As with a tossed grenade – close is good enough.

In either case, once Israel confirms Hezbollah’s possession of Scud missiles and their operational status vice a malicious ruse of inoperable missile shells, an imminent and series of strategic strikes by Israel would be virtually assured.

Should these strike occur, as I believe they will, then this will likely become a war of widespread WMD use per Isaiah 17:4-11, followed by a rapid escalation into the fulfillment of Psalm 83, Joshua 13:1-7 and Zechariah 9.

Today we should enjoy the calm before the storm, a storm which lies a hair’s breadth distance between the current relative calm and full-scale NBC warfare.  America’s position in this war will determine the near-term fate of this Constitutional Republic per Genesis 12:3.
Filed Under: Domestic Terrorism