LINK Coşmarul unui nou război face să tremure Orientul Mijlociu 16 Ianuarie 2011
de VALI DEACONESCU
Că Libanul este la un pas de abis era clar de mai multe luni. Lumea era deja pregătită de ieşirea din executiv a celor 11 miniştri din Hezbollah şi demisia ulterioară a guvernului. Momentul critic a venit atunci când premierul Saad Hariri a plecat la Washington, unde s-a întâlnit cu aliatul său cel mai important, preşedintele american Barack Obama, notează Corriere della Sera în ediţia de vineri, citată de Agerpres.
În acel moment coaliţia de la guvernare s-a dezmembrat. Motivul? Simplu, potrivit publicaţiei menţionate. Hariri a refuzat să cedeze (a priori) unui şantaj, nerecunoaşterea deciziei tribunalului ONU, care este pe cale să facă publice acuzaţiile la adresa presupuşilor autori ai masacrului de Sfântul Valentin (14 februarie 2005), când 22 de persoane au fost ucise. Masacrul avea ca obiectiv asasinarea fostului premier Rafik Hariri, tatăl actualului premier demisionar.
Problema este că judecătorii ar fi ajuns la concluzia că autorii masacrului fac parte din conducerea Hezbollah. O acuzaţie pe care liderul Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, o consideră "calomnioasă." Nu numai că o respinge, dar spune că este rezultatul unui complot "sionist şi american." Deci, ca o măsură preventivă, a luat decizia ieşirii din guvern şi undă verde propagandei care ar putea crea condiţiile pentru o nouă baie de sânge.
În această afacere dramatică este implicată toată lumea: Libanul, Siria (care iniţial a fost desemnată drept mintea organizatoare a masacrului), Iranul, care sprijină Hezbollah, Arabia Saudită (Damascul şi Ryadul s-au aliat pentru a atenua tensiunea), Israelul, care supraveghează graniţa de nord şi toate ţările din regiune care se tem de un efect de domino. Desigur şi SUA, evident Franţa care se consideră "naşa" Libanului şi chiar Italia, care are un contingent militar în sudul Libanului sub steagul ONU, dar mai ales pentru că presedintele Tribunalului internaţional care investighează masacrul este un italian, Antonio Cassese. Un judecător renumit care are o sarcină descurajatoare: de decizie depinde ceea ce se va întâmpla în Liban.
Anunţarea numelor acuzaţilor era prevăzută înainte de Crăciun, dar acum nu se mai poate aştepta. "Cine se face vinovat este corect să plătească", a spus Amr Moussa, secretarul general al Ligii Arabe.
Există riscul real al unui conflict sângeros, deoarece Hezbollah este foarte puternic în Liban şi nu intenţionează să dea înapoi de la poziţiile sale intransigente. Mizează pe sprijinul celuilalt mare partid şiit Amal (şiiţii reprezintă astăzi majoritatea relativă a populaţiei), al creştinilor conduşi de generalul Aoun şi al altor foşti lideri militari, cum ar fi liderul druzilor libanezi Jumblatt, care în urmă cu cinci ani s-a aliniat împotriva Siriei şi Hezbollah, dar apoi a fost lăsat singur, iar acum a revenit în chip de fidel al regulii "dacă nu-ţi poţi învinge duşmanul, aliază-te cu el."
În prezent are loc o cursă frenetică. După Washington, Saad Hariri a ajuns la Paris pentru a se întâlni cu Sarkozy şi se va duce şi în Turcia, unde îl aşteaptă premierul Erdogan, unul dintre puţinii lideri din regiune care are credibilitatea şi prestigiul necesare pentru a încerca o mediere.
Compromisul pe care unii îl caută este de a nu se forma imediat un nou guvern libanez. Fără un executiv care să accepte sau să respingă verdictul instanţei internaţionale, impactul ar fi mai mic. Dar este vorba de scenarii de pură supravieţuire. Beirutul tremură.
Nu sunt un specialist in geopolitica , dar, cu un Damasc adus macar cu un pas spre SUA prin trimiterea unui ambasador SUA in Siria, aceasta din urma poate avea un cuvant[mai mic decat Iranul] asupra Hezbollah-ului, ca sa nu mai faca astia pe nebunii si sa intre Itzic sa ii caute
In recentul conflict din Gaza apararea antiaeriana israeliana a doborat 421 din 1.354 rachete trase inspre ei, iar dintre cele care au trecut 58 au lovit zone locuite, restul au cazut pe camp deschis.
Zilele astea au testat sistemul Arrow 3, care loveste rachetele inamice in zona extra-atmosferica. Ce trece sunt preluate de Arrow 2, dupa care intervine David's Sling Missile System. . De remarcat ca imaginile tuturor persoanelor care apar in video sunt blurate
Zilele astea au testat sistemul Arrow 3, care loveste rachetele inamice in zona extra-atmosferica. Ce trece sunt preluate de Arrow 2, dupa care intervine David's Sling Missile System.
Si ce trece de David's Sling Missile System, nu mai trece de populatia care face un magistral stop pe piept cu ele.
Aparent Mossad a furat una in barba de la Anonymous.Rau de tot. LINK
Anonymous has struck again in its ongoing campaign against Israeli forces, this time by releasing thousands of names, ID numbers, email addresses and geographic data allegedly corresponding to Israeli politicians, IDF officers and even Mossad agents.
Dubbed “#OpIsrael” on Twitter, various collectives of the amorphous Anonymous community are targeting official Israeli web domains, evidently causing intermittent disruption to the official website of spy agency Mossad via a self-described “sophisticated DDoS” attack.
The data was released by a hacker team going by the name of “The Red Hack,” a Turkish group, while the direct denial-of-service attack targeted at Mossad was attributed to another group operating under the moniker “Sektor 404.”
RT has viewed the spreadsheets but has not yet been able to verify the legitimacy of the data, which has quickly garnered thousands of views as the documents spread via social media.
Earlier, Anonymous announced a massive cyber-attack on Israel, threatening to erase the Jewish state from the worldwide web. The first ‘OpIsrael’ cyber-attacks were launched by the hacktivist group during Israel’s ‘Pillar of Defense’ operation against Gaza last November.
Nasol pentru Mossad. Dar acolo unde NSA,MI-5,BND si alte agentii se împiedica (totusi) în legi,Mossad-ul are asa un talent sa trateze chestiile astea într-un fel foarte radical. Când or sa înceapa Anonimous-ii sa se trezeasca care explodând pe WC,care sinucigându-se cu un cutit în spate,sa vezi ce scrisori de scuze trimit. Scrise de mâna.
Mda,numai ca aparent anonimii astia au pus accentul pe faptul ca-s turci.Ori s-au dat turci ca sa-i trimita pe evrei la vanatoare de vrajitoare,ori sunt chiar turci,ori turcii cu ochi albastri au pasat,din greseala desigur,o mana de ajutor.
Faza asta vine in momentul in care Hussein of za Casa Alba la fortat pe Netanyahu sa-l sune pe Erdogan si sa-si ceara scuze pt. faza de acum cativa ani cu Mavi Marmara.In care soldatii evrei au omorat niste ''nevinovati'' turci ce sarisera cu iataganele pe ei.Cu ce la vrajit Hussein pe Bibi nu ma duce capul,dar Erdogan a acceptat scuzele,iar in rest a facut ceva pe Netanyahu. Acum vine figura asta.
Nu cred eu ca Obama va pati ceva cat timp e la Casa Alba.Ar fi tupeul prea mare pana si pt evrei.Dar nu dau nici 2 shekeli pe el si ai lui cand securitatea sa va fi ceva mai relaxata,dupa ce-si termina mandatul.
Remarc o chestie : spui evrei în mai multe locuri,când de fapt e vorba de israelieni. Nu toti evreii sunt israelieni (chiar daca pot fi) asa cum nu toti israelienii sunt evrei.
Nu e vreo "punere la punct",dar societatea israeliana e si ea foarte divizata în multe privinte,si multi evrei sunt împotriva Israelului (doctrinar vorbind). Vorbind de Mossad,s-a demonstrat experimental ca nu e bine sa te "iei în bete" cu ei. De la arestarea lui Eichmann,trecând prin episodul Munchen si arestarea lui Ocalan,ei bine...astia când au o nemultumire se exprima. Uneori le ia timp si vieti,dar tot ajung la tinta. Si când au vreun "dujman" desemnat,ca e goy sau evreu nu conteaza
Aliatii cei mai noi si mai dragi ai Vestului,implicit aliatii nostri in lupta ce o dam pe tot globul cu fortele intunericului si ale represiunii,sunt niste simpatici.Cum sa nu-i iubesti,mama lor de dragalasi?
PREGĂTIRI DE RĂZBOI: Siria a îndreptat rachetele spre Israel
The Sunday Times scrie că rachetele Tishreen, de tip sol-sol, fabricate în Siria, sunt capabile să transporte un focos cu o greutate de până la 500 kg, pe o rază de peste 200 km, fiind similare cu cele iraniene "Fateh-110", de care armata siriană dispune de asemenea.
După cum relatează săptămânalul britanic Sunday Times, preşedintele sirian Bashar al-Assad a dat ordin privind desfăşurarea de rachete Tishreen, de tip sol-sol, care să fie utilizate împotriva Israelului în cazul unui nou atac aerian dinspre statul evreu, transmit duminică mass-media israeliene, printre care şi Radio Israel.
Trupele care se ocupă de rachetele siriene au ordin clar privitor la un atac asupra Tel Aviv-ului şi a părţii centrale a Israelului în cazul în care forţele aeriene israeliene vor comite noi bombardamente asupra unor ţinte de pe teritoriul Siriei, scrie publicaţia britanică, citând surse militare şi referindu-se la informaţii provenind de la sateliţi.
Dezvăluirea săptămânalului britanic a produs un ecou larg în Israel, unde aceasta este analizată amănunţit.
Potrivit unor informaţii neconfirmate oficial, Israelul a lansat un atac cu rachete asupra teritoriului sirian la începutul lunii mai. Siria a declarat că-şi rezervă dreptul la replică, iar preşedintele sirian, Bashar al-Assad, a ameninţat statul evreu cu un război la scară largă. Oficialii israelieni de rang înalt au declarat că statul evreu încearcă să împiedice transferul unor arme avansate către mişcarea fundamentalistă Hezbollah în Libanul vecin.
The Sunday Times scrie că rachetele Tishreen, de tip sol-sol, fabricate în Siria, sunt capabile să transporte un focos cu o greutate de până la 500 kg, pe o rază de peste 200 km, fiind similare cu cele iraniene "Fateh-110", de care armata siriană dispune de asemenea.
În articolul său, publicaţia britanică citează o declaraţie făcută recent de un oficial israelian pentru The New York Times, în care regimul de la Damasc este avertizat în legătură cu posibilele consecinţe grave ale oricărui pas ostil împotriva Israelului.
Din septembrie 2012, la graniţa dintre Siria şi Israel au fost înregistrate mai mult de 20 de tiruri asupra teritoriului israelian. De fiecare dată, Tsahal /armata israeliană/ a invocat 'împuşcături accidentale', însă, dacă rachetele siriene vor viza zonele populate, armata israeliană va reacţiona cu severitate, a avertizat conducerea statului evreu.
Complică şi mai mult situaţia livrarea de sisteme de rachete S-300 Siriei de către Rusia. În ciuda eforturilor întreprinse de premierul israelian Benjamin Netanyahu, care s-a deplasat săptămâna aceasta la Soci (coasta rusă a Mării Negre) pentru a-l determina pe preşedintele Vladimir Putin să suspende aceste livrări, se pare că rachete au ajuns deja în Siria, după cum a relatat presa arabă. Oficialii Air Force Israel recunosc că sistemul rusesc ar putea complica operaţiunile sale în spaţiul aerian sirian, dar experţii spun că aviaţia este capabilă să facă faţă sistemului rusesc de apărare aeriană.
Pe fondul tensionat al situaţiei din regiune, Rusia a trimis nave de război în Marea Mediterană, lansând un semnal clar SUA şi Israelului cu privire la inadmisibilitatea oricărui atac militar împotriva Siriei, relatează publicaţia The Yeshiva World
Citeste mai mult pe REALITATEA.NET: LINK Follow us: @realitatea on Twitter
si un alt articol ceva mai vechi, de vreo 10 zile:
Why the Israel Defense Forces hit Syria—and why they believe that Assad won’t hit back
The Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff, Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz looks absolutely exhausted these days. Gantz, who was appointed to his job almost as an afterthought in February 2011, after a particularly poisonous battle within Israel’s military leadership, has never radiated a very lively aura. It may be a matter of character, or age, or just the fact that he had been called back into office after deciding to retire, but the IDF’s commander often seemed to be gliding through his term during the first two years in office. All this has changed: The man, it is rather clear, is not getting much sleep. His aides, well aware of this, try to enhance the boss’s alertness by providing him a constant supply of black coffee. Even the Israeli media had taken note. The result: a rather heated debate over the required rules of courtesy at the chief of staff’s office and whether those rules offend women officers.
Menachem Begin once famously maintained that “you do not ask a gentleman where he spent last night,” but Gantz’s chief reason for exhaustion is pretty clear: the deteriorating situation in Syria. While Israeli and American politicians pour clichés over the Iranian nuclear threat, the IDF is now more immediately worried about the dangers from Israel’s northern front—the implications of Syria’s civil war in particular. Publicly, Israel is deliberately keeping a very low profile. Even the last two Israeli air strikes (out of three, altogether) in Syria were initiated without any official response from Jerusalem (and since Israeli military censorship laws apply to Israeli journalists, I should add that these strikes only happened according to international sources).
It is reasonable to assume that Israel’s current operations in Syria are not limited to air strikes. Israel’s different intelligence agencies are believed to keep a very watchful eye on our northern neighbor, while various Arab media organizations have constantly claimed that Israel’s elite units frequently operate inside Syria. After Israel bombed the North Korean-made nuclear plant in northeast Syria in September 2007, several Western newspapers reported that Israeli commandos had secretly visited the site beforehand, taking ground samples in order to make sure that the site had indeed been what the intelligence claimed it was.
Oooo, Doamne, sa fie adevarat?
For decades, Syria had been considered Israel’s fiercest enemy—and also its most feared. Israeli POWs, returning from long periods in Syrian jails, told stories of very brutal methods of torture, a much more aggressive treatment than any experienced from Egyptian jailers. The trauma of the Yom Kippur War in 1973 is still ingrained in Israeli collective memory. For years, the IDF units had prepared themselves for a repeat: Syrian tanks storming through the Golan Heights, threatening to reach the Sea of Galilee; Syrian commandos taking by surprise the IDF’s bases on Mount Hermon. In every war room at the northern command, there used to be a big poster, saying “War Tomorrow.” The IDF’s top brass had genuinely feared this scenario for years, but the concern also served to keep the army on its toes—and allowed the military to expand the defense budget after the relative failure in the war, to establish more divisions and brigades and to keep the reserve units well-trained. Tank crews and infantry units practiced for what was seen as an inevitable war with Syria, while military intelligence teams memorized the names and roles of Syrian division officers—preparing for a full-scale military confrontation that never materialized.
In reality, the Syrian army had long been deteriorating, as its tanks and fighter jets gradually rusted. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia refused to honor huge arms deals with Syria, since Damascus was not able to come up with the required cash. Hafez el-Assad’s original goal—to reach strategic parity with Israel—was eventually abandoned by the Syrian regime, and his son and successor, Bashar, came up with a new strategy. Since Syria could not equal Israel on the military front, it would find new ways to circumvent the IDF’s superiority. The Syrians began to concentrate on defensive weapons and methods that would make it extremely difficult for Israel to attack through the border in the Golan Heights—fortifications, anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles—while pointing a massive armory of surface-to-surface missiles and rockets at Israel’s towns and cities. The threat, Assad Junior hoped, would be enough to prevent Israel from seeking a direct military confrontation with Syria. Meanwhile, both Assads continued to support Lebanese (Hezbollah) and Palestinian (Hamas and Islamic Jihad) organizations in their ongoing fight against Israel.
Although the new Syrian strategy did not push Israel to surrender the Golan Heights in peace negotiations, it did help to persuade the Israelis to initiate a full withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000 and helped Syria maintain its position among members of the radical anti-Israeli camp in the Arab World. Both sides of the Golan border upheld a rather constructive balance of deterrence: Each side remained careful not to appear to be publically provoking the other, and the Syrian border remained one of Israel’s calmest fronts for decades. Every few years, when Israel suspected that the Syrians went too far in supporting Palestinian terrorism, it sent a clear message—by sending fighter jets to fly very low over the presidential palace or by attacking a training camp near Damascus.
And when in 2007 Bashar Assad surprised the world by actually pursuing a nuclear project, the Israelis—according to American and European journalists—reacted by striking and destroying that site from the air. Israel never publicly claimed responsibility for the attack, a tactic that presumably helped Assad ignore it and kept the border calm for the next few years. The shadow war between the two countries has been quite frustrating for Israeli newsmen, who had read in George W. Bush’s and Condoleezza Rice’s memoirs very specific descriptions of this affair, but still cannot—to this day—contribute anything to the discussion. Yet the larger strategic assumptions that underlay the balance of power on Israel’s borders was altered drastically by that turmoil that some experts still insist on optimistically describing as the Arab Spring. Suddenly, as Israeli scholar Asher Susser had put it so accurately, Israel stopped being afraid of Arab strength and began to be worried about Arab weakness. In Syria, what had started as a local popular revolt in the southern city of Dara’a grew pretty quickly into a terrible civil war, the worst conflict to hit an Arab country since the outcome of the American invasion of Iraq in 2003.
From the Israeli perspective, Syria became a huge problem once the Assad regime began to experience difficulties in controlling the distant provinces—specifically the provinces near the Israeli border. Once the border area became an enclave for extremist, al-Qaida-affiliated groups, Israelis faced a new threat: A failed-state, or a non-state, along the border was a much harder foe to handle than a deterred police state, no matter how brutally its dictator treated his subjects. Whom do you deter when there is no longer an identifiable actor on the other side of the border?
Very quietly, and unofficially, Israeli leaders wish success to both sides. They pay lip service to condemning the regime’s horrors and express their sympathy for the plight of the Syrian people under Assad but do not go out of their way to help the opposition. Israel assumes that if indeed the opposition wins, it would quickly be dominated by jihadist groups, which will soon set their weapons against the Jewish settlements in the Golan Heights. On the other hand, if the fighting continues, so will the deterioration of the Assad forces’ military capabilities. No army would be able to initiate a war against a neighboring country after more than two years of a self-destructive murderous battle against its own people—producing what is almost a win-win situation for Israel.
Yet Israel has its red lines, just like everybody else these days. President Barack Obama defined, rather vaguely, the American red line: The United States would intervene if it has proof that the Assad regime had used chemical weapons. Israel’s red line is very different. It will act, as Israeli leaders have constantly threatened, if important weapons systems are either transferred deliberately from Syria to Hezbollah or fall into the hands of extremist jihadist groups on the rebels’ side. Some Israelis have described the effect of these weapons as “tie-breakers” in Lebanon. This is clearly false, since there is no “tie” between Israel and Hezbollah. But Israel is explicitly nervous about the transfer of chemical weapons, of advanced anti-aircraft systems (such as the Russian-made SA-17 missiles, bombed in January near Damascus, presumably on their way to Lebanon), of coast-to-sea missiles (like the Russian-made Yahont), and of accurate surface to-surface missiles (such as the Iranian-made Fateh-110, bombed twice in the beginning of May). The internal chaos in Syria probably helps the Israelis to collect further data on the military situation there, without being noticed. On the other hand, one would assume that the Syrian army’s withdrawal from many parts of the country and the fact it had to deploy its units under pressure have made following them a much more complicated mission. Evidently, the decision to strike three times means that Israel had enough information about the weapon shipments to strike.
But there is probably something else at work here: Generals—and air force and intelligence specifically—tend to emphasize the need for taking immediate advantage of tactical opportunities. So far, Syria has not retaliated for the attacks. However, on Tuesday, May 7, President Assad threatened Israel with “resistance at the Golan border,” and a government newspaper announced that “next time will be different.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would certainly think hard before he approves another air strike, even if the IDF’s brass claims that it is absolutely necessary.
Why has Assad refrained from military action until now? Without admitting any responsibility for the strikes, a senior Israeli defense official explained to me that the government believes the Syrian regime does not have enough space for maneuvering. “If they do act, they will involve us directly in their civil war—a result both of us would like to avoid.” This would mean the destruction of the Syrian air force, Assad’s most effective weapon against the rebels. “I know Assad says he is going to react severely next time, but how many times have you said this to your kids and ended up doing nothing?” remarked the official.
But Assad is not the only actor on his side: Israel should also consider the possibility of either an Iranian or Lebanese response. Hezbollah is deeply involved in the civil war in Syria, and it is assumed that the Shiite organization has sent more than 2,000 of its fighters to help Assad’s loyalists. Iranian Revolutionary Guard units are also present in Syria. (The commander of their “El-Quds” force in Lebanon was mysteriously killed on his way to Syria two months ago.) Israel has used this to strengthen its case against Teheran—blaming the Iranians for spreading unrest across the region. Wouldn’t the Iranians and Hezbollah eventually blame Israel—however falsely—for their mounting casualties in Syria? The Israelis believe that Syria’s allies are too busy helping Assad fight for his survival and wouldn’t spend valuable time on minor friction with the IDF. “Until now, our presumed involvement had been minimal,” one military source said. “The Iranians are otherwise occupied.”
More and more, the civil war in Syria is seen in a broader, regional context, and the American hesitance over the right course of action is looked upon in Jerusalem as a disturbing precedent regarding the country’s long-term strategic challenge, the Iranian nuclear project. Will Iran and Hezbollah decide to retaliate for the latest strikes, defending Syrian honor? Israeli intelligence officials assume the chances are slim. But we should remember that they have discovered in the past that some of their assumptions were much too optimistic for this region.
Aliatii cei mai noi si mai dragi ai Vestului,implicit aliatii nostri in lupta ce o dam pe tot globul cu fortele intunericului si ale represiunii,sunt niste simpatici.Cum sa nu-i iubesti,mama lor de dragalasi?
Apropo de Siria, iata o "chestie" care ar putea fi interesanta
NATO nu va participa la o operaţiune militară în Siria
Presupusa folosire a armelor chimice de către regimul sirian cere un răspuns din partea comunităţii internaţionale, dar o intervenţie directă a NATO este exclusă, a declarat vineri secretarul general al Alianţei Nord-Atlantice, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, pentru presa daneză.
"Eu nu văd care ar fi rolul NATO într-o reacţie internaţională împotriva regimului" sirian, a declarat Rasmussen pentru presa daneză, informează ediţia electronică a cotidianului Politiken.
El a repetat că presupusa folosire a armelor chimice reprezintă "un act terifiant şi oribil. Atacurile chimice constituie o încălcare flagrantă a normelor internaţionale, o crimă care nu poate fi ignorată".
Acest lucru "cere un răspuns internaţional, pentru ca aşa ceva să nu se mai întâmple", a adăugat Rasmussen.
Secretarul general al NATO a insistat anterior asupra necesităţii de a găsi o soluţie politică pentru conflictul sirian.
Experţi ONU au vizitat locurile producerii atacului de la 21 august, în apropiere de Damasc.
Potrivit opoziţiei siriene, peste 1.300 de persoane au murit la Mouadamiyat Al-Sham şi în Ghouta de Est, două zone controlate de rebeli situate la vest şi la est de capitala Siriei.
Aproximativ 355 de pacienţi "care prezintă simptome neurotoxice" au murit în Siria, potrivit Médecins sans frontières.
Rasmussen s-a arătat convins că responsabilitatea aparţine regimului sirian.
"Nu am nicio îndoială că regimul a procedat la un atac chimic", a spus el.
"Puţine lucruri sugerează că opoziţia este în măsură să efectueze un asemenea atac", a conchis Rasmussen.
Un punct de vedere interesant, dar nu uitați că aparţine unei oficine israeliene:
The nerve-gas attack that left an estimated 1,000 or more dead civilians foaming at the mouth last month in Damascus constitutes a national security risk that the United States cannot afford to ignore, President Barack Obama argued in his televised remarks on Saturday, because it “risks making a mockery of the global prohibition on the use of chemical weapons.” A more precise description of the attack in Damascus was that it made a mockery of Obama’s “red line” against the use of chemical weapons—a line that Obama appears to have laid down precisely because he believed that it would never be crossed, thus providing America with a bullet-proof excuse for staying out of Syria’s bloody civil war.
So, who in their right mind would aim to force Obama into a conflict he obviously wants to avoid? Syria has little military or political interest in being bombed by the United States—especially now that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is clearly winning the war for primacy in Syria. In the context of the regime’s recent military gains, a chemical weapons attack on a civilian neighborhood in the middle of Damascus served no strategic purpose even remotely commensurate with the risk it entailed. The same goes for Syria’s regional allies: Hezbollah has little interest in their Syrian ally appearing to be even more of a monster, and Iran’s chief interest would appear to lie in encouraging the rest of the world to forget about WMD threats until they actually acquire a nuclear bomb.
Who actually benefited from breaching Obama’s “red line”? A compelling answer can be found in the nature of the attack itself. A Sarin gas attack like the one in Damascus requires days of preparation so that the chemical agents can be mixed and loaded into specialized delivery systems by trained handlers and troops in the region can be issued gas masks and other protective clothing. Orders must travel through a defined chain of command—allowing them to be intercepted, as they apparently were by Israeli intelligence, which put them in American hands before the attack was even launched. In other words, a nerve-gas attack is not the kind of atrocity that a local commander can order up on a whim to please his goons or terrify the locals into obedience. Except in the most extreme instances of Col. Kurtz-like madness or institutional disintegration, orders to use such weapons necessarily come from the top.
Clearly, suggesting that anyone aside from Assad gave the final order to launch a massive chemical weapons attack in the center of his own capital is tantamount to suggesting that Assad is no longer in charge of his regime—a suggestion for which there is no evidence. But the chain of military command inside Syria doesn’t end with the country’s president. The idea that Assad gave the order to carry out such a massive and politically dangerous attack without the approval of his Russian and Iranian advisers is also absurd—given the regime’s near-total reliance on Russian and Iranian strategic planning, supplies, fighters, and diplomatic backing for its week-to-week survival. Ditto for the idea that Russian or Iranian officers inside Syria gave their approval for such an attack without the blessing of the men at the top of their own chains of command: Ali Khamenei in Iran, and Vladimir Putin in Russia.
So, who—Khamenei or Putin—gave the OK? A reading of public statements by Iranian leaders suggests that they were at the least discomfited by the Syrian government’s actions, if not blind-sided by them. Both current Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and former Iranian President Rafsanjani condemned the attack, with Rafsanjani openly naming the Syrian government as the perpetrator. Rouhani, for his part, called on “the international community to use all its might to prevent the use of these weapons anywhere in the world, especially in Syria”—which hardly seem like the words of a man whose immediate boss just OKed the use of chemical weapons in Syria. Which leaves the more influential and powerful authority figure in the room by nearly every conceivable measure, including disposable wealth, diplomatic throw-weight, and advanced weapons systems: Vladimir Putin.
The most illuminating way of understanding why Putin would greenlight a nerve-gas attack that would cross America’s “red lines” in Syria is therefore to ask how the Russian president understands U.S. policy toward the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction—a policy whose real focus is not Syria but Iran.
***
Among students of the rougher techniques used by fascists, communists, and other old-fashioned political actors whose names rarely appear on ballots in contemporary Western democracies, the nerve-gas attack in Damascus is what’s known as a provocation. In the aesthetics of power that Putin learned from his instructors in the KGB, and that they learned from both their Leninist teachers and the Nazi enemy in WWII, a good provocation is a thing of beauty—a sinister and mind-bending event designed to elicit a response that will serve as a pretext for a predetermined course of action directed toward a larger strategic goal.
One of the classic aims of provocation as a technique is to alter the context in which future action takes place; the aggressor looks like he is defending himself, while the injured party looks like the aggressor. One major aim of this reversal is to disorient and demoralize the victim as well as anyone who is watching, a situation that often leads to paralysis, which further augments the aggressor’s tactical advantage. Some classic examples of provocation include the burning of the Reichstag, which was provoked by the Gestapo and led to Hitler’s formal seizure of power in Germany, or attacks on ethnic Germans in Czechoslovakia and Poland that were staged or provoked by Nazi agents and then used as pretexts for the Nazi invasions of those countries. A more recent example of the technique can arguably be found in the 1999 bombings of apartment buildings in Moscow by Chechen terrorists—attacks that may have been sanctioned by the FSB for the purpose of bringing Putin to power.
And while Hezbollah is silent and the Iranians condemn their ally’s actions, Putin appears to be enjoying himself at his victim’s expense. Calling claims of a Syrian nerve-gas strike “utter nonsense,” Putin told the Ria Novosti news agency last week that he had not seen even the slightest proof that the Syrian government was behind any use of chemical weapons, ever—or that chemical weapons had been used at all. “If they say that the governmental forces used weapons of mass destruction … and that they have proof of it, let them present it to the U.N. inspectors and the Security Council,” Putin opined, adding, “Claims that the proof exists but is classified and cannot be presented to anybody are below criticism.” Putin also seemed to delight in personally tweaking Obama—addressing him not as President of the United States but as a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and urging him to embrace nonviolence.
If what happened in Damascus was a provocation, authored by Putin and intended to display American weakness to the world—the next question then becomes, why? Or, to put a finer point on things, what purpose, apart from the obvious pleasure of making Obama look like a sissy, was worth the risk of being held responsible—even partially responsible—for killing more than 1,000 people with weapons whose names are bywords for horror and whose use is a heinous crime under international law.
A worthy prize is not hard to find. While Obama was making his calculations about staying out of Syria—calculations that appear in retrospect to have been both reasonable and false—Putin was making his own calculations about the power vacuum that Obama had left behind in the Middle East. His first conclusion from studying that vacuum appears to have been that Obama wasn’t serious about stopping Iran from getting a nuclear bomb—since that would mean involvement in another shooting war in the region. His second conclusion was that the best way to make that conclusion obvious was by crossing Obama’s “red line” in Syria—in response to which the U.S. president would probably do nothing, or next to nothing. What made the “red line” a perfect target for a provocation was that the line was never serious; it was a fig-leaf for excusing American inaction in a bloody civil war while keeping alive the president’s stated commitment to keep Iran from getting a nuclear bomb. It is also worth noting that the nerve-gas attack in Syria is simply the latest and biggest in a series of incidents in which Putin has chosen to publicly confront the United States and stick his finger in Obama’s eye. First, Putin chose to give NSA leaker Edward Snowden refuge in Moscow’s airport and then in Moscow itself—a decision that led Obama to cancel his planned summit meeting with the Russian president, which presumably was a consequence that Putin both predicted and welcomed. Second, Putin decided to criminalize homosexuality at the Sochi Olympics—a thumb in the eye to an American government that prided itself on its acceptance of gay marriage. The U.S. press treated each of these incidents as indications that Putin is a difficult, ornery person—when in retrospect, they appear to be part of an ongoing global campaign to put Moscow on one side and Washington on the other. Applying the wedge tactics in the global arena that were so successful in Putin’s use of the Pussy Riot incident at home was an interesting novelty, it seemed, but nothing more. What was missing was any sense of why Putin would suddenly find it to Russia’s advantage to stoke conflict with Washington.
Evidence for why Putin might have gambled on America backing down is again easy to find. Obama made it plain that his only real interest in the Middle East was to get American troops out of the region as fast as possible. His famous Cairo speech, which so excited global commentators, pro and con, was a rhetorical signal that America was taking a new direction after eight years of war. The direction Obama clearly favored was “out”—out of Iraq, out of Afghanistan, out of the business of backing Hosni Mubarak and other regional dictators, out of attempts to overthrow or destabilize the regime in Iran, out of any real effort to create a Palestinian state or force Israel to leave the West Bank.
For Washington policymakers on both sides of the aisle, Obama’s new direction for Mideast policy made plenty of sense. The American economy was weakened by a decade of wars, the American people were tired, and the Pentagon was broke. Attempts at using limited force in Libya had created a mess that made even reasonable people long for the days of Muammar al-Qaddafi. Egypt, where Obama hoped for an accommodation with the Muslim Brotherhood, slid into economic chaos and hopeless misrule. On the plus side, what was left of al-Qaida seemed more or less under control—and there was also the surprising news that, thanks to improved technology for extracting oil from shale deposits, America was on track to become the world’s largest oil producer by 2017. So, why bother with the Middle East?
The president’s Syria policy was therefore an entirely coherent example of his larger approach to the region: Let Assad’s forces and the Sunni jihadists stomp on each other’s corpses and then YouTube it, while America provided airplane meals to a limited number of people who professed their belief in some form of democratic, nonsectarian government. The appointment of Samantha Power as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations was icing on the policy cake, ensuring that the Pulitzer Prize-winner would be too busy explaining Syria policy to her fellow delegates and Ivy League grads to write a book denouncing Obama as an accomplice to genocide. It was perfect set-up, until Putin ruined it all with a nasty poison gas attack on Obama’s face-saving “red line.”
The prize Putin is seeking for obliterating the American “red line” is not victory in Syria—since his client Assad is clearly winning anyway. The point of the attack is to publically expose Obama’s deep ambivalence about the use of force to stop Iran. If Obama’s red line against the use of chemical weapons in Syria can fall so easily, after the public deaths of more than 1,000 innocent people, including hundreds of children who died foaming at the mouth, how many cruise missiles might Iran’s putative acquisition of nuclear weapons capacity cost? Two hundred? One hundred? Zero? The answer now is plain: However many missiles they might fire, America has no stomach for fighting a war in Syria, let alone in Iran.
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Putin needs to make America look weak because Russia is weak. The major source of Russian weakness is Vladimir Putin—or rather, the system that Putin has imposed on Russia so that he can continue in his dual capacity as the country’s elected leader and also its richest man. When he decided to run for president again in 2012, Putin was faced with a fateful choice: He could work to make Russia an attractive destination for foreign capital by strengthening the rule of law and loosening the grip of the oligarchs, or he could choose to strengthen his own rule, according to the methods that were most familiar to him. Putin’s decision to use fraudulent means to win the presidential election, and then to clamp down hard on subsequent criticism, closing down newspapers and throwing critics in jail, made perfect sense to a man bred in an authoritarian state. It also ensured that the Russian economy would continue to be run through by Putin and the oligarchs—the backbone of his political support—in ways that were unlikely to encourage rational foreign investment. The decay of the Russian economy under Putin means that foreign policy is not a moral exercise—rather, it is the only means by which Russia’s current economic leverage can be sustained.
By showing that Obama’s America is unable and unwilling to keep its promises, Putin has widened the leadership void in the Middle East—as a prelude to filling it himself. By helping to clear Iran’s path to a bomb, Putin positions himself as Iran’s most powerful ally—while paradoxically gaining greater leverage with Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf States, who would much rather negotiate with Russia than with Iran, their sworn enemy. While the Americans were heading out of the Middle East, and the Chinese were too busy with their own internal debates about the future of their economy and society, Putin saw that something valuable had been abandoned on the world stage, and he took it. For the price of 1,000 dead civilians in Damascus, he has gained great power status in the oil-rich Middle East. Iran, for its part, gets the bomb, which isn’t great news for anyone, but was probably going to happen anyway. The first lesson here for American policymakers is that Putin may or may not be evil, but he is obviously much smarter than they are—and he knows it. Another lesson worth learning is that American belief in promoting ostensibly universal aims like promoting democracy or halting the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction through the limited and well-meaning use of military force is only sensible in a world of people who share American values and preferences.
Since no such world exists, at least right now, and probably ever, Americans might be better off crediting the notion that while we are thinking our thoughts, other people are thinking their own thoughts, which are shaped by very different experiences and aesthetics—and that are likely to shape a world that we no longer control, in part because we have decided that telling people in faraway places what to do is the ultimate sin. In that belief, as in many others, Obama—and not his critics on the left and on the right—accurately reflects the will of the American people, who have experienced the endless wars of the last 50 years as a pointless waste of lives and treasure whose only clear outcomes appear to be piles of corpses abroad and the diminishment of basic liberties at home.
Only time will tell whose evil is worse—Putin’s or Obama’s. While Putin delights in using the old-school KGB playbook to consolidate his one-man rule, and to expose the empty moral posturing of the West, Obama believes that he can talk his way into a workable accommodation between his own sense of morality and global reality. But the lesson of Obama’s fig leaf is that it is better to be honest about what we are doing in the world and why. If Putin baited a trap for the United States in Damascus, it was Obama who walked right into it. If Obama had stood up and declared that the United States had no vital interest in Syria but would stop Iran from getting nukes—and would prosecute the authors of the nerve-gas attack at The Hague—then Putin would have been trapped. The same would have been true if Obama had said nothing and blown up two or three of Assad’s palaces. But he did neither. Sometimes, well-meaning lies and political spin can be just as deadly, in the end, as nerve gas.
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