Just like then, just as in Cuba, two freight trains are rushing toward each other on the track. The drivers are waiting to see who will blink first, and run off the rails before the great explosion. The good news is that, at the moment, it is only a war of words and not a war of missiles. Moreover, at least from the Israeli side, the war of words is intended to prevent a war of missiles.
Minister of Defense Moshe Ya'alon's remark, "We will know what to do," was understood in Moscow and Damascus. The planes that, according to foreign media reports, which were sent three times against arms deliveries in Syria will also know how to find the fourth arms shipment. The truth must be told: every additional strike further restricts Syrian President Bashar Assad's to wipe the spit off his face, to claim that it is rain, and resume slaughtering his people without making a major response on the Golan Heights or against Israel's home front.
Assad has declared the opening of a front on the Golan, but that is the last thing he needs. If anyone opens a front on the Golan, it will be al Qaida-affiliated rebel groups based on villages along the border with Israel. Those who want to open a front, shoot; they don’t talk about it on television. When deterrence is the name of the game, the whole neighborhood switches from strategy to psychology. Deterrence is chiefly a psychological concept, existing mainly in the mind, in awareness, and in hidden fears. In the interview with "al Manar", Assad tried to deter Israel from making more strikes on Syrian territory; and Israel is trying to deter him from responding to the next strike. The problem is that deterrence is such a slippery and fluid concept. 40 years of deterrence can hold against Syria, and then end in an instant.
Why are the S300 missiles such a big deal?
The Israel Air Force remembers the shoulder-fired missile that were a problem for its aircraft in the 1973 Yom Kippur War; they, too, were Russian missiles. Military history sometimes provides a technological development which dictates a new reality of war and peace. The machine gun, the tank, the missile, and rocket shaped the killing fields of the 20th century. According to foreign reports, the Air Force is already flying training missions against the S300, and various foreign friends have provided it with intelligence about the system. The training has proved that even against the best that the Russians can produce, the Air Force is not helpless.
To deal with the S300, just as the Air Force dealt with the Syrian antiaircraft network during the First Lebanon War in 1982, it must know the missile's ballistics and electronics in order to disrupt them and evade it. In contrast to Iran's heavy Fateh-110 missile, the danger from the S300 is its operation in Syria rather than its transfer to Hezbollah. S300 batteries in the Damascus area also have no problem covering southern Lebanon, where Israel Air Force jets and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are heard and seen day and night as they carry out the Sisyphean task of monitoring the landscape and rocket arsenals, preparing the targets bank of the third Lebanon war, or the first Iran war.
Israel has dropped the slogan, "Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t," with regard to Bashar Assad, and this is a good thing. There are no good and bad guys in this story; there is no "good for the Jews" and "bad for the Jews". Since the fiasco of the First Lebanon War, Israel no longer tries to dictate who will rule over its neighbors, and this is a good thing.
Just like in the Iran-Iraq War, Israel wishes both sides success. In the optimistic scenario, clear of moral considerations, the Syrian civil war will carry on for another year or two, weakening both the Syrian Army and Hezbollah. In the pessimistic scenario, the break-up of Syria will involve its southern neighbor too. Armies always prepare for pessimistic scenarios.
In the background of all this is Iran. Hopes that the mid-June elections in Iran will result in a change in its nuclear policy have dissipated. Whoever is elected will do what the spiritual leader Ali Khamenei says, and the past will be repeated: a rush for the bomb. While Hezbollah is deeply invested - 4,000-5,000 of its soldiers - in Syria, and taking Grad rocket strikes against the rebuilt Dahiya neighborhood in south Beirut, it continues its efforts to carry out terrorist attacks far from Israel's border.
Reports of the capture of an armed Hezbollah squad in Nigeria by determined efforts of Nigeria's security services - apparently with the help of the agency of a friendly country - just before an attack against the many Israelis working there, demonstrate that the efforts of Hezbollah's foreign terror machine continues, encouraged by the Quds Force of Iran's Revolutionary Guards, with the goal of making a revenge terrorist attack below the noise threshold.
After Thailand, Cyprus, Azerbaijan, India, Georgia, and the major attack at Burgas in Bulgaria, which has not yet been solved, Hezbollah has moved to Africa. Israelis residing in Ivory Coast, Benin, Ghana, Sierra Leone, and other countries are now in the crosshairs.
The writer is the military correspondent for Channel 10 News.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on June 3, 2013
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2013