Thursday, March 28, 2024
Thursday, March 28, 2024
Get the Daily
Briefing by Email

Subscribe

SPECIAL BRIEFING: SYRIAN CRISIS – ASSAD’S MURDEROUS GAS ATTACK CALLS OBAMA’S BLUFF— BUT THE REAL “ROAD TO DAMASCUS” RUNS THROUGH IRAN

We welcome your comments to this and any other CIJR publication. Please address your response to:  Ber Lazarus, Publications Chairman, Canadian Institute for Jewish Research, PO Box 175, Station  H, Montreal QC H3G 2K7 – Tel: (514) 486-5544 – Fax:(514) 486-8284; E-mail:  ber@isranet.wpsitie.com

 

 

 Download an abbreviated version of today's Daily Briefing.

 

Contents:

 

Syria Will Require more than Cruise Missiles: Eliot A. Cohen, Washington Post, Aug. 25, 2013—In 1994, after directing the U.S. Air Force’s official study of the Persian Gulf War, I concluded, “Air power is an unusually seductive form of military strength, in part because, like modern courtship, it appears to offer gratification without commitment.” That observation stands.

 

More Questions than Answers as Attack on Syria Looms: Zvi Bar'el, Ha’aretz, Aug. 25, 2013— “When you have to shoot, shoot. Don’t talk,” says Eli Wallach’s character in “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.” But he also says, “If you miss, you had better miss very well.” It seems that the fear of missing is the dilemma now facing the United States and Europe over Syria.

 

The Road to Damascus Starts in Tehran: Michael Ledeen, PJ Media, Aug. 25, 2013—It’s Middle East Groundhog Day all over again.  The discussion of What To Do About Syria is a replay of What To Do About Saddam:  it’s all about the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time in the wrong way.

 

Israel’s Interest: That Assad not Be Victorious: Mitch Ginsburg, Times of Israel, Aug. 25, 2013—With four US warships prowling the eastern Mediterranean, poised to respond to Syrian President Bashar Assad’s apparent usage of chemical weapons, Israeli security chiefs have likely swiveled their intelligence-collecting antennae to the Syrian front and lowered their public profiles, seeking neither to be seen as the instigator of a US strike, nor as provoking a Syrian response.

 

 

On Topic Links

 

Looking the Other Way: Amir Taheri, New York Post, Aug. 25, 2013

Networks of Spies Aid Syria Gas Probe: Adam Entous, Wall Street Journal, Aug. 23, 2013

‘IDF Intercepted Syrian Regime Chatter on Chemical Attack’: Adiv Sterman, Times of Israel, August 26, 2013

Assad Calls Obama’s Bluff: Lee Smith, The Weekly Standard, Sept. 2, 2013

The Chemical Attack in Syria: Implications: Lt. Col. (ret.) Jonathan D. Halevi, JCPA, Aug. 25, 2013

 

 

SYRIA WILL REQUIRE MORE THAN CRUISE MISSILES

Eliot A. Cohen

Washington Post, Aug. 25, 2013

 

In 1994, after directing the U.S. Air Force’s official study of the Persian Gulf War, I concluded, “Air power is an unusually seductive form of military strength, in part because, like modern courtship, it appears to offer gratification without commitment.” That observation stands. It explains the Obama administration’s enthusiasm for a massive, drone-led assassination campaign against al-Qaeda terrorists. And it applies with particular force to a prospective, U.S.-led attack on the Syrian government in response to its use of chemical weapons against a civilian population.

 

President Obama has boxed himself in. He can no longer ignore his own proclamation of a “red line.” The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in a breach of proper civil-military relations, has publicly telegraphed his skepticism about any use of force in Syria. But the scale, openness and callousness of the Syrian government’s breaking of an important taboo seems likely to compel this president — so proud of his record as a putative war-ender — to launch the warplanes yet again in the Middle East.

 

The temptation here is to follow the Clinton administration’s course — a futile salvo of cruise missiles, followed by self-congratulation and an attempt to change the topic. It would not work here. A minority regime fighting for its life, as Bashar al-Assad’s is, can weather a couple of dozen big bangs. More important, no one — friends, enemies or neutrals — would be fooled. As weak as the United States now appears in the region and beyond, we would look weaker yet if we chose to act ineffectively. A bout of therapeutic bombing is an even more feckless course of action than a principled refusal to act altogether.

 

A serious bombing campaign would have substantial targets — most plausibly the Syrian air force, the service once headed by Assad’s father, which gives the regime much of its edge over the rebels, as well as the air defense system and the country’s airports, through which aid arrives from Iran. But should the Obama administration choose any kind of bombing campaign, it needs to face some hard facts.

 

For one thing, and despite the hopes of some proponents of an air campaign, this would not be surgical. No serious application of air power ever is, despite administration officials’ claims about the drone campaign, which, as we now know, has killed plenty of civilians. A serious bombing campaign means civilian casualties, at our hands. And it may mean U.S. and allied casualties too, because the idea of a serious military effort without risk is fatuous.

 

The administration would need congressional authorization. Despite his professed commitment to transparency and constitutional niceties, Obama has proved himself reluctant to secure congressional authorization for the use of force, most notably with Libya in 2011. Even if an authorization is conferred retroactively, it needs to be done here because this would be a large use of force; indeed, an act of war.

 

And it probably would not end cleanly. When the president proclaimed the impending conclusion of the war with al-Qaeda, he disregarded the cardinal fact of strategy: It is (at least) a two-sided game. The other side, not we, gets to decide when it ends. And in this case neither the Syrian government nor its Iranian patrons, nor its Hezbollah, Russian and Chinese allies, may choose to shrug off a bombing campaign. Chess players who think one move ahead usually lose; so do presidents who think they can launch a day or two of strikes and then walk away with a win. The repercussions may be felt in neighboring countries; they may even be felt in the United States, and there is no excuse for ignoring that fact.

 

Despite all these facts, not to act would be, at this point and by the administration’s own standards, intolerable. The slaughter in Syria, tolerated for so long, now approaches the same order of magnitude (with the number of dead totaling six figures at least) as Rwanda, but in a strategically more important place. Already it is late, perhaps too late, to prevent Syria from becoming the new Afghanistan or Yemen, home to rabidly anti-Western jihadis. A critical firebreak, the use of chemical weapons on a large scale, has been breached.

 

No less important, U.S. prestige is on the line. Why should anyone, anywhere, take Obama’s threats (or for that matter, his promises) seriously if he does nothing here? Not to act is to decide, and to decide for an even worse outcome than the one that awaits us.

 

“War is an option of difficulties,” a British general once remarked. The question before the president is whether he will make matters worse by convincing himself that he has found a minimal solution to a fiendish problem. He will convince no one else.

 

Eliot A. Cohen teaches at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. He directed the U.S. Air Force’s Gulf War Air Power Survey from 1991 to 1993.
 

Contents

MORE QUESTIONS THAN ANSWERS AS ATTACK ON SYRIA LOOMS

Zvi Bar'el

Ha’aretz, Aug. 25, 2013

 

“When you have to shoot, shoot. Don’t talk,” says Eli Wallach’s character in “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.” But he also says, “If you miss, you had better miss very well.” It seems that the fear of missing is the dilemma now facing the United States and Europe over Syria.

 

The countries are still talking. Even the signs of preparations for military action, bringing warships armed with missiles nearer to the Syrian border, urgent consultations at the White House and coordination of positions with European countries, do not take the safety catch off just yet. That’s because it’s not tactically missing the target that is the concern, since the location of the Syrian army’s chemical weapons sites are known. The concern is over diplomatically missing it.

 

The decision makers have before them a few versions, each pointing a finger in different directions following last week’s reported use of chemical weapons east of Damascus. One version is that of the Free Syrian Army and the political opposition, whose spokesmen explaine at a news conference Saturday that the chemical missiles were fired by the Syrian army’s Brigade 115 from its Mount Kalamun missile base and that, during the attack, the head of the Syrian missile directorate, Taher Hamed Khalil, was present at the base.

 

Another version is that of Saudi newspaper Al-Sharq, relying on a source in the Free Syrian Army who claims that soldiers of the Fourth Elite Unit, commanded by Maher Assad – the Syrian president’s brother – raided the Scientific Studies and Research Center and captured quantities of the chemical weapons after killing a Syrian officer who refused to let them in.

 

A third version comes from the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Seyassah, through an Iraqi source close to the separatist Muktada al-Sadr, who says that fighters from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, in charge of some of the chemical weapons stores, fired the chemical weapons at the town of al-Ghouta, despite opposition by the Syrian army brass.

 

Yet another version, published on the Syrian opposition website al-Hakika, reported that the chemicals were smuggled from Turkey by activists of the Turkmen uprising and that these activists were the ones who fired the missiles to spark an international provocation.

 

The website, which published reports on the smuggling of the chemicals about a week before the attack – as well as after it – raises questions about the way the dead were found, plus the fact that the weather conditions on the day of the attack could not ensure that Syrian soldiers would not also be killed. The Syrian regime has its own version, in which five Syrian soldiers were killed and others rushed to the hospital after they were injured by the chemicals.

 

In this abundance of versions, it seems that, at least in one matter, the fog has been lifted. Chemical weapons, whose makeup is still not known for sure, were indeed used. Even Iranian President Hassan Rohani said on Saturday that Syrian citizens had been killed by chemical weapons – without, of course, saying who fired them.

 

The foot-dragging in the West stems from a lack of clear-cut proof about who fired the weapons. The United States wants to find the smoking gun in President Bashar Assad’s palace so the attack on Syria will not be restricted to aiming cruise missiles at some weapons stores, but rather, will lead to a strategic change that will decide the battle in Syria.

 

In contrast, the destruction of those stores is no assurance that quantities of chemical weapons have not already been distributed among Syrian army units, or have not made their way to rebel groups that do not answer to the Free Syrian Army – such as Islamic groups affiliated with Al-Qaida. One worrisome scenario is that after the aerial bombardment of the chemical weapons depots, such weapons will continue to be used, but then there will no longer be a clearly responsible target to be attacked.

 

Beyond tactical considerations, such an attack could cross the strategic boundary that has so far prevented military involvement in Syria. The immediate fear is of a Russian and Iranian response. But even if we assume that the Russians will make do with sharp condemnations and won’t send troops to defend the Syrian regime nor bring its warships closer to the Syrian port of Tartus (the site of a Russian naval facility), the question will still remain of what happens “the day after.”

 

Who exactly will reap the fruits of the attack? Who will take the reins of government in Syria if the strike leads to Assad’s downfall? No one knows the answer to that – neither the United States, Israel or Europe, nor even within Syria itself.

 

U.S. President Barack Obama can do himself a political favor and attack a few targets in Syria, showing his insistence on the “red line” he defined a year ago. That, of course, is an important consideration for a president whose popularity continues to slip. But when a superpower is made to strike another country or bring down a regime, the pretext and the outcome should be superpower-sized. Chemical weapons have killed more than 1,200 people, and conventional weapons have killed more than 100,000. That is a good enough reason to bring down the regime.

Contents

THE ROAD TO DAMASCUS STARTS IN TEHRAN

Michael Ledeen

PJ Media, Aug. 25, 2013

 

It’s Middle East Groundhog Day all over again.  The discussion of What To Do About Syria is a replay of What To Do About Saddam:  it’s all about the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time in the wrong way. When the intel and military “experts” say, as they have been saying for many months, “there is no good outcome in Syria,” they’re talking about that war, the wrong war.

 

We invaded Iraq in the name of the War Against Terror, which President George W. Bush defined as a war against terrorist organizations and the states that supported them.  That should have made Iran the focus of our strategy, since Tehran was (and still is, now more than ever) the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism.  Nothing would have so devastated the jihadis as the fall of the Iranian regime, which–then as now–funded, trained, armed and gave sanctuary to terrorist groups from al-Qaeda and Hezbollah to Islamic Jihad and Hamas.  Unless we defeated Iran, it would not be possible for Iraq to have decent security, no matter how total the defeat of Saddam and the Baathists, and how well-intentioned the successor government.  As you can plainly see.

 

It’s not as if anyone should be surprised;  before the invasion, both Assad and Khamenei publicly announced that they would wage war against us in Iraq, just as they had in Lebanon a short generation before.  Today they warn us to stay out of Syria, or they will attack us on a global scale.

 

Here we go.  Again.  We are still the main target of the terror war, of which the leading sponsor is Iran.  The Assad regime in Damascus is a satrapy of Iran, as we are publicly told by both the Syrian insurrectionaries and the Iranian leaders, including The Great Moderate, President Rouhani.  There are thousands of Iranian killers in the front lines, hailing from the Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force and from Hezbollah, long the regime’s foreign legion. Iranian advisers tell Assad’s loyalists where and how to attack, and if the Syrians have indeed used chemical weapons, you can be sure the Iranians approved it, and were probably involved in the operations.

 

So, as in Iraq, if you want to win this battle in the terror war, you must defeat the Iranian regime.  And, as in the early years of this bloody century, you can do it without dropping bombs or sending Americans to fight on the ground, because the overwhelming majority of Iranians want to rid themselves of Khamenei and Rouhani and all the rest of their tyrannical oppressors.  They can do it, with a bit of political, technological and economic support.  They could have done it in 2003, when they were on the verge of declaring a general strike against the regime.  Colin Powell and W abandoned them, and it never happened.  They could have done it in 2009, when millions of them took to the streets in demonstrations larger than those that led to the downfall of the shah.  Hillary Clinton and O abandoned them, and a brutal repression ensued.

 

A lot of Americans have been sacrificed to our failure of strategic vision, and American soldiers, the best of us, are at risk today in Afghanistan, targets of Iranian-trained Taliban fanatics.  You can be sure that more Americans will be at enhanced risk if we engage in Syria, from soldiers on military bases to civilians in embassies and consulates and resorts and stock exchanges, or even walking through Times Square or waiting at the finish line of a marathon.

 

It is like fighting a known arsonist by waiting for him to ignite a conflagration and then calling the firemen to put it out.  To be sure, if you eliminate the arsonist there will still be flames and smoldering embers, but that problem is easier to manage than the certainty of new conflagrations set ablaze by the same fanatic.

 

Iran is the engine of the Syrian bloodbath.  Remove Tehran’s killers, money, weapons, intelligence services and fanatical ideologues from the Syrian battlefield, and things will get better, perhaps much better.  And not only in the Middle East;  things will improve in Africa (talk to the Nigerians about that) and South and Central America.

 

How can so many policy makers, pundits, scribblers and babblers overlook Iran’s centrality?  And how can so many of them fail to recognize the enormous power of the ongoing revolt against the theological fascists who hold power in Tehran and who have just lost power in Cairo?  The uprising that defenestrated the Muslim Brothers in Egypt was the biggest mass demonstration in the history of the world, but the self-proclaimed deep thinkers debate whether it qualifies for “coup,” and suggest that the fascists should be given a share of power.

 

As the immortal Orwell reminds us, Winston Smith finally proclaimed “I love Big Brother.”  All too many of our corrupt elite are headed down that path.  Enough, already.  Don’t go to war against Eurasia yet again.  Fight the real war against the real enemy, with the lethal weapons our history has bequeathed us. No more Newspeak, tell it like it is: Win in Damascus by supporting freedom in Tehran.

 

Contents

 

 

ISRAEL’S INTEREST: THAT ASSAD NOT BE VICTORIOUS

Mitch Ginsburg

Times of Israel, Aug. 25, 2013

 

With four US warships prowling the eastern Mediterranean, poised to respond to Syrian President Bashar Assad’s apparent usage of chemical weapons, Israeli security chiefs have likely swiveled their intelligence-collecting antennae to the Syrian front and lowered their public profiles, seeking neither to be seen as the instigator of a US strike, nor as provoking a Syrian response.

 

The US, for reasons ranging from presidential prestige to moral imperatives to strict national interests, seems ready to act. “I think it is fair to say that, as difficult as the problem is, this is something that is going to require America’s attention and hopefully the entire international community’s attention,” President Barack Obama told CNN over the weekend. But of the many options open to the US — from a tongue lashing to a limited strike to a debilitating blow to the Assad regime — which, if any, serves Israel’s national interests?

 

Brig. Gen. (ret) Shlomo Brom, a senior research fellow at the Institute of National Security Studies, said his view has changed over the course of the brutal war in Syria. “At first, I was one of those who said that the best possible scenario is that Assad put down the rebellion like his father did,” said Brom, a former head of the IDF’s Strategic Planning Division. His thinking at the time, he said, was that if Syria was deterred by Israel, the chances of war were slim to none, and he believed that Assad, despite his ties to Hezbollah and Iran, sincerely sought a peace agreement with Israel.

 

“But now Syria has begun playing on a much bigger court,” Brom said Sunday, noting that the Syrian civil war had pitted Saudi Arabia and Qatar against Iran and, to a certain extent, the US against Russia. “Therefore, Israel’s interest is that he not be victorious,” he said of Assad.

 

From Israel’s perspective, there are two good US options and one bad one, Brom went on. The first and most likely scenario entails a strike that is punitive in nature and limited in time and scope. A one-time barrage of Tomahawk sea-to-surface missiles against a symbolic Syrian target — much like the 1998 US strikes in Sudan and Afghanistan — would not have a significant impact on the outcome of the conflict, said Brom, but it would be helpful in that it would likely deter Assad from continuing to use chemical weapons.

 

On the other end of the spectrum is a “true and effective intervention.” That type of move, perhaps entailing actions akin to the March 1999 invasion of Yugoslavia, is not likely, Brom said. But it would be far preferable to the middle ground — the bad alternative — which might entail “a true intervention that is not effective,” Brom said characterizing such a step as the kind that “allowed the war to grind on and on.”

 

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, in July wrote a letter to Congress outlining five possible options for US action in Syria, the independent military newspaper Stars and Stripes reported. Options No. 4 and 5 — creating buffer zones to protect civilians and seizing control of all chemical weapons, respectively — would fit neatly into Brom’s least desirable category.

 

Professor Efraim Inbar, the head of the BESA Center for Strategic Studies, was unequivocal about the ultimate Israeli interest. “There are no good options,” he said of the situation in Syria. “But the Israeli interest is that Bashar not survive.”

 

As an ally of Iran, Israel’s No. 1 enemy, Assad has to go, even at the cost of anarchy or extremist Sunni control in Damascus, Inbar indicated. Asked whether a US strike could trigger a retaliation against Israel, as happened during the first Gulf War, and whether the nature of the US strike might dictate the severity of Assad’s response, both Brom and Inbar were cautious yet dubious of Assad’s willingness to attack Israel.

 

“There was a broad Arab coalition against Saddam,” Inbar claimed, asserting that the point of Saddam Hussein’s missile launches in January 1991 was to drag Israel into the fray and thereby fracture the Arab unity. “Here there’s hardly any Arab coalition at all.” Brom said Assad’s bottom line was “survivability” — a goal that clashed with a major strike against Israel. “Syria is right on our border,” he said. “We can be very effective there… actually, more so than the Americans.”

Contents

 

 

Looking the Other Way: Amir Taheri, New York Post, Aug. 25, 2013—Assad has decided American indifference and UN ineffectiveness means he can commit mass murder in Syria As expected, the threat of a Russian veto has prevented the United Nations from adopting any position on the latest chemical attack in Syria, which killed hundreds in three suburbs of Damascus. An organization meant to act in support of peace has been turned into an instrument for preventing all such action.

 

Networks of Spies Aid Syria Gas Probe: Adam Entous, Wall Street Journal, Aug. 23, 2013—A growing Western consensus that Syria's government used chemical weapons this week against its own people is based on information from networks of informants in rebel strongholds, who collect tissue samples and video evidence for Western and Middle Eastern spy agencies, according to U.S., European and Arab officials.

 

‘IDF Intercepted Syrian Regime Chatter on Chemical Attack’: Adiv Sterman, Times of Israel, August 26, 2013

An IDF intelligence unit listened in on senior Syrian officials discussing a chemical attack that allegedly took place on the outskirts of Damascus and left hundreds of Syrian civilians dead last Wednesday, a major German publication reported.
 

The Chemical Attack in Syria: Implications: Lt. Col. (ret.) Jonathan D. Halevi, JCPA, Aug. 25, 2013—The regime of Syrian president Bashar Assad has once again made use of chemical weapons in Syria’s bloody civil war, which has cost over 100,000 lives since it began in March 2011.

 

Assad Calls Obama’s Bluff: Lee Smith, The Weekly Standard, Sept. 2, 2013 —The timing was probably not a coincidence, falling as it did on two anniversaries. August 18, 2011, was when President Obama first demanded Syrian president Bashar al-Assad step aside, and August 20 last year was when Obama warned that the use of chemical weapons would “change my calculus.” 

 

Visit CIJR’s Bi-Weekly Webzine: Israzine.

CIJR’s ISRANET Daily Briefing is available by e-mail.
Please urge colleagues, friends, and family to visit our website for more information on our ISRANET series.
To join our distribution list, or to unsubscribe, visit us at https://isranet.org/.

The ISRANET Daily Briefing is a service of CIJR. We hope that you find it useful and that you will support it and our pro-Israel educational work by forwarding a minimum $90.00 tax-deductible contribution [please send a cheque or VISA/MasterCard information to CIJR (see cover page for address)]. All donations include a membership-subscription to our respected quarterly ISRAFAX print magazine, which will be mailed to your home.

CIJR’s ISRANET Daily Briefing attempts to convey a wide variety of opinions on Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world for its readers’ educational and research purposes. Reprinted articles and documents express the opinions of their authors, and do not necessarily reflect the viewpoint of the Canadian Institute for Jewish Research.

 

 

Ber Lazarus, Publications Chairman, Canadian Institute for Jewish ResearchL'institut Canadien de recherches sur le Judaïsme, www.isranet.org

Tel: (514) 486-5544 – Fax:(514) 486-8284 ; ber@isranet.wpsitie.com

Donate CIJR

Become a CIJR Supporting Member!

Most Recent Articles

Day 5 of the War: Israel Internalizes the Horrors, and Knows Its Survival Is...

0
David Horovitz Times of Israel, Oct. 11, 2023 “The more credible assessments are that the regime in Iran, avowedly bent on Israel’s elimination, did not work...

Sukkah in the Skies with Diamonds

0
  Gershon Winkler Isranet.org, Oct. 14, 2022 “But my father, he was unconcerned that he and his sukkah could conceivably - at any moment - break loose...

Open Letter to the Students of Concordia re: CUTV

0
Abigail Hirsch AskAbigail Productions, Dec. 6, 2014 My name is Abigail Hirsch. I have been an active volunteer at CUTV (Concordia University Television) prior to its...

« Nous voulons faire de l’Ukraine un Israël européen »

0
12 juillet 2022 971 vues 3 https://www.jforum.fr/nous-voulons-faire-de-lukraine-un-israel-europeen.html La reconstruction de l’Ukraine doit également porter sur la numérisation des institutions étatiques. C’est ce qu’a déclaré le ministre...

Subscribe Now!

Subscribe now to receive the
free Daily Briefing by email

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

  • Subscribe to the Daily Briefing

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.