Mac SlavoActivist Post
Syria is guilty of war crimes. According to the U.S., Israel and other Western nations, it was Syrian President Bashar al-Assad who was behind the chemical attack that left hundreds dead last week.
All signs point to armed intervention in Syria this week, even though UN inspectors (who incidentally came under sniper fire today) have yet to conclude their investigation.
No matter, however. The die has been cast. There is a strong possibility that the Allies will respond, in force, in very short order.
The only possibility to avoid conflict at this point is that Russia, which has made its support of Syria’s government known, will somehow convince the West it is not in our interests (perhaps by threatening a full-scale confrontation, otherwise nothing else is going to work).
Thus, let us assume that the United States, Britain, et. al. initiate a missile strike on targets in Syria in coming days.
What will Assad do in response?
According to a report by Steve Watson at Prison Planet, he’ll immediately direct his military to strike targets in Israel, just like Saddam Hussein did in the first Gulf War.
But this time, the Israelis may not show the restraint they did in 1991.
It could be a game changer for the Middle East… and the world:
A senior Syrian official has warned that Israel will “come under fire” should the United states pursue any military aggression against the Assad regime.
As reported by the Israeli news site Ynet, Halef al-Muftah, a leading member of the Syrian Ba’ath national council, and a former aide to the Syrian media minister said today that the Syrian government has “strategic weapons aimed at Israel.”
Making the comments on an American Arabic radio station, Muftah added that Damascus views Israel as being “behind the aggression” and therefore will be retaliated against should the US strike Syria.
The official also stated that the Syrian government would not be beholden to threats from the US, and added “If the US or Israel err through aggression and exploit the chemical issue, the region will go up in endless flames, affecting not only the area’s security, but the world’s.”In the last 24 hours President Assad suggested in an interview on Russian television that he will not back down.
“Failure awaits the United States as in all previous wars it has unleashed, starting with Vietnam and up to the present day,” he told the pro-Kremlin Izvestia newspaper in an interview which the Russian daily said was conducted in Damascus.There is a strong possibility that any military action taken by the U.S. and its allies will be met with a military response. And if this report is accurate, it means that those Russian-supplied weapons that have never been seen in the Middle East before will likely be used to strike U.S. naval targets, as well as the heart of Israel.
The game changer – the biggest variable in all of this – will be what Israel does in response.
In 1991, the Israelis did not respond to Saddam Hussein’s targeting of Jerusalem with SCUD missiles. By doing so, the alliance against Iraq, which ironically also included Syria, remained in tact.
Had the Israelis engaged Iraqi targets, it would have broken the alliance and possibly led to widespread confrontation in the Middle East twenty years ago.
This time, however, is a different story. And Israel, which in May made the unilateral decision to destroy a Syrian weapons facility, may well return fire.
If they do, then the centuries-old conflict between the Arabs and Jews could potentially go into full swing, especially if Syria were to do something crazy like fire chemical or bio weapons, something Israelis now expect as they are distributing gas masks to their populace.
In response, we could well see a nuclear contingency plan initiated by the Israelis.
Folks, this has all the makings of the start of a World War.
One misstep here and this could very quickly spread throughout the Middle East and beyond – a warning that Russia gave the U.S. just a few months ago.
There is, according to the Russians, no proof that Syria’s government launched a chemical attack on its own people.
There doesn’t need to be.
Armies are mobilizing, just as they did following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in June of 1914.
By December of 1914 over a million people were dead and war lines spanning hundreds of miles were drawn across Europe.
It can happen fast. And this time it just might.
