Middle East Report Nov. 3, 2015

Syrian media reported an Israeli air force attack Sunday, Nov. 1, after two sorties Friday night against Syrian army and Hizbollah bases in the Qalamoun Mountains on the Lebanese border. The IDF declined to confirm or deny these reports. Syrian sources described a large number of Israeli airplanes as bombing a Hizbollah unit based in the village of El Ain in northern Lebanon and the arms depot of the 155th Brigade of the Syrian army at Al-Katifa to the east.

The two targets are 70 km apart. So these air strikes must have targeted two key points along the Iranian arms supply route to Hizbollah.

They also raise three important questions:

1. Did Israel’s Tel Aviv command center use the hotline to Russian headquarters to give Moscow prior warning of air strikes against Syrian and Hizbollah targets, explaining that no harm was intended to the Russian military in Syria?

Hardly likely; the Russians would not be expected to tolerate Israeli bombardments so close to their own military enclave in Latakia province.
2.  Did Russian surveillance planes and stations detect the approach of Israel’s bombers and decide not to interfere?

After all, Israel has turned a blind eye to repeated Russian air strikes in the last few days against terrorist positions in the southern Syrian town of Deraa and Quneitra opposite IDF Golan positions. The two cases suggest a gentlemen’s agreement between Russia and Israel to abstain from interfering with each other’s air operations over Syria, so long as there are no direct clashes between the two air forces. This could easily have happened when Russian planes bombed Quneitra.
So is Moscow giving Israel enough aerial leeway to strike Iranian, Syria and Hizbollah targets so long as there is no interference in Russian operations?

That too is unlikely because it would amount to permission for the Israeli air force to operate inside the anti-access/area denial bubble which the Russian air force has imposed over Syria.
3.  Did the Israeli air force use electronic warfare measures to jam the tracking systems installed in Russian spy planes and air defense missile systems in Syria?

Israel and Russia have been conducting a clandestine electronic contest for 33 years, since the memorable episode in 1982, when the Israeli air force destroyed in a single strike the entire Russian air defense missile system installed in Syria.

Since then, the Russians have worked hard to develop electronic warfare measures for gaining on the Israeli edge, without much success.
This was strikingly demonstrated in September 2007, when the Russian-made electronic tracking and warfare systems, which were the backbone of Syria air defense missile batteries, missed the Israeli warplanes as they came in to bomb the North Korean-built Iranian-Syrian plutonium reactor going up in northern Syria.
This lapse may have recurred in the case of the Israeli air sorties Saturday.

 

IDF forces shut down the Hamas Al-Hurriya radio station in Hebron Tuesday over broadcasts inciting Palestinians to carry out knife attacks on Israelis.  In the past month, 29 terrorist attacks were staged in the Hebron area of which 22 were stabbing. The Palestinian who Mondy night injured two Israelis seriously in Rishon Letzion came from the Hebron district.

The United States Embassy in Cairo has instructed its staff not to travel anywhere in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula as a "precautionary measure," pending the outcome of the investigation into the crash of a Russian passenger jet Saturday with 224 people aboard.

US, British and German aviation authorities Monday issued a directive to their airlines and air crews to avoid flying over the Sinai Peninsula below 26,000 feet and avoid Sharm el-Sheikh airport due to terrorist violence. The warning specifically mentioned the use of "anti-aircraft weapons with the potential for reaching high altitudes."
These governments did not wait for the Egyptian and Russian investigations into the deadly Russian airliner crash Saturday over Sinai in which 224 people perished. They have drawn their own conclusions about the cause of the disaster as most probably an ISIS missile

Russia took another step toward supplying advanced S-300 antiaircraft missiles to Iran on Monday, as its state-owned arms exporter Rosoboron export said it is preparing a contract for such a sale.

The planned sale, following the recent deployment of the S-300 in Syria, shows that Russia is building a unified air defense system, centering on the S-300, for Iran, Iraq, Syria, Hizbollah and Lebanon.

The wave of Palestinian terror - mostly by stabbing attacks - claimed nine Israeli lives in October, injured 88 of whom half are in serious condition. Monday, the terror reached the heart of two big towns, Rishon Letzion and Netanya.

The logical endgame of President Obama’s Iran policy and his “roundtable” approach to Syria has always been to offer American protection for Iranian missile shipments to Hezbollah. Sounds crazy, right? It is. But after all, as the administration’s hard-nosed diplomats will tell you, there needs to be a compromise in Syria to end the killing, which means that Iran must preserve its legitimate core interest—namely, its “link” to Lebanon, where Hezbollah has tens of thousands of missiles aimed at Israel.

The White House announcement that President Obama has brought Iran into formal discussions over Syria in Vienna is yet another public step on the path towards one of the most stunning reversals in the history of American foreign policy: formal American backing of Syrian leader al-Assad. Although reporters have generally represented this development as something new, the White House has in fact been openly set on this course for at least a year. At the G20 meeting in Brisbane, Australia last year, Obama said so explicitly: “At some point…the various players involved, as well as the regional players—Turkey, Iran, Assad’s patrons like Russia—are going to have to engage in a political conversation.”

Around the same time, Obama also signaled publicly his acquiescence to Assad staying in power and having a role during a so-called “transitional” period, thereby moving closer to the Russian and Iranian position on the role of the Syrian leader. As far back as late 2013, the White House was leaking that the president regretted ever calling on Assad to “step aside.”

Obama’s Syria policy, and the direct threat it poses to Israel, is a continuation of his broader policy of rapprochement with Iran. By recognizing Iran as a principal “stakeholder” in Syria and the region more broadly, America is choosing to legitimize Iran’s local assets and means of projecting power. So if you legitimize Iran as a “stakeholder,” you also legitimize Iran’s “stake.” But what, exactly, is Iran’s interest in Syria? Very simply, it is to preserve the land bridge to Lebanon through which it supplies Hezbollah with heavy weapons like long-range missiles that can’t be moved any other way.