Israel Asked Jordan For Approval to Bomb Syrian WMD Sites

[Purveyor]

Anxiety is increasing about the prospect of a desperate Bashar al-Assad using chemical weapons against his rapidly proliferating enemies. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned Assad that such chemical weapons use would cross a U.S. red line: "I'm not going to telegraph in any specifics what we would do in the event of credible evidence that the Assad regime has resorted to using chemical weapons against their own people. But suffice to say we are certainly planning to take action."

This new level of anxiety was prompted by reports that Assad's forces have been moving chemical weapons, according to David Sanger and Eric Schmitt in The Times. They report that one American official told them that "the activity we are seeing suggests some potential chemical weapon preparation," though the official "declined to offer more specifics of what those preparations entailed."

The U.S. is not the only country worried about the possible use of chemical weapons. Intelligence officials in two countries told me recently that the Israeli government has twice come to the Jordanian government with a plan to take out many of Syria's chemical weapons sites. According to these two officials, Israel has been seeking Jordan's "permission" to bomb these sites, but the Jordanians have so far declined to grant such permission.

Of course, Israel can attack these sites without Jordanian approval (in 2007, the Israeli Air Force destroyed a Syrian nuclear reactor), but one official told me that the Israelis are concerned about the possible repercussions of such an attack on Jordan. "A number of sites are not far from the border," he said, further explaining: "The Jordanians have to be very careful about provoking the regime and they assume the Syrians would suspect Jordanian complicity in an Israeli attack." Intelligence sources told me that Israeli drones are patrolling the skies over the Jordan-Syria border, and that both American and Israeli drones are keeping watch over suspected Syrian chemical weapons sites.

MORE...

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/12/israel-asked-jordan-for-approval-to-bomb-syrian-wmd-sites/265818/

[leveymg]

1. Syria is being moved into a 1) use-'em-or-lose-'em dilemma or 2) a deadman trigger scenario.

This is incredibly dangerous, and the regime changers never adequately planned for a realistic end-phase in Syria, always reassuring the policymakers that they could pull off a nice, easy coup d'grace, a la Libya.

The CIA SAD and JSOC, along with the Israelis, are now planning on a preemptive strike including special forces on the ground to take the launchers. That would set off scenarios 1) and then 2).

The problem is that all the rest of the Damascus high command are Alawite and Ba'ath Party, so they too have no options other than to fight to the last or be exterminated, along with their families, by the Sunnis and al-Qaeda.

This regime change program was incredibly stupid on the part of Obama, Clinton, Rice, Petraeus & Co. An epoch, historical mistake.