Oncus.net suggests in a piece called “Silence and Syria, Panic in Iran” that there is exactly that… panic, in those places.
The mullahs are freaking out in fear. Why? Because of the silence in Syria. On September 6, Israeli Air Force F-15 and F-16s conducted a devastating attack on targets deep inside Syria near the city of Dayr az-Zawr. Israel’s military censors have muzzled the Israeli media, enforcing an extraordinary silence about the identity of the targets. Massive speculation in the world press has followed, such as Brett Stephens’ Osirak II? in yesterday’s (9/18) Wall St. Journal. Stephens and most everyone else have missed the real story. It is not Israel’s silence that ‘speaks volumes’ as he claims, but Syria’s.
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Why would the Syrian government be so tight-lipped about an act of war perpetrated on their soil?
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They thought they were protected – at enormous expense – only to discover they are defenseless. As in naked. Thus the Great Iranian Freak-Out – for this means Iran is just as nakedly defenseless as Syria.
Personally, my take is that can only be a good thing. The pressure is about to force Iran and Syria, their stooge, to implode. As the article suggests, a sure sign of panic on the part of the Iranians particularly was the threat by Tehran to launch “600 shihab missles” at Israel. The threat, of course, is toothless. First of all, if they’d had 600 missiles to launch,they’d doubtless have done so quite a while ago. Secondly, even assuming they were able to shoot the wad like that, their inability to follow up with something more substantial, leaves them defenseless.
There is nothing like a toothless threat, in its ability to indicate panic on the part of the one issuing the threat.
Another interesting point speaks to something that I have long suspected ; that long line of trucks leaving Iraq toward Syria was Saddam’s chemical weapons stockpile…
So – what was attacked near Dayr az-Zawr? It’s possible it was North Korean ‘nuclear material’ recently shipped to Syria, i.e., stuff to make radioactively ‘dirty’ warheads, but nothing to make a real nuke with as the Norks don’t have real nukes (see Why North Korea’s Nuke Test Is Such Good News, October 2006). Another possibility is it was to take out a stockpile of long-range Zilzal surface-to-surface missiles recently shipped from Iran for an attack on Israel. A third is it was a hit on the stockpile of Saddam’s chemical/bio weapons snuck out of Iraq and into Syria for safekeeping before the US invasion of April 2003.
Actually, I think it likely that this is a combination of two elements. Why, after all, would they create a second secure area, one for nukes , and one for chem weapons? Doesn’t make sense. Further, given the hurry in which they were transporting stuff of Iraq, the likelihood is they transported those weapons to an already secure facility. .. one that already housed such weapons.
