The New Domino Theory

[Nbadan]

Israel attacks a Syrian...military convoy in Syria...bound for Lebanon...

BREAKING: Regional security officials say Israel conducted airstrike inside Syria overnight. -MM

http://twitter.com/AP/status/296647160928296962

Israel conducts airstrike on Syria


BEIRUT (AP) — Regional security officials say Israel conducted an airstrike inside Syria overnight near the border with Lebanon.

The two officials did not say what the target was. But they said Wednesday that Israel had been making plans in the days leading up to the airstrike to hit a shipment of weapons bound for the anti-Israel militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon.

They said the shipment included sophisticated, Russian-made SA-17 anti-aircraft missiles, which would be strategically "game-changing" in the hands of Hezbollah.

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/regional-security-officials-say-israel-conducted-airstrike-inside-syria-overnight

Meanwhile, Syria reports that Israel actually struck a military research center northwest of Damascus....



BEIRUT (AP) — Syrian state TV has confirmed that Israeli warplanes bombed a military research center northwest of the capital, Damascus.

U.S. and regional security officials reported the strike Wednesday but did not say where it took place.

State TV says the strike targeted a military research center in the area of Jermana.

It says the strike caused material damage and the center was used to advance Syrian military capabilities.

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/regional-security-officials-say-israel-conducted-airstrike-inside-syria-overnight


Iran puts out a statement today that an attack on Syria is an attack on Iran



DUBAI | Sat Jan 26, 2013 2:32am EST
(Reuters) - Iran would consider any attack on Syria an attack on itself, a senior government official was quoted as saying on Saturday, in one of Tehran's most assertive defenses of its ally yet.

Iran is a key supporter of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad who is fighting a near two-year-long revolt. Tehran has already repeatedly warned the West against intervening in the conflict against Assad.

"Syria has a very basic and key role in the region for promoting firm policies of resistance ... For this reason an attack on Syria would be considered an attack on Iran and Iran's allies," said Ali Akbar Velayati, an aide to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, according to the Mehr news agency.

Tehran sees Damascus as part of an axis of opposition to Israeli and Western influence in the Middle East.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/26/us-syria-crisis-iran-idUSBRE90P05620130126


and the Russians follow that statement with this...


Russia: Attack on Tehran is Attack on Moscow


Russia has given Iran its bear hug and warns Israel and the West that an attack on Tehran would be considered an attack on Moscow. The threat heightens the prospect of World War III in the event of a military strike on Iran.

“Iran is our neighbor,” Russia's outgoing ambassador to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, told reporters in Brussels. “And if Iran is involved in any military action, it’s a direct threat to our security.”

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/regional-security-officials-say-israel-conducted-airstrike-inside-syria-overnight

Situation goes to shit....

[symple19]

rofl

[Nbadan]

Meanwhile, Israel targets Iranian missiles in Gaza..


The flow of weapons into the Gaza Strip continues, according to sources familiar with the Palestinian resistance logistics, despite the ongoing Israeli assault … These weapons usually begin their journey in Iranian or Syrian ports. From there, they head to Sudan, where they are transported to the Sinai in Egypt and end up in Gaza. … Sources told Al-Akhbar that the focus is now on transporting large quantities of long-range missiles, considerable numbers of which have already reached the Strip since the beginning of the Israeli assault

Meanwhile, the proxy war continues...

When Israel assassinated the top Hamas military commander in Gaza on Wednesday, setting off the current round of fierce fighting, it was aiming not just at a Palestinian leader but at a supply line of rockets from Iran that have for the first time given Hamas the ability to strike as far as Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.


The commander, Ahmed al-Jabari, had shifted Hamas’s low-grade militia into a disciplined force with sophisticated weapons like Fajr-5 rockets, which are named after the Persian word for dawn and have significantly increased the danger to Israel’s major cities. They have a range of about 45 miles and are fired by trained crews from underground launching pads.

Hamas had perhaps 100 of them until the Israeli attacks last week, which appear to have destroyed most of the stockpile. The rockets are assembled locally after being shipped from Iran to Sudan, trucked across the desert through Egypt, broken down into parts and moved through Sinai tunnels into Gaza, according to senior Israeli security officials.

The smuggling route involves salaried employees from Hamas along the way, Iranian technical experts traveling on forged passports and government approval in Sudan, Israeli officials said.

Mr. Jabari’s strategy has been so effective and alarming for Israel that it is preparing for a possible next stage in the four-day-old battle: a ground war in which its troops would seek to destroy remaining rocket launching bases and crews and munitions factories.

Under Mr. Jabari, Hamas also developed its own weapons industry in Gaza, building long-range rockets as well as drones that they hoped to fly over Israel just as Israeli drones roam the skies of Gaza, sowing fear in its population.

The current operation to eliminate the Hamas rocket launchers could serve to cripple the ability of Iran’s allies in Gaza from retaliating should Israel ever carry out its threat to attack Iranian nuclear facilities.

“Both Hamas and Islamic Jihad are building weapons with experts from Iran,” one top security official said Saturday, speaking on condition of anonymity. “What we took care of last night was their own production facility for U.A.V.’s,” he added, referring to unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones. “This was all the work of Jabari, who was a very sophisticated and strategic thinker.”

A number of recent Israeli military attacks were aimed at cutting the supply chain into Gaza. In late October, a munitions factory in Sudan was hit from the air. Israel did not acknowledge carrying out the attack, but the winks and nods of officials here make clear that it did. Israel has carried out several other such attacks on Sudan, including on convoys, in the past few years.

In addition, Mossad agents killed a Hamas official in a Dubai hotel in early 2010 because he was thought to be crucial to the Hamas supply chain of weapons and rockets into Gaza.

Egypt’s new Islamist government champions the right of Gaza to “resist” Israel. The Guardian reports that in recent months, Israel has asked Egypt to stop the flow of weapons from Libya and Sudan. Egypt claims to be trying, but an Egyptian security official pleads that it’s hard to stop smugglers in the Sinai since Mubarak’s security apparatus was dismantled.

[Nbadan]

Netanyahu has drawn a line in the sand, only this time, it's for the U.S.


According to a Maariv report, when speaking to a visiting delegation from the American Jewish Committee, Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel was simply not strong enough to force a halt to Iran's nuclear enrichment program. In order to halt the program, Bibi said, the U.S. would have to strike, and they must do so this year.

Netanyahu:

"The sanctions are only likely to stop Iran if there is a credible (military) threat over their head ... and in order for it to be a credible threat, you need to mean it, meaning that if the sanctions don't work – and they haven't until now – you will use it," he said.

He followed this up by saying that 2013 would be the last year America could effectively put an end to Iran's nuclear program. If not, they would get their hands on enriched uranium and build a bomb in "a short time" according to Netanyahu.


Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/netanyahu-tells-america-to-bomb-iran-2013-1#ixzz2JWbdi4Gn

[Wild Cobra]

Dan?

Are you employed?

I think you have too much time on your hands.

5XcKBmdfpWs

[spursncowboys]

Good for Israel