Chicago Tribune September 23, 2007
Mideast: Violence might increase
By Liz Sly
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Israeli jets strike a mysterious Syrian target, fueling speculation that Syria is joining Iran in the quest to acquire nuclear weapons. Another anti-Syrian politician is assassinated in Lebanon. The U.S. detains another Iranian in Iraq. And all the while a frenzied arms race is gathering pace, with countries from Iran to Libya racing to spend billions on sophisticated new weaponry.
Although the Bush administration continues to insist that a precipitous U.S. withdrawal from Iraq would risk triggering a regionwide conflagration, many in this region fear such a war could happen anyway.
“The sky over the region seems heavy with the clouds of war,” warned the independent Lebanese daily Al-Akbar in an editorial earlier this week, echoing the jittery mood prevailing across the Middle East.
The dangers were illustrated by the Israeli airstrike earlier this month against a mystery Syrian target in the remote northeast of the country, the details of which have not been confirmed.
Unusually, Israeli officials have refused to comment on the raid, leaving it to Syria to offer its version of events: that the jets were spotted over Syrian territory, that Syrian anti-aircraft gunners opened fire on them, and that in their haste to escape, the jets jettisoned missiles on an empty field.
That version has been given little credence, either in the Arab world or in Washington. Some reports have suggested the jets struck weapons destined for Lebanon’s Shiite Hezbollah movement, others that the planes hit a fledgling nuclear facility in the process of being supplied by North Korea. The Washington Post reported Friday, citing anonymous U.S. officials, that Israel and the U.S. had shared intelligence before the strike about the presence of North Korean nuclear experts in Syria.
On Saturday, North Korea’s No. 2 leader met with a Syrian delegation in Pyongyang, the North’s media reported, further fueling suspicions of a secret nuclear connection between the two countries. Kim Yong Nam, head of the North’s rubber-stamp legislature and titular head of state, had “a friendly talk” with the Syrian delegation, led by Saaeed Eleia Dawood, director of the organizational department of Syria’s Baath Arab Socialist Party, the North’s Korean Central News Agency reported.
Few analysts doubt that the Syrian target was significant. “It was an act of outright aggression against a state, and you don’t do that over something simple,” said Timur Goksel, a veteran of the UN force in southern Lebanon, UNIFIL, who now lectures in conflict studies in Beirut.
The incident has set nerves on edge in this fragile region, where memories of the war unleashed in Lebanon last summer by Hezbollah’s abduction of two Israeli soldiers still are fresh.
“We’re living under a volcano, and this volcano might last forever. But there’s a good possibility it will erupt for a very simple reason, and that it could escalate into a major conflict,” said Mustafa Alani, director of security studies at the Gulf Research Center in Dubai.
In some ways, there already is a proxy war in the region, with conflicts between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, between Sunni and Shiite militias in Iraq and the tensions in Lebanon all falling within the context of the broader struggle for influence between the U.S. and Iran.
“The other point of view is that we are already at war,” said John Pike of the Washington-based Globalsecurity.org.
Concerns that the U.S. will withdraw from Iraq before the country’s problems are resolved — leaving its allies exposed to the expansionist ambitions of a newly aggressive Iran — meanwhile are encouraging an arms spending spree on the part of Arab nations.
The Israeli strike on Syria nonetheless might have diminished rather than increased the chances of an imminent confrontation, by reminding everyone in the region who is the dominant military power, according to Goksel.
Syria’s muted response to the raid has exposed its vulnerabilities, underscoring that it is in no position to wage war against Israel’s superior force, he said. The strike also sent a powerful message to Iran that Israel is capable of striking across the region at will.
The Associated Press contributed.
© Copyright 2007, The Chicago Tribune
