At the brink: the ‘limited’ strike


To all those cheering along from the sidelines (Arab League) and hoping the US ‘limited’ strike on Syria would somehow tip the scales in favor of the Syrian opposition and the Free Syrian Army, think again! This foolhardy strike would have truly ‘catastrophic’ consequences as the Russians have warned. Iran is prepared to retaliate should the US strike Syria, but not against US military targets against Israel. An attack on Syria “means the immediate destruction of Israel,” said General Mohammad Ali Jafari, chief of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.

Even if Iran does not retaliate, Syria could and probably will. Many seem to think that because the regime did not retaliate against Israel whenever the later bombed targets within Syria that the regime would absorb the US hit and not strike back. The regime was always wary to maintain a tense stand off at all times with Israel, not wishing to give the US or Israel any excuse to attempt regime change in Syria, but this proposed strike will be a game changer.

There is no doubt the Syrian regime has the capability to strike back. It has the advanced P-800 Yakhont supersonic anti-ship missile which has a 300km range and can in theory target and hit US warships now stationed in the Eastern Mediterranean. Syria could also fire surface to surface missiles at Israel, and Syria’s air defense missile system, reportedly the best in the world after China and North Korea, could shoot down low-flying, subsonic Tomahawk cruise missiles fired from US warships.

It can be in the Syrian regime’s interest to turn this limited fight into a wider regional conflict, this way it could conceivably turn moral and diplomatic support from Russia into tangible, direct military and logistics support. If Russia is not prepared to go to war over Syria I wonder what it would take for Russia to actually go to war. If Iran strikes Israel as it promises to do if Syria is hit, would the United States retaliate and strike Iran? And if the US strikes Iran would Russia stand on the sidelines or would it step in to support its main Middle East ally Iran?

The question that everyone is asking above all is: “Can the US and Russia fight a limited conventional war in the Middle East without using nuclear weapons against each other?” I think they can and they probably will sooner or later. Since the end of the Second World War the balance of global power has been frozen in time, so to speak, the victors in the war are still nominally the official global military powers. I think many lesser powers are eager to fight a conventional war, even a limited war in the Middle East, to shake up the global balance of power, should that happen the US would be relegated to minor power status at best and a lot of countries would have to start learning Farsi, Chinese or Russian!

There is no doubt that we stand at a crucial historic juncture for human civilization, one that could define what the next two hundred years would be like. It is likely that the deserts, towns and cities of Arabia will be the battlefield where such a future war will be fought.

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