Al-Assad Says Syria Has S-300 Missile Batteries

The big story this morning being reported by Anne Barnard from Beirut, "Assad Says Syria Has Received Advanced Missiles From Russia," was widely predicted to be the outcome of the European Union's decision to lift its arms embargo on Syria. -- Russia would respond by shipping the S-300 air defense missiles. And so it has come to pass, though Israel denies that any shipment has been made. Here's what "Yuval Steinitz, Israel’s minister of strategic and intelligence affairs, told an audience of reporters and diplomats in Jerusalem on Tuesday":

He said that the Russian S-300 systems were not just defensive weapons but could also be used offensively. With a range of around 125 to 185 miles, he said, they could threaten civilian and military aircraft deep inside Israeli territory.

The question now is whether Israel will make another bombing run, adding to the three it has made so far this year. Israel says it will. If so, how will Syria and Hezbollah respond?

These are the questions the West and the Gulf monarchies want us to be asking ourselves. They prefer people to be transfixed by the fear of force rather than making an accurate assessment of the situation. An accurate assessment would surely take note that news of equal weight to delivery of the S-300s is the shift in positions by the Syrian opposition meeting since last week in Istanbul. In Bernard's story she says that Assad's departure is now an opposition prerequisite for peace talks. Just yesterday Hala Droubi and Rick Gladstone reported in "Chances of U.N. Peace Talks on Syria Appear Dim as Both Sides Dig In" that

The Syrian Coalition, the main umbrella opposition group, said that it welcomed the idea of negotiations but that Mr. Assad and his security and military subordinates must “step down and be excluded from the political process.” 

While the Syrian Coalition statement did not call those demands preconditions to negotiations, it did not commit to attending an international conference under United Nations auspices in Geneva, which both the Americans and the Russians have been pressing to hold as early as next month.

The story by Droubi and Gladstone is worth reading to get a sense of the bloated gravy train that the Syrian Coalition is. It has many masters, many funders. The West is trying to garnish the group with moderates. At this point the opposition has less to do with the democratic aspirations of working people than an upscale brothel in Doha:

A bloc of four leading anti-Assad activist organizations issued a statement strongly criticizing the Syrian Coalition, asserting that it had “failed to fulfill its responsibility to represent the great Syrian people’s revolution at the organizational, political and humanitarian levels.” 

Samir Nachar, a member of the Syrian Coalition, said in a telephone interview that the opposition was under pressure by supportive foreign governments to add new liberal members “to bring internal balance to the group.” Others said that of 23 new names suggested, participants in the Istanbul meeting had agreed on only eight of them.

The resolution passed yesterday in Geneva by the U.N. Human Rights Council calling for an end to the fighting in Qusayr and criticizing the intervention of foreign fighters on behalf of the Assad government is an absurdity. Everyone knows that foreign fighters and arms are what makes the rebellion possible at this point. Without foreign fighters and arms the Syrian uprising would have gone the way of Bahrain long ago.

This is statecraft on full display. And what does one see? Not to be too Blakean here, but one sees the operation of dark Satanic Mills. Great Powers thrive on war. With peace talks scuttled by the demands of a farcical opposition -- an opposition fed and clothed by the West and its monarchical allies in the Persian Gulf -- it is clear the West desires more war.

Twelve years after 9/11 and with war winding down in Afghanistan and Pakistan -- or so Obama assured us last week -- great diplomatic effort is being spent ginning up the next war. The Arab Spring seems a distant memory.