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 insists a precipitous U.S. withdrawal from Iraq would risk triggering a region-wide 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 a recent editorial.
The dangers were illustrated by the Israeli air strike earlier this month against a mystery Syrian target, the details of which have not been confirmed.
Unusually, Israeli officials have refused to comment on the raid, leaving 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 in the Arab world and 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 being supplied by North Korea. Citing anonymous U.S. officials, The Washington Post reported Friday that Israel and the U.S. had shared intelligence before the strike about the presence of North Korean nuclear experts in Syria.
Nerves set on edge
Few analysts doubt that the 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 who now lectures in conflict studies in Beirut.
The incident has set nerves on edge in this region, where memories of the war unleashed in Lebanon last summer by Hezbollah’s abduction of two Israeli soldiers are still 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.
The center has just completed a study on the chances of a regional war, he said. It concluded that the chances of what Alani called “an accidental war” that would escalate to include the U.S. and Iran were “high.”
“There are a number of flash points that make us believe an accidental war is likely,” he said.
Among those are the Persian Gulf, where U.S. and Iranian warships patrol in close proximity; Iraq, where the U.S. accuses Iran of supporting Shiite militias; the elevated tensions between Israel and Syria; the possibility that Israel will launch a pre-emptive strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities; and Lebanon, which has been thrown into further turmoil by the assassination of an anti-Syrian legislator on the eve of a presidential election.
In some ways, there already is a proxy war in the region, with conflicts between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, 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 are encouraging an arms spending spree by Arab nations.
The U.S. is planning arms sales in excess of $50 billion to the region over the next 10 years, including $30 billion destined for Israel and more than $20 billion to Saudi Arabia and other gulf nations. Saudi Arabia announced the additional purchase of $8 billion worth of British Typhoon fighter jets.
The Syrians are reportedly sealing a $900 million deal to buy upgraded anti-missile systems from Russia. At a military parade in Tehran on Saturday, Iran unveiled a long-range missile capable of hitting Israel. Days earlier, Iran warned that it is ready to retaliate if Israel attacks Iran.
Sending a message
The Israeli strike on Syria may nonetheless have diminished 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 underscored that it is in no position to wage war against Israel’s superior force, he said. The strike also sent a message to Iran that Israel is capable of striking at will.
Goksel, like many others in the region, thinks a rerun of last summer’s war is likely. In that conflict, Israel failed to eliminate Hezbollah as a threat to Israel’s northern border.
Both sides now say they have recovered their deterrent capacities.
Hezbollah is embroiled in Lebanon’s domestic political turmoil and almost certainly has no wish right now to provoke another confrontation, said Hilal Khashan, a political scientist at the American University of Beirut. But the next war could be much bigger, perhaps involving Syria, the main transshipment point for Iran’s military supplies to Hezbollah.
“Israel … failed to conclude the last war on its terms,” he said. “The next time, it has to win convincingly.”
Paradoxically, the tensions crackling across the region may sustain a balance of peace, if only because so many players are so acutely aware of the risks of war, said David Hartwell, Middle East editor for Jane’s Country Risks.
“At the moment there’s certainly enough distrust that little incidents could be misconstrued and escalate,” Hartwell said. “But there’s also enough acknowledgment in the region that any kind of conflict is in no one’s interests.
Though, he added, “that doesn’t mean it won’t happen.”
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lsly@tribune.com
