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New Tensions Between Israel and Syria

Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad says He Has the S-300 Missile

The war of words between Israel and Syria ratcheted up today after Bashar Al-Assad told a Lebanese television interview that he had already received the first shipment of Soviet S-300 missiles. The announcement came after Israel’s national security advisor Yaakov Amidror that Israel would not allow the anti-aircraft missile batteries to become operational.

Israeli officials declined to comment after Assad’s interview.

“We’ve been quite explicit about what we will do,” one senior Israeli official told The Media Line on condition of anonymity. “We’ve made ourselves very clear.”

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu even traveled to Russia earlier this month to try to stop the sale. Russian President Vladimir Putin said the deal had been signed in 2010, before the civil war broke out in Syria, and that Russia could not go back on the deal now.

Strategic Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz said the S-300 is an offensive weapon because its 125-mile range could threaten Israeli planes inside Israeli airspace. He said the missiles could even threaten planes landing at Tel Aviv’s international airport.

The S-300 missiles are not new, and have been around since the late 1970’s. But defense analysts say the latest version can launch six missiles at once, each of which can destroy planes flying at several times the maximum speed of the F-16 and F-22 fighter jet. Those are the planes most commonly used by both the Israeli and US air forces. If Syria did receive the missiles and was able to use them, it makes an Israeli strike on Syria far more costly.

Israel is even more concerned that the missiles could fall into the hands of Hizbullah in south Lebanon.

“Their defense against our planes would be much better than it is now,” Uzi Eilam, a military expert at the INSS think tank in Tel Aviv told The Media Line. “At the same time the chances that this missile will arrive in Syria in quantities and then be transferred immediately to Hizbullah is quite low.”

Eilam said similar systems are deployed all over the world – including India, Turkey and South Korea — and that there are ways to cope with them.

“I don’t want to get into classified information,” he said. “But it is likely that the fact that these missiles have been around for so long means that ways of dealing with them have been developed.”

Even if the first shipment has already arrived in Syria, it will take several months before the system is operational. Because of its complexity, Syrian soldiers will have to be trained both in Russia and in Syria before they will be able to fire the missiles.

It is not clear what Israel’s reaction will be. Earlier this month, Israel reportedly struck twice in Syria to prevent long-range missiles from Iran from reaching Hizbullah. But this time the missiles are coming from Russia, one of Israel’s diplomatic and trading partners.

In the interview on Lebanese television, Assad also threatened to retaliate against Israel if it strikes in Syria.

“The Syrian government will not stand in the way of any Syrian groups that want to wage a war of resistance to liberate the Golan,” Assad was quoted as saying, referring to the Golan Heights which Israel acquired in 1967 and later annexed.

He also stressed the strong connections between Syrian troops and Hizbullah forces. European officials have said thousands of Hizbullah troops are fighting in Syria on Assad’s behalf and several dozen have already been killed in fighting.