CNN, quoting a U.S. official, reported that Israel has carried our air
strikes in Latakia, Syria, targeting a shipment of SA-8 surface-to-air missiles
and related equipment that were to be delivered to the Hezbollah. Earlier
today, Al Arabiya also reported that Israel was behind the air raid on a
military base in the city of Latakia. That attacks reportedly happened on
Wednesday.
Eyewitnesses told the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights that the
explosions took place near Snobar Jableh, south of Latakia.
The official Lebanese news agency reported that Israeli aircrafts were sighted on multiple occasions Wednesday in the south of the country.
Israeli sources declined to comment on the reports.
Latakia is said to house a large number of Quds Force military advisors.
Image credit: Latakia, Syria (Google)
The official Lebanese news agency reported that Israeli aircrafts were sighted on multiple occasions Wednesday in the south of the country.
Israeli sources declined to comment on the reports.
Latakia is said to house a large number of Quds Force military advisors.
Image credit: Latakia, Syria (Google)
21 comments:
" Latakia is said to house a large number of Quds Force military advisors."
I'm sure that Israel wasn't targeting the Quds Force advisors, and if any were killed in the attack, that would be merely an accident.
not a bad thing, but merely a small unintentional favor for the Syrian people
Little do you know that it was also small favor for the Iranian people as well.
excellent reply.
"Latakia is said to house a large number of Quds Force military advisors."
Advisors or observers? Previous media reports had referred to IRGC-QF "teams" in observer status, mainly concerned with logistical support.
The Syrian Army has a great deal more experience with COIN than the IRGC.
Well done Israeli Air Force.
Where are all the Arm Chair General and (Bache Basijis) on this site who predicted that now the Syrain army has S-400 and they can even shoot down Israeli fighter jets over Tel Aviv ??
So Syrian people should be grateful for being attacked by a foreign state? Thank the white man for his bomb attacks?
VERY EASY!
It is very easy to fool someone in Tel Aviv!. Hell bent to make a hit and pretend to deny, the IDF can be easily touted to strike by moving out a ten trailer convoy of empty cylinders in a bumpy rough road to the direction of Lebanon!. NUTS in Tel Aviv will order a strike and pretend it was some high precision missiles from Iran OR Russia stopped from reaching Hezbollah!. cowards! or a ploy to win some approval for the spiraling budget of the IDF!! from the Knesset !.
Well anyone claiming on this site or elsewhere that the Syrian army got hold of even a single S-400 battery would be either clearly uninformed of publicly available sources on the matter, including Russian official statements regarding it, or being (as you say) cheap regime followers/propagandists, some kind of would-be ideologues trying to give themselves credit by making sensational claims.
What is known and declared so far is that the Kremlin has denied Assad's declarations last summer about having obtained the first samples of the much coveted advanced air defense system, and went as far as saying the any shipment of the weapon system, if they ever materialize, would take place no sooner than in mid-2014 in the best case scenario, and with reason : they wouldn't want their latest piece of expensive export hardware fall into the wrong hand, either pro-western or pro-GCC. That pretty much closes that argument.
Now, with that said, it is interesting to see how the IDF is once again handling yet another violation of all international norms in performing a deep strike in foreign territory when it deems it necessary for its interests, and, as usual, get away with it through plausible deniability. Former Syrian intelligence agent Afaq Ahmad, a defector now in exile in France, put it best by telling Al-Jazeera yesterday that Israel, after several unanswered strikes on the country, is now fully aware that Assad has lost any capacity to respond such acts of blatant and direct aggression, by fear of opening a new critical front with a powerful army de-facto allied with anti-regime fighters on the ground, on top of whatever challenges they are currently dealing in the ongoing Civil War, and so, despite repeatedly making empty threats to retaliate on every such occasions they are hit ard and humiliated in an unannounced way.
Israel just keeps on performing those regular strikes to basically show what it perceives as a need to show-off its persistent regional prowess in the most effective and noticeable way, short of being able to get close to its Iranian targets despite quasi-weekly saber-rattling by Netanyahu for years now.What I personally find sad here is that they seem to be expiating their frustrations towards their other un-achievable goals (like crushing Hezbollah or Iran, which have a known and/or demonstrated ability to respond in kind) by resorting instead to attack their weaker neighbor already grappling with catastrophic internal unrest.
And what is even more sad is that we never witness the Israeli Air Force target even ONE of the countless Al-Qaida-linked pro-Saudi elements present in many strongholds throughout Syria to this day, and rather always choose to weaken the armed forces standing in their face instead.
I guess the "terrorist threat with a chemical weapon" is no longer a public option considering the spectacularly well performed destruction of Syria's chemical weapons arsenal, which is one the greatest events that have ever happened to the troubled region and its safe future secured of some of its most deadly WMDs in decades... unfortunately, not much of the same can be said about Israel's actions, that simply stick at moving forward its own complex interests and agenda, and stockpiling its own WMDs by the hundreds if not more and deny access to any international regulating body (while preaching it to Iran and Syria), rather than to work and contribute to the greater good in the region.
-A
What you're saying apllies to the regime in Tehran that parades welded and painted barrels on top of trucks and calls them S300 missiles. As you know that didn't fool anybody except for those gullible idiots that believe everything the regime shovels at them.
Another act of war. It is clear to the whole world, who is the real threat to the region. The zionist occupation.
Anon 5:14AM
Good observation!
IAF and the USAF are the most accomplished air forces ever. Very few airforces come close to matching either one...those of the Middle East and North Africa are certainly not among them. The IAF and USAF are in a league of their own, absolute pros. They know how to operate against their opponents and perform in an astounding manner.
The Arab air forces, including its look alike buddy the Iranian one, are merely paper tigers. Easily outclassed.
Anonymous November 1, 2013 at 5:14 AM, "Where are all the Arm Chair General?" There is no need for them, while you armchair air marshals are pontificating here and celebrating an act of state terrorism.
I`m amazed anyone is still repeating that "oil barrel" idiocy,if those systems were fakes then they were damn good ones,but then I`m sure you thought that the rq170 the iranians captured was a fake too
http://www.uskowioniran.com/2010/04/iran-s-300-type-launcher-and-radar.html
AnonymousNovember 1, 2013 at 10:30 AM
The israelis avoided going head to head with any of the syrian air defences by launching stand off weapons from inside lebanese airspace,their biggest fear would be Hezbollahs acquisition of long range air defences that could destroy israeli aircraft while they were still in israeli airspace,the last person,a certain mr saddam hussein,who thought irans airforce was a paper tiger ended up regretting that assessment,of course irans real striking power lies in its ballistic missile forces,the largest and most capable in the M.E. and all of israel as well as all the us military infrastructure in the region are in range of these
Iran's missiles are no match for the capabilities of Israel's military weapons and should Iran use its missiles to bomb Israel's cities, the Israelis could respond by wiping Tehran from the page of history.
the empty and empty-headed boasts about Iran's capabilities do not change the truth of iran's relative weakness and inability to project military power.
That is entirely correct November 2, 2013 at 3:55 AM,
in all of its unexpected strikes against Syria since July, the IDF carefully avoided to even enter Syrian airspace and on every occasion instead resorted to stand-off weaponry, and so both in order to minimize the inherent danger of intervention for its pilots, and also more importantly, to be able to provide denial latitude for the Israeli regime as well Assad himself, for whom the growing humiliation incurred by those repeated unanswered acts of aggression on his country and its capital, and the ensuing pressure he is sure to get from his surrounding military top brass to react at least in some symbolic way are sure to prove potentially dangerous if pushed to the wall from every direction despite his total demonstrated lack of courage towards his historical neighboring enemy since 2007, long before any Civil War (other than the legitimacy of his rule and its subsequent wariness and reluctance about having to wage a losing war with the technically superior IDF), constituted an excuse for him to just stand and watch his strategic infrastructure get bombed the hell out.
The recent surge in media complaints from various Israeli officials against the latest leak the American administrated probably willingly let give away their responsibility on this latest incident is a testimony to the above assertion.
Now, of course, the tide of the civil war won't be changed an iota from a couple of completely outdated SA-3 batteries get destroyed on some remote air defense storage base, and every player both inside and outside of Syria at the moment knows this, including the perpetrator of these attacks. The idea is merely to give credit to the IDF and the Likud government's supposed Iron Fist in dealing with trouble abroad, at a time where its impotence to follow words with deeds on the Iranian dossier is becoming a more and more blatant a weakness for the world to see, notably through Bibi's non-stop bickering at Iran-US negotiations, and his Washington-Tel Aviv flight frenzy, with some meeting requests even turned down by Obama, which have made him ridiculed including in the Knesset.
Thus, regularly striking Syria this way provides him with a much-needed breathing room for internal consumption and see him applauded by every major Israeli news outlet rather than giving any true momentum to their currently unreachable goals concerning either Hezbollah or Iran, or even the Syrian civil war itself for that matter, from which they certainly do not control the ongoing development let alone the final issue. So long as they don't go in full scale bombing campaign against Hezbollah and Syrian armed forces fighting on the front-lines, I guess my opinion won't change.
Let them see how they perform once they encounter IRIAF most upgraded air-defense squadrons coupled with the air-defense nets that will be waiting for them on the whole way to their targets deep into Iranian territory. Oh but isn't that exactly what Bibi has been trying to sell to the world on a monthly and sometimes weekly basis since what, 2004 ? Looks like he's been having trouble convincing his own brass twice since 2010 to move forward with his brilliant plan of making the IAF eradicate everything Iranian on its course to the critical nuclear sites he dreams of blowing up every night or so, and having all his planes come safely back home and celebrate their unquestioned superiority in doing the job the Hollywood way....
-A
AF, you comments, as is the norm with them lately, were direct and personal attacks on the authors of thgis blog, and will not be published. If you have anything intelligent to say about the topic of the posts, say so and we will publish it.
ufred November 2, 2013 at 1:25 PM
And just how would the israelis do this?,for israel even launching a single airstrike against iran would be a large and very risky undertaking with no gaurentee of success,hence the reluctance of the israelis to try and attack irans nuclear sites and the clamor for the us to do it instead,israels missile forces are tiny compared to irans,there is no comparison between the two forces,they are there purely for the delivery of nuclear weapons so israels means of retaliation against iran is very limited at best,either a very risky air strike or a very small ballistic missile strike.The biggest problem for israel is that it does not wish to exchange dimona,or any other target in israel for that matter,for natanz,and this is the minimum that it would have to accept in order to strike iran.There would be little that israel could do in the event of an iranian missile strike except to sit tight and absorb it and hope that the abm systems would take out some of the incoming missiles before they in turn were destroyed.So far the israelis dont appear to like any of those options and frankly who can blame them.As far as irans so called "inability" to project power is concerned the iranian missile forces can hit virtually any target within 2000+ kilometers of irans borders,I`d call that pretty good power projection considering that all of israel and a good portion of the us military assets in the region fall within that range,or to put it another way,its a hell of a lot easier for iran to hit israel than it is for israel to hit iran and both sides know this.I think that the only one here making "empty-headed boasts" is you,you`ve been drinking israels kool aid for so long that you think them invincible when clearly they are not
And just how would the israelis do this?,
are you serious? did you actually read and understand the comment?
as a response to Iran launch missile targeting Israel's cities and civilian population, Israel could flatten Tehran with a single salvo of Israeli missiles launched from a submarine in the Gulf.
Iran has no defense against such a strike.
Oh so all your estimations of a successful Israeli war against Iran are actually based on the asumption that the IDF will rapidly resort to nuclear strikes on a non-nuclear armed country and thus answer conventionnal missile strikes with a nuclear holocaust on Tehran using Germany gifted submarines ? Alright then. I could almost agree if I didnt consider this option as a joke.
AnonymousNovember 3, 2013 at 9:27 AM
Its just the usual idiocy one expects from a zionist,he just cant face the fact that when it comes to iran israels options are few and far between and all of them poor,israel may try and act the part of the mad dog but even the most rabid zionist would realise that the use of nuclear weapons would turn it into an instant international pariah
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