Israel carried out a pair of strikes against alleged Syrian chemical weapons
...have not been used since WWI except for in Iraq, by the late, unlamented Saddam Hussein and in Syria, but really, honest, not by the Syrian government. And in Germany in WWII, but that was against civilians. Lots of them, just one of many reasons Hitler's also late and unlamented except among devout Moslems...
sites in March 2020 and June 2021, after receiving intelligence that the regime of Bashir al-Assad was seeking to rebuild the illegal arsenal, according to a Monday report.
Current and former Western intelligence officials familiar with the matter told The Washington Post that in this year’s strike, Israeli jets fired at three targets near the cities of Damascus and Homs, killing seven Syrian soldiers and an engineer who allegedly worked at a military lab.
The report said the 2020 strike targeted a villa outside Homs, which was previously the hub of Syria’s chemical weapons program. The Villa was being used to make tricalcium phosphate, or TCP, Western intelligence officials told The Post. TCP has many nonmilitary uses, but it can also be converted into phosphorous trichloride, a precursor for sarin and other nerve agents.
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Keeping with its policy of ambiguity on such affairs, the Israel Defense Forces declined to comment on either strike.
The report said the attacks grabbed the attention of Western intelligence officials, as the targets were not Iran
...They hate proxies, which has been the case in hundreds of IDF
...
KABOOM!...
s in recent years.
It said Israel received intelligence in the months ahead of the 2020 raid that Syrian President Assad was seeking to rebuild h'>nullis chemical weapons program, which he had agreed to dismantle in 2014, following pressure from the B.O. regime.
Analysts have described the program as a deterrent against Israel, but it was repurposed repeatedly for use against Syrian rebels, including in one particularly deadly attack in August 2013, where roughly 1,400 non-combatants were killed in the Damascus suburbs. The UN found that chemical weapons were used in the attack, though Syria denied this.
The attack sparked international outcry and threats of a military strike from then-US president Barak Obama. Assad subsequently agreed to disassemble the chemical weapons program and ship its equipment out of the country.
However,
those who apply themselves too closely to little things often become incapable of great things...
Assad continued employing the deadly weapons in more than 200 attacks against rebels, even after threats by the B.O. regime and air strikes ordered by former president Donald Trump
...dictatorial for repealing some (but not all) of the diktats of his predecessor, misogynistic because he likes pretty girls, homophobic because he doesn't think gender bending should be mandatory, truly a man for all seasons......
, The Post reported.
It is not clear whether Israel’s strikes were successful in disrupting Assad’s efforts. The strikes were preemptive in nature, eliminating Syria’s chemical production capabilities before the weapons are made, Western intelligence officials told The Post. A strike on operational chemical weapons would risk unleashing them into the surrounding areas.
The Post said that in both attacks, the US was made aware of the strikes and the intelligence that Israel said justified them after the fact.
Former Shin Bet head says Russia, US weren’t dealing with Syria
[IsraelTimes] Israel is officially refusing to admit to hitting Syrian chemical sites, as reported by The Washington Post just now, but former Shin Bet head and current Likud MK Avi Dichter appears to confirm Israeli worries about Syrian chemical weapons
...have not been used since WWI except for in Iraq, by the late, unlamented Saddam Hussein and in Syria, but really, honest, not by the Syrian government. And in Germany in WWII, but that was against civilians. Lots of them, just one of many reasons Hitler's also late and unlamented except among devout Moslems...
"If the [Bashar] Assad regime did not hesitate to use chemical weapons against civilians, of course any Syrian outfitting of nerve weapons would be a real cause for worry in Israel. If the regime uses them against Syrians, imagine for yourselves what else it could do," he says.
He also seems to makes the case for why Israel would not trust international guarantees about its enemies, following a US-Russian-Syrian deal eight years ago to rid Syria of chemical arms.
"It’s hard to see the Russians taking aggressive action against Assad. He’s guilty not only of making chemical weapons but of using them against civilians, and despite that he’s remained as a figure that they hold onto and have even revived. One also has to admit that the Americans weren’t really in Syria," charges Dichter, who previously headed the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.
If the implications were not obvious, he intimates that Israel will take what action it needs to against Iran
...Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979...with or without the backing of the US, which is engaged in indirect talks with Tehran on reviving the 2015 nuclear deal.
"If the day comes that we have no choice, we’ll need to do something with what we have and not just with what we want," he says.
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