Lebanon @ MindSay

I subscribe to a financial newsletter, Outside the Box, of which John Mauldin is the editor.  Honestly, I don’t understand a lot of it, but I try to glean something helpful and increase my knowledge.  Once in a while, Mr. Maudlin publishes a piece by George Friedman with Stratfor, a civilian intelligence agency.  This article is lengthy, but it’s worth your time.

A Mystery in the Middle East

By George Friedman 

"The Arab-Israeli region of the Middle East is filled with rumors of war. That is about as unusual as the rising of the sun, so normally it would not be worth mentioning. But like the proverbial broken clock that is right twice a day, such rumors occasionally will be true. In this case, we don't know that they are true, and certainly it's not the rumors that are driving us. But other things — minor and readily explicable individually — have drawn our attention to the possibility that something is happening.

The first thing that drew our attention was a minor, routine matter. Back in February, the United States started purchasing oil for its Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR). The SPR is a reserve of crude oil stored in underground salt domes. Back in February, it stood at 96.2 percent of capacity, which is pretty full as far as we are concerned. But the U.S. Department of Energy decided to increase its capacity. This move came in spite of record-high oil prices and the fact that the purchase would not help matters. It also came despite potential political fallout, since during times like these there is generally pressure to release reserves. Part of the step could have been the bureaucracy cranking away, and part of it could have been the feeling that the step didn't make much difference. But part of it could have been based on real fears of a disruption in oil supplies. By itself, the move meant nothing. But it did cause us to become thoughtful.

Also in February, someone assassinated Imad Mughniyah, a leader of Hezbollah, in a car bomb explosion in Syria. It was assumed the Israelis had killed him, although there were some suspicions the Syrians might have had him killed for their own arcane reasons. In any case, Hezbollah publicly claimed the Israelis killed Mughniyah, and therefore it was expected the militant Shiite group would take revenge. In the past, Hezbollah responded not by attacking Israel but by attacking Jewish targets elsewhere, as in the Buenos Aires attacks of 1992 and 1994.

In March, the United States decided to dispatch the USS Cole, then under Sixth Fleet command, to Lebanese coastal waters. Washington later replaced it with two escorts from the Nassau (LHA-4) Expeditionary Strike Group (ESG), reportedly maintaining a minor naval presence in the area. (Most of the ESG, on a regularly scheduled deployment, is no more than a few days sail from the coast, as it remains in the Mediterranean Sea.) The reason given for the American naval presence was to serve as a warning to the Syrians not to involve themselves in Lebanese affairs. The exact mission of the naval presence off the Levantine coast — and the exact deterrent function it served — was not clear, but there they were. The Sixth Fleet has gone out of its way to park and maintain U.S. warships off the Lebanese coast.

Hezbollah leaders being killed by the Israelis and the presence of American ships off the shores of Mediterranean countries are not news in and of themselves. These things happen. The killing of Mughniyah is notable only to point out that as much as Israel might have wanted him dead, the Israelis knew this fight would escalate. But anyone would have known this. So all we know is that whoever killed Mughniyah wanted to trigger a conflict. The U.S. naval presence off the Levantine coast is notable in that Washington, rather busy with matters elsewhere, found the bandwidth to get involved here as well.

With the situation becoming tense, the Israelis announced in March that they would carry out an exercise in April called Turning Point 2. Once again, an Israeli military exercise is hardly interesting news. But the Syrians apparently got quite interested. After the announcement, the Syrians deployed three divisions — two armored, one mechanized — to the Lebanese-Syrian border in the Bekaa Valley, the western part of which is Hezbollah's stronghold. The Syrians didn't appear to be aggressive. Rather, they deployed these forces in a defensive posture, in a way walling off their part of the valley.

The Syrians are well aware that in the event of a conventional war with Israel, they would experience a short but exciting life, as they say. They thus are hardly going to attack Israel. The deployment therefore seemed intended to keep the Israelis on the Lebanese side of the border — on the apparent assumption the Israelis were going into the Bekaa Valley. Despite Israeli and Syrian denials of the Syrian troop buildup along the border, Stratfor sources maintain that the buildup in fact happened. Normally, Israel would be jumping at the chance to trumpet Syrian aggression in response to these troop movements, but, instead, the Israelis downplayed the buildup.

When the Israelis kicked off Turning Point 2, which we regard as a pretty interesting name, it turned out to be the largest exercise in Israeli history. It involved the entire country, and was designed to test civil defenses and the ability of the national command authority to continue to function in the event of an attack with unconventional weapons — chemical and nuclear, we would assume. This was a costly exercise. It also involved calling up reserves, some of them for the exercise, and, by some reports, others for deployment to the north against Syria. Israel does not call up reserves casually. Reserve call-ups are expensive and disrupt the civilian economy. These appear small, but in the environment of Turning Point 2, it would not be difficult to mobilize larger forces without being noticed.

The Syrians already were deeply concerned by the Israeli exercise. Eventually, the Lebanese government got worried, too, and started to evacuate some civilians from the South. Hezbollah, which still hadn't retaliated for the Mughniyah assassination, also claimed the Israelis were about to attack it, and reportedly went on alert and mobilized its forces. The Americans, who normally issue warnings and cautions to everyone, said nothing to try to calm the situation. They just sat offshore on their ships.

It is noteworthy that Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak canceled a scheduled visit to Germany this week. The cancellation came immediately after the reports of the Syrian military redeployment were released. Obviously, Barak needed to be in Israel for Turning Point 2, but then he had known about the exercise for at least a month. Why cancel at the last minute? While we are discussing diplomacy, we note that U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney visited Oman — a country with close relations with Iran — and then was followed by U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. By itself not interesting, but why the high-level interest in Oman at this point?

Now let's swing back to September 2007, when the Israelis bombed something in Syria near the Turkish border. As we discussed at the time, for some reason the Israelis refused to say what they had attacked. It made no sense for them not to trumpet what they carefully leaked — namely, that they had attacked a nuclear facility. Proving that Syria had a secret nuclear program would have been a public relations coup for Israel. Nevertheless, no public charges were leveled. And the Syrians remained awfully calm about the bombing.

Rumors now are swirling that the Israelis are about to reveal publicly that they in fact bombed a nuclear reactor provided to Syria by North Korea. But this news isn't all that big. Also rumored is that the Israelis will claim Iranian complicity in building the reactor. And one Israeli TV station reported April 8 that Israel really had discovered Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, which it said had been smuggled to Syria.

Now why the Bush administration wouldn't have trumpeted news of the Syrian reactor worldwide in September 2007 is beyond us, but there obviously were some reasons — assuming the TV report is true, which we have no way of establishing. In fact, we have no idea why the Israelis are choosing this moment to rehash the bombing of this site. But whatever their reason, it certainly raises a critical question. If the Syrians are developing a nuclear capability, what are the Israelis planning to do about it?

No one of these things, by itself, is of very great interest. And taken together they do not provide the means for a clear forecast. Nevertheless, a series of rather ordinary events, taken together, can constitute something significant. Tensions in the Middle East are moving well beyond the normal point, and given everything that is happening, events are moving to a point where someone is likely to take military action. Whether Hezbollah will carry out a retaliatory strike or Israel a pre-emptive strike in Lebanon, or whether the Israelis' real target is Iran, tensions systematically have been ratcheted up to the point where we, in our simple way, are beginning to wonder whether something has to give.

All together, these events are fairly extraordinary. Ignoring all rhetoric — and the Israelis have gone out of their way to say that they are not looking for a fight — it would seem that each side, but particularly the Americans and Israelis, have gone out of their way to signal that they are expecting conflict. The Syrians have also signaled that they expect conflict, and Hezbollah always claims there is about to be conflict.

What is missing is this: who will fight whom, and why, and why now. The simple explanation is that Israel wants a second round with Hezbollah. But while that might be true, it doesn't explain everything else that has happened. Most important, it doesn't explain the simultaneous revelations about the bombing of Syria. It also doesn't explain the U.S. naval deployment. Is the United States about to get involved in a war with Hezbollah, a war that the Israelis should handle themselves? Are the Israelis going to topple Syrian President Bashar al Assad — and then wind up with a Sunni government, or worse, an Israeli occupation of Syria? None of that makes a lot of sense.

In truth, all of this may dissolve into nothing much. In intelligence analysis, however, sometimes a set of not-fully-coherent facts must be reported, and that is what we are doing now. There is no clear pattern; there is no obvious direction this is taking. Nevertheless, when we string together events from February until now, we see a persistently escalating pattern of behavior. In fact, what we can say most clearly is that there is escalation, without being able to say what is the clear direction of the escalation or the purpose.

We would like to wrap this up with a crystal clear explanation and forecast. But we can't. The motives of the various actors are opaque; and taken separately, the individual events all have quite innocent explanations. We are not prepared to say war is imminent, nor even what sort of war there would be. We are simply prepared to say that the course of events since February — and really since the September 2007 attack on Syria — have been startling, and they appear to be reaching some sort of hard-to-understand crescendo.

The bombing of Syria symbolizes our confusion. Why would Syria want a nuclear reactor and why put it on the border of Turkey, a country the Syrians aren't particularly friendly with? If the Syrians had a nuclear reactor, why would the Israelis be coy about it? Why would the Americans? Having said nothing for months apart from careful leaks, why are the Israelis going to speak publicly now? And if what they are going to say is simply that the North Koreans provided the equipment, what's the big deal? That was leaked months ago.

The events of September 2007 make no sense and have never made any sense. The events we have seen since February make no sense either. That is noteworthy, and we bring it to your attention. We are not saying that the events are meaningless. We are saying that we do not know their meaning. But we can't help but regard them as ominous."

Yossi Klein Halevi and Michael B. Oren writing for the Jewish World Review explain Israel’s existential fears. The threat of a nuclear arsenal by a Mohammedan nation in simplest form strategically removes almost all military superiority Israel has accrued over its short modern existence.

Israel is a haven for Jews to live in a freedom from political persecution for the first time since the Maccabees successfully resisted a Hellenic Syria (Seleucid dynasty established in the area after the death of Alexander the Great). The Maccabees successfully retook Jerusalem and purified the Temple in 164 BC. This day is celebrated by Judaism as Hanukah (aka Chanukah).

If the West abandons Israel to face a nuclear armed Mohammedan world, Israel’s military conventional forces will be nearly neutralized. An Iranian nuclear or chemical launched missile will encourage Syria and Hezbollah (and possibly other Mohammedan nations) to launch a conventional military assault on a crippled Israel.

Another scenario is the Israeli realization that the West will conclude to NOT prevent a nuclear Iran. Knowing what the strategical stakes are, Israel launches preemptive air strikes on Iran in the hope of slowing down nuclear armament. If Iran has no nukes it is probable they have chemical weapons. Iran definitely has the missile power to reach Israel. Iran launches missile strikes on Israel followed closely by tactical invasions by Syria, Hezbollah of Lebanon and radical Islamofascist terrorists from the Palestine Authority (or Palestine Liberation Organization), including infamous Hamas.

Keep in mind that the Jewish Homeland is just a little sliver of land that the arrogant Mohammedans begrudge the Jews. Twenty-first century technology and Western appeasement might produce the globes SECOND Holocaust in the deaths of millions of Jews. Over what? A mere parcel of land that was insignificant until Jews turned the land into an agricultural paradise. Before the Jewish arrivals in pre-modern Israel, the land was a waste area that Mohammedan Arabs and Turks had zero interest in.

The Mohammedans cannot stand that the Jews made the Land prosperous again because of their superiority complex. The Jews return to their homeland and Mohammedan Arabs wish to claim the credit for Jewish innovation with propaganda epithets like, “The right of return.”

There were hardly any Arabs in the sliver of Land known as Israel today, until Jewish prosperity provided jobs for Mohammedan Arabs (later created as Palestinian Arabs).

That is the brief scenario. Halevi and Oren go into greater detail of Israeli fears. (READ IT. This link will take you to this introduction. Simply scroll down to the Halevi and Oren assessment.)

The National Review Online conducted a symposium on Iraq Study Group (ISG). The names involved are Peter Brooks, Victor Davis Hanson, Clifford D. May and David Schenker.

The NRO panel of writers is unanimously critical of the ISG report. Some agree about criticizing Iraq for not doing their part to battle sectarianism in Iraq. Agreement ends there.

The NRO panel points out that dealing with Syria and Iran for the sake of ending chaos is ludicrous. Both of those nations thrive on chaos in order to be players in the Middle East. Dealing with Syria and Iran will mean America forcing to give something up that will be unpalatable at best and unenforceable at worst.

Dealing with Syria will sell out Lebanon and Israel. Syria will want to dominate Lebanonese politics and the return of the Golan Heights. The Golan Heights are used as an invasion buffer to continuously belligerent Syria.

Dealing with Iran will cause the West and America to live with a nuclear armed Iran. There are huge hints that America and the West are willing to acquiesce on this issue. I have heard talk from the new Secretary of Defense (designate) Robert Gates understands Iran’s need to go nuclear. Iran is surrounded by potentially nuclear armed enemies: Sunni Pakistan, Russia, Israel and American WMD armed Naval and Military in Iraq and in Afghanistan. That sounds like the go ahead to me.

Read the NRO Symposium written relating to the ISG.

Other posts on the ISG: Here, Here and Here.

The situation in Lebanon mystifies me. Hezbollah and a Christian faction led by the Aoun family have united to bring down the government of Prime Minister Siniora.

Here is the thing. I can understand Hezbollah attempting to bring Siniora. I can also understand Christians wishing the Siniora government’s demise.

Hezbollah Shi’ites is because Siniora has not totally walked the Syrian line. Christians are because of Siniora’s ineptitude in protecting anti-Syrian government PM’s and voices in Lebanon. In fact the last assassination (Pierre Gemayel) in Lebanon was a Christian that was murdered by Syrian agents or Hezbollah or both in collusion.

If Aoun has made some kind of deal with Hezbollah, he must be delusional. Does he not realize that a Hezbollah controlled Lebanon will be disastrous for Christians in Lebanon.

King Abdullah of Jordan is expressing in a public forum that three civil wars could be emerging in the Middle East.

The locations: Iraq, Lebanon and (so-called) Palestine.

King Abdullah senses that internecine strife is spiraling out of control in Iraq. He is correct. Blood feuds, revenge, inter-religion sectarian (Shia VS Sunni) and mutual hatred among radicals of the American presence are all mitigating factors in Iraq. The fledgling elected democratic government of Iraq has failed hugely in addressing much of the mitigating factors while relying on the U.S.A. to keep the seams of unity from tearing completely. Prime Minister Maliki needs to be more far and balanced. Maliki has failed greatly in this prospect.

Lebanon is ruled by a Syrian sympathetic government lead by President Lahoud. The Lebanese Prime Minister has the . . .

Read the full post at Slantright.com.