Israel Matzav

Syria claims Russia prevented it from intervening in last summer's war

MEMRI reports that Syrian deputy foreign minister Faisal Al-Miqdad told the UAE daily al-Khaleej that Russia prevented the Syrians from intervening in last summer's war between Israel and Hezbullah in Lebanon.

Al-Miqdad claimed that the war broke out because the Arab countries had tried to eliminate Hezbullah.

The second claim is pure nonsense, but the first claim is quite interesting. You may recall that the 'neocons' who dominated the US Defense Department last summer expected Israel to attack Syria. My hunch is that Russia really did hold the Syrians off (if they needed to hold them off at all) because they expected Syria to lose - badly. Recall that last June, Israeli war planes buzzed Bashar Assad's summer palace outside Damascus while Assad was there and the only action was that the Syrians pressured Khaled Meshaal to release Gilad Shalit.

It seems to me that the Russians may have prevented the Syrians from intervening by telling the Syrians that if they did intervene, they were on their own.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:01 AM