Panic in Tehran
Contrasting with all the optimism (by the Islamists) over Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's visit to New York is the grim reality in Iran itself. Dr. Jack Wheeler reports that the real story of Israel's raid on Syria three weeks ago is not what the target was (which is still a secret) but Syrian silence in the face of the raid. The Syrians are in shock because they had bought the top of the line Russian anti-aircraft equipment. And the Iranians are in a panic because they have the same Pantsyr S-1 missiles. And they failed. Totally.Hat Tip: Instapundit
Why would the Syrian government be so tight-lipped about an act of war perpetrated on their soil? The first half of the answer lies in this story that appeared in the Israeli media last month (8/13): Syria's Antiaircraft System Most Advanced In World. Syria has gone on a profligate buying spree, spending vast sums on Russian systems, 'considered the cutting edge in aircraft interception technology.' Syria now 'possesses the most crowded antiaircraft system in the world,' with 'more than 200 antiaircraft batteries of different types,' some of which are so new that they have been installed in Syria 'before being introduced into Russian operation service.' While you're digesting that, take a look at the map of Syria: Notice how far away Dayr az-Zawr is from Israel. An F15/16 attack there is not a tiptoe across the border, but a deep, deep penetration of Syrian airspace. And guess what happened with the Russian super-hyper-sophisticated cutting edge antiaircraft missile batteries when that penetration took place on September 6th. Nothing.I have said in the past that I did not expect a US attack on Iran until the summer of 2008. But maybe the time to hit Iran is now while they're still in a panic.
El blanko. Silence. The systems didn't even light up, gave no indication whatever of any detection of enemy aircraft invading Syrian airspace, zip, zero, nada. The Israelis (with a little techie assistance from us) blinded the Russkie antiaircraft systems so completely the Syrians didn't even know they were blinded. Now you see why the Syrians have been scared speechless. They thought they were protected - at enormous expense - only to discover they are defenseless. As in naked. Thus the Great Iranian Freak-Out - for this means Iran is just as nakedly defenseless as Syria.
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:52 AM
3 Comments:
Wow. You know, I was wondering why Syria wasn't doing more "posturing" over that "incident." That certainly would explain much.
Whatever the target was, it must have been really important. Israel and the US just gave away any future strategic surprise by letting the Syrian and Iranian enemy know now that we can turn off their anti-air defense networks.
Better they'd both found that out when smart bombs and cruise missiles were, beside Syrian targets, also taking out all the Iranian nuclear weapons facilities.
(And I bet our Russian "friends" in the Kremlin and military are also shocked and highly displeased that their latest, greatest -and very expensive- anti-aircraft missile systems have been shown by the US and Israel to be useless.
Or at least useless against the US and Israel.)
Dave,
If you follow the link you will see that the Russians immediately denied having sold them their top of the line equipment.
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