Jordan to deploy four Patriot missile batteries to protect itself and Israel from Syria
There's something really weird about this story. France's Le Figaro is reporting that Jordan is going to deploy four Patriot missile batteries to protect itself and Israel from attack by Syria in case the Assad regime starts to fall.Quoting a European military expert, it said the the missile defense systems would be supplied by Germany, with US support. The US originally sold the systems to Germany 20 years ago.Okay. But why are these missile batteries going to Jordan and not to Israel? Here's some speculation:
The paper said Israel also privately supported the move.
The Patriots would be capable of intercepting Scud missiles fired by Syria en route to Israel, the expert reportedly said.
The paper noted that a cousin of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s, businessman Rami Makhlouf, had warned last May that Syria’s ongoing conflict would spread beyond its borders, to Israel, if the regime in Damascus felt threatened. “If there is no stability here, there will be none in Israel,” Makhlouf said.
Jordan is an ally of the USA and signed a peace treaty with Israel, and its actual involvement in the defense strategy is the clearest signal that the voltage has exceeded the warning level. Moreover, the combination of the Syrian war with the Iranian military exercises, already constitute a threat rather than concrete, in the dispute over Iran’s development of nuclear technology. Materially the missile batteries that Jordan will line up consisting of Patriot supplied by Germany, with permission of the U.S., but it is easy to see that behind the whole operation the Israeli state has a coordinator, as soon as possible to cover the flaw in your system defense. The task will be to Patriot missiles to intercept Scud missiles or m-600, which are available in the Syrian arsenal. For Jordan, but this initiative is going to create some internal problem, the presence on its territory, a large number of Palestinian refugees, who could become a source of protest against the decision to deploy missile defense operations for the benefit of Israel.In other words, it's being done this way because it is somehow faster and because it makes a statement about the side that Jordan is taking.
Or could it be that it's being done this way to keep the IDF in line - avoiding an attack on Iran at the same time?
Hmmm.
Labels: Bashar al-Assad, Israel, Jordan, patriot missiles, scud missiles, Syrian uprising
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 2:38 AM
2 Comments:
Hi Carl.
"Or could it be that it's being done this way to keep the IDF in line - avoiding an attack on Iran at the same time?" Would he go that far?Probably he might...But it could also be a result of the meetings this month at the White house..first Saudi Arabia....a bit later Jordan, now the Saudi king stating that " Saudi Arabia “will never abandon its religious and moral obligations towards what’s happening.” sounds almost like he's considering to get involved in Syria.
There's a very informative article in the current issue of Foreign Policy, entitled "Exclusive: State Department quietly informing region on Syrian WMDs".
It gives a lot of information in the text and maybe even more in reading between the lines.
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