What’s Some Stray Missiles Between “Friends”?

According to this McClatchy news story, the Israelis have acknowledged that “its air force had struck an unspecified military target deep inside Syria in September.”

And that’s about it. However, the McClatchy story offers this possibility…

One of the latest theories is that North Korea told the United States it had sold nuclear technology to Syria , which prompted the U.S. to tell Israel that North Korea had sold nuclear technology to Syria , which prompted Israel to attack the North Korean technology in Syria . Follow?

And as far as I’m concerned, telling Bushco about stuff like this is as good as telling the Israelis anyway.

Personally, I think something else is going on here, as noted here by Daniel Levy of The Century Foundation via Ezra Klein, as follows (dated 9/7 right after the story broke)…

There has been huge speculation in Israel, throughout the summer, regarding Syrian rearmament and possible military intentions. This might have been a way of dipping one's toe in the water of Syrian potential bellicosity. The Israeli website, DEBKA (part sensationalist, part propagandist, part psych-ops plaything) has suggested today that Israel was checking the threat posed by the new Russian-supplied Pantsyr Missile Systems that both Syria and Iran have taken possession of:

Western intelligence circles maintain that it is vital for the US and Israel to establish the location and gauge the effectiveness of Pantsyr-S1E air defenses in Syrian and Iranian hands, as well as discovering how many each received... Western intelligence circles stress that information on Russian missile consignments to Syria or Iran is vital to any US calculation of whether to attack Iran over its nuclear program... Syria took delivery in mid-August of 10 batteries... the Pantsyr-S1E had failed in its mission to bring down trespassing aircraft.

This would neatly dovetail the renewed push in the American media this week for confrontation with Iran - that included a Washington Post editorial discrediting IAEA chief elBaradei, a new ADL stop Iran campaign and general neocon push. I am not suggesting that the American Enterprise Institute has a hotline to the Israeli Air Force Chief.

However, I would suggest that the Israelis took out the Syrian Pantsyr missiles as a test to find out we could do the same thing to the Iranian missiles, which are the same type. And the Syrians are, by comparison, not making much ado about it because they don't want to publicize the fact that they got burned.

And if you doubt any of this, then just wonder why President Stupid Head (in these parts today to honor a 10 year old; his intellectual equal, no doubt, and I don’t mean to insult the kid) keeps beating the drum against Iran in his typically mindless fashion.