Source:
WSWS
In the wake of the European Union's vote late Monday to lift a ban on directly arming Western-backed "rebels," there is a mounting danger of wider war. Growing military tensions in the region are likewise threatening to turn a Syrian peace conference, ostensibly backed by both Washington and Moscow, into a dead letter. Dubbed "Geneva II," the conference is tentatively set to convene in mid-June.
On Tuesday, the Russian government condemned the EU for "throwing fuel on the fire" of Syria's sectarian civil war and announced that it is going ahead with the delivery of S-300 air defense systems to Syria.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told a press conference in Moscow that the deployment of the advanced air defense batteries would serve as a "stabilizing factor" in the Syrian crisis by dissuading Western powers from launching direct military intervention.
The mobile, surface-to-air missile systems have been compared to the US Patriot and are capable of bringing down rockets as well as planes.
"We consider that such steps will restrain some hotheads from the possibility of giving this conflict, or from considering a scenario that would give this conflict, an international character with the participation of external forces," he said.
While the deployment of the missiles would complicate any imposition of a "no-fly zone," the action that began the US-NATO war for regime change in Libya, it is also directed against Israel, which has repeatedly carried out air strikes against Syria in the course of the two-year-old crisis. The latest of three known air strikes took place earlier this month and provoked an angry denunciation from Moscow, which is Syria's long-standing ally and biggest arms supplier.
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The Israeli government condemned the decision to deliver the Russian missile systems to Syria, claiming that the anti-aircraft batteries were not defense weapons, as Moscow has claimed, but rather "offensive" because their range made them capable of bringing down planes flying in Israeli airspace. Israeli officials also claimed that the weapons could fall into the hands of Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite mass political movement and militia, which has resisted Israeli incursions into Lebanon.
Tel Aviv's principal concern is that the missile systems could rob the Israeli military of its ability to carry out military aggression against Syria as well as Lebanon with impunity.
Israel's Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon threatened that the country's military "will know what to do" if the missile systems reach Syria, an implicit threat of renewed air strikes that could draw Russia more directly into the conflict.
Meanwhile, the White House acknowledged Tuesday that it had been informed in advance of a provocative stunt staged by Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican and former opponent of Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential race, who made a brief foray just inside Syria's border with Turkey to meet with the so-called rebels Monday.
The area that McCain visited is largely under the control of Islamist militias, including the Al Nusra Front, which has formally aligned itself with Al Qaeda. His host, the former Syrian general and defector Salem Idris, is the leader of the Supreme Military Council of the Free Syrian Army. While it is by no means clear that Idris exerts any real control over the various militias and gangs that have taken up arms against the government, the ex-general used McCain's visit to press Washington for more arms and direct military intervention.
"We need American help to have change on the ground; we are now in a very critical situation," Idris told the Daily Beast, which first reported McCain's two-hour trip to Syria. "What we want from the US government is to take the decision to support the Syrian revolution with weapons and ammunition, anti-tank missiles and anti-aircraft weapons," the ex-general continued. "Of course we want a no-fly zone and we ask for strategic strikes against Hezbollah both inside Lebanon and inside Syria."
The "rebels'" demand for US imperialist intervention in both Syria and Lebanon apparently dovetails with preparations being made by the Pentagon and the Obama administration. The White House has asked the US Joint Chiefs of Staff to draft plans for the imposition of a no-fly zone to be enforced by Washington and its key NATO allies, the former Middle East colonial powers, Britain and France.
The Daily Beast quoted two unnamed administration officials Tuesday as saying that the request came "shortly before Secretary of State John Kerry toured the Middle East last week to try and finalize plans for an early June conference between the Syrian regime and rebel leaders in Geneva."
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