Written by: Craig Edwin Holdway
Over the next few days, it will become clear that Israel has used its strike fighters to bomb a major missile base deep inside northern Syria. The installation was under construction by both the Syrian and Iranian governments, on Syrian territory. It has been recorded that the Israeli fighter aircraft violated Syrian airspace and destroyed the military base. When the Israeli aircraft came under attack from Syrian ground forces the planes ejected their external fuel tanks; increasing their manoeuvrability, and retreated to Israel territory.
Syria has made a formal protest to the United Nations claiming that Israeli fighters have perpetrated a "hostile act" by bombing a space inside Syrian territory and returning to Israeli airspace. Syria has warned that if its 2 formal protest letters to the UN Security Council 'continue to disregard denunciation of the act' then the result could precipitate 'consequences that no one knows its limits'.
Israel has warned that North Korea is selling its nuclear expertise and nuclear material to Iran and Syria. The danger is if the accusation turns out to be true then the time frame that Iran can manufacture a nuclear weapon would be dramatically reduced. Iran and Syria are installing a state-of-the-art Russian air defence system named Pantsyr. The Pantsyr system is perfectly suited to defend the Iranian nuclear facilities from air strikes. The Israeli aircraft may also have had a secondary mission to violate Syrian airspace and determine the effectiveness of the new Russian air defence system. The bombing will also be seen as a warning not to rearm the Hezbollah in Lebanon.
With Russia looking to build a major naval installation in the Middle East and more probably in Syria, the weapon systems being installed are seriously concerning. Israel and Syria are still technically at war with each other and have fought three wars in the last sixty years as well as multiple smaller conflicts.
The views are my own and are based on my own experiences and are written from personal insights and observations.