The Israeli media [Haaretz] is talking about Dayr as-Zwar, but that makes no sense, there is too much emptiness in eastern Syria to put anything near a town overrun with refugees. The Syrians have to assume that some of the “refugees” are spies.
The Israelis have to be planning to overfly Kurdistan, which isn’t going to make the Kurds happy, especially with the US going around “kidnapping” Iranian diplomats in Kurdistan. The Kurds have to live next door to Iran, and are attempting to normalize relations.
The new Turkish government is not going to be happy with the Israeli playing games, and they are working with the Kurds over oil, and the Iranians over Kurdish radicals.
The fuel tanks and bombing make no sense unless the Israelis saw something out there that caused concern. It wouldn’t be the worst place in Syria for a long range radar system.
It may have been a morale builder for Israel after the Hezbollah debacle, an attempt to imply the IDF is back.
Both sides are hiding something, and everything from the area falls under the general category of rumor, probable lie.
It would be nice to see the before and after satellite pictures of the area.
]]>My speculation is that this was part of a test of reaching Iran with IAF F-15’s. Note that the IAF has joint training arrangements with Turkey and thus can fly unarmed jets into Turkish territory as “training missions” (jets armed with active bombs and missiles, as vs. dummies, would be a bit of a problem), so if the F-15’s were fired upon or Israel’s AWACS out over the Mediterranean showed possible jet fighters on the way to intercept, they could dump their bombs, dump their tanks, and head over into Turkish territory as a safe haven. They were probably threading the border which would be why the tanks ended up in Turkish territory (bombs got dropped first). But Turkey obviously would not want Israel overflying their territory to attack Iran, it’d be the end of the treaty or else the heads of Turkish government officials would be displayed on the walls of Istambul, and Turkey gets a lot of goodies from Israel in exchange for the treaty (mostly technical help in keeping their own Air Force running and training for their pilots, since Israel is a leader in those fields). Do note that it would be possible for one of Israel’s tankers to slip into Kurdistan from Turkish territory without overflying hostile territory, as long as a “training exercise” was organized over Turkish territory at the same time.
In any event, I have no reason to believe the Syrians, but no reason to believe Joe “Iraqi WMD’s” Lieberman or the Israelis either. Given geopolitical realities in the area and Israel’s paranoia about Iranian nuclear weapons, preparation for a strike upon Iran appears to be the most likely explanation. And the ramifications of that… well, I just don’t want to think about it at the moment.
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