source stratfor cabinet de geopolitique (plutot pro republicain lol)
Mystery in the Middle East
By George Friedman
The Ar@b-Israeli region of the Middle East is filled with rumors of war. That is about as unusual as the rising of the sun, so normally it would not be worth mentioning. But like the proverbial broken clock that is right twice a day, such rumors occasionally will be true. In this case, we don't know that they are true, and certainly it's not the rumors that are driving us. But other things minor and readily explicable individually have drawn our attention to the possibility that something is happening.
The first thing that drew our attention was a minor, routine matter. Back in February, the United States started purchasing oil for its Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR). The SPR is a reserve of crude oil stored in underground salt domes. Back in February, it stood at 96.2 percent of capacity, which is pretty full as far as we are concerned. But the U.S. Department of Energy decided to increase its capacity. This move came in spite of record-high oil prices and the fact that the purchase would not help matters. It also came despite potential political fallout, since during times like these there is generally pressure to release reserves. Part of the step could have been the bureaucracy cranking away, and part of it could have been the feeling that the step didn't make much difference. But part of it could have been based on real fears of a disruption in oil supplies. By itself, the move meant nothing. But it did cause us to become thoughtful.
Also in February, someone assassinated Imad Mughniyah, a leader of H@zboll@h, in a car bomb explosion in Syria. It was assumed the Isr@elis had killed him, although there were some suspicions the Syri@ns might have had him killed for their own arcane reasons. In any case, Hezboll@h publicly claimed the Isr@elis killed Mughniy@h, and therefore it was expected the militant Sh@ite group would take revenge. In the past, Hezboll@h responded not by attacking Israel but by attacking Je@wi@sh targets elsewhere, as in the Buenos Aires attacks of 1992 and 1994.
In March, the United States decided to dispatch the USS Cole, then under Sixth Fleet command, to Leb@nese coastal waters. Washington later replaced it with two escorts from the Nassau (LHA-4) Expeditionary Strike Group (ESG), reportedly maintaining a minor naval presence in the area. (Most of the ESG, on a regularly scheduled deployment, is no more than a few days sail from the coast, as it remains in the Mediterranean Sea.) The reason given for the American naval presence was to serve as a warning to the Syri@ns not to involve themselves in Leb@nese affairs. The exact mission of the naval presence off the Levantine coast and the exact deterrent function it served was not clear, but there they were. The Sixth Fleet has gone out of its way to park and maintain U.S. warships off the Leb@nese coast.
He@zboll@h leaders being killed by the Isr@elis and the presence of American ships off the shores of Mediterranean countries are not news in and of themselves. These things happen. The killing of Mughniy@h is notable only to point out that as much as Isr@el might have wanted him dead, the Isr@elis knew this fight would escalate. But anyone would have known this. So all we know is that whoever killed Mughniy@h wanted to trigger a conflict. The U.S. naval presence off the Levantine coast is notable in that Washington, rather busy with matters elsewhere, found the bandwidth to get involved here as well.
With the situation becoming tense, the Isr@elis announced in March that they would carry out an exercise in April called Turning Point 2. Once again, an Isr@eli military exercise is hardly interesting news. But the Syri@ns apparently got quite interested. After the announcement, the Syri@ns deployed three divisions two armored, one mechanized to the Leb@nese-Syri@n border in the Bek@@ Valley, the western part of which is Hezboll@h's stronghold. The Syri@ns didn't appear to be aggressive. Rather, they deployed these forces in a defensive posture, in a way walling off their part of the valley.
The Syri@ns are well aware that in the event of a conventional war with Isr@el, they would experience a short but exciting life, as they say. They thus are hardly going to attack Israel. The deployment therefore seemed intended to keep the Isr@elis on the Lebanese side of the border on the apparent assumption the Isr@elis were going into the Bek@@ Valley. Despite Isr@eli and Syri@n denials of the Syri@n troop buildup along the border, Stratfor sources maintain that the buildup in fact happened. Normally, Isr@el would be jumping at the chance to trumpet Syri@n aggression in response to these troop movements, but, instead, the Isr@elis downplayed the buildup.
When the Isr@elis kicked off Turning Point 2, which we regard as a pretty interesting name, it turned out to be the largest exercise in Isr@eli history. It involved the entire country, and was designed to test civil defenses and the ability of the national command authority to continue to function in the event of an attack with unconventional weapons chemical and nuclear, we would assume. This was a costly exercise. It also involved calling up reserves, some of them for the exercise, and, by some reports, others for deployment to the north against Syri@. Isr@el does not call up reserves casually. Reserve call-ups are expensive and disrupt the civilian economy. These appear small, but in the environment of Turning Point 2, it would not be difficult to mobilize larger forces without being noticed.
The Syri@ns already were deeply concerned by the Isr@eli exercise. Eventually, the Leb@nese government got worried, too, and started to evacuate some civilians from the South. Hezboll@h, which still hadn't retaliated for the Mughniyah assassination, also claimed the Isr@elis were about to attack it, and reportedly went on alert and mobilized its forces. The Americans, who normally issue warnings and cautions to everyone, said nothing to try to calm the situation. They just sat offshore on their ships.
It is noteworthy that Isr@eli Defense Minister Ehud B@rak canceled a scheduled visit to Germany this week. The cancellation came immediately after the reports of the Syri@n military redeployment were released. Obviously, B@rak needed to be in Isr@el for Turning Point 2, but then he had known about the exercise for at least a month. Why cancel at the last minute? While we are discussing diplomacy, we note that U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney visited Om@n a country with close relations with Ir@n and then was followed by U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. By itself not interesting, but why the high-level interest in Om@n at this point?
Now let's swing back to September 2007, when the Isr@elis bombed something in Syri@ near the Tu@rkish border. As we discussed at the time, for some reason the Isr@elis refused to say what they had attacked. It made no sense for them not to trumpet what they carefully leaked namely, that they had attacked a nuclear facility. Proving that Syri@ had a secret nuclear program would have been a public relations coup for Isr@el. Nevertheless, no public charges were leveled. And the Syri@ns remained awfully calm about the bombing.
Rumors now are swirling that the Isr@elis are about to reveal publicly that they in fact bombed a nuclear reactor provided to Syri@ by North Korea. But this news isn't all that big. Also rumored is that the Isr@elis will claim Ir@ni@n complicity in building the reactor. And one Isr@eli TV station reported April 8 that Isr@el really had discovered S@d@d@m Hu@@ein's weapons of ma/ss dest/ruction, which it said had been smuggled to Syri@.
Now why the B*u*sh administration wouldn't have trumpeted news of the Syri@n reactor worldwide in September 2007 is beyond us, but there obviously were some reasons assuming the TV report is true, which we have no way of establishing. In fact, we have no idea why the Isr@elis are choosing this moment to rehash the bombing of this site. But whatever their reason, it certainly raises a critical question. If the Syri@ns are developing a nuclear capability, what are the Is@elis planning to do about it?
No one of these things, by itself, is of very great interest. And taken together they do not provide the means for a clear forecast. Nevertheless, a series of rather ordinary events, taken together, can constitute something significant. Tensions in the Middle E@st are moving well beyond the normal point, and given everything that is happening, events are moving to a point where someone is likely to take military action. Whether Hezboll@h will carry out a retaliatory strike or Isr@el a pre-emptive strike in Lebanon, or whether the Isr@elis' real target is Ir@n, tensions systematically have been ratcheted up to the point where we, in our simple way, are beginning to wonder whether something has to give.
All together, these events are fairly extraordinary. Ignoring all rhetoric and the Isr@elis have gone out of their way to say that they are not looking for a fight it would seem that each side, but particularly the Americans and Isr@elis, have gone out of their way to signal that they are expecting conflict. The Syri@ns have also signaled that they expect conflict, and Hezboll@h always claims there is about to be conflict.
What is missing is this: who will fight whom, and why, and why now. The simple explanation is that Isr@el wants a second round with Hezbol@h. But while that might be true, it doesn't explain everything else that has happened. Most important, it doesn't explain the simultaneous revelations about the bombing of Syri@. It also doesn't explain the U.S. naval deployment. Is the United States about to get involved in a war with Hezboll@h, a war that the Isr@elis should handle themselves? Are the Isr@elis going to topple Syri@n President Bàshar al @ss@d and then wind up with a Su:nni government, or worse, an Isr@eli occupation of Syri@? None of that makes a lot of sense.
In truth, all of this may dissolve into nothing much. In intelligence analysis, however, sometimes a set of not-fully-coherent facts must be reported, and that is what we are doing now. There is no clear pattern; there is no obvious direction this is taking. Nevertheless, when we string together events from February until now, we see a persistently escalating pattern of behavior. In fact, what we can say most clearly is that there is escalation, without being able to say what is the clear direction of the escalation or the purpose.
We would like to wrap this up with a crystal clear explanation and forecast. But we can't. The motives of the various actors are opaque; and taken separately, the individual events all have quite innocent explanations. We are not prepared to say war is imminent, nor even what sort of war there would be. We are simply prepared to say that the course of events since February and really since the September 2007 attack on Syri@ have been startling, and they appear to be reaching some sort of hard-to-understand crescendo.
The bombing of Syri@ symbolizes our confusion. Why would Syri@ want a nuclear reactor and why put it on the border of Turkey, a country the Syri@ns aren't particularly friendly with? If the Syri@ns had a nuclear reactor, why would the Isr@elis be coy about it? Why would the Americans? Having said nothing for months apart from careful leaks, why are the Isr@elis going to speak publicly now? And if what they are going to say is simply that the North Koreans provided the equipment, what's the big deal? That was leaked months ago.
The events of September 2007 make no sense and have never made any sense. The events we have seen since February make no sense either. That is noteworthy, and we bring it to your attention. We are not saying that the events are meaningless. We are saying that we do not know their meaning. But we can't help but regard them as ominous.
