Saturday, December 22, 2012

Syria - Assad's Dangerous Games



Above: Visitor access points from the region to "blueprint news", including some most probable positions of German Patriot missiles, as published two days before in my blogspot Syria at the Mercy of Opposing Powers.

Only some days ago, German media were still wondering about the urgent installation of two German Patriot units in Eastern Turkey and the related deployment of up to 400 German troops. Knowing that artillery rockets or rocket propelled grenades (RPG) which recently hit Turkish border settlements were just too tiny targets for the Patriot missile defence system, one might come to think that any official explanation given was only to hide the probability of Iranian medium-range missiles hitting our NATO ally Turkey whenever it came to an armed conflict already looming between the U.S. driven by Israel and the Islamic Republic.


Above: Range of Syrian Scud-D missiles.

From that point of view, yesterday's news coming from CNN had something "soothing" in it. They told us that Syrian government troops had already applied some four Scud-D rockets in their fight against the own people. Such missiles developed in North Korea on the basis of a Soviet designed model could be fitted with chemical weapons. Their range of 700-800 km would make it possible to reach Israel as well as Ankara, the capital of Turkey. According to CNN, the Assad regime should have 700 of such Scud-D rockets in stock.

On a press conference in Moscow even Russia's president Putin declared that change was needed in Damascus, further distancing Moscow from Syrian President Bashar Assad in another sign that Assad's support may be fraying even among his few remaining allies. [Source: Los Angeles Times on December 20, 2012]

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