Destroying Syrian Weapons of Mass Destruction -- Part 2

Kurdish dead after an Iraqi gas attack on Halabja
in 1988. An estimated 4,000 died. (Photo:
Wikimedia)

First appeared in the Times of Israel

Publication last week of of my article “Syria’s Arsenal of Weapons of Mass Destruction Must Be Destroyed,” seems to have grabbed the attention of reporters and officials in the Pentagon and State Department.  Foreign Policy’s Josh Rogin reported on Friday that the State Department is quietly warning Middle East countries about Syria’s WMD.

CNN has a strange story from the Pentagon this weekend claiming that 75,000 U.S. troops would be needed to secure Syria’s chemical and biological weapons. This appears to be yet another “news” story spun to discourage any new U.S. military engagement in the Middle East.

Actually, the most effective method of destroying these doomsday weapons may be from the air by bombing and incinerating the chemicals and viruses. Napalm or fuel-air explosives, also known as thermobaric bombs, create widespread and super-hot explosions, hot enough to destroy the chemical agents.

The United States government uses two methods to destroy chemical agents — neutralization of the chemicals or incineration in furnaces. A decade ago the U.S. National Research Council concluded, “Storing chemical weapons poses a greater threat to public safety than destroying them [by incineration]. The NRC recommends completing the destruction process ‘as quickly as possible’ because the most urgent threat is from an accidental or deliberate release from stored chemical weapons.”

True, the bombing of Syria’s unconventional armory is not the same as a controlled incineration, but what’s the choice?

Foreign Policy’s Rogin quotes an unnamed State Department official that the United States has “long called on the Syrian government to destroy its chemicals weapons arsenal and join the Chemical Weapons Convention.”

Syria is much too busy massacring its own people to consider destroying its chemical weapons arsenal. Maybe it’s time for the U.S. and allies to show Bashar Assad how it’s done.

How quickly we forget

The following is an excerpt from a July 2007 Jane’s DefenceWeekly article:

Dozens of Syrian military officers and Iranian engineers were killed on July 26 in Halab, Syria, as they were attempting to mount a chemical warhead with mustard gas on a Scud-C missile, Jane’s Defence Weekly reported.


An explosion spread lethal chemical agents, including mustard gas, VX gas and sarin nerve gas, killing 15 Syrian officers and dozens of Iranian engineers who were in the facility. Dozens of people were injured.

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Syria’s Arsenal of Unconventional Weapons Must Be Destroyed

Published in the newly launched Times of Israel, an exciting new Internet newspaper.

Click to read the whole article.  Here are excerpts:

Syria’s unconventional weapons were the doomsday weapons every new Israeli soldier was warned about. A very ominous percent of Syrian artillery shells, bombs, and missile warheads were armed with Sarin, mustard gas, or VX, we were told....

A CIA study released in 2010 stated, ”Syria has had a CW [chemical weapons] program for many years and already has a stockpile of CW agents, which can be delivered by aircraft, ballistic missiles and artillery rockets.”...

In 2003, Libya’s dictator Muammar Gaddafi renounced the use of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and invited western nations to destroy his country’s stockpiles. Long-range missiles were destroyed, and chemical and nuclear programs were dismantled. 

What motivated Qaddafi to destroy his WMD? Some analysts believe that he came to the prudent decision when he saw the crushing of Saddam Hussein after Western countries (only) suspected him of developing WMD.


In Syria, however, no such flash of temporary sanity is likely to dawn on Syrian President Bashar Assad. He is fighting for his survival, and those weapons are his ace in the hole, his “Samson complex” –- “if you take me out, I’ll take you all down with me.”...

In Libya, the controlled destruction of WMD and missiles was conducted with Qaddafi’s reluctant cooperation. In Syria, the destruction of the stockpiles will only occur if they are obliterated and incinerated by Western missiles, warplanes, and cruise... missiles.

HT to JG for this terrifying article about Syria's advanced bio-weaponry program. 

Syria's Bio-Warfare Threat: an interview with Dr. Jill Dekker

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Iran Threatens Two More Naval Chokepoints In Addition to the Strait of Hormuz

By Lenny Ben-David

First appeared in The Weekly Standard, February 9, 2012

Considerable attention is being given to Iranian threats to block the Strait of Hormuz, through which a large proportion of the world’s petroleum sails. The U.S Energy Information Administration estimates that “almost 17 million barrels in 2011, up from between 15.5-16.0 million bbl/d in 2009-2010,” sails past Iranian gun and missile emplacements along the coast, mine-laying ships, and Revolutionary Guard fast boats. In 2011, that amounted to “roughly 35 percent of all seaborne traded oil, or almost 20 percent of oil traded worldwide.”

Yet the recent visit of two Iranian naval vessels to the Saudi Red Sea port of Jeddah should draw attention to two more vital naval chokepoints—the Bab el Mandeb Strait at the southern tip of the Red Sea, and the Suez Canal located between the northern tip of the Red Sea and the Mediterranean. (See this map.) More than three million barrels of oil pass through the Bab el Mandeb every day on the way to the Suez Canal and the SUMED (Suez-Mediterranean) pipeline used by tankers that are too big to traverse the Canal. Closure of the Bab el Mandeb would force ships to travel around the southern tip of Africa.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration warns, “The international energy market is dependent upon reliable transport. The blockage of a chokepoint, even temporarily, can lead to substantial increases in total energy costs. In addition, chokepoints leave oil tankers vulnerable to theft from pirates, terrorist attacks, and political unrest in the form of wars or hostilities as well as shipping accidents which can lead to disastrous oil spills.”

The Iranian ships docked in Jeddah, the large supply ship (the Kharg) and the relatively small destroyer (the Shaid Kandy), are not necessarily a direct threat. But they do represent the Iranian potential for troublemaking.
Last February, the Kharg sailed through the Suez Canal into the Mediterranean and paid a port call in Latakia, Syria. There it is believed to have unloaded containers of Iranian and Chinese weapons and missiles, presumably for Hamas or Hezbollah. One month later, the Gaza-bound Victoria, registered in Liberia and with 50 tons of weapons loaded in Latakia, was stopped by the Israeli Navy. Its weaponry reportedly included anti-ship missiles.

While civilian ships laden with weapons bound for those terrorist groups have been stopped and the weapons confiscated, no navy is going to stop an Iranian naval vessel in peacetime to check if it is loaded with weapons.

Presumably, Western satellites and intelligence services will be watching the Kharg to see if it continues through the Suez Canal to Syria, as it did last year. But it is also important to see if the Kharg delivers – or delivered already – containers in the Eritrean port of Assab, located precisely at the Bab el-Mandeb gateway to the Red Sea.

In late 2008 published reports claimed that Iranian ships, troops, weapons, and even submarines were seen in Assab. The Eritrean government rejected the reports as “persistent disinformation campaigns by Israeli intelligence officials.”

Nevertheless, Iranian “engineers” were seen in Assab more recently – “maintenance workers” for an oil refinery, Eritrean officials explained.
Authorities in an African port management association were queried this week about Iranian naval traffic in Assab. This was their response: “As you may be aware the Eritrean Government is strict on limiting communication with the outside world and this affects our ability to get information regarding the ports of Massawa and Assab.”

Iranian naval ships have also been patrolling in the Gulf of Aden which lays just south of the Bab el-Mandeb strait, waters known for their Somalia-based pirates. In early February, Iran claimed that its ships chased away pirates attempting to hijack an Iranian oil tanker in the area.

Iran’s growing interest in the region led it to announce plans to open embassies in Somalia and in Djibouti, another country on the Horn of Africa that borders on the Bab el Mandeb.

Turkey is funneling aid to the regime in Mogadishu to challenge to Iran’s subversive activity in Somalia, as recently detailed by Turkish analyst, Abdullah Bozkurt: “Intelligence reports detail how the Mullah regime in Iran has been providing arms and munitions to the insurgent groups in Somalia, including al-Shabaab,” Bozkurt wrote in Zaman. “Tehran has been funneling most of its aid to insurgents through the ‘Christian’ dictator of Eritrea, Isaias Afewerki, who has been cozying up to Iranian regime for years.”

The recent soccer rioting in Egypt should light up more warning lights for the security of the Suez Canal chokepoint. Besides rioting in Cairo and Port Said, at the northern tip of the Canal where more than 70 people died in the soccer stadium, rioting and deaths took place in Suez City at the southern tip of the Canal.

The Canal is extremely vulnerable to terrorism, particularly as the Sinai Peninsula is becoming a lawless sanctuary for all sorts of bad guys – Bedouin smugglers, Hamas, al Qaeda and Hizbullah. In 2009, Egypt caught a Hizbullah spy network operating in Egypt and the Sinai, headed by a senior Hizbullah operative named Sami Shihab. At the time of their arrest the terrorists had been reconnoitering tourist sites and traffic in the Suez Canal.

Imagine what a few well-placed mines could do to shipping in the Canal. In 2010, more than 3,000 oil and gas tankers sailed north and south in the Canal.

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