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| File photos of the USS Eisenhower (top) and the USS Iwo Jima |
The Iraq playbook is all set for Syria:
- The American aircraft carrier USS Eisenhower has arrived at the Syrian coast, joining the USS Iwo Jima amphibious assault ship.
- France is said to be lining up a relatively small contingent of its Special Forces -- Brigade des forces spéciales terre (BFST) -- for a mission in Syria.
- U.S. officials confirm the Syrian military have loaded the precursor chemicals for sarin, a deadly nerve gas, into aerial bombs to be used against rebel fighters.
- Overnight, the US Senate voted nearly unanimously to assess military options to cripple President Bashar al-Assad’s air force. Lawmakers said the action aims to stop the killing of civilians.
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| Rebels along the perimeter of Damascus airport |
The big question though
is whether these are simply deterrence measures or concrete steps for imminent
direct intervention. Only time will tell.
But either way, they
come after opposition forces scored a series of tactical
victories around Syria in recent weeks, overrunning military
bases and airports, closing in steadily on Damascus and halting air traffic at
the capital's international airport for days.
According to RT,
the first Russian 24/7 English-language news channel which brings the
Russian view on global news, the USS Eisenhower, an American aircraft carrier that holds eight
fighter-bomber squadrons and 8,000 men, arrived at the Syrian coast yesterday
in the midst of a heavy storm, indicating U.S. preparation for a potential
ground intervention.
While the Obama
administration has not announced any sort of American-led military intervention
in the war-torn country, the U.S. is now ready to launch such action “within
days” if President Assad decides to use chemical weapons against the
opposition, The Times reports.
The USS Eisenhower joins the USS Iwo Jima amphibious assault ship,
which holds about 2,500 Marines.
“We have (U.S.) special
operations forces at the right posture, they don’t have to be sent,” an unnamed
U.S. official told The Australian,
which suggested that US military troops are already near Syria and ready to
intervene in the conflict, if necessary.
If the U.S. decides to
intervene militarily in Syria, it now has at its disposal 10,000 fighting men,
17 warships, 70 fighter-bombers, 10 destroyers and frigates and a
guided-missile cruiser. Some of the vessels are also equipped with Aegis missile
interceptors to shoot down any missiles Syria might have at hand, according to
DEBKAfile.
“The muscle is already
there to be flexed,” a U.S. official told the London Times about the U.S. military’s presence off Syria’s coast. “It’s
premature to say what could happen if a decision is made to intervene. That
hasn’t taken shape; we’ve not reached that kind of decision. There are a lot of
options, but it [military action] could be launched rapidly, within days.”
The move comes after
NATO made a significant strategic decision Tuesday to deploy Patriot Air and
Missile Defense Systems in Turkey on the border with Syria where opposition
groups have their stronghold. The Patriots would be able to protect Turkey from
potential Syrian missiles that could contain chemical weapons, as well as
intimidate Syrian pilots from bombing the northern Syria border towns, which
the armed rebels control. Syria is thought to have about 700 missiles.
“The protection from
NATO will be three dimensional; one is the short-range Patriots, the second is
the middle-range Terminal High Altitude Air Defense [THAD] system and the last
is the AEGIS system, which counters missiles that can reach outside the
atmosphere,” Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said.
DEBKAfile’s anonymous
military sources claim the THAD and Aegis arrived at the Syrian coast aboard
the USS Eisenhower.
France in turn is
preparing a small contingent of its Special Forces for Syria action.
The French weekly Le Point says the move appears to be in response to fears the regime
intends using chemical weapons against rebel forces closing in on Damascus. It
says a large ground operation "is out of the question" and a move to
secure chemical weapon stockpiles is possible.
With mounting fears the
capital will become the next major battlefield in the 21-month-old
Syria conflict, U.S. officials told NBC News on Wednesday Assad’s
army has effectively loaded chemical weapons into bombs and is awaiting his
order to use them against insurgents.
The officials said the army
loaded the precursor chemicals for sarin, a deadly nerve gas, into aerial bombs
that could be dropped onto opposition forces from fighter-bombers.
As recently as Tuesday,
officials had said there was as yet no evidence the process of mixing the
"precursor" chemicals had begun. But Wednesday, they said their worst
fears had been confirmed: The nerve agents were locked and loaded inside the
bombs.
Sarin is an
extraordinarily lethal agent. Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's forces killed
5,000 Kurds with a single sarin attack on Halabja in 1988.
U.S. officials stressed
the sarin bombs hadn't been loaded onto planes as yet and Assad hadn't issued a
final order to use them.
Secretary of State
Hillary Rodham Clinton reiterated U.S. warnings to Assad not to use chemical
weapons, saying he would be crossing "a red line" if he did.
Speaking Wednesday at
NATO headquarters in Brussels, Clinton said the Syrian government was on the
brink of collapse, raising the prospect that "an increasingly desperate
Assad regime" might turn to chemical weapons or that the banned weapons
could fall into other hands.
Aides told NBC News
Clinton was expected next week to officially recognize the National Coalition
of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, with which she is scheduled to
meet in Morocco.
On Capitol Hill
meanwhile, the 100-seat U.S. Senate voted almost unanimously to assess military
options to cripple the Assad’s air force. Legislators said the action aims to
stop the killing of civilians.
Ninety-two Senators
voted to move forward with a Pentagon report on possible military options in
Syria, with six opposing the legislation.
The bill in question
gives Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta 90 days in which to carry out the study
and report back to the Senate with the findings, aimed at “advancing the goals of President Obama of
stopping the killing of civilians in Syria and creating conditions for a
transition to a democratic, pluralistic, political system in Syria."
The report will detail
three military options, including the deployment of Patriot missiles in the
Syria-Turkey border zone, the creation of a no-fly zone and the possibility of
airstrikes on key government air bases.
