Evening Update: What IS Syria Planning For Their Chemical Weapons?

There seems to be a lot of ambiguity around what Syria has planned for their chemical weapons now that some of them are being transported from storage.

Israel Preparing For Action In Syria, Says Former Mossad Chief

Former Mossad chief Danny Yatom said on Thursday that Israel is preparing for the possibility of military action in Syria, in case its chemical weapons were to end up in the hands of Hizbullah or other terrorist organizations in the region.

Yatom spoke to the British Sky News, which reported that Israel is deeply concerned that Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad may deliberately give Hizbullah chemical weapons or that they could end up in the hands of other terror groups

In either case, this could lead to a regional war, Yatom told the network.

“The conventional wisdom should be that we cannot exclude a non-conventional attack on Israel,” he said. “We would have to pre-empt in order to prevent it. We need to be prepared to launch even military attacks... and military attacks mean maybe a deterioration to war.”

Investigations by Sky News have identified four sites where the agents are produced: Hama, Latakia, Al Safira, near Aleppo and at the Centre D'Etude et Recherche Scientifique laboratories in Damascus.

Storage sites have also been found at Khan abu Shamat, Furqlus, Hama, Masyaf, Palmyra, the report said.

Al Qaeda-related groups are known to be operating inside Syria, and its leadership has frequently extolled members or followers to try to get hold of chemical weapons.

A top IDF officer said recently that Israel is “in preparations for the possibility of warand in the midst of deployment with the situation in Syria in mind.”

Golan added, “Syria has weapons of mass destruction along with a very heavy arsenal of weapons, including surface-to-ground missiles and chemical weapons. The fact that Syria is a storehouse of weapons which fuels terrorists in the region is very unsettling.”

“Al-Qaeda related factors that are active there now and working against the regime may operate against us over time,” he said. “The Syrian threat to Israel requires attention. It will not happen tomorrow morning, but it can occur within a few months.”

Israel Advised To Brace For Syrian Missile Attack - Conventional Or Chemical

As the already unthinkable pace of slaughter in Syria accelerates further, Western military sources warned Saturday, July 14, that not only Israel, but additional strategic targets in Middle East lands deemed enemies by Bashar Assad should prepare for him to launch surface-to-surface missile attacks. The assaults would start out with conventional warheads, but as the regime continued to be hammered, the beleaguered ruler might well arm the next round of missiles from his huge stockpile of mustard gas - not to mention sarin nerve poison and cyanide.

Western intelligence sources say Assad has a list of targets ready to go. Analyzing the Syrian war game taking place last week, they calculated that Wednesday and Thursday, July 11 and 12, the Syrian army practiced shooting missiles at strategic centers in Israel, Turkey and Jordan.

But while most Western officials now confirm that Assad has moved his WMD warheads and shells out of storage, they are already divided on what it means. Some US officials are soft-pedaling the menace, offering the theory that the Syrian ruler is only safeguarding his unconventional weapons from falling into rebel – or what he calls “terrorist” – hands.

Other Western intelligence watchers, especially in Britain, believe he is preparing a campaign of ethnic cleansing at centers of revolt and report that chemical weapons have already been transferred to Homs, Latakia and Aleppo for operational use.

That is one game-changing predicament facing the West.

It would quickly assume a regional dimension if Turkey, Israel and Jordan were to come under Syrian missile assault.