Hezbollah Scuds - Much to Do About Nothing

I've been watching the news and blog posts fly for the past few weeks about the allegation that Syria had transferred a few Scud missiles across its border with Lebanon to the terrorist group Hezbollah. It's unclear if there was any US intelligence to substantiate this story. There has been a lot of conjecture about "hybrid warfare," and it's only a matter of when, not if, Israel is going to invade Lebanon again. It seemed odd that the overwhelming majority of posts seemed to blindly accept the idea that a terrorist group operating largely in the open in Lebanon might want a clunky Cold War relic like a Scud missile. In particular, I've seen a few stories that go so far as to speculate if Syria would have given Hezbollah chemical warheads for the Scuds. But it seems clear that Israel's leadership is pushing the story.

Israeli defense officials have said they believe Hezbollah has obtained Scud missiles capable of hitting targets anywhere in Israel. Israel's President Shimon Peres earlier this week directly accused Damascus of providing the weapons.

Israel has not offered proof to back up the claim, and Syria's Foreign Ministry strongly denied the charge, saying it "believes that Israel aims through these claims to further strain the atmosphere in the region."

And of course, the US government response was to verbally abuse Syria over this allegation, because accusing Israel of hyping the threat would just be unseemly.

Speaking before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday, the state department's top official on the Middle East said it would consider the "full range of tools" available to make Syria reverse any delivery of ballistic missiles to Hezbollah.

Mr Feltman would not confirm that Scuds had been delivered but said it would be an "incendiary, provocative action" if it turned out to be true.

"The United States has shown in the past that we are able to act," he said. "I expect that all options are going to be on the table looking at this."

After repeated protestations by Syrian and Lebanonese leaders that there had been no transfer of Scuds, only then did people start thinking, "wait, does this story really make sense?"

Simply put, Hezbollah does not need Scuds. The missiles are, according to military analysts, less sophisticated than the group’s current missiles, and although explosively powerful they are not very accurate. Additionally, the Scuds reportedly transferred to Hezbollah have a range of 500 kilometers and beyond. That is useless for Hezbollah, which already has all Israeli cities and towns within range of its missiles, which all fall within a 15-200 km arc.

British defense analyst Charles Heyman remarked, "Hezbollah need[s] to float like butterflies, sting like bees. They don’t need something that lumbers along like an ox." This was in reference to the bulky nature of Scud missiles, which are a handicap in guerilla warfare. Even prominent Israelis came out to challenge the Scud claims, with Uzi Rubin, an advisor to the Israeli Ministry of Defense, saying, "What do they need Scuds for? They already have [the] Fateh-110, which has a similar range, and being a solid-fuel rocket, is far less cumbersome. Okay, so Scuds weigh a ton while the Fateh-110 is half a ton. Nothing to stop them firing two Fateh-110s."

When the Israeli prime minister is questioned directly on this issue, he declines to answer and just waves it off as "well, we see a lot of weapons flowing from Syria through Lebanon to Hezbollah." Now that we are finally seeing stories suggesting that US intel agencies and defense experts now are reacting a little more skeptically, one has to wonder why Israel went through all of this effort to shake everyone up. I have only three ideas:

• Israel wanted to continue its underdog profile as a nation that is hounded by the evil Muslim states surrounding it, and that justifies the continued annual subsidy of $3 billion in US foreign aid and additional US military arms sales.
• Israel needed to deflect media attention away from the fact that its prime minister had to drop out of an international nuclear weapons summit meeting because of questions of its own nuclear weapons program.
• It's just business as usual in the Middle East. Nothing personal.

Any way you cut it, the rush to judgment against Syria speaks poorly of US news coverage. I understand the desire to beat other news organizations to the punch by breathlessly announcing this alleged arms escalation in the Middle East. It does nothing, however, but feed raw meat to conservative politicians who just want an excuse to badmouth the Obama administration's foreign policy and to beat a neo-con war drum for the continued use of military force in the Middle East as  the primary tool of diplomacy. 

UPDATE: And where would we be without Fred Hiatt at the WaPo trying to sharpshoot the Obama administration on foreign policy and simultaneously show his pro-Israel neo-con support? Asshat.

Comments

[sheerahkahn]

I would definitely pay ring side prices to watch Hez try to launch one of those...in fact, I probably could pay for the seats by placing side bets on how long it would take them before they either..
A: ESD the rocket fueling process blowing themselves off the planet.

B: Incorrectly sequencing the fueling process

C: Roman candle the damn thing if they were able to light it off.

Rumors...sometimes their really, really funny.

[asdfsdf]

What does it say about me that I recognized the source of that image within 5s? (Desert Combat Mod for Battlefield 1942, Map: El Alamein (I recognized the sand))

If I recall correctly, the SCUD was fairly useless in that context as well. Doesn't seem to be a terribly practical missile when not used en masse, does it?

I was always under the impression that the chief advantage of rockets was that they were simply easier and more practical that suicide bombing, though less effective. Yep, scuds, easy and practical. That computes.

[elizzar]

Isn't the Scud basically a tarted-up V-2 WW2-era rocket? So based around 60+ year old tech? Surely the ingenuity (craftiness? evil?) of the Hezbollah would come up with something 'better' ... but then we sheep in the wider world recognise the word Scud (with its Gulf War 1 connotations) and are thus scared more easily by it ...
Am feeling particularly cynical today ...

[fred lapides]

I WOULD LOVE TO GET TO A TIME WHEN WE CAN SIMPLY GET A REPORT, OBJECTIVE, WITHOUT THE BLAME GAME AND NAME CALLING ALONGSIDE OF THE INFORMATION...THE RIGHT AND THE LEFT SEEM NOW ALWAYS TO BECOME A PART OF WHAT ONCE MIGHT HAVE BEEN SIMPLE FACTUAL MATERIAL

[Mike]

Well they managed to get 40,000 rockets last time. Where do you think they came from? The Sears catalog? Maybe Walmart?

The writer seems pretty far away - maybe come and write it from Israel. I pay almost 50% tax here to pay for all that shit we buy from the US.

Then again the beaches and weather is fine between wars.

[asdfsdf]

Er, mike, the point isn't whether they have it or not. The point is that there is virtually no point in their acquiring one, as they are bulky, expensive, dangerous to operate, and not more dangerous than rockets they already have. If Hezbollah were 500k distant this might be understandable, but they could throw an equivalent warhead at Israel with a catapult, which might be as inconspicuous as a Scud. Location location location.

[M husini]

When a country like the USA or Israel want to push a political Agenda in the middle east into place, they come up with such rumors. This one did not have any backing or proof and not even a number of the rockets smuggled was giveb. the point here is the stratigic and power balance in the area. but hizbala does not really change the balance more than it is, it already (said by Gates) has more rockets than many governments in the world. now if the israel has said the scud has chemical weapons warheads thats a different story but not even israel want to look that foolish.

[Ray]

I just read blog of Mike (above).
By odd coincidence, before reading said, I had been thinking that my view of Israel and it's enemies, both perceived and real, would change drastically if I lived there. What that thinking would change to, I can only guess at. I do know that if I lived there, my freedom in physical and mental form would be ring-fenced; self-imposed as well as put upon, from within and without that country. Jerusalem: seen from many different aspects by different religions. An international city but with armed national ownership. Supported by world-wide Jewish distribution, attacked by world-wide and sincerely-held opposing doctrines of all kinds.
And here I am, in my armchair, far away (as Mike remarks of a lot of we would-be commentators)and reading and thinking here of Scuds. That's the least of Israel's or its enemies' problems...
Just to add that my view of Israel (Elat) was from Jordan (Aquba) across barb wire and mined borders, which took the occasional wandering camel. That was in l957-58. Will it never end.

[james]

obviously the knowledge about the scuds originated out of some intelligence source - so how could a country show proof about it?