There they go again.
For the second time in as many months, the Obama administration has leaked news about Israeli strikes on Syria. Unless the administration’s goal is to embarrass Syria’s Bashir al-Assad into retaliating — and thus escalating a civil war into a regional conflict — it’s hard to follow the logic for the leaking.
US officials leaked to CNN and The New York Times that Israel was behind a July 5 air strike that destroyed a weapons depot in Syria containing a shipment of high-tech Yakhont missiles Russia sent to the Assad regime. It’s more or less the same thing American officials did after Israel’s covert strike on Syrian military targets in May.
The purpose of the Israeli strikes is clear. They are not aimed at intervening in Syria’s civil war. They underscore Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s promise that he’s going to enforce Israel’s red line, which means preventing Syrian weapons from slipping into the hands of the Iranian-backed terror group Hezbollah.
So why is America leaking? One explanation is that it is payback for the way Israeli strikes are undermining the administration’s claim that it doesn’t have the capability to do its own airstrikes in Syria.
Only last month, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, declared that the US couldn’t risk airstrikes in Syria without a massive operation “that would require 700 or more sorties.” Israel’s surgical work makes Dempsey look foolish and the White House quiescent in a war that has taken over 100,000 lives.
Meanwhile, Secretary of State John Kerry announced yesterday in Amman that Israelis and Palestinians will meet soon to finalize an agreement aimed at relaunching peace negotiations. Let’s just say they would go much better if the Israelis didn’t have to worry that the US is working against them behind their backs.