Washington, April 21: As Syria faces charges it may have supplied Hezbollah with Scud missiles, experts say spotting the weapons is no easy task — which US and British forces learned in the first Gulf war.
Smuggling missiles and mobile launchers into Lebanon without US intelligence agencies noticing would be “possible, but difficult,” one US defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said.
Missiles and mobile launchers could be taken apart to avoid detection, analysts said.
“All you have to do is separate the tail from the missile, which is something you can do easily. And then move it to some other vehicle,” said Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.
Israel has accused Syria of arming Hezbollah with the ballistic missiles, a charge Damascus vehemently denies. US officials meanwhile say they cannot confirm if the weapons have been delivered to the Lebanese Shiite movement.
In the 1990-91 Gulf war, allied aircraft — along with US and British special forces on the ground — struggled to track and take out Saddam Hussein’s mobile Scuds, which were hidden in gullies and culverts and quickly shifted out of sight after any launch.
“We flew thousands of missions to try to destroy Saddam’s Scuds which he was firing at Israel and Saudi Arabia. After the war we discovered we had missed every single time,” said Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer and fellow at the Brookings Institution.
Sensors and other military technology have improved since then, and Lebanon offers a smaller area to monitor than Iraq.
Once inside Lebanon, the missiles and launchers could be reassembled and hidden until Hezbollah was ready to use them.
“The missiles are most vulnerable when they are preparing to launch. Still it would be difficult to destroy every launcher before they fired,” he said.
Scud-type missiles, originally designed and produced by the Soviets, are usually about 11 meters (yards) long and have a range of roughly 300 kilometers (186 miles), though some versions can strike beyond 500 kilometers.
“It does not dramatically change the equation but it means Hezbollah can fire at any target in Israel,” Cordesman said.
Whether or not Scuds have been delivered, the Obama administration is convinced that Syria is stepping up military support to Hezbollah, US officials said.
“There’s a narrow question of Scuds but there is a much broader concern about advanced weaponry,” a US official, who asked not to be named, told reporters.
“The cooperation between Syria and Hezbollah is escalating.”
It remained unclear why the accusation against Syria was leveled by the Israeli president, Shimon Peres, and not by military or intelligence officials who usually present such charges along with more details, analysts said.
Some lawmakers in the US Congress have seized on the allegations to argue against Washington’s efforts to promote dialogue with Syria.
President Barack Obama in February appointed Robert Ford as the first US ambassador to Damascus in five years, although the Senate has yet to confirm him.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Thursday in Estonia that “as of today” the United States sought to pursue deeper ties with Syria, suggesting Obama’s policy could change if Damascus was found to be sending missiles.
Hezbollah, originally a resistance group formed to counter an Israeli occupation of south Lebanon, had forced the Israeli military out of Lebanon in 2000.
And in the summer of 2006 Israel waged a bloody 34-day war on Lebanon and fighting claimed the lives of more than 1,200 people in Lebanon, most of them civilians, and more than 160 Israelis, most of them soldiers.
But Israel’s prime minister sought to downplay on Thursday the chances of conflict with Syria and Lebanon.
“We do not want war. But weapons have been transferred to Hezbollah across the border between Syria and Lebanon, and this is unacceptable,” he said.
However, Israeli flights over Lebanon occur on an almost daily basis and are in breach of UN Security Council resolution 1710, which in August 2006 ended the war.
In addition, Israel continues to occupy the Lebanese Shabaa Farms.
—Agencies