March 26,2008:
The Israeli government has been passing around, to local governments, a
war planning document. This exercise assumes
a future war with Syria, and gives the local officials an idea of what to
expect. Currently, the Israelis estimate that there would be as many as 3,300
Israeli casualties (including up to 200 dead) is Syria tried to use its long
range missiles against Israel. If the Syrians used chemical warheads, Israeli
casualties could be as high as 16,000. Over 200,000 Israelis would be left
homeless, and it's believed about a 100,000 would seek to leave the country.
Israel now
assumes that Iran would fire some of its ballistic missiles as well, armed with
conventional warheads. But the big danger is Syria, which is a client state of
Iran. Syria has underground storage and launch facilities for its arsenal of
over a thousand SCUD missiles. Armed with half ton high explosive and cluster
bomb warheads, the missiles have ranges of 500-700 kilometers. Syria also has
some 90 older Russian Frog-7 missiles (70 kilometer range, half ton warhead)
and 210 more modern Russian SS-21 missiles (120 kilometer range,half ton warhead) operating with mobile
launchers. There are also 60 mobile SCUD launchers. The Syrians have a large
network of camouflaged launching sites for the mobile launchers. Iran and North
Korea have helped Syria build underground SCUD manufacturing and maintenance
facilities. The Syrian missiles are meant to hit Israeli airfields, missile
launching sites and nuclear weapons sites, as well as population centers. Syria
hopes to do enough damage with a missile strike to cripple Israeli combat
capability.
Israel has
long been aware of the Syrian capabilities and any war with Syria would
probably result in some interesting attacks on the Syrian missile network. The
SCUD is a liquid fuel missile and takes half an hour or more to fuel and ready
for launch. So underground facilities are a major defensive measure against an
alert and astute opponent like Israel.
The
planning document did not discuss what Israel would do in response to this
attack, but in the past, Israel has threatened to use nukes against anyone who
fired chemical weapons at Israel (which does not have any chemical weapons).