US
sending Patriot surface-to-air missiles to Turkey – reports
US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta has signed an order to deploy two Patriot air-defense missile batteries to Turkey, he said in an exclusive interview with CBS News. The missiles are expected to bolster Turkish defenses against Syria.
RT,
14
December, 2012
Up
to 400 American servicemen are being sent to Turkey to operate the
batteries.
On
December 4 NATO foreign ministers approved the deployment of German
and Dutch batteries of Patriot missiles on the Turkish-Syrian border.
On
December 14 Germany’s Bundestag voted on deploying country’s
Patriot complexes to Turkey.
The
air defense shield on Turkish-Syrian border will not only protect
Turkey. There are fears that Patriot batteries might create
practicalno-fly zones inside the Syrian territory, as Patriot has a
range of 160 kilometers.
Germany
and Netherlands are expected to dispatch Patriot batteries to Turkey
in early 2013.
The
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Patriots are defensive
weapons and NATO's decision to deploy the surface-to-air missiles to
Turkey is clear signal to Damascus that Turkey is backed by its NATO
allies.
NATO
Secretary General Fogh Rasmussen told the media earlier this month
that "Patriots
are effective as interceptors against chemical weapons," following
the news spread in the western media that Syria is getting its
chemical weapons stock ready.
The
US fears that in case President Bashar Assad loses control of the
situation the chemical weapons of Syria could fall into the hands of
radical Islamists.
Several
cross border incidents between Syria and Turkey over the summer have
stoked fears within Ankara that the ongoing civil war in its southern
neighbor could spill over into Turkish territory.
On
Tuesday US President Barack Obama recognized Syria’s main
opposition group as the legitimate representative of the Syrian
people, thus bringing the US in line with its allies Britain, France
and the Gulf Arab states.
The
following day Conn Hallinan, a contributing editor at Foreign Policy
in Focus, told RT US recognition of the Syrian opposition “opens
the door for a much more direct intervention into the civil war in
Syria.”
“It
will mean that the heavy weapons will come in. Potentially you could
end up with a no-fly zone. Really, it's pretty much an open
declaration of war against the Assad regime,” Hallinan
said.
On
December 5 the USS Eisenhower, an American aircraft carrier that
maintains eight fighter bomber squadrons and 8,000 men, reached the
Syrian coast. The carrier joined the USS Iwo Jima Amphibious Ready
Group, which arrived earlier and holds approximately 2,500 Marines.
If Washington calls for a ground intervention into Syria, the US
currently has 10,000 fighting men, 17 warships, 70 fighter-bombers,
and 10 destroyers and frigates armed with guided military missiles in
the waters close to Syrian shores.
Iran in their sights?
The
reason for positioning the Patriot missiles on Syria’s border isn’t
connected to a possible attack by Syria, Jeremy Salt from the Bilkent
University in Ankara, told RT.
“There’s
absolutely no likelihood that Syria is going to attack Turkey,”
Salt argued, adding that the speculation is whether it’s the first
step to direct NATO military intervention in Syria, or a strategic
move with different implications.
The
increasing military pressure from the Jordanian side of Syria’s
border certainly “adds up to something being in the wind,” the
professor said.
The
Patriots might have nothing to do with Syria at all, instead being
“part of the game planned against Iran”, Jeremy Salt told RT,
citing Middle East commentator Abdel Bari Atwan.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.