Assad fires more Scuds

The Assad regime may firing Scud weapons to warn off the west from intervening in Syria, according to Shashank Joshi research fellow at the Royal United Services defence think tank.

Speaking to the Guardian he said:

Missiles are a useful way of reminding the outside world ‘look we still have potentially several hundred of these ballistic missiles and if they can land very near the Turkish border they can also land within Turkey itself’.

Assad may be gambling that this is a useful signal of deterrent against foreign intervention ... it only takes one [missile] to get through and hit a populated area, or an air base, for their to be very serious political consequences particularly in this context if it has chemical armed warheads.

I still don’t see any strong reason for Assad to use such weapons, but the capability does exist. And it is only sensible for Turkey and other countries to prepare for that contingency.

Joshi warned that the Nato Patriot missile system, which is due to be operational on the Turkish border by the end of January, “hasn’t been tested against fall-blown Scud missiles in battlefield conditions".

He said Iranian suggestions that the deployment of Patriots was a step towards war were “absurd”.

Joshi said reports of Scud missile attacks were credible. There is little reason for the US government to make false claims about such attacks, he said. And he warned that the legacy of the Iraq invasion should not be used to “reflexively reject all evidence”.

In the case of Syria, western states continue to have little appetite for intervention, he said.

If we had wanted a reason to intervene [in Syria] there are innumerable pretexts to have done so, without have to raise the spectre of chemical weapons.

Although I think we should be sceptical, I’m not one of those who thinks this is a swirl of propaganda being thrown up in the air simply to allow an easy path for western states simply to assault Syria under false pretexts. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be very much on our guard in how we assess these little bits of fragmentary evidence coming through.

He warned that it is unlikely to be clear from satellite detection whether the missiles launched were Scud or Scud-type missiles.

“It is easy to confuse the specifics. But what’s clear is that some sort of missile was launched at this base last week and something has been launched this week," he said.

He said Scud missiles were too imprecise to hit specific targets, but can be effective against wide areas like air bases.

Assad maybe turning to such missiles because his air force is over stretched and now vulnerable to anti-aircraft weapons, newly acquired by rebels, Joshi said.

He said were “grounds for scepticism” about US claims that Assad is preparing to use chemical weapons, as they were based on anonymous briefings.

If officials are only willing to speak off the record there is a problem of accountability and reliability of the evidence.

The Guardian