CENTRAL VIEW for Monday, October 1, 2007

Air Defense: Clueless in Iran and Syria

Watch for some Iranian and Syrian generals to meet those 72 virgins in Muslim Paradise much earlier than they expected. It seems the generals bought a bunch of very expensive air defense systems from the Russians that do not work.

The recent raid into northern Syria, just south of the Turkish border, by Israeli Defense Force (IDF) F-16s and F-18s (not even stealth fighter-bombers), revealed that Syria’s air defense system does not work. Because Iran purchased the very same system, the Iranian Mullahs are gulping down the Imodium AD.

This means that the United States and/or the IDF would have few problems using even conventional fighter-bombers to bomb Iran’s nascent, nuclear-weapons capabilities back into the Stone Ages. Behind the ridiculous scene of Iranian President Amadinajihad (as I call him) blustering before the United Nations, the Mullahs, the actual Iranian leaders, have no basis for bluster.

Despite being fawned over by the Hate-tri-ots (a term heard on Rush Limbaugh that denotes those who claim to support our troops but, in fact, simply hate Bush), Amadinajihad’s U.N. appearance was a PR disaster. Amadinajihad’s low point came when he stated that homosexuals are not a problem [his word] in Iran because there are no homosexuals in Iran.

Of course not. If discovered, Iranian homosexuals are executed. The gay community might take note that where the radical Islamists take power and impose the Law of Sharia, there are no gays.

But the much larger issue in the Middle East is that almost all the nations of that region do not want Iran to gain hegemony over the Persian Gulf and its oil and, therefore, put the Iranian Mullahs in charge. Recall, 95-percent of Muslims are Sunnis. The Iranian Muslims are Shiites.

The only viable counters, at present, to an Iranian takeover of the Middle East, are the armed forces of the United States, along with some help from the U.K. and some militarily weak Western European nations. Still, the only way Iran can become the Big Man on Campus of the Middle East is a U.S. withdrawal combined with some credible, nuclear-weapons delivery systems.

The only forces capable of eliminating Iran’s nuclear-weapons delivery systems are the U.S. and the IDF, either acting alone or in concert.

So, the following nations have indicated, either directly or indirectly, that they want the U.S. and whatever allies we can scrape up to maintain a credible troop presence in Iraq and the region:

Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Turkey, Egypt, Abu Dhabi, Ajman, Dubai, Fujairah, Ras al-Khaimah, Sharjah, Umm al-Quwain, Muskat, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Turkmen, Azerbaydzhan, Armenia, Georgia, and Israel.

The odd nations out are Iran and Syria. At this point, only the IDF and the Syrians know what the IDF bombed. Some think the IDF bombed WMD moved into Syria right before the Coalition invasion in March, 2003. Others think the Syrians were storing nuclear weapons belonging to the North Koreas, and hidden in northern Syria to escape U.N. inspectors. For sure, the Turks were helping the IDF by allowing the IDF fighter-bombers to use the airspace of southern Turkey.

Between the Surge, which is working where employed, and Iran’s lack of an air defense, which Iran cannot fix between now and January, 2009, the Iranians are in a panic.

At some level of consciousness, the Mullahs must that know that a Democrat U.S. President will not remove U.S. troops from Iraq because to do so would hog-tie the Democrat Party as the party of defeat -- the Hatriots -- forever.

In the wake of a total U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq, no Democrat would want to be responsible, again, for allowing the slaughter of those who have cooperated with U.S. Forces.

While a Democrat presidential candidate might pander to the move-on-dot-org-Hatriots to get elected, he or she, if elected, would, in the end, end up telling the Hatriots to perform an anatomically impossible act. That’s what geo-political scientists call: Realpolitik.

Syndicated columnist and featured commentator for USA Today, William Hamilton, is a Distinguished Graduate of the U.S. Naval War College and a former research fellow at the U.S. Military History Institute of the U.S. Army War College. He is a member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers. Writing as William Penn, he and his wife are the co-authors of The Grand Conspiracy and The Panama Conspiracy – two thrillers about terrorism directed against the United States.

©2007. William Hamilton.

Dr. Hamilton can be contacted at:

Email: william@central-view.com