Word: hizballah
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...Over the past few months, U.S. and Israeli officials allege, Damascus has expanded and accelerated its customary deliveries of weapons to Hizballah, the Iran-backed Shi'ite militia in neighboring Lebanon. Israeli President Shimon Peres on Tuesday accused Syria of ratcheting up the stakes by sending midrange Scud missiles to Hizballah. The significance of the Scud is more symbolic than strategic. Though they have a longer range than any of the smaller rockets already in Hizballah's ample arsenal - and that would allow the group to theoretically target any location in Israel - the larger Scuds can be easily tracked...
...Scud specter threatens to sink the Obama Administration's attempts to woo Syria away from its strategic alliance with Iran and militant groups such as Hizballah and Hamas. Until recently, Syria seemed to be one of the few areas in the Middle East where Washington's diplomatic overtures appeared to be paying off. U.S. military officials in Baghdad have cited improved Syrian efforts at controlling the flow of jihadists over the Syrian border into Iraq as contributing to the reduction of violence there since 2007. More recently, American diplomats acknowledged that Syria has been playing a more constructive role...
...Ford has not yet been sent to Damascus, in part because of U.S. concerns over the increase in weapons deliveries to Hizballah and other issues. Administration officials were particularly miffed when Assad hosted both Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah at a dinner in Damascus in February, shortly after the U.S. had named Ford as ambassador-designate. In his testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during confirmation hearings, Ford voiced concern that though the Syrian government says it is committed to a comprehensive Middle East peace agreement, it also threatens to revert to its old behavior...
...that's the message Syria is trying to send through stepping up weapons shipments, the exercise could backfire. "Assad says he wants talks with Israel, but doubling down on Hizballah isn't going to make the Israelis come running, especially not a Likud government," says Tabler. "It makes a war that much more likely...
...apparent breakdown in the Syrian-Israeli peace track is contributing to the widespread pessimism in the Middle East that the next war between Israel and one of its enemies - Iran, Syria, Hizballah or Hamas - could easily escalate into a regional war with all of them. And there are a number of potential triggers for such a conflagration. Hizballah, which has rearmed in violation of U.N. resolutions and is even more powerful than it was before the summer 2006 war with Israel, still claims the right to retaliate for the 2007 assassination of its operations chief, Imad Mugniyah. And although Hamas...