Zero Hedge:
While the (chemical) dust over Syria has yet to settle, one country is not waiting around before in tried and true fashion it kicks the proverbial hornets nest. Only this time the recipient of Israeli aggression is not some small country that can hardly afford to defend itself against made in the US, state-of-the-art weapons: it is Russia, if only indirectly. Last Friday, July 5, in the fog of the Egyptian coup, a contingent of 50 Russian-made Yakhont P-800 anti-ship missiles at the Syrian port-city of Latakia was destroyed. It has since become clear that the attack was launched by none other than an Israeli Dolphin-class (German-made) submarine according to a report in the British Sunday Times, which in turn contradicts a previous report that the attack had been the work of the Israeli air force.
Furthermore, the alleged Israeli naval strike was closely coordinated with the United States. While this open aggression on Russian interests in Syria for now remains unchallenged, one wonder what happens when the news hits that US-made weapons supporting Syrian “rebels” have been mysteriously blown up by Russian rockets and how furious the public outcry would be against such an open Russian provocation.
From Jerusalem Post:
According to the report, the Israeli fleet of German-built submarines launched a cruise missile at the weapons cache after which Syrian rebels reportedly attested to hearing early-morning explosions at a Syrian port-side naval barracks.
On Friday, anonymous US officials told CNN that Israel had carried out an air strike on the Syrian city.
Three unnamed US officials told CNN the IAF had targeted Russian-made Yakhont anti-ship missiles that could pose a threat to Israel.
Qassem Saadeddine, spokesman for the Free Syrian Army’s Supreme Military Council, said the pre-dawn attack hit Syrian Navy barracks at Safira, near the port of Latakia. The rebel forces’ intelligence network had identified newly supplied Yakhont missiles being stored there, he said.
“It was not the FSA that targeted this,” Saadeddine told Reuters. “It is not an attack that was carried out by rebels. This attack was either by air raid or long-range missiles fired from boats in the Mediterranean.”
A loud explosion was heard near Latakia on Wednesday, an opposition monitoring group said, but the cause of the blast was unclear.
Fast forward one week when we learn that in a perfectly unrelated event, a massive military drill involving naval forces, strategic bomber aircraft, missile-defense teams, tactical and strategic missiles, infantry, and armored vehicles took place in Russia’s far east: a perfectly unrelated exercise that just happens to have 160,000 soliders, 1,000 tanks, 130 aircraft and 70 naval vessels that has been classified as the largest of its kind in thepost-Soviet period.
