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by Dashiell Bennett
As concern grows over Syria's stockpile of chemical weapons, a new
report suggests that one country is already figuring out how it intends
to bomb them out of existence. Jeffery Goldberg, over at our sister site
The Atlantic says that two different intelligence sources
have told him that Israel approached Jordan—which shares borders with
Israel and Syria—about a possible airstrike on Syrian chemical weapons
sites, but that the Jordanians said "the time was not right." The
requests were made through informal channels during the last two
months.
Israel has attacked Syria in the past without Jordan's stamp of approval—in 2007, they leveled a Syrian nuclear plant without
warning—but is still concerned about putting their neighbors in
jeopardy. Some of the sites they want to attack are near the border
between Jordan and Syria, and Jordan has already become a quiet player
in the Syrian civil war. Refugee camps on the Jordanian side of the
border would become prime targets for Assad's forces, while many of the
Syrian rebels use Jordan as base to regroup and coordinate without
outside allies. As a result of that help, and their generally friendly
peace with Israel, Jordan has become a target for both pro-Assad and
al-Qaeda sympathizers. A recently foiled terror plot planned for the capital city of Amman was organized by al-Qaeda allies who had fought in the Syrian conflict.
Just today, the United States threatened to take action should Syria cross the "red line" and use chemical weapons in its civil war or on its neighbors, why Syria's foreign ministry immediately denied.
However, much like the possibility of a nuclear weapon in Iran, the
Israelis may not be willing to wait as long as the Americans are before
they do something about it. The closer the Assad regime comes to
falling, the more dangerous they become and that could mean a war that
spreads wider before it comes to an end.