S-300 Missiles in Syria

Several outlets have reported on the introduction of the Russian S-300 anti-air missile system into Syria.  The Wall Street Journal and Al Jazeera show similar stories.  Last week Syria shot down a Russian intelligence aircraft trying to defend against an attack by Israel on Iranian targets in Syria. Yes, its complicated.

Russia and Iran support Assad, and both have sent troops to do their fighting.  Iran sends its terrorist groups as proxies.  It is sometimes hard to tell the "Syrian forces" from either one of those since they blend in so well.  Israel does not want Iranian offensive weapons on its doorstep and has destroyed some of them before they ever got delivered.  The Israelis are good at that sort of thing.  In the process, the Syrians shot down the Russian plane.  The BBC says that was because the Israeli aircraft were using the reconnaissance aircraft for cover, but it is just as easy to blame it on the fog of war.  Iran will blame the US for everything, even if it makes no sense.

Of course, we remember when the Russians brought one of its Buk missiles into the Ukraine and shot down a civilian aircraft, so nobody wanted a repeat of that sort of thing.  This was pretty close to that same situation.  The Russians already, by the Al Jazeera account, have operators being trained in Russia.  That should help us believe that they weren't trained very well on the missiles that shot down the Russian aircraft last week.  There is not enough time to train anyone on this complex defensive system, so you can bet a lot of those "Syrian operators" will be Russian to avoid another mistake.  It is really hard to get good help these days.

The Russian S-300 has not made the Israelis happy, and everybody knows what that means.  In the meantime, the Russians will have a very accurate missile with much better targeting capabilities sitting on their bases, with Russians and Hezbollah side by side.  The EU continues to support Iran through all of this, even today announcing a financing vehicle to avoid US sanctions on Iran.