JODI RUDOREN, NYT: Israel Backs Limited Strike Against Syria

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http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/06/world/middleeast/israel-backs-limited-...

Israeli officials have consistently made the case that enforcing Mr. Obama’s narrow “red line” on Syria is essential to halting the nuclear ambitions of Israel’s archenemy, Iran. More quietly, Israelis have increasingly argued that the best outcome for Syria’s two-and-a-half-year-old civil war, at least for the moment, is no outcome. 

Here is one answer to "Who Benefits" (aka "Cui Bono") for a strike against Assad focused on WMD, extremely unlikely to shift the balance of the conflict enough to drive Assad out of power, and extremely unlikely to have any positive benefits to Syrian civilians.

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That would be entirely compatible with long-standing Likud ...

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BruceMcF's picture

... views, so that's pretty straightforward independent of any of the inside baseball stuff that is so prone to being info-gamed.

A landlocked state with substantial Druze influence in Southern Syria, especially if it includes Damascas would be seen by Likudniks as a buffer state. But for Balkanization, they need neither the Alawites nor the Sunnis to win and establish / re-establish government control quickly. Hence the appeal of a limited strike in the Damascus region against government positions which would not tilt the overall balance of power but would hamper the ability of the government to project force into Southern Syria would have a lot of appeal from those who want a Balkanized Syria.

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