Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir delivers a statement after a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry at the State Department in Washington, February 8, 2016. REUTERS/CARLOS BARRIA
Reuters: Saudi minister says Syrian rebels should get surface-to-air missiles
Moderate Syrian rebels should be supplied with surface-to-air missiles to defend against air strikes, Germany weekly Der Spiegel quoted Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir as saying.
The rebels are under attack from both the Syrian air force and Russian strikes. Jubeir said providing them with the rockets would "enable the moderate opposition to neutralize the regime's helicopters and planes".
Al-Jubeir repeated his calls for Syrian president Bashar al-Assad to step down in order to enable a political solution to the five-year-long war.
"The other option is that the war goes on and Assad is being defeated," al-Jubeir said.
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Update #1: Saudi FM says Syrian rebels should receive anti-aircraft missiles (AFP)
Update #2: Saudi ground forces would target only Daesh in Syria (AFP)
WNU editor: There are already many anti-aircraft missiles in Syria .... my guess is that the Saudi government now wants to send even more advanced versions of these missiles. As to what is my take on such a development .... the possibility that some of Syria's radical groups may get their hands on these weapons should make all of us shudder.
7 comments:
Why do I get this weird feeling that if Al Nusra or friends of Saudi Arabia/Turkey get advanced surface to air missiles in Syria, somehow the Houthi's fighting Saudi Arabia et al., will mysteriously obtain more advanced Russian or Iranian surface to air missiles in Yemen. Hmmm...,,,,,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f23b1gwNmHg
"Syrian civil war
In the Syrian civil war, Turkey reportedly helped to transport to the anti-government rebels a limited amount of FIM-92 Stingers.[41][42]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIM-92_Stinger
" The battery of a Stinger lasts for four or five years, so any battery supplied in the 1980s would now be inoperative[32] but during the Syrian Civil War, insurgents showed how easily they switched to different batteries, including widespread car batteries, as power sources for several MANPADS models."
This is probably easy. If you think like a programmer in terms of blackboxes (modules), an engineer in terms of interfaces or your average tinkerer. ...
At what point will the Kurds be supplied with surface to air missiles??? Putin hasn't even started twisting the knife.
The Kurds have MANPAD's, every faction does,
but to avoid them them, everybody just stays above 5,000 feet.
The Saudi's are proposing that the "Gentleman's Agreement" that limits the jihadi's to short range missiles, be broken, and their pet jihadi's be given SAM systems that can down aircraft up to 55,000 feet at ranges of hundreds of miles.
I'm not guessing the the Kurds would down a f-4 or f-16 but I'm sure they(Turks) use their AH-1's well within MANPAD range.
The Turks have only deployed their Apache's against the PKK, who arn't in Syria, and as far as we know, don't have MANPADs.
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