Game changer: Russia to supply Syria with advanced S-300 air-defense systems

Analysts note that Ryabkov’s statement about the deal to sell the S-300 to Syria comes a day after two events which should have boosted the morale of the anti-Assad rebels:

• The European Union on Monday announced it was lifting its arms embargo on the Syrian opposition, thus allowing EU member states to begin supplying arms to the rebel militias. France and the United Kingdom, the two leading European advocates of sending military assistance to the rebels, both agreed not to supply arms to the rebels “at this stage,” but both also announced that this commitment to abstain from supplying arms will end on 1 August.
• On Monday, Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) visited to Turkey-Syria border area, and had three meetings with political and military leaders of the Syrian opposition. Two meetings took place in a Turkish border town, and the third meeting took place in a small town a mile or so inside Syria.

Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon earlier today (Tuesday) suggested that Israel might attack and destroy the S-300 batteries if the systems were to be deployed in Syria.

Haaretz quotes Ya’alon to say that Russia’s plan to sell the S-300 systems to Assad is “a threat, as far as we’re concerned,” but noted that the air-defense batteries have yet to be shipped out.

“I can’t say there’s been an acceleration (in weapons delivery from Russia to Syria),” he told reporters. “The shipments haven’t set out yet and I hope they won’t. If they do arrive in Syria, God forbid, we’ll know what to do.”

This last comment by Ya’alon appears to contradict Israel Air Force (IAF) chief Maj. Gen. Amir Eshel, who last week said that Syria under Assad has already invested millions in acquiring anti-aircraft missiles, and that the S-300 shipment “is on its way.”

Israel has four worries about the S-300 systems:

• The deployment of the systems would make Israeli attacks on targets inside Syria, by either manned aircraft or cruise missiles, more difficult – and costlier in terms of men lost and aircraft, cruise missiles, and stand-off munitions shot down.
• If the United States and its allies decided to impose a no-fly zone over Syria, it would be more difficult, and costly, to maintain such a no-fly zone.
• Syria may transfer some of the S-300 batteries to Hezbollah, thus eroding Israel’s air superiority over Lebanon and allowing Hezbollah greater freedom of action.
• The range of the S-300 missiles is about 200km, so they will also allow Syria to disrupt IAF flights in northern Israel.

Anthony Cordesman, a military specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), does not mince words when describing the consequences of supplying the S-300 systems to Stria:

The Russian sale of the S-300 to Syria is a massive game changer. If it is more than a matter of words, and actual transfers take place, it virtually ensures that the U.S.-Russian talks will be meaningless, sends warning signals about similar arms transfer to Iran, can drag Israel into the Syrian fighting, and would sharply alter U.S. and allied “no fly “capabilities if the Syrians can quickly absorb the system and make it effective.
Coupled to the rising civil war in Iraq, rising Lebanese sectarian tension, Hezbollah intervention in Syria, pressures on Turkey and Jordan, and Saudi-Qatari-UAE intervention in support of the Syrian rebels, it is creating a potential zone of at least political and covert conflict that now extends from the Strait of Hormuz to the Mediterranean and is fundamentally changing the U.S. strategic position in the Middle East in ways that have nothing to do with the war on terrorism.

There are observers in Israel who, while not minimizing the importance of having the S-300 added to Assad’s arsenal, say that the missiles will not materially change the military equation between Syria and Israel (note that these observers agree, however, that the S-300 missiles will change the military balance between Israel and Iran, if Russia supplied them to Iran, because the distance between Israel and Iran will make any Israeli air and electronic countermeasure deployment over Iran much thinner than it would be over neighboring Syria, and, hence, less effective against the S-300 systems) . They note that:

• The IAF has been training for some time now in how to defeat the systems. These intense IAF drills have been helped by the fact that three close allies of Israel – Greece, Cyprus, and Azerbaijan – have purchased the S-300 systems from Moscow over the last decade, and they have all allowed Israeli military engineers and pilots to study the systems in detail. The Greek air force has been on especially good terms with Israel, and the air forces of the two countries have conducted several large-scale joint simulation practices of attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
• The Russian company manufacturing the S-300 last year said it was closing the system’s production lines for lack of demand for the missiles. Russia may thus have to take missiles out of its own arsenals to supply them to Syria.
• It is not clear how the Syrian military, exhausted and depleted after two years of war, will be able to absorb these sophisticated systems and use them effectively. It may be that Russian military personnel and engineers will accompany the batteries and stay behind to operate them, but it is difficult to see Russia allowing dozens of its citizens to stay in a fast-changing and violent theater of war – and, in any event, reliance on Russian technicians to operate the systems may restrict Assad’s freedom in using the missiles.