Getting Syrias

Last week's incident involving Israeli airplanes violating Syrian airspace seems to be the beginning of a larger dilemma. If you thought relations with the region couldn't get any more strained:

Israel believes that North Korea has been supplying Syria and Iran with nuclear materials, a Washington defense official told the New York Times. “The Israelis think North Korea is selling to Iran and Syria what little they have left,” he said.

The official added that recent Israeli reconnaissance flights over Syria revealed possible nuclear installations that Israeli officials estimate might have been supplied with material from North Korea.

According to the New York Times, last week's airspace violation wasn't just a little mistake:

A Defense Department official said Israeli jets had struck at least one target in northeastern Syria last Thursday, but the official said it was still unclear exactly what the jets hit and the extent of the bombing damage.

While the Times says the target remains unknown, Ynet news reported a Middle Eastern newspaper uncovered evidence that the strike hit something much more sensitive than empty desert:

Meanwhile on Wednesday the Nazareth-based Israeli Arab newspaper The Assennara cited anonymous Israeli sources as saying that Israeli jets "bombed a Syrian-Iranian missile base in northern Syria that was financed by Iran... It appears that the base was completely destroyed."

And just in case anyone had doubts about Syria's intent to retaliate, Syrian Vice President Farouk al-Shara told Italian newspaper Le Repubblica, "Damascus will retaliate:"

Following IDF's reported violation of Syrian airspace, Farouk al-Shara tells Italian newspaper La Repubblica, 'All I can say is that the military and political echelon is looking into a series of responses as we speak. Results are forthcoming'

And what does the United States plan to do concerning the new tension in the region? Draw up plans to bomb Iran, of course:

A recent decision by German officials to withhold support for any new sanctions against Iran has pushed a broad spectrum of officials in Washington to develop potential scenarios for a military attack on the Islamic regime, FOX News confirmed Tuesday.

In addition to these United States plans, the UK has sent soldiers to the Iraq-Iran border to monitor crossing of equiment and personnel into Iraq. While this may seem like a reasonable precaution necessary for security in Iraq, it could bring (hopefully unwanted) consequences:

The operation is regarded as a high-risk strategy which could lead to clashes with Iranian-backed Shia militias or even Iranian forces and also leaves open the possibility of Iranian retaliation in the form of attacks against British forces at the Basra air base or inciting violence to draw them back into Basra city.

And then there's the Russian and Chinese connections to the region, as if relations with the Middle East weren't complicated enough.