Report: Syria Aiming VX Missiles at Israel

Defense source says at least 100 chemical warheads deployed

August 2, 2003
© 2003 WorldNetDaily.com

Syria is aiming at least 100 long-range ballistic missiles equipped with VX – the most lethal nerve gas – at central Israel, according to a senior Israeli defense source.

Damascus now has achieved its goal of balancing Israel's nuclear advantage, said the source, quoted by Jane's Foreign Report this week.

U.S. and Israeli intelligence sources have said they believe Syria hid evidence of Saddam Hussein's deployment of weapons of mass destruction among its own arsenal of unconventional weapons.

In April, the Defense Department said Syria had conducted a series of chemical-weapons tests to exploit the transfer of Iraqi expertise.

A captured Iraqi scientist who worked in Iraq's chemical weapons program for more than a decade said Iraq had secretly sent unconventional weapons and technology to Syria since the mid-1990s, the New York Times reported in April.

In May, Jane's Intelligence Digest said Syria's scientific expertise made the existence of a biological weapons program entirely plausible.

German and Israeli sources, according to Jane's, have asserted Syria possesses and can weaponize anthrax, botulinum toxin and the toxin ricin.

In 1973, Syria allegedly received assistance and chemical agents from Egypt and had the capability to produce and weaponize sarin and VX nerve agents by 1986, as well as mustard blister agents.

Syria also was believed to have received considerable help with its delivery systems from the former Soviet Union.

The Israeli daily Ha'aretz said the U.S. believes Syrian President Bashar Assad is having difficulty controlling the advisers of his late father, former president Hafez Assad.

Bashar Assad has promised U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell he would get Syria removed from the U.S. list of states supporting terror. But the senior aides, who had little influence while the elder Assad was alive, are exploiting the younger Assad's inexperience, Ha'aretz reported. Their hardline is preventing any effort to stop the flow of weapons and money to terrorists in south Lebanon.

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