Some have perhaps wondered about the reasons for the warning directed by US President Barack Obama to Syria a few days about the consequences of its chemical or biological weapons “moving around or being utilized", and his assertion that this would change the United States' calculus and would free it of its current commitment not to interfere militarily in the Syrian crisis. Is such a threat then due to new information obtained by the Americans about the possibility of Bashar Al-Assad's troops making use of unconventional weapons against the opposition or the possibility of such weapons being purposely moved to another party, especially as Obama's warning pointed to “other players on the ground" without naming Al-Qaeda as he had in previous warnings? Most likely such talk from the US has come as a response to the speech given by Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah on Quds Day, which Iran celebrates every year – a speech that contained the new threat of inflicting “tens of thousands of Israeli casualties" with “a small number of missiles" in case it were to suffer an attack from Israel. Whatever may be the types, sizes and names of the missiles Hezbollah has been supplied with from either Iran or Syrian arms manufacturers, it is not known that there are among them missiles capable of killing tens of thousands of people, even if dozens of them were to be fired successfully, knowing that such missiles would be difficult to conceal or to use in large numbers during a war because of Israel's crushing air force superiority. Moreover, there are among the conventional missiles held by the greatest military powers in the world – such as the United States, Russia and China – none that could kill tens of thousands of people. What Nasrallah meant may well then regard the nature of the warheads those missiles would be carrying, and that is most likely what prompted Washington and drove it to direct such a warning. Yet where is the wisdom in talking about holding deadly missiles when Hezbollah is known for being extremely tight-lipped about its armament and for keeping “surprises" for when it uses them, as was the case with the missile that hit the Israeli warship during the 2006 war? Does Hezbollah believe that a war against Iran, which could include targeting its own forces, is drawing near as Israel's belligerent tone is rising, and seeks to “up the ante" in order to deter Israel, or does it have a different objective in mind? Certainly the supporters of the Damascus regime – Hezbollah, Iran and Russia – have spoken repeatedly, while in the process of “warning", of the possibility of the Syrian crisis expanding and turning into a regional war. They may well in fact be wishing and hoping for such a turn of events, because a broadened conflict would decrease the pressure on the Syrian regime and drive the world powers that have stripped it of legitimacy to backtrack and agree to its participation in looking into how to stop it. Some American analysts have even considered that Moscow wants the US to get implicated in Syria because it wants “revenge" for what happened in Libya and to prove the efficiency of Russian weapons – and that downing the Turkish jet was a frank invitation to fight directed at the North Atlantic Alliance (NATO). This is why one can place Nasrallah's “new threat" under eliciting such a regional war by hinting to the fact that he now has the ability to threaten Israel in what it considers to be its main weakness: large-scale human casualties. And although the Secretary-General's words may well be no more than a maneuver to induce panic, reshuffle the cards and invite the US and the West to accept the offers made by Russia and Iran to hold negotiations between the Syrian regime and the opposition, the American response has been clear and swift: playing with unconventional weapons would mean bringing an immediate end to the Damascus regime, not prolonging its life. Whatever may be meant by Nasrallah's words, and whether or not he actually has such new missiles in his possession, his party, whose considerations and stances are based on regional factors alone, is thus placing the fate of Lebanon as a whole on the table of its wagers.
