JERUSALEM – The Middle East Newsline has confirmed that Syria has established an arsenal of extended-range Scud-class ballistic missiles along the border with Lebanon.Western intelligence sources said the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad has overseen the accumulation of a huge missile arsenal along the Syrian border with Lebanon. They said the arsenal included Scud C and Scud D missiles, with ranges of 550 and 700 kilometers, respectively. “The Scuds are kept just inside Syrian territory to avoid an Israeli attack,” an intelligence source said.

The sources said the Syrian military has been training the Iranian-sponsored Hezbollah to operate the Scuds. They said some of the Scud missile infrastructure has been transferred to Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa Valley.

“If the Syrians want to, they could transport and fire Scud launchers from Lebanon within hours,” the source said. Western intelligence agencies have assessed that Syria deployed about 1,000 Scud C and D missiles near the Bekaa Valley. The sources said

Hezbollah was believed to have received Scud equipment rather than launchers.

In April 2010, Israel reported that Syria shipped Scud missiles to Hezbollah in Lebanon. The United States has not confirmed the shipment, but expressed concern over Iranian arms transfers to Hezbollah. The sources said the missile shipments to Hezbollah, detected by Israeli reconnaissance satellites, stem from both Iran and Syria. They said

Hezbollah operates a depot at Damascus International Airport and transports the ballistic missiles into Lebanon via trucks.

Damascus and Teheran were also said to have been cooperating in liquid- and solid-fuel missile production in Syria. In 2010, the sources said, Iran helped finance North Korean assistance for the manufacture of the Scud D, which contains a separating warhead, as well as solid-fuel rockets, such as the Fateh-110.

“Under the program, Hezbollah would receive the liquid-fuel Scuds, while

Syria would produce more advanced solid-fuel missiles,” the source said. Iran and North Korea have also helped establish a command and control facility near Damascus to operate the missile arsenals in both Syria and Lebanon. The sources said the C2 center would direct massive Scud salvos toward Israel.

“The Iranian and Syrian strategy is for coordinated missile launches to take place from Syria, Lebanon and the Gaza Strip,” the source said.

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David Bedein
David Bedein is an MSW community organizer and an investigative journalist.   In 1987, Bedein established the Israel Resource News Agency at Beit Agron to accompany foreign journalists in their coverage of Israel, to balance the media lobbies established by the PLO and their allies.   Mr. Bedein has reported for news outlets such as CNN Radio, Makor Rishon, Philadelphia Inquirer, Los Angeles Times, BBC and The Jerusalem Post, For four years, Mr. Bedein acted as the Middle East correspondent for The Philadelphia Bulletin, writing 1,062 articles until the newspaper ceased operation in 2010. Bedein has covered breaking Middle East negotiations in Oslo, Ottawa, Shepherdstown, The Wye Plantation, Annapolis, Geneva, Nicosia, Washington, D.C., London, Bonn, and Vienna. Bedein has overseen investigative studies of the Palestinian Authority, the Expulsion Process from Gush Katif and Samaria, The Peres Center for Peace, Peace Now, The International Center for Economic Cooperation of Yossi Beilin, the ISM, Adalah, and the New Israel Fund.   Since 2005, Bedein has also served as Director of the Center for Near East Policy Research.   A focus of the center's investigations is The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). In that context, Bedein authored Roadblock to Peace: How the UN Perpetuates the Arab-Israeli Conflict - UNRWA Policies Reconsidered, which caps Bedein's 28 years of investigations of UNRWA. The Center for Near East Policy Research has been instrumental in reaching elected officials, decision makers and journalists, commissioning studies, reports, news stories and films. In 2009, the center began decided to produce short movies, in addition to monographs, to film every aspect of UNRWA education in a clear and cogent fashion.   The center has so far produced seven short documentary pieces n UNRWA which have received international acclaim and recognition, showing how which UNRWA promotes anti-Semitism and incitement to violence in their education'   In sum, Bedein has pioneered The UNRWA Reform Initiative, a strategy which calls for donor nations to insist on reasonable reforms of UNRWA. Bedein and his team of experts provide timely briefings to members to legislative bodies world wide, bringing the results of his investigations to donor nations, while demanding reforms based on transparency, refugee resettlement and the demand that terrorists be removed from the UNRWA schools and UNRWA payroll.   Bedein's work can be found at: www.IsraelBehindTheNews.com and www.cfnepr.com. A new site,unrwa-monitor.com, will be launched very soon.