Bracing For Conflict With Israel, Syria Puts Rubble On War Footing

“There’s basically almost nothing left for Israel to destroy, since we’ve done such a good job by ourselves already.”

Damascus, February 14 – Embattled President Basher Assad today ordered the crumbling remains of his military and economy to prepare for a possible eruption of prolonged and intensified hostilities with Israel after a weekend exchange of fire across the border between the two states.

Battered by a civil war that has raged for the better part of a decade and from sectarian conflicts rending apart the repressive but once-stable dictatorship, Syria has also been targeted by Israeli strikes aimed at preventing Iran’s proxy Hezbollah from obtaining advanced weapons to use against the Jewish State from Syria or Lebanon. The growing likelihood of more violent conflict with Israel prompted the president to instruct his military and other planners to place Syrian rubble on a war footing.

The strategic regional conflict playing out on Syrian soil between Iran and Israel escalated Saturday after a Syria-based Iranian drone penetrated sovereign Israeli airspace. In the ensuing battle between Israeli fighter jets and Syrian antiaircraft fire, an Israeli F-16 was downed, numerous Syrian antiaircraft batteries destroyed, and several Iranian assets in Syria were also eliminated. Two Israeli pilots of the jet were injured; they elected over Israeli territory. Casualty figures from the episode among the Syrians and Iranians remain unclear, but hundreds of thousands of Syrians are already dead and millions more displaced from the protracted civil war.

“We must tell our corpses, our bombed-out hulks of buildings, ruins of neighborhoods, and wrecks of industry to make ready for war with the Zionist entity,” declared Assad in a televised speech. “Our crumbling walls, mutilated infrastructure, fractured polity, delapidated facilities, nonexistent economy, depleted resources, and drained coffers must now meet the task of serving as cannon fodder for two regional powers duking it out.”

Syrian defense officials expressed confidence in the country’s ability to weather the coming storm. “There’s basically almost nothing left for Israel to destroy, since we’ve done such a good job by ourselves already,” observed Maj. Gen. Fubar a-Snaffu of what remains of Syria’s air force. “Essentially, it means there’s nothing Israel can do to us that we haven’t already done to ourselves – or that Iran has already done to us – and they don’t scare whoever’s left of us. Mostly because we’re too busy scrounging to survive that we don’t have time to notice which side is doing the shooting at any given moment.”

“That is, anyone not in the president’s close circle,” he added. “As long as we can speak Russian we’ll be OK.”

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