What are the main economic activities in Syria?

Russia sells advanced arms to Syria: How will nuclear armed arab nations change the middle east?

• What are your thoughts regarding US relationship with Russia? http://www.pressdisplay.com/pressdisplay/viewer.aspx According to the source, Defense Minister Ehud Barak spoke against the sale with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov when he visited them in Moscow last week. Barak told them that the weapons could end up with Hizbullah, as has happened in the past. According to the RIANovosti news agency, Serdyukov said the issue of missile sales to Syria had been raised during talks with US Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and that “undoubtedly, the Russian side of the contract would be fulfilled.” He added that he did not believe terrorists could acquire the weapons. Syria and Iran are both under US pressure because of their support for anti-Israel terrorist groups. The US also accuses Syria of secret nuclear activities.

• Answer:

  Nuclear armed Arab countries inevitably mean more instability in the Middle East, given how politically unstable Arab countries are internally. While individual regimes might be friendly to the West, they sit atop often restive populations which are often quite receptive to radical Islamism, which seeks the downfall of the West. Although part of this trend is no doubt a move to counter the frightening prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran, there are other actors in the region, like Syria (the most radical country on Israel's borders) that are allied with Iran. I believe that when Israel took out a North Korean built reactor in Syria in 2007, they effectively disabled Syria (which is for all practical purposes a proxy state of Iran today) at least temporarily with regard to weapons of mass destruction. As for the U.S. relationship with Russia, my view is that in a sense, the Cold War didn't really end - it merely was put on hold for a number of years. Vladimir Putin, an ex-KGB officer, was bound to find a way to restore, to at least some degree, policies that are harmful to the interests of the free world. At any rate, his apparent sale of advanced arms to Syria, in my view, dovetails rather oddly with his policies with regard to Chechnya. While he may regard Islamic radicalism in Chechnya, which is on his country's southern border, as a grave danger to his country, he has no problem selling arms to a very radical Arab country allied with the highly radical Islamist regime in Tehran - and for all practical purposes an Iranian satellite country.