It seems the Syrian civil war is finally winding down and that the Baathist government
is nearing its goal of driving out thousands of ISIS-Al Qaeda
head-choppers financed and supplied – directly or indirectly – by the U.S.,
Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and the other Persian Gulf oil monarchies.
It would be good news if
true, but most likely it’s not. While one stage in the Syrian
conflict is coming to an end, another is beginning, and this time the results
could be even worse.
The reason is Israel. Despite intervening sporadically
on the rebel side in Syria, the Jewish state generally held itself aloof from
the conflict in the belief that events were breaking its way regardless of
whether it stepped in or not. After all, why go to war when your enemies
are doing a fine job of tearing each other apart on their own?
With President Bashar al-Assad
expected to step down eventually, Israel figured that it only had to wait and
watch as a hostile regime collapsed under its own weight as it thrashed about
unable to restore order to Syria. Never in the Arab-Israeli hundred years’
war had Israel seemed stronger and the Arabs weaker and in greater disarray.
But then the unthinkable
happened. Assad not only survived but prevailed. Backed by Russia,
Iran and the Lebanese Shi‘ite militia Hezbollah, he has bottled up Al Qaeda in
East Ghouta and Idlib province in the extreme northwest and is racing to lift
ISIS’s siege on Deir-Ezzor along the Euphrates. If successful, the effect
will be to clear a path straight through to the Iraqi border some 30 miles to
the east.
U.S. military enclaves might remain
in the northeast and in the southern border town of Al-Tanf. But it’s hard
to see how they’ll have much of an impact as the Damascus regime tightens its
grip on the country as a whole.
But rather than making a wider
war less likely, the upshot is to make it even more. Having bet on the
wrong horse, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu now finds himself facing a
nightmare scenario in which Iran takes advantage of Assad’s winning streak to
extend its reach from Iraq and Syria into Lebanon beyond. It’s not just a
question of political influence, but of the emergence of a powerful Iranian-led
military bloc.
Eleven years after fighting a
vicious 34-day war in southern Lebanon, Israel thus finds itself facing not
only Hezbollah but the Syrian Arab Army, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards,
and Iraqi Shi‘ite militias – all backed by Russian military might – in a front
extending across its entire northern border. All are battle-hardened after
years of combat, better armed, better led, and more self-confident to
boot. Israel finds itself confronting a new threat that is many times more
powerful than Hezbollah (or Syria) alone.
Israeli consternation is not to
be underestimated. One news outlet says the official attitude is one of “grave concern”
while an anonymous government minister heaped blame on
the U.S. for sacrificing Israeli interests:
“The United States threw Israel
under the bus for the second time in a row. The first time was the nuclear
agreement with Iran, the second time is now that the United States ignores
the fact that Iran is obtaining territorial continuity to the Mediterranean Sea
and Israel’s northern border. What is most worrisome is that this time, it
was President Donald Trump who threw us to the four winds – though viewed as
Israel’s great friend. It turns out that when it comes to actions and not
just talk, he didn’t deliver the goods.”
Netanyahu is meanwhile off to the
Black Sea resort of Sochi to confer with Russian President
Vladimir Putin while, in Washington, Israeli military and
intelligence officials are meeting with top Trump officials such as National
Security Adviser H.R. McMaster and special Mideast envoy Jason Greenblatt.
Israel has also engaged in
saber-rattling with regard to a missile factory that it says Iran is building
in the Syrian port city of Baniyas. Gadi Eisenkot, the Israeli military’s chief
of staff, said that
stopping efforts by Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah to equip themselves with
accurate missiles capable of striking deep inside the Jewish state “is our top
priority.”
Adds Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s
hard-right defense minister: “We know what needs to be done…. We won’t
ignore the establishment of Iranian weapons factories in Lebanon.”
Words like that should not be
taken lightly. Meanwhile, influential neoconservatives are joining the
me-too chorus. At the Atlantic Council – the hawkish Washington think tank
partly funded by the United Arab Emirates and pro-Saudi interests that functioned
as an arm of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign – former Obama
administration official Frederic C. Hof recently argued that
the U.S. wouldn’t be in such a pickle if it had invaded Syria years ago:
“A Syrian opposition recognized by Washington
in December 2012 as the ‘legitimate representative of the Syrian people’ should
have been tasked with preparing for post-ISIS governance, and assisted to that
end by an American-organized, multi-national effort. An all-Syrian
stabilization force should have been built in a protected eastern Syria to
pacify the area, facilitate humanitarian aid, and spur reconstruction.”
But now the U.S. is seemingly
“indifferent” to what comes next once Islamic State is gone. As a
consequence, Hof said, the Trump administration is effectively
“install[ing] Iran as Syria’s suzerain, with the Assad entourage sifting
through the country’s ruins for spoils and setting the stage for successive
waves and varieties of extremism arising in response.” The only solution,
according to Hof, is a radical strategic change “to prevent Iran and Assad
doing their worst for the security of the United States, its allies, and its
partners.”
Neocon yes-men agree that something must be done, it seems that something
WILL be done sooner rather than later.
Of course, a few complications
could get in the way. One involves Russian President Vladimir Putin who,
despite his close alliance with Assad, enjoys a solid working relationship with
Israel and is none too eager to see war break out between the two
countries. Another is the Syrian government in Damascus, which, under the
leadership of the careful and cautious Assad, is none too eager to rush into a
conflict that could conceivably prove even more ruinous than the one it is
trying to finish up.
Saudi Arabia also has imposed an
economic blockade on Qatar, and it is backing a repressive regime in Bahrain
that has imposed a reign of terror on the country’s 70-percent Shi‘ite
majority. Riyadh continues to engage in a dangerous war of words with Iran,
which the royal family believes believes is a heretic nation bent on dismembering the kingdom and wresting away
control of Mecca and Medina.
The more paranoid Saudi leaders
become, the more threatening Saudi Arabia grows – and the more resolved Iran
becomes to make the most of its victory in Syria by fulfilling the ancient
Persian goal of opening a corridor to the Mediterranean Sea. Aggression on
one side leads to counter-aggression on the other, a process of mutual
escalation that seems impossible to reverse.
Finally, there is the question of
political stability – or, rather, an increasing lack thereof. In
Iran, newly re-elected President Hassan Rouhani is locked in a growing
confrontation with hardline Shi‘ite Islamists with little
appetite for compromise.
In Saudi Arabia, power is in the
hands of Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman (MbS), a rambunctious 31-year-old who
launched the disastrous war in Yemen in March 2015 – and then disappeared
on a vacation in the Maldives as U.S. officials tried
desperately to reach him by phone – and who more recently unveiled an ambitious
economic reform program that so far has done nothing to stem the kingdom’s
alarming decline. Despite vows to diversify the economy, non-oil
revenue actually
shrank by 17 percent this spring while foreign reserves have
fallen by nearly a third since 2014. But that didn’t stop MbS, as he’s known,
from committing himself to $110 billion in U.S. arms purchases in May or his
father, King Salman, from spending a reported $100 million on a summer vacation in
Morocco.
Saudi Arabia is thus becoming the
sick man of the Middle East, one whose collapse could trigger a “geopolitical
tsunami” sweeping across much of the region.
Sooner or later,
rash rhetoric can only lead to rash actions, if not on America’s part then
someone else’s. The shakier Trump grows, the greater the likelihood that
he will engage in some risky adventure in order to strengthen his grip.
A number of forces are thus
converging: political instability in Tehran, Riyadh and Washington, a growing
thirst for more war on the part of Israel and the U.S. foreign-policy
establishment, and a growing defensiveness on the part of a “Shi‘ite crescent”
stretching from Yemen to southern Tehran. The United States, Turkey, Saudi
Arabia, and others have already plunged Syria into death and destruction by
sponsoring a murderous Sunni Salafist assault on one of the most diverse
populations in the Middle East. The big question now is whether, with
Israeli help, they are about to impose another.
Given the vicious cycle of
violence in the Middle East, one that the U.S. has done its
level best to worsen at every step of the way, it’s hard not to
believe that even worse may be ahead.
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