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    • Why has Syria become a hunting ground for Israel?
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    Why has Syria become a hunting ground for Israel?

    Umito Posted on

    With Israeli forces in daily action in Gaza and southern Lebanon, and intermittent drone and missile attacks continuing from Iraq and Yemen, one front in the ongoing regional conflict has tended to be overlooked: Syria.

    Yet available evidence shows that Israeli strikes against Lebanese Hezbollah and Iranian targets in Syria have increased significantly over the past two months.

    Those targeted in Syria include veteran and prominent leaders and members of the Iran-directed regional axis.

    At the same time, reports appearing in regional media in recent weeks portray Syrian President Bashar Assad as a weak link in Iran’s war effort.

    These reports suggest that the Syrian leader is trying to distance himself from his Iranian ally and move closer to moderate Arab states. Some Israeli observers of Syria agree with this assessment.

    Kurdish-led militiamen ride on military vehicles as they celebrate victory over Islamic State in Raqqa, Syria October 17, 2017 (credit: REUTERS/ERIK DE CASTRO)

    So what’s going on in Israel’s most important neighbor to the north, and where might things go?

    It is important to remember that the civil war that began in Syria in 2012 is not over. Rather, the battle lines became frozen, leading to a de facto partition of the country.

    After a period of sorting, Syria has been divided since 2019 into three de facto entities: the area controlled by the regime, encompassing approximately 60% of the country’s territory including Damascus and the entire coastal area; the area controlled by the Autonomous Administration of Northeast Syria (AANES), with a Kurdish majority, which covers approximately 30% of Syrian territory; and a Sunni Islamist enclave guaranteed by Turkey in the northwest, holding 10% of the country’s territory.

    The continuation of this arrangement depends on the desire of international actors to guarantee these zones of control: the Syrian regime is today a protectorate of Iran and Russia, the United States guarantees the survival of the zone dominated by the Kurds and Turkey is the sponsor and controller of the regime. the Sunni Islamist zone.

    Assad does not enjoy undisputed territorial control, even over the area nominally under his rule. His army is weak and impoverished. Its survival depends on Iranian and Russian support.

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    As a result, the patrons today are the senior associates. In practice, this means that the Iranians and their proxy militias today control the southeastern border crossing between Iraq and Syria at Abu Kamal, as well as the roads leading west. Assad’s army only enters this area with Iranian authorization.

    Southern Syria is therefore a link in the contiguous Iranian chain of control that extends from Iran through Iraq and Syria to Lebanon and the Mediterranean.

    In any case, Israel shows no particular interest in Assad, except to the extent that its forces seek to facilitate, assist or defend the path of Iranian weapons from Iraq to Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon.

    Israel’s interest

    Israel, however, has a keen interest in Iranian activities on Syrian soil and in disrupting Iranian efforts.

    In recent weeks, this interest has been reflected in some very significant “Axis of Resistance” scalps, apparently claimed by Israeli air power on Syrian soil.

    The names on this list may not have the same notoriety as that of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah or Hamas’s Ismail Haniyeh. But they are important players, whose sudden absence will largely contribute to the disarray currently reigning in this regional camp.

    The list includes Ali Musa Daqduq, a Lebanese Hezbollah veteran whose name is well known to Americans who served in Iraq. In the years of Shiite insurgency against U.S. and allied forces in that country, Daqduq was a key facilitator and point man for the Iranians.

    The United States believes he took part in deadly attacks on American troops. According to Syrian media, Daqduq was killed in an Israeli airstrike on the Sayida Zeinab neighborhood of Damascus on November 12.

    An Israeli airstrike in the Qusayr region this week eliminated a second high-ranking Lebanese Hezbollah operative. Qusayr, in the border area between Syria and Lebanon, is a strategically important area for arms trafficking from Iran to Lebanon.

    It was the scene of a fierce battle in the Syrian civil war in which Hezbollah gained the upper hand over Syrian rebels.

    This week, an Israeli airstrike on a location in the area killed Salim Ayyash, the Hezbollah man convicted in absentia for the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq al Hariri in 2005.

    Several other notable figures from the movement have also been eliminated in Syria in recent weeks: Mahmoud Shahin, who headed Hezbollah’s intelligence network in Syria and was involved in its air defense efforts, was assassinated on November 4.

    Abu Saleh, who led Hezbollah Unit 4400, responsible for overseeing Hezbollah’s financing from Iranian oil sales, was killed in a precision strike on October 22 in Damascus.

    Adham Jahut, a Hezbollah official based in the Quneitra region and responsible for the organization’s intelligence activities in this important area, was killed by an Israeli airstrike on October 10.

    Hassan Jaafar Qassir, brother-in-law of the late Hezbollah leader Nasrallah, was killed in Damascus on October 3.

    The disarray of Hezbollah

    This list reflects both the extent of Israeli intelligence penetration into Syria and Hezbollah, and the extent to which Israel, since the outbreak of war a year ago, has cast aside the old rules tacit commitments, treating Syria as an inseparable component of an alliance with which Jerusalem is now at war.

    THE RECENT assassinations also show the relative dismay of Hezbollah and its allies in the face of Israel’s incessant attentions.

    This is consistent with reports from other sources that Hezbollah officials and their families have arrived in Iraq in considerable numbers in recent weeks.

    There they are housed, with the help of their comrades in the Iraqi Shiite militias, in the holy Shiite cities of Najaf and Karbala. It is only there, it seems, that they feel safe in the face of Israel.

    Some observers have suggested that the current relative disarray of the “Axis of Resistance” is prompting the Syrian leader to try to extricate himself from it.

    An article published this week in the Al-Araby Al-Jadeed newspaper gathered the evidence. He noted a recent reduction in Captagon smuggling into Jordan, in line with Jordanian and Emirati demands.

    Furthermore, Saudi Arabia’s decision to reopen its embassy in Damascus reflects the unquestionable desire of pro-Western Gulf states to draw a line under the civil war and use economic incentives to alienate Assad from his allies.

    Behind-the-scenes efforts, led by the Italians, are underway to restore relations between the regime and Europe.

    But any hope that Assad can achieve a decisive break with Iran should probably be resisted.

    The Syrian dictator remains indebted to Tehran for surviving the civil war. He must surely be keenly aware that if he had faced the Arab Spring while aligned with the West, he would almost certainly have shared the fate of fellow authoritarian leaders Zine el Abidine Bin-Ali of Tunisia and Hosni Mubarak of ‘Egypt.

    Furthermore, the current Syrian regime has survived for half a century because it exploited conflict with Israel and the West (while leaving the door slightly open to future rapprochement).

    The openings of the Gulf and the West allow Syria to continue to act according to this model.

    A total abandonment by the Iranians would represent a severe break with a model that has served the Assad family quite well. Such a rupture therefore remains unlikely.

    Syria’s current status as a geographical description rather than a country appears likely to continue for the foreseeable future.

    This means it is likely that it will also continue to be a hunting ground for Israeli air power as it fights its way through Hezbollah and Iran’s long list of targets in the country.



    Umito
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