What Did Assad’s Allies Do in Two Weeks?

People protest against a US military intervention in Syria in front of the Cannon House Office Building near the US Capitol in Washington on 9 September 2013. (Photo: AFP - Nicholas Kamm)

By: Ibrahim al-Amin

Published Tuesday, September 10, 2013

It was the British House of Commons that first opened the way for what became a retreat from the brink of war. Suddenly, public opinion entered the calculations of Western governments, which quickly led to a search for an exit for the White House. As soon as Barack Obama put the matter up before Congress, it was clear that he was looking for some sort of compromise.

All that was left was to find something that Washington can go to its Arab and European allies with and tell them, “See, this is what I got for not waging a war on Syria.”

The Russians saw their opportunity to make a move. They needed to come up with something that would not look like a defeat for the US, while at the same time wouldn’t make Damascus look like it is backing down completely. So they came up with the idea of neutralizing Syria’s chemical arsenal by placing it under international supervision.

The Russian initiative will likely usher in what appears to be only a temporary settlement, postponing the attack, rather than canceling it altogether. But even this requires quite a bit of discussion in order to see the light of day, and as the saying goes, the devil is in the details.

The Israeli plan in effect seeks a replay of the Iraq scenario, in which weapons inspectors were asked to look in every nook and cranny, including Saddam Hussein’s private palaces, until the US was ready to attack.

And what was leaked by the Israeli media about a Tel Aviv plan, advising Obama to drag out the negotiations, suggests that this will be nothing more than a short respite, until the opportunity presents itself at a later date to strike. By then perhaps, the right conditions will be in place to wage a war under more favorable circumstances.

The Israeli plan in effect seeks a replay of the Iraq scenario, in which weapons inspectors were asked to look in every nook and cranny, including Saddam Hussein’s private palaces, until the US was ready to attack. In Syria’s case, the Americans could use the excuse of having failed to reach a final agreement based on the Russian initiative as an excuse to wage a far broader assault on Damascus than what was planned this time around.

But what about the other side? How does it appraise the situation? And what is it planning for any future confrontation?

No one needs to tell Syria’s allies that Washington no longer possesses complete freedom to do as it pleases, particularly compared to a decade or so ago, before getting bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan. They also know that America’s recent setbacks have produced a regional and international opposition alliance that brings together powerful forces that continue to grow by the day.

This opposition alliance operates on a number of levels: Russia playing a diplomatic role, while Iran is prepared to take the lead militarily, if it comes to a regional confrontation with the US. Tehran is not only capable of facing down Washington in Syria and the surrounding area, but it has the ability to cause them serious harm.

In two short weeks, this alliance succeeded in mobilizing a broad military front that is prepared to engage in an extended war that could last for months or more, opening up many new opportunities that were not previously available and making it possible for this alliance to confront any Western attack, without submitting to the aggressors’ timeframe, geography or scale.

Ibrahim al-Amin is editor-in-chief of Al-Akhbar.

This article is an edited translation from the Arabic Edition.

Simply put: A GREAT ARTICLE...

Yes, Syria and Hezbollah Will Hit Israel if US Strikes

By Sharmine Narwani - Fri, 2013-09-06 15:52- Sandbox

Informed insiders have confirmed that Syria and Hezbollah plan to retaliate against Israel in the event of an American-led military attack on Syria. Says one: “if even one US missile hits Syria, we will take this battle to Israel.”

An official who spoke to me on the condition that neither his name or affiliation is published, says the decision to retaliate against Israel “has been taken at the highest levels within the Syrian state and Hezbollah.”

Why attack Israel after a US strike?

“Israel has been itching for a fight since their 2006 defeat by Hezbollah,” explains an observer close to the Lebanese resistance group. “They have led this campaign to draw the US into a confrontation with Syria because they are worried about being left alone in the region to face Iran. This has become an existential issue for them and they are now ‘leading’ from behind America’s skirts.”

The "Resistance Axis" which consists of Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and a smattering of other groups, has long viewed attacks on one of their members as an effort to target them all.

And Israeli aggression against this axis reached a new high in 2013, with missile strikes and airstrikes unseen for many years in the Levant.

Israel has reportedly conducted at least three separate, high profile missile strikes against Syria this year, effectively ending a 40-year ceasefire between the neighboring states. The last overt violation of this uneasy truce was in 2007 when the Jewish state destroyed an alleged nuclear site inside Syria.

Then two weeks ago, Israel launched its first airstrike in Lebanon since the 2006 war, bombing a Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine–General Command (PFLP-GC) target in an entirely unprovoked attack. Earlier, four rockets had been launched into Israel from Lebanese territory, but an unrelated Al Qaeda-linked group took credit for that incident.

When asked whether Syrian allies Russia and Iran would participate in retaliatory strikes against Israel or other targets, the official indicated that both countries would back these efforts, but provided no information on whether this support would include direct military engagement.

The Russians have stated on several occasions that they will not participate in a military confrontation over Syrian strikes. Iran has not offered up any specifics, but various statements from key officials appear to confirm that strikes against Syria will result in a larger regional battle.

On Tuesday during an official visit to Lebanon, Iranian parliamentarian and Chairman of the (Majlis) Committee for National Security and Foreign Policy Alaeddin Boroujerdi told reporters: “The first party that will be most affected by an aggression on Syria is the Zionist entity.”

His comments follow a steady stream of warnings by senior Iranian officials, which have escalated in tenor as western threats to attack Syria have intensified.

“The US imagination about limited military intervention in Syria is merely an illusion, as reactions will be coming from beyond Syria’s borders,” said the Commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari last Saturday.

Even Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has stepped into the fray, warning the US and its allies: "starting this fire will be like a spark in a large store of gunpowder, with unclear and unspecified outcomes and consequences".

Concurrent with these warnings, both Iran and Russia have been urging the West to avoid further confrontation and return to the negotiating table to resolve Syria’s 29-month conflict. But instead, western officials and diplomats in the Mideast have spent the past few weeks hitting up their regional sources for information on how Syria’s allies will react to a strike.

An unusual visit to Tehran by UN Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs Jeffrey Feltman (a former senior US State Department official) was one such “feeler.”

According to several media outlets, the Iranians had a singular response to Feltman’s efforts to gauge their reaction to a US strike: if you are serious about resolving the Syrian crisis, you must first go to Damascus, and follow that by launching negotiations in Geneva.

Gunning for a fight

While Israel plays heavily in the background, by turns provoking and encouraging western military intervention in Syria, it publically denies any role in this business.

Just this week, Israeli President Shimon Peres attempted to distance the Jewish state from events in Syria by insisting: “It is not for Israel to decide on Syria, we are in a unique position, for varying reasons there is a consensus against Israeli involvement. We did not create the Syrian situation.”

He’s right about one thing. Any visible Israeli military intervention in Syria will likely raise the collective ire of Arabs throughout the region. But Peres is being disingenuous in suggesting that Israel hasn’t played apivotal role in dragging the region to the brink of a dangerous confrontation.

In fact, since its establishment as a state, Israel has possibly never beenmore motivated to force a military confrontation in the Mideast:

The Arab uprisings, a shift in the global balance of power, increased isolation and the waning influence of Israel’s superpower US ally have all served to remind Israel that it stands increasingly alone in the Mideast in confronting its longtime adversaries - Iran, Hezbollah, Syria and various Palestinian resistance groups.

Before a US exit from the region becomes patently clear to one and all, Israel needs to disarm its foes – and it needs the Americans to do that. For years, the Israeli establishment has regularly threatened military strikes against Iran, in most part attempting to inextricably embroil Washington in this military venture.

Forcing 'red line' narratives into western political discourse – whether it be the use of chemical weapons in Syria or a civilian nuclear program in Iran – has become a clever way to commit allies to an Israeli military agenda.

When US President Barack Obama last week appeared to suddenly revise his plans to launch a strike on Syria by deferring the decision to Congress, Israel went into overdrive:

Two Israeli missiles were launched off the Syrian coast in the Mediterranean Sea to raise temperatures again. Whether this was meant to be veiled threat, a provocation, or an attempt to pin the deed on Syrians is unclear. What is certain is this: Russian early radar systems caught the activity and publicized it quickly to ward off misunderstandings that might trigger counterstrikes.

This quick reaction forced Israel – under US cover – to acknowledge it had participated in unannounced ballistic missile tests. The Iranians reacted very skeptically. Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed ForcesGeneral Hassan Firouzabadi said the missiles were “a provocative incident” conveniently executed as western nations withdrew from plans to attack Syria, and called Israel “the region’s warmonger.” He further charged: “If the Russians had not traced the missiles and their origin, a Zionist liar would have alleged that they belonged to Syria in a bid to pave the way for breaking out a war in the region.

On an entirely different front, Israel has been amassing its considerable army of US supporters and lobbyists to ensure a compliant Congressional vote on strikes against Syria.

All its heavy hitters have now stepped up to push US lawmakers into backing military intervention, even though polls continue to show the majority of Americans rejecting strikes.

The Israeli lobbying effort has been particularly critical to ensure there is bipartisan consensus and that Obama’s Republican opponents join the bandwagon. To ensure this, the scope of the “surgical strikes” had to be expanded for GOP members opposed to a cursory punitive strike against Syrian government interests.

Key Republicans have since piled on, and already there are soundings of 'mission creep.' Obama told lawmakers on Tuesday that his plan “also fits into a broader strategy that can bring about over time the kind of strengthening of the opposition and the diplomatic, economic and political pressure required – so that ultimately we have a transition that can bring peace and stability, not only to Syria but to the region.”

This suddenly sounds remarkably like President George W. Bush’s plans to remake the Middle East. And it is everything Syria and its allies have both feared and suspected from the start.

Existential for you, existential for me

If ever there was a real 'red line' in the region, this is it. Any "limited” or “broad” military intervention in Syria is simply unacceptable to Syria, Iran, Russia, Hezbollah, China and a whole host of other nations that want to turn the page on US hegemonic aspirations in the region and beyond.

Washington has miscalculated in thinking that an attack in any shape or form would be palatable to its quite incredulous adversaries. They are all intimately familiar with the slippery slope of American interventionism and its myriad unintended consequences.

Israel, in particular, appears to be victim to a false sense of security. Analysts and commentators there seem to think that the lack of a Syrian military response to recent Israeli missile strikes is a trend likely to continue. Or that Hezbollah and Iran would have no 'grounds' to climb aboard a counterattack if Syria were attacked.

But the fact is that, to date, no member of the Resistance Axis has faced a collective western-Israeli-GCC effort to strike a blow at their core. This promised US-plus-allies strike against Syria makes their calculation aneasy one: there is nowhere to go but headfirst into the fracas.

As Israel warplanes pounded Lebanon during the 2006 war, then-US Secretary of State Condaleeza Rice got one thing right. Refusing to call for a ceasefire, Rice explained that battle was sometimes necessary to break free of the status quo and emerge with a new regional order. The carnage, in short, was simply “the birth pangs of a New Middle East” - something to endure in order to reach a desired outcome.

But in 2006, conditions were not yet ripe for an all-out confrontation on multiple fronts. Today's confrontation, however, has all the ingredients to fundamentally shift the region in a clear new direction, depending on which side emerges victorious.

What Rice did not anticipate seven years ago was that a few thousand Hezbollah fighters could shake the region beyond Lebanon's small borders in a mere 33 days - simply by emerging from battle with Israel, leadership and capabilities intact.

The US has never predicted outcomes successfully in the Middle East and is unlikely to do so this time given that its strategic and military objectives seem even more muddled than usual. What we do know is that Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah has promised that the “next battle” will take place inside Israel’s borders and that he will fight proportionately this time – striking Israeli cities when Israel hits Lebanese ones.

On the Syrian front, Israel imagines a war-weary adversary. But the Syrian armed forces have the kinds of conventional weapons and ballistic missiles that can level a town in short shrift – that is not an outcome Israel has the capacity to endure.

In yet another corner is Iran, boasting a rare combination of military manpower, hardware, technology and tactical skills that Israel has never faced in any adversary on the battlefield. Russia looms large too – it may provide military intelligence to its allies or it may just use its clout in the UN Security Council to intervene at opportune moments in the fight. Either way, Moscow is a huge asset for the Resistance Axis – and will be joined by China to coach and calibrate responses to the fighting from the 'international community.'

Meanwhile, as if unable to stop a 'war trajectory' once it starts, the US Senate's Foreign Relations Committee has just voted to widen and deepen the scope of a US attack on Syria. The new goal? To “reverse the momentum on the battlefield” against the Syrian army and “hasten Assad’s departure.”

This is no different than Libya, Afghanistan or Iraq. Israelis and Americans need to understand that language and behavior threatening 'regime-change' gives their adversaries only one choice: to retaliate withall their capabilities and assets on all fronts. Washington just made this existential. No more games, no more rhetoric. Any strike on Syria will be 'war on.' In US military parlance: a 'full-spectrum operation' will be heading your way. And you can call it Operation "Tip of the Iceberg" out of sheer accuracy, for a change.

Sharmine Narwani is a commentary writer and political analyst covering the Middle East. 

Israel in Syria

By As'ad AbuKhalil - Mon, 2013-02-04 18:16- Angry Corner

It is abundantly clear that Israel has been involved in every Arab (and several non-Arab) civil and inter-state wars over the decades. There is hardly a civil war in which Israel was not criminally involved on the side of the most reactionary party. From Yemen to Lebanon, Jordan, Sudan, Western Sahara, Oman and Iraq, Israel has consistently involved itself – usually on the side of a repressive regime, or a repressive army or militia. Israel has been involved in the affairs of Lebanon since the 1950s, at least.

Israel has also been involved in Syrian affairs for decades. The story of Elie Cohen has been told too many times, and the failure of Cohen – it is rarely mentioned in the Western heroic portrayal of him that he was after all caught, which is not the ultimate prize for any spy – has been covered up in all those pro-Israeli movies and books. Cohen basically opened a brothel in Damascus on behalf of the Mossad, and hoped that drunken officers and low-level government clerks would open up late into the night. It has never been established that Cohen really obtained crucial secrets as was claimed. And Arab enemies of Amin Hafiz [leader of the 1963 coup that brought the Baath party to power in Syria and subsequent president] and Israeli propagandists both promoted the false story about links between Hafiz and Cohen.

Israel, of course, regards the eruption of civil war in any Arab country as a golden opportunity to enter the scene, usually with the assistance of one of the two sides of the conflict. Syria has not been as safe as Lebanon has been for Israeli espionage, but this may soon change. There are already Western media reports about the arrival of Mossad terrorists in Syria, through the entrances that are run by Turkey and their client, the Free Syrian Army. The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood has had direct and indirect relations with Israel for years. They have been allies of the Jordanian King Hussein (by his own admission in a famous televised speech that Hafez al-Assad compelled him to make) and of the pro-Israeli right-wing militias in Lebanon during the civil war. Israeli weapons reached the Muslim Brotherhood militias through the Phalanges in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

It is too early to write about the Israeli role in the Syrian conflict but American officials – for purely domestic reasons – are quite transparent that Israel is consulted on every Western decision concerning Syria. In fact, the Israeli factor may be behind the American preference for the preservation of the Syrian regime, but without Bashar al-Assad. Israel remains unclear whether it wants a change of regime or not, although the proliferation of radical Islamist groups in Syria may have made Israel nervous, and Israel may have pressured the US to abstain from delivering shipments of arms to Syria. Israel, however, may be supporting certain elements of the armed opposition groups in order to gain a foothold among them.

The recent Israeli attack on Syria is not its first, and it came on the heels of the Israeli bombings of Sudan, and Gaza and the West Bank in Palestine. The objective of the Israeli bombing is not clear and the Syrian regime is typically circumspect about the Israeli target or targets. The Syrian regime typically resorted to its language about waiting to pinpoint the “time and place” of Syria and said – yet again – that it reserves the right to respond to Israeli aggression. There was little condemnation from the side of the exile Syrian opposition, despite whispered mumblings here and there and some effortful words by a few individuals who claimed that they are not happy about the Israeli bombing (the lip service that the Syrian March 14 movement pays to the cause of enmity towards Israel is a replica of the Lebanese March 14 version).

And the Syrian regime, despite its pathetic lack of a response to past acts of Israeli aggression against Syria, is now in a more difficult position. If it does not act in response to Israeli aggression, it will be quite embarrassing for the regime to justify the use of fighter jets and helicopter gunships in its internal conflict (for purposes of regime preservation), but not for defending Syrian territory against Israeli attacks. The Syrian army, which has by and large remained loyal to the regime, could face major defections in protest against this regime reluctance. But if the regime responds to Israeli attacks, Israel can inflict severe damage to the military power of the regime which is needed to protect the regime. Either way, the regime could suffer, although it would change the contours of the conflict if it were to respond against Israel in a major way.

Israel must be nervous as the earth all around it shakes vigorously. The region today is quite different from the quiet environment that Israel has been accustomed to since the US and Sadat removed the Egyptian army from the Arab-Israeli conflict. But the changes in the region are not complete and the earth will continue to shake until some form of political or maybe revolutionary transformation takes shape. It is not easy to predict the final outcome, but it is possible to predict that the region will increasingly look unsafe for Israeli occupation and aggression. That in itself is good news.

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