Despite Russian Involvement in Syria, Israel to Maintain Watchful Eye: Yossi Melman, Jerusalem Post, Dec. 1, 2016— Throughout 2016, there were very few reports about two alleged strikes by the Israel Air Force against weapons convoys traveling from Syria to Hezbollah.
Implications of the Emergent Russian-Hezbollah Coordination in Syria: Yossi Mansharof, Besa, Dec. 2, 2016 — On November 24, 2016, the Hezbollah-affiliated Lebanese daily al-Akhbar reported that for the first time Russian senior military officers held a direct meeting with Hezbollah field commanders.
Why Russia Isn’t Waiting to Finish Aleppo: Tom Rogan, National Review, Nov. 28, 2016— When Russia’s offensive in Syria began last year, I argued that Putin’s strategy would focus on “securing a contiguous area of Assad-regime control in western Syria, reaching from the north to the south.”
The Jihadists Strike Back: Isabelle Lasserre, National Post, Nov. 16, 2016 — In Syria and Iraq, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant is losing territory fast.
Trump’s Ascent Is More Bad News for the Syrian Opposition: James Snell, National Review, Nov. 16, 2016
U.S. Syria Policy at Crossroads as Rebels Falter: Jay Solomon, Carol E. Lee and Felicia Schwartz, Wall Street Journal, Dec. 4, 2016
Analysis: Russian Silence Might Signal ‘Tacit Consent’ by Kremlin to Israeli Strikes in Syria: Barney Breen-Portnoy, Algemeiner, Dec. 1, 2016
Iran's Forces Outnumber Assad's in Syria: Majid Rafizadeh, Gatestone Institute, Nov. 24, 2016
DESPITE RUSSIAN INVOLVEMENT IN SYRIA,
ISRAEL TO MAINTAIN WATCHFUL EYE
Yossi Melman
Jerusalem Post, Dec. 1, 2016
Throughout 2016, there were very few reports about two alleged strikes by the Israel Air Force against weapons convoys traveling from Syria to Hezbollah. This was in a sharp contrast to dozens of reports about similar attacks in the preceding three years, so commentators reached the conclusion that Israel was reducing its involvement in Syria due to the massive Russian presence there in general, and the deployment of its air force and its sophisticated anti-aircraft radars and batteries, which practically cover the entirety of Israel, in particular. But the attack attributed to the IAF which took place at 1 a.m. on Wednesday proves that the impression is wrong: despite Russian involvement in the bloody Syrian civil war, Israel still maintains, at least partially, its freedom of action in Syria.
This is certainly the case in areas very close to the Israeli border, as we saw earlier this week when IAF attacked an ISIS position and took responsibility for it, in retaliation for an ISIS attack on an Israeli patrol on the Israeli side of the Golan Heights. But when it comes to areas more distant from the border – certainly near Damascus – the operation is much more complicated, risky and could spin out of control.
According to reports emerging from Syria, the IAF attacked a weapons convoy – on the outskirts of the Syrian capital and on the main road to Beirut – which was destined for Hezbollah. Israel has kept silent, neither confirming nor denying the reports. Such a mission is very sensitive indeed. Though the attack was aimed, as reported, against Hezbollah, it is interpreted – and rightly so – also as a strike against the Assad regime, which is either responsible for the weapon shipment or turning a blind eye to it. Indirectly, a strike against Bashar Assad can be perceived as an assault or humiliation of Russia, which is behind the regime and aiding in its consolidation. Already last night reports suggested that Russia is asking for clarifications from Israel.
Israel and Russia established a special red line link for “deconfliction,” to avoid unintended clashes between the two sides. For this purpose Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu traveled to Moscow four times over the last year for talks with President Vladimir Putin, and senior IDF and IAF officers met with their Russian counterparts. But it is very unlikely that Israel informed Russia ahead of the reported attack. Nations don’t do that not even with their friends, because it may jeopardize the operation and risk life. Bearing in mind these circumstances and complications, one has to conclude that the targets attacked, as reported, were very important to Israel and worth the risk and the ramifications. It can also be assumed that the intelligence was excellent, and that it was a feasible operation.
In the past, Israeli leaders said – and Netanyahu and defense ministers Moshe Ya’alon and Avigdor Liberman reiterated – that Israel has no intention of getting involved in the civil war, but that it would religiously guard its national interests. That included retaliation for every intentional and unintentional violation of Israeli sovereignty, as well as preventing shipments of sophisticated weapons to Hezbollah in Lebanon. Israel is mainly concerned about Yakhont land-sea cruise missiles, anti-aircraft batteries and radars, and components that would increase the accuracy of Hezbollah ground-to-ground missiles. If indeed Israel is behind the latest attack, most probably this was the motivation.
It is important, however, to stress that Israel is also very cautious not to violate Lebanese sovereignty. In the past – after an IAF strike on Lebanese soil – Hezbollah threatened to retaliate. For the Shi’ite organization, Israeli strikes on Syrian soil are tolerable. Will they be also accepted by Russia and by Assad?
RUSSIAN-HEZBOLLAH COORDINATION IN SYRIA
Yossi Mansharof
Besa, Dec. 2, 2016
On November 24, 2016, the Hezbollah-affiliated Lebanese daily al-Akhbar reported that for the first time Russian senior military officers held a direct meeting with Hezbollah field commanders. The meeting had taken place in Aleppo a week earlier. According to the report, the meeting was conducted via representatives in joint operations rooms in Baghdad and Damascus, and it included Syrian and Iraqi military officers. The meeting was held at the request of the Russians and concluded with Moscow and Hezbollah agreeing to convene such meetings regularly.
The report states that Russia initiated the meeting after being impressed by Hezbollah’s efforts at repelling the Syrian rebel attack in western Aleppo in October. Al-Akhbar added that the open channel between the parties will include operational discussions of military programs, and will not address the conflict between Hezbollah and Israel.
If Russia really does intend to step up its military cooperation with Hezbollah in Syria by maintaining this channel, Israel must update the security coordination between Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Putin. The Syrian civil war has long been transformed from a local and regional feud into a superpower conflict on a par with other flashpoints between the superpowers in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Asia. Moscow has been consistently prepared to defend its vital interests in the Syrian arena, while the Obama administration’s Syrian policy has been timid and indecisive.
The US administration has persistently proclaimed that Assad must go. Ultimately, however, it relented and agreed to consider the Syrian dictator a legitimate actor in a transitional government that is supposed to lead the country toward a new future. Russia, aware of US confusion, began in July 2015 to increase its footprint in Syria through direct, escalating military intervention and widespread attacks against the Syrian opposition.
The Russia-Hezbollah meeting has important implications for the Islamist group, the US, and Israel. Hezbollah is mired in the Syrian quagmire. According to estimates by Hezbollah's opponents in Lebanon’s Shiite community, the group’s death toll in Syria has passed the threshold of two thousand fatalities. Hezbollah needs a response to its critics among both Lebanese Shiites and the wider Sunni world, which accuse it of participating in genocide and in directing its weapons against Muslims instead of Israel.
The leak of the Hezbollah-Russia meeting by a Lebanese media outlet affiliated with the Shiite group is unlikely, therefore, to have been coincidental. Hezbollah’s mounting casualties have contributed to a decline in motivation among Lebanon's Shiite youth to enlist in its ranks, and its Syrian involvement has inflicted a blow to its public standing – particularly among its traditional supporters, who have served as an important base for its political and security activity.
A direct military and operational dialogue with Russia will serve Hezbollah in three ways. First, it can bolster its image and present it as the recipient of growing recognition and support as a legitimate operational actor in the Syrian arena. Secondly, it signals to critics at home that the number of fatalities from the fighting in Syria could be reduced now that a direct channel with Russia has been established. Thirdly, Hezbollah can reap military benefits in the form of improved warfare capabilities in built-up areas.
Those benefits will serve Hezbollah well in its fight against Israel, from both defensive and offensive standpoints. In terms of defense, Hezbollah's exposure to Russian military operations could significantly improve its overall level of readiness and competence in dealing with infiltration by Israeli special forces. In terms of offense, by learning from the Russian army, Hezbollah can improve and streamline its military doctrine and combat skills, which would hamper the IDF's ability to counter it. Precisely for this reason, the direct military channel in Aleppo between Russia and Hezbollah harms Israel's interests in Lebanon.
In the public debate in Israel on the implications of Hezbollah's participation in the Syrian civil war, the main argument in favor is that the organization’s wearing down of its manpower and its sinking into the Syrian quagmire plays into Israel's hands. But others have warned that by fighting in Syria, Hezbollah is improving its fighting capabilities in built-up areas. Those capabilities can potentially be used by Hezbollah to repel IDF forces from Lebanese villages, or to send "intervention forces" into Israel to capture populated areas and preoccupy Israel with fighting on its own turf.
In addition, though the report specified that the operational dialogue between Russia and Hezbollah will not address the organization's struggle against Israel, an alarm should be sounded in Jerusalem. The security coordination reached by Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Putin to avert an Israeli-Russian clash has been weakened following the entry of S300 missiles from Russia into Syria in October, as well as the indirect and unofficial defense umbrella provided by Moscow to Hezbollah in Syria. This umbrella likely explains the fact that in the past year there have been fewer reports of Israeli attacks on Hezbollah in Syria.
Enhanced security coordination between Russia and Hezbollah might also be intended as a signal to the incoming US administration. Russia might wish to convey to Trump, whose future policy in the Syrian arena is anyone's guess, that it is prepared to thwart American steps in Syria that are not to its liking – first and foremost any attempt to depose Assad. Russia's strengthening of air defenses and tightening of relations with Hezbollah in Syria might aim at forestalling any attempt by Trump to establish a restricted flight zone in Syria, as proposed during his election campaign.
Another recent report in the Lebanese media indicated that Hezbollah is planning to beef up its manpower and weaponry ahead of an expansive ground attack on Aleppo. It is possible that the Russia-Iran-Hezbollah axis, aided by Iraqi, Afghan and Pakistani Shiite militias, seeks to establish facts on the ground that will scupper any plans of the new US administration to establish an offensive policy in Syria. A direct operations channel between Russia and Hezbollah may facilitate the attainment of this strategic goal.
WHY RUSSIA ISN’T WAITING TO FINISH ALEPPO
Tom Rogan
National Review, Nov. 28, 2016
When Russia’s offensive in Syria began last year, I argued that Putin’s strategy would focus on “securing a contiguous area of Assad-regime control in western Syria, reaching from the north to the south.” Just over a year later, the Russian leader is on the verge of a far greater victory.
Supported by the Russian military, Syrian-regime forces are close to seizing the entirety of Aleppo. It would be a huge defeat for the arrayed rebel forces opposing Assad’s regime. If Assad secures Aleppo, his Russia-Iran axis will corral the opposition into western Syria’s Idlib Province. The rebels will be surrounded on three sides. Syria’s northwest border with Turkey will be their only external supply lifeline. But even that can’t be taken for granted. While he was once a fervent supporter of the rebels, Turkey’s president is now supplicant to Russia.
Still, it’s not coincidental that Russia and Iran have waited until now for their final push on Aleppo: Putin believes that this moment offers maximum potential to further his grand strategy. The military dynamics in Aleppo today favor the Russians like never before. Deliberately and systematically slaughtering Aleppo’s civilian population, the axis has demoralized the rebels. But more than that, Putin, by constantly manipulating the West, has bought the axis space and time to prepare for this final push. As I explained prior to September’s Aleppo cease-fire, Russia has never been interested in a durable cease-fire. Putin’s pretenses to the contrary were designed only to delay new European and American support for the rebels. In addition, Putin clearly senses that Obama has given up. Obama wants rid of Syria and is happy to hand it over to his successor. Putin therefore feels empowered to do his worse while Obama remains in office.
But Putin is also pushing now because he is unsure of the future. President-elect Trump appears sympathetic toward Putin, but the KGB colonel is wary. As Trump learns more about what Russia is actually doing in Syria — for example, not targeting ISIS — Trump could question a Russian détente. Putin also knows that America’s Sunni-Arab allies will push Trump to take a tougher approach against Assad’s slaughter of Syrian Sunnis. This gives Putin another rationale to crush Aleppo now rather than later.
And that, Putin probably hopes, will help him in another regard — by altering the broader international politics of the Syrian civil war. After all, as much as Putin is riding high on the Syrian battlefield, he’s suffering Western sanctions for his Ukraine-Syria policies. Thanks partly to those sanctions, Russia’s economy remains mired in recession. Russia depends heavily on oil exports for its foreign-capital generation; with oil prices still low, the Russian economy is weak.
Yet Russia sees economic hope on the horizon, because Trump isn’t the only up-and-coming Western leader saying nice things about Russia. Following yesterday’s conservative primary, François Fillon is now the front-runner in the race to become France’s next president. And, like the far-right candidate he’ll probably face, Fillon wants stronger economic and political ties between France and Russia. Like Putin, Fillon wants to end the sanctions. Since Angela Merkel’s Germany has bent under Russian pressure, and since the U.K. voted for Brexit, and because Britain loves the Russian money flooding into the British financial system, Putin believes he can now undercut the Western coalition from within. While finishing Aleppo, Putin probably hopes that, come January 20, 2017, the images of bloodied Syrians will be an afterthought in Western minds.
Ultimately, though it’s right to criticize Trump for his Putin delusions, Russia’s looming success testifies to President Obama’s catastrophic foreign-policy failures. It need not have been this way. Even now, the U.S. retains significant means short of military force with which to restrain Putin’s axis. Unfortunately, no one in the White House or around the world believes we will use those measures. And so, in the ruins of U.S. credibility, Putin retains the bloody initiative.
Isabelle Lasserre
National Post, Nov. 16, 2016
In Syria and Iraq, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant is losing territory fast. The organization barely now controls 40 per cent of the 60,000 square kilometres it occupied in the region in October 2014. The disintegration of the caliphate installed on the land of the Sham — the old name for Syria — has led some to foretell its disappearance in the medium term. But this good news will not have as a consequence the end of Islamist terrorism.
The decline of ISIL in Syria is being accompanied by a return of al-Qaida, whose demise had been announced somewhat prematurely after the fall of the Taliban in Kabul. Having been shocked and discombobulated by the loss of its historical leader, Osama bin Laden, the terrorist nebula is back in force: in the Sahel, the Arabian peninsula, Libya and Syria where the old Al-Nusra front, which is very active in Aleppo, has changed its appearance by calling itself Fatah al Sham, but has not changed its methods or its enemy.
Anticipating its territorial decline, ISIL has been adjusting to the new circumstances. The senior members of the organization are planning to go underground if needed. The jihadists were given the instruction to strike at the heart of Western societies, through organized attacks or, when this is not possible, through attacks of inspiration or opportunity. Finally, experts are considering the possibility of an alliance between ISIL and al-Qaida, which, in spite of their rivalry, share the same objective of combating supposedly irreligious Muslim regimes and Western societies. Thanks to its Internet-based recruitment techniques, ISIL is certain to attract recruits — if not in Syria, where the flow of foreign fighters has slowed, at least in Europe, where the possibility of a mass return of the jihadists has become the nightmare of the authorities. This is only one of the paradoxes of the evolution of the Syrian conflict: the weakening of ISIL could, at least in the beginning, mean more terrorist acts.
In their Syrian adventure, ISIL fighters have been “helped” by the international community. Of all the powers involved in the conflict to achieve their strategic interests, none has made the group its priority. The Russian obsession is to support the Syrian regime; that of the Americans is to disengage from the region; that of the Turks is to put an end to the territorial ambitions of the Kurds and regain a certain influence at its borders on the steps of the old Ottoman Empire; that of Shiite Iran is to win the battle against Sunni Saudi Arabia, and vice versa. As for Europe, it has been standing aloof, divided, and unable to defend itself without outside help.
Recent developments seem to suggest that the Russian intervention could save the life of Syrian President Bashar Assad, literally and politically. If this is the case, the first victim would not be terrorism. By repressing violently the peaceful demonstrations in March 2011, and releasing Islamists from prison, the Syrian regime bears the primary responsibility for the disaster in which its country is now drowning. Repression has stirred the jihadist fire in the world. With Assad remaining in power, the opponents, who are sucked up by the jihadist movements, could only become more radicalized. Terrorist groups feed on wars. Hezbollah was born from the war in Lebanon. Al-Qaida evolved in the Afghan civil war in the 1990s. ISIL has grown on the unstable lands of the Levant.
Syria is the largest provider of refugees in the world. And if migrants constitute a huge humanitarian problem, they also mean a security headache for European societies. They are important targets for the jihadist recruiters, because they are not well integrated, with a robbed past and a forbidden future. Wherever they go, they carry politics with them. Since history cannot be remade, we will never know how the destiny of Syria would have been had U.S. President Barack Obama not abandoned the idea of punishing Damascus when it crossed the “red line” on chemical weapons in August 2013. But this retreat eroded the political credit of the United States and its allies, thus catalyzing the Russian breakthrough. Russia, by sustaining the war, is feeding the terrorism that Moscow is pretending to fight. This might lead to a Russian-led stalemate.
It is Europe that, in the Western world, and because of its geographical location and its considerable Muslim communities, is the main target of the jihadists. But the Orlando, Fla., attack in June 2016 has come to remind Americans, who thought they had greater immunity, that they, too, remain a favourite target for the jihadists. The crises in the Middle East are no longer external to us. They are now embedded in the societies of the West.
Trump’s Ascent Is More Bad News for the Syrian Opposition: James Snell, National Review, Nov. 16, 2016—Donald Trump’s unexpected victory in last week’s presidential election took many by surprise, both domestically and around the world. There was always a chance he would win the keys to the White House, but many — including, it seems, almost all the pollsters — had convinced themselves that his opponent Hillary Clinton would be the next leader of the free world.
U.S. Syria Policy at Crossroads as Rebels Falter: Jay Solomon, Carol E. Lee and Felicia Schwartz, Wall Street Journal, Dec. 4, 2016—Steep losses by antiregime rebels in Syria have scrambled U.S. policy calculations at a crucial moment in the country’s long-running war, with the election of Donald Trump already pointing…
Analysis: Russian Silence Might Signal ‘Tacit Consent’ by Kremlin to Israeli Strikes in Syria: Barney Breen-Portnoy, Algemeiner, Dec. 1, 2016 —Russia’s silence following reports that the Israeli Air Force bombed an arms depot and a Hezbollah-bound weapons convoy in Syria on Wednesday might signal “tacit consent” to such actions as long as they do not harm the Kremlin’s interests, a military reporter for the Hebrew news site Walla wrote on Thursday.
Iran's Forces Outnumber Assad's in Syria: Majid Rafizadeh, Gatestone Institute, Nov. 24, 2016—In Syria and Iraq, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant is losing territory fast. The organization barely now controls 40 per cent of the 60,000 square kilometres it occupied in the region in October 2014. The disintegration of the caliphate installed on the land of the Sham — the old name for Syria — has led some to foretell its disappearance in the medium term. But this good news will not have as a consequence the end of Islamist terrorism.
