The Assad regime has fallen. It’s very unlikely to end well.
But it is an opportunity for Israel to enhance its own border security, and it’s taking advantage of it.
The Assad regime has fallen. It’s very unlikely to end well.
But it is an opportunity for Israel to enhance its own border security, and it’s taking advantage of it.
Time to arm the Kurds (for real this time) and let them loose.
They’ll turn Syria into Iran’s Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, Israel is moving into the buffer zone, having abrogated the treaty keeping them away. Move some more arty to the Golan and start plinking
Ideally, I’d like to see the Kurds get their centuries-overdue own country comprised of the majority Kurdish northern parts of Syria, Iraq and Iran. Trump sanctioning Iran again and the Israelis finishing off its nuclear weapons infrastructure should topple the mullahs and allow Iran to be diced up. Hand the Arab-majority oil-rich border province of Khuzestan to Iraq as compensation for detaching its Kurdish north as part of a new Kurdistan. Screw the Turks.
Maybe Trump can work a deal with Turkey and the Kurds where the Kurds get some sort of country and Turkey gets a guarantee that is all the land they will get any any Kurds who want autonomy should move there.
US now launching airstrikes against ISIS targets in Syria.
Dude, are you telling a joke, or is the Biden Administration taking a swan dive into this shallow pool of dog leavings (again) for real?
In this moment of chaos, taking out targets of opportunity is wise.
Striking ISIS isn’t a big deal. Fighting a proxy war with our NATO ally is a big deal.
I wonder if we’ll ever get a clear picture of what was going on. In some sense, this appears early on to be an attempt by Russia to open another front in the Ukrainian war. A conflict between Israel and Iranian proxies provided a distraction from what was going on in Ukraine.
It’s still not clear to me what Iran would gain by this action. Perhaps they’re close to having nuclear weapons and in the fashion of Saddam Hussein thought that they would have time to start a war beforehand.
And the fall of Assad’s government is profound not just in its suddenness (less than two weeks!), but in the surprise. For example, I read through a number of news stories that attempt to construct a timeline. A common approach is to talk about years old events and then finish up abruptly with the observation that the Assad government fell in December, 2024. I see almost no attempts to explain how that happened. And those that do are often shallow (such as merely claiming that it was a surprise that Assad’s military collapsed so fast).
My bet is that some critical Assad ally switched sides in late November along with Assad’s foreign allies distracted by the conflicts with Ukraine or Israel. Before that, recent conflict was between Turkish forces and allies, and Kurds.
I don’t favor a common theory that the collapse happened because Syrian military was hollowed out. That probably was a factor, but the fighting was very mobile and well executed. That indicates to me a combination of planning, logistics, and ambition that the rebels hadn’t exhibited to that point.
In any case, if Putin contrived to attack Israel via proxies in order to distract the foreign allies of Ukraine, then that strategy has profoundly failed with the loss of Syria. They might be able to bribe whatever factions are in control to support their military bases in the country for considerable cost, but it seems more likely that they’ll eventually lose access to these bases and lessen their influence in the region.
Iran has similar problems. In addition to the loss of Syria, Hamas is under siege and Hezbollah is greatly disorganized. I wouldn’t be surprised to if the Houthi rebels in Yemen receive setbacks in the near future. I think the only thing they can do to improve their situation is develop a viable superweapon like said nuclear bombs. So it makes me wonder what their expectations were going in.