In Syria, and in the Region, What’s to Come is Still Unsure

The sudden collapse of the Assad regime has led to jubilation in Syria, and all sorts of speculation by analysts as to what this will mean both for the future of Syria and for its neighbors. More of one such example of speculation can be found here: “Syrian turmoil resurfaces: Turkey rises, Iran threatens, and regional alliances shift – opinion,” by Eric R. Mandel, Jerusalem Post, December 8, 2024:

Two weeks ago, the dormant 13-year-old Syrian civil war was barely on the radar of American and Israeli political, defense, and security leaders, with everyone focused on Iran, Hezbollah, and Gaza. The lesson is that those who think they know what is coming next in Syria and the region are fooling themselves.

After the Arab Winter in 2011, when Egyptian President Mubarak was toppled, few saw the rapid rise of the Muslim Brotherhood, which led to the election of the anti-American Islamist President Morsi. His short tenure ended in a coup by military strongman al-Sisi, who is still the authoritarian President of Egypt.

In retrospect, the events in the region over the past thirteen years seem to make sense, but they certainly didn’t at the time. Today’s political leaders must force themselves to remember how precarious the situation was at the time and how little insight our defense, security, and intelligence analysts had as the events transpired in real-time.

Today, Iran is on the defensive, but as a cornered rat, it is more dangerous than ever. With attention grabbed by the events unfolding in Syria, one might presume that Iran has suffered a major strategic defeat and is in no position to cause trouble, as its primary proxy in Lebanon is isolated, and Syria is no longer under its thumb.

On the contrary, while everyone is focused on Syria and the march of the jihadists backed by Turkey’s Islamist President Erdogan, we must not take our eye off the Islamic Republic of Iran, whose mullahs are likely to decide now is the time to dash to a nuclear weapon to become immune to an attack.

Alarmed by their geopolitical setback in Syria, where rebel troops so quickly conquered the country, the rulers of Iran may be worrying about a sudden attack on their country by the IDF, and think that a nuclear weapon will be its surest way to head off such an attack. The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, has just warned that Iran has “dramatically” increased its stockpile of near weapons-grade uranium — enriched up to 60% purity, which is just one step away from the 90% purity needed for a weapon. The Israelis, aware of that increase in near weapons grade uranium by Iran, cannot afford to wait until there is a breakout by Iran to a nuclear weapon; it has to bomb — or have the US bomb — those enrichment sites very soon to put paid to such a threat.

My recommendation to both the Biden and Trump administrations is to seize the moment of Israeli decapitation of Iran’s anti-missile system as the right time to strike on the nuclear weapons program. A nuclear Iran remains a nightmare scenario for the Middle East, Israel, and US national security interests….

When Israel destroyed the S-300 anti-missile systems on October 25, it left Iran vulnerable to future attacks from the air. A nuclear Iran is not just a threat to Israel, but to our Sunni Arab allies in the Gulf, to Europe, and to the United States. Israel should not be left to deal with this problem alone. After all, it is the United States, not Israel, that possesses the most powerful bunker-buster bombs that will be needed to destroy the underground nuclear facilities at Fordow and Natanz. Trump does not want to involve the United States in a long and costly war. But this would not be such a “war,” like those extraordinarily expensive and wasteful campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq; it would be a sudden massive strike using missiles and bombs, to which Iran would not dare try to respond. And there would be no need for troops on the ground.

Will the stronger HTS jihadists devour their temporary SNA ally? Turkey will work with anyone who will allow it to take over northern Syria, ethically cleanse the Syrian Kurds from that region, and return the three million Syrian refugees to Syria who took shelter in Turkey during the civil war….

Will any Syrians, whatever their ideology, want to allow Turkey to take over a huge swathe of land in northern Syria in order to kill Kurdish citizens of Syria? Of course not. Nor will they countenance Turkey’s violation of Syria’s sovereignty by continual bombing of Syrian Kurds. On the other hand, Syria will be as glad to welcome back 3.5 (not 3) million Syrians who are currently refugees in Turkey, as Erdogan will be glad to get rid of them, for they are a great burden on the Turkish treasury.

If Erdogan decides to crush the Syrian Kurds, the Americans should take the side of the Kurds. The Kurds, after all, fought alongside the Americans against ISIS, just as they fought with us against Saddam Hussein in Iraq. They are today responsible for guarding tens of thousands of ISIS sympathizers. And we should not forget that the forty million Kurds are the largest stateless people in the world, who deserve an independent Kurdistan, not annihilation by Erdogan’s army. Such a state would be a natural ally of both the United States and Israel. American support would not require any boots on the ground, but only American weapons to fill and replenish the Kurdish arsenal.

Mandel’s worst-case scenario goes like this: the HTS rebels turn out to consist of real jihadists, and these jihadists, in turn, manage to monopolize power in Syria, gain the support of Turkey — even though Mandel had said that Erdogan had not supported HTS, but the SNA (Syrian National Army) — and by example, inspire similar jihadists to take control of Jordan, as the HTS did in Syria. All of these moving parts of his scenario could happen — or none of them.

Trump will want to remove the 900 American troops in Syria. As long as we support the Kurds with enough advanced weapons to defend themselves against both the remnants of ISIS and Turkey, those troops can be removed.

And how will the Supreme Leader and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, in Mandel’s hypothetical, be certain that America and Israel will not attack Iran’s nuclear program? They can’t possibly know that. Mandel is simply saying that whatever may or may not occur in the region, Iran is now hellbent on becoming a nuclear power, and it is up to the Americans to prevent it.

In sum, America has a large stake in preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear power, for Iran threatens not just Israel, but the Sunni Arab states of the Gulf, as well as Europe and America. There are, after all, many ways to deliver nuclear weapons to distant targets, not necessarily by air. Iran is now rushing quickly, according to IAEA head Rafael Grossi, to enrich its stocks of uranium up to 60% purity, just below weapons-grade. Only America, not Israel, has the bunker-buster bombs that a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities would require. Trump and the isolationist wing of his advisers needn’t worry, because a strike on nuclear facilities would be both quick and cheap, unlike those hideously expensive wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that clearly made such a deep and negative impression on our President-elect.