After opposition rebels took Damascus, Bashar al-Assad’s government collapsed and he escaped to Russia, Syria appears to be up for grabs between powerful regional players.
The two main groups inside the country are the Syrian National Army and the jihad group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). Meanwhile, Turkey has “for years supported Syrian opposition forces,” particularly the Syrian National Army, which has been “looking to oust the Iran and Russia-backed Assad.” Turkish President Erdogan’s main obsession has been the presence of the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia in northern Syria, which Erdogan considers to be a terrorist group, as it seeks Kurdish independence. Over the weekend, Turkey’s military was “firing on U.S.-backed Kurdish forces in northern Syria.” How NATO member Turkey continues to respond to US forces in the region could become a source of tension between the two countries in the coming weeks.
A key player also is Iran, which is loyal to al-Assad, and wanted to see the opposition quashed so as to preserve his rule. While Russia sought the same, it also aimed to convince Assad to “normalise relations with Turkey, including over Ankara’s demand that it can intervene to prevent Kurdish forces using northern Syria to mount attacks inside Turkey.”
It’s all happening in Israel’s backyard. Israel Defense Forces set up a buffer zone along the border and have now crossed into Syrian territory for the first time in five decades to “act as peacekeepers.”
Prime Minister Netanyahu issued the following statement upon the fall of the Syrian government (Courtesy: Israel Government Press Office):
“This is a historic day for the Middle East. The collapse of the Assad regime, the tyranny in Damascus, offers great opportunity but also is fraught with significant dangers. This collapse is the direct result of our forceful action against Hezbollah and Iran, Assad’s main supporters. It set off a chain reaction of all those who want to free themselves from this tyranny and its oppression.
But it also means that we have to take action against possible threats. One of them is the collapse of the Separation of Forces Agreement from 1974 between Israel and Syria. This agreement held for 50 years. Last night, it collapsed. The Syrian army abandoned its positions. We gave the Israeli army the order to take over these positions to ensure that no hostile force embeds itself right next to the border of Israel. This is a temporary defensive position until a suitable arrangement is found.
Equally, we send a hand of peace to all those beyond our border in Syria: to the Druze, to the Kurds, to the Christians, and to the Muslims who want to live in peace with Israel. We’re going to follow events very carefully. If we can establish neighborly relations and peaceful relations with the new forces emerging in Syria, that’s our desire. But if we do not, we will do whatever it takes to defend the State of Israel and the border of Israel.”
Meanwhile, the opposition commander of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, has his own plans for Syria. As he is a Sunni Salafist leader, his vision doesn’t align with that of Shia Iran. He stated:
This new triumph, my brothers, marks a new chapter in the history of the region, a history fraught with dangers (that left) Syria as a playground for Iranian ambitions, spreading sectarianism, stirring corruption.
So now Turkey and Iran are also headed toward conflict.
The Iranian proxy Hizballah has long backed al-Assad, whose fall represents a great “blow to Iran’s Axis of Resistance.” But the Times of Israel warns:
Iran still holds the card of its nuclear program. Though it denies that intention, it can use the potential for building a weapons capability to cast a shadow of influence in the region.
On Friday, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, stated that “Iran stands poised to ‘quite dramatically’ increase its stockpile of near weapons-grade uranium as it has started cascades of advanced centrifuge.”
His comments came only “hours after Iran said it conducted a successful space launch” of its Simorgh rocket, a “program that the West alleges improves Tehran’s ballistic missile program.”
The Shia Doomsday regime remains a heightened threat as it becomes more desperate.
somehistory says
And since mozlums are involved….mozlums of various stripes….anything and everything should be watched and guards up with the violent possibilities on the horizon.
Ezekiel 38-39
Tony says
Sunni Muslims(Turkey, Erdogan) are against Shia Muslims(Iran, Assad) to gain ultimate power and control over Syria. This is Islam and its Muslims, a Criminal Gang Enterprise. Moreover, Islam is a deceitful, totalitarian, terrorist, pedophilic Criminal Gang Enterprise against all Non-Muslims by using discrimination, deception, rape, hatred, and violence to gain ultimate power and control as taught in Islamic Law and in Islam’s Quran. Moreover, Islam’s supremacist-genocidal Ideology, its tyrannical Muslims, its propaganda Schools, its foreign terrorist Organizations, and its ‘Convert-or-Die’ Mosques fund, teach, inspire, and promote ‘Threats and Incitement of Violence’ as well as never-ending terrorism, loathing, and segregation against women, children, and all Non-Muslims(eg. Quran 2:191-3; 4:89,100; 5:14,82; 8:65; 9:5,14-15,29; 33:26; 47:4; 65:4; 98:6-7 and more).
MD Anthony says
Assad is an Ala-white – closer to being a Christian than a Muslim – Think Chrislam. It’s why Rick Warren supported Assad. Assad was the protector of Minorities in Syria but was a virtual hostage to Shia Iran and trying to survive.
࿗Infidel࿘ says
You are thinking of the Druze. Alawites are people whose main difference from other shi’a is that they actually worship Ali, as opposed to shi’a, who just think of Ali as being the first legitimate successor to Muhammad. Normally, that would make them heterodox, if not downright heretical, even in a shi’a theocracy, and there’s no way it would normally be tolerated in, say, Iran. However, their numbers made them useful to Iran in Syria, and so a shi’a cleric in Iran issued a fatwa recognizing Alawites as shi’a, despite that difference
As far as minorities went, Assad only protected them as was useful to him, such as Syrian Christians. However, when Israel withdrew from South Lebanon in 2006 and Hizbullah took over, many of those South Lebanon Army fighters were captured by Hizbullah and sent to Syria, where they were executed. Only way Christians would be favored by the Assad regime is if they flipped and took Syria’s side, like Michel Aoun and Elie Hobeika
Cynthia says
Now should be the time to rid the world of Iran’s nuclear program. They are weakened because of Israel, and in spite of the Biden administration.
somehistory says
“NYT: Documents show top administrators at UNRWA schools were Hamas fighters”
“Some two dozen teachers, counselors and administrators at UNRWA schools in Gaza are members of Hamas or other terror groups, according to a foreign media report published Sunday based on documents provided by Israel.
The materials, seized from terror groups during the ongoing war that began with Hamas’s October 7, 2023, massacre, shed further light on Israel’s longstanding contention that the United Nations agency responsible for aid to Palestinians — which administered some 288 schools in the enclave before the war — has fostered radicalism, and been used by terror groups in their efforts against Israel.
The documents viewed by The New York Times identify 24 employees at 24 different UNRWA schools — the majority of them principals or deputy principals — who are registered members of Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad; about half of them had documented possession of lethal weaponry, including assault rifles and hand grenades, provided by the terror groups, or participated in their training exercises.
Gaza residents interviewed by the Times said Hamas’s presence in UN schools was something of an open secret, with one UNRWA educator “regularly seen after hours in Hamas fatigues carrying a Kalashnikov,” according to the report.
Another school principal, a Hamas member who was issued an assault rifle and a handgun, reportedly has a photo on his Facebook page depicting him standing in front of a Hamas banner.
The report also noted the presence of Hamas tunnels in UNRWA schools. It also cited internal Hamas documents listing two schools in particular that were used for hiding weapons, and calling schools and other civilian sites “the best obstacles to protect the resistance.” Israel has frequently encountered Hamas operatives in school buildings throughout the war.
The principal with the Hamas banner in his Facebook photo oversaw a school that was directly on top of a tunnel. UNRWA discovered the tunnel in 2017 and issued a statement at the time condemning Hamas for its use of the school, and saying it had moved to seal the tunnel’s entrances.However, in several cases examined by the Times, the Israeli government provided written warnings to UNRWA that specific employees were terror group operatives, but the employees were not fired.
The Foreign Ministry alerted UNRWA in 2011, for example, that Naji Abu Aziz, the principal of the Khuza’a Prep Boys School, was connected to Hamas. Records seized more recently have shown that Abu Aziz is part of the chemistry unit of Hamas’s military manufacturing department. He is still listed as the principal of the school.
Philippe Lazzarini, the agency’s commissioner-general, told the Times that UNRWA has trouble getting information from Israel that would allow it to take action against employees connected to terror groups. He also said it was “extraordinarily interesting” that Israel had shared the Hamas documents with the newspaper, rather than with the UN itself.Israel has long had a combative relationship with UNRWA, which it argues has perpetuated the Palestinian refugee crisis by allowing Refugee status to be passed down through generations. Frustration with UNRWA in Jerusalem has picked up over the past decade as Israel has found the Gaza-ruling Hamas terror group embedded within the agency’s infrastructure.
That anger peaked after Hamas’s October 7 onslaught, in which a number of UNRWA staffers were found to have participated, including kidnapping and killing Israelis. Israel has alleged that 10 percent of the UN agency’s staff in Gaza have ties to terror groups — a charge of which the agency says it has no evidence.On November 1, the Knesset passed a bill banning UNRWA from operating from Israeli territory and prohibiting government agencies from working with UNRWA. The bill will take effect in early 2025.
The UN has previously said nine UNRWA staff members may have been involved in the attack and had been fired. The head of UNRWA’s teacher’s union in Lebanon was also killed by Israel recently, in his capacity as a Hamas commander there.”
there are a few more paragraphs, documenting the connections between the un and the un of hamas and why the un refuses to do something different.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/nyt-documents-show-top-administrators-at-unrwa-schools-were-hamas-fighters/ar-AA1vuTsk?ocid=msedgntp&pc=HCTS&cvid=5b778354dbe745eb95c69ed9a549576c&ei=44
࿗Infidel࿘ says
Israel needs to occupy those abandoned positions permanently. Bad as his regime was, Assad could be trusted to honor that Separation of Forces agreement even more than his father. But the more we learn about Jolani, who was, among other things, a former Gitmo inmate, the more reasons we have to be suspicious of him. If he’s gonna be the new head honcho in Damascus, then the Israelis should at least make the local Druze militia on the Syrian side their frontline defenses on the Syrian side. That way, they avoid diplomatic accusations of an occupation. Also, they need to make allies w/ the Kurds and the Christians, and maybe even the Alawites, at least those sane Alawites who don’t see a jihad against Israel as a substitute for keeping them safe from the sunnis
Also, while I’m no fan of Bashar al Assad, some of the propaganda about him is over the top. Yeah, he was a nepo baby (the newest term we’ve been hit w/ over the last week), but his father was far worse. All Bashar’s wars have been contained within Syria, and that too, only after 2011, when the Arab Spring attempted to spill into Syria and do to him what they had done to Mubarak, Gaddafi and Ben Ali. By contrast, his father was one of the leading enemies of the Egypt-Israel Camp David Acccords, interfered in Lebanon in a big way to destroy the Maronite control of that country, including assassinating Bashir Gemayel, empowering Hizbullah and giving Iran a link to Lebanon and Israel. He was more of an islamic villain than his son was
Reziac says
Translation: Turkey has finally reconquered Syria. 🙁
Gurek says
Sadly true. And those people who cheer on Assad’s fall will soon see how it’s like to live under Turkish boots. Erdogan is worse. He is a NATO member and thus gets a free pass whatever crimes he committ.
And people should stop trusting the Kurds. The claim that they are moderate is ludicrous. They too are sunnis and will not hesitate to kill the Infidel.
࿗Infidel࿘ says
Yeah, Kurds are sunnis, but given their enmity w/ the Turks, Arabs and Iranians, they are the least islamic of the 3, if you know what I mean. It makes sense for both Israel and the US to support them, so that neither needs to have their own boots on the ground. The US can put pressure on Turkey and read them the riot act if they try to use this situation to wage war on the Kurds.
Similarly, Israel already has the support of the Druze on its side of the border in the Golan, and many of them have relatives on the Syrian side of the border. So Israel can work w/ that Druze militia – SOF or whatever – to man the buffer zone b/w them and Syria. Essentially, make it clear to Jolani that HTS or even official Syrian forces won’t be tolerated in the buffer zone, as per the Separation of Forces agreement, and do what it can to prevent Jolani from taking over the entire country, such as the Kurdish areas east of the Euphrates, or the Alawite areas in and around Latakiya
Billy says
Netanyahu, Israel should make Islam, its Mosques, its Schools, and any Muslim Organizations illegal because they fund, teach, incite, and support Terrorism, Discrimination, Segregation, and Violence against all Non-Muslims as taught in Islamic Law and in Islam’s Quran(eg. Quran 2:191-3; 4:89,100; 5:14,82; 8:65; 9:5,14-15,29; 33:26; 47:4; 65:4; 98:6-7 and more).
memi says
Yes, indeed, he should do this and also European leaders should follow Israel’s example if it ever implements this Zero Islamist Tolerance policy that would save both Jews and Christians! And sanctions against Turkey if it doesn’t stop sending its fanaticized Islamist Imams to EU countries!
Troybeam says
Netanyahu will defend Israel I just hope he does not broadcast his plans until they are set. I hope he does not let his defenses down but strengthens them on the Syrian border in plain site of all Muslims that would use this to attack Israel.
Billy stated he should Islam, Mosques and such illegal in Israel and agree 100%. Had neighbors that are
Arab-Israelies born and raised in Israel question is how will Netanyahu deal with this?
Another question is this: will Netanyahu/government take away the guns from the people once more and leave them without a way to defend themselves as was the case on Oct.7, 2023?
A people left defenseless will always be open to attack from those that carry weapons, thank you forefathers for the 2nd Amendment.