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| An Israeli military vehicle rides on the Golan Heights side of the ceasefire line with Syria on Dec. 18. (Shir Torem/Reuters) |
| Fear and hope color the unfolding drama in Syria in equal shades. After the stunning fall of the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, attention has centered on the new dispensation taking shape in Damascus — and the powerful regional actors that may be influencing it. Analysts have already declared geopolitical winners and losers: Iran and Russia, Assad’s longtime backers, are licking their wounds; Turkey and Arab monarchies that supported the Syrian rebels to varying extents are in the ascendance. Israel, which carried out a ruthless bombing campaign on Syrian military targets and moved ground forces across the disputed Golan Heights into Syrian territory clearly feels emboldened, too. As the Islamist rebel group that ousted Assad takes the reins in steering the country’s political transition, Western governments are starting to reengage a country long in the diplomatic cold. On Tuesday, the French flag was hoisted above France’s embassy in Damascus for the first time in 12 years. Barbara Leaf, the top State Department official on the Middle East, is set to visit the Syrian capital in the coming days.
Much remains uncertain. On Thursday, hundreds of Syrians demonstrated in the heart of Damascus, calling on the new Islamist-linked authorities to preserve a secular, inclusive state. Kurds in Syria’s northeast are bracing for potential battles with Turkish-backed militias. As my colleagues reported, members of Assad’s minority Alawite sect have faced reprisal attacks and killings at the hands of rebel groups long suppressed by a half-century of dictatorship. Assad’s fall has made some dynamics clear. The regime’s demise was prefigured by Israel’s tactical decimation of Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, an Iranian proxy that was vital to securing the Assad regime over a decade of civil war. Furthermore, after defending him for years, both Iran and Russia were unable or even unwilling to keep Assad in power. His ousting represents a political sea change in the Middle East. “Just as 1989 marked the end of communism in Europe, Assad’s flight to Moscow signals the demise of the ideology of anti-Western, anti-Israel resistance in the Middle East,” wrote Lina Khatib, a Middle East analyst at Britain’s Chatham House think tank. “For more than half a century, the Assad family was the backbone for a political order in the Middle East in which a bloc of states styled themselves as the resistance to what they labeled Western imperialism and Zionism.” Now, she added, it seems Israel is “becoming the Middle East’s agenda-setter.” It has smashed its most proximate enemies in Hezbollah and Palestinian militant group Hamas — to be sure, at the cost of tens of thousands civilian lives and mounting allegations that it has committed crimes of genocide in the Gaza Strip. The Israeli campaigns have humbled and hobbled regional foe Iran. And with President-elect Donald Trump coming to office next month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is in a strong position to further push Israel’s agenda in the region. In an essay in Foreign Affairs, top former Israeli security officials Amos Yadlin and Avner Golov outlined a strategy that would establish “an Israeli order in the Middle East.” They called for a diplomatic push to further bind Israel to Arab monarchies in the Gulf, especially Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — a complex effort that would require American partnership and eventual Israeli concessions to millions of Palestinians living under de facto occupation. But that would also require Netanyahu to defy key far-right members of his own ruling coalition, who envision Israel soon annexing parts of the West Bank and even establishing settlements in Gaza. Over the past three months, Israel has reasserted its ability to shape Middle Eastern politics and security,” Yadlin and Golov wrote. “Without brave leadership, however, Israel’s opportunity could slip away. Aspirations of extreme members of Netanyahu’s coalition to annex parts of Gaza and the West Bank, impose military rule in Gaza, or pursue a polarizing domestic agenda that weakens democratic institutions will severely hinder this progress.” | ||||||
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| Presidents of the Organization of Eight Developing Countries summit during the opening session in Cairo on Thursday. (Handout Handout/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
But there is another regional player also sensing their moment. The Assad regime was a linchpin in what analysts long-dubbed Iran’s “Shiite crescent,” an arc of influence and proxy groups that bridged Tehran to the Mediterranean. With Assad gone and Hezbollah cowed, wrote Hassan Hassan in the Guardian, we may be watching “the end of Iran’s long-feared ‘Shiite crescent’ and the rise of Turkey’s ‘full moon,’ reshaping the geopolitical landscape from the Horn of Africa to the Levant and Afghanistan.” Turkey’s proxies are in a commanding position in Damascus and poised to seize further control in Syria’s northeast. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan long called for Assad’s ouster, and now seems vindicated in his approach. He has also played a larger role as regional statesman, recently brokering peace deals between Ethiopia and Somalia, while beefing up Turkey’s alliance with Azerbaijan, a well-armed petro-state on Iran’s doorstep. Trump even cast the Syrian rebellion as an “unfriendly takeover” by Turkey, a narrative that was rejected by Ankara. “We wouldn’t call it a takeover, because it would be a grave mistake to present what’s been happening in Syria” in those terms, Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said in an interview, adding that the toppling of Assad reflected “the will of the Syrian people” and that it was important for the Middle East to move beyond a “culture of domination.” “It is not Turkish domination, not Iranian domination, not Arab domination, but cooperation [that] should be essential,” Fidan told broadcaster Al Jazeera. Turkey’s friendliness with Islamist groups and historic backing of parties affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood are a source of disquiet for both Arab states like the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, as well as Israel, whose relations with Turkey have cratered since the beginning of the war in Gaza. Political tussles in Damascus may quickly take on a geopolitical edge. “The rival ambitions of Erdogan and Netanyahu could easily clash in Syria,” wrote Financial Times columnist Gideon Rachman. “It risks becoming a battleground for competing regional powers because Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries also have interests at stake there.” Still, though the regime in Tehran may be weakened, its rivals will have to be careful about pressing their advantage. “The risks are that a military escalation by Israel against Iran might spiral out of control, with the latter responding with attacks on oil shipping and production facilities in the Gulf, triggering a global energy and economic crisis,” noted the Middle East Institute’s Paul Salem. Iran may also “decide to rebuild its lost deterrence by rushing to develop a nuclear weapon, which would also trigger a war with Israel — and the United States,” he added. More the reason, others argue, for the Trump administration to exploit Iran’s vulnerability via diplomacy that curtails a rush toward a nuclear weapon. “I don’t think that a nuclear weapon is inevitable,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York on Wednesday, adding that he saw “the prospect of negotiations.” In Syria, analysts believe Iran may carefully try to work its way back, exploiting security vacuums and potential unrest among ethnic minorities. “We all know Iran lost big-time with the fall of Assad. We also know Iran has patience,” Syrian journalist Ibrahim Hamidi told my colleagues. “For now, it’s taking a few steps back to decide how to deal with this.” |