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Israel Paves the Way for Assad to Move South (Enab Baladi Online, opposition website) http://syrianobserver.com/EN/News/34330 Comment: By now, there have already been dozens of articles on this development, and this is just one more, but this piece coming from the rather reliable Syrian opposition news site Enab Baladi (translated by the Syrian Observer) seems a relatively thorough piece. The deal is completely simple, expected, and always lurking there as the obvious "solution" to please "everyone", ie, Assad, Israel, Jordan, Russia, the US, with the Southern Front of the Free Syrian Army being the loser and Iran being the fall guy. The simple fact is that there is nothing even remotely surprising about Israel agreeing to Assad's forces returning to guard the "border" of the Israeli-stolen Golan; despite years of shrill nonsense from the alt-left wingnut brigade, and sometimes even from sensible people, about Israel being behind the Syrian people's uprising against Assad's tyranny, there has never been a grain of truth to it: Israeli leaders, political, military, "security", the entire spectrum, along with think-tanks and various prominent spokespeople, have always been in favour of Assad re-taking the "border" from the rebels. After all, why not? Despite BS "resistance" talk, Assad kept the occupied "border" stone-cold quiet for 40 years. And despite some of the left-wingnut fantasies, Israel has no more been in favour of "regime change" in Syria than has the US itself; if anything, Israel has been even more opposed. The snag, however, has been the large-scale presence of Iranian and Iranian-backed forces from the global Shiite jihadist forces (from Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon etc) aiding Assad's genocidal war against his people. Israel has continually launched strikes against these forces in Syria, which gave many the impression that Israel was perhaps changing its stance and coming out against Assad. However, this view can only be blind to the fact that Iran is one of Assad's key global allies, but the other is Putin's White Russian imperialist machine, which since 2015 has waged a horrifically brutal air war against the Syrian population, playing a similar role in Syria to what the US played in Vietnam. And from the very start of the Russian operation, Israel has declared itself heavily in favour of it, and best friends Putin and Netanyahu have had countless high-level love fests since then. How can one explain Israel's close and warm relationship with Russia (including, for example, not taking part in US and western actions against Russia over its illegal annexation of Crimea, or over the recent poisoning case in UK), if Israel was opposed to the Assad regime? Clearly, Israel simply preferred the 'Russian' to the 'Iranian' version of the rescue-Assad operation. Now with Assad victorious in the military struggle throughout most of Syria, two issues emerge (among many that is). One is that allies in the battle to save Assad, eg Iran and Russia, may emerge as rivals to be the more dominant power over Assad's blighted little satrapy. This includes now open rivalry over economic contracts etc. The second thing is that, the more Assad is victorious, the less the presence of large numbers of pro-Iranian Shiite cannon-fodder remains essential. At some point, the "secular" Baathist tyrant, aiming to semi-restore his dynastic tyranny, will be just as bothered as Russia by these unruly troops loyal to a foreign theocracy. Seems to me the reason this very obvious agreement - that Iranian and pro-Iranian forces distance themselves from the southern region (Daraa and Quneitra provinces), and if so, Israel has no problem with Russian-airforce-backed Assad troops crushing the southern FSA, that Russia will not oppose Israel continuing to bomb pro-Iranian forces anywhere in Syria, but Israel promises not to touch Assad's own forces in the process (to the extent they can be distinguished) - the reason this obvious agreement has been delayed to now is that Assad still needed this Iranian-backed cannon fodder to help smash the Syrian rebels, given the extreme weakness of Assad's own Syrian forces, and Russia's desire to not put troops on the ground. Therefore, Russia wanted to give them time, and while Israel was impatient and regularly struck Iranian forces, it did not make too much of a big deal either. For example, early this year, Israel struck Iranian assets in Homs, I think early February. Then from mid-February to mid-March, Assad and Putin bombed the East Ghouta Gaza-style ghetto to smithereens in an Operation Protective Edge style slaughter, forcing its surrender. During that entire operation, not a peep from Israel (and obviously not from the US). Once it was safely over, Israel then again struck Iranian assets in Homs. Now with the crushing of Ghouta, Israel assesses that Assad is safely in power, so can up the ante in its war of wills with Iran (and a war of wills, of rhetoric, is what it is - the most laughable idea ever is that nuclear-armed Israel "feels threatened" by the Iranian build-up). It was not surprising to see Netanyahu in Moscow for a very high-level appearance as guest of honour just hours before Israel launched its most major operation against Iranian assets in Syria several weeks ago; that Putin gave the green light is as clear as the fact that the sun rises in the morning. And this led directly to this current agreement. The FSA has responded by demanding the Arab states live up to their obligations against this international conspiracy, but of course this will fall on deaf ears in the same way as similar Palestinian calls always have. One interesting factor in all this is that the role of the US appears to be that of bombastic irrelevance: Trump ends the nuclear agreement with Iran - huge news. Next day, Netanyahu goes to *Moscow* for the agreement to blast Iranians in Syria. Then Pompeo makes one of the most aggressive sounding speeches heard for a long time about Iran, which includes the demand that Iranian forces leave Syria, Iraq, Yemen etc (Iranian forces are not in Yemen, but anyway). Yet this in the context that it is Russia/Israel getting Iranian forces from southern Syria, it is Iraqi voters voting for a movement that opposes the Iranian presence in Iraq and the same movement opposes the US presence in Iraq, the Houthi front in Yemen is collapsing because the Houthis went to war with their key ally, former tyrant Saleh, without whom they would never have been able to occupy the south in the first place, the Arab minority in Iranian Ahvaaz is in uprising, and Iranian people in Iran itself have been in various forms of uprising throughout this year - Pompeo may have wanted to make it sound like the US had something to do with any of that. Then as Assad threatened to attack the south, the US State Dept made the most unusual move by warning Assad against violating the "de-escalation zone" there, threatening unnamed consequences. Unusual because it is the only time in the entire war that the US has warned the regime not to attack the rebels (as opposed to the chemical warfare issue). Not that the US cares a fig for these southern rebels who it has cut off all support to years ago, but because it wants to show its relevance by showing it looks after the interests of its friends like Israel and Saudi Arabia who oppose the Iranian role. Yet that was just background noise to the real dealing going on between Israel and Russia. _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
