One of the fallouts of the Gaza campaign undertaken by the Israeli Defense Forces and 5he Pentagon combined has been the much-awaited fall of the Baathist Syrian faction government in Damascus. The Baath has been in power in Syria since 1963 in one form or another, with Hafez Al Assad in complete control since 1971 onwards; has been left wing in nature; obviously looking for the then Soviet military hardware.
One of the combat pilots with the Syrian Air force prior to the Baathist coup in 1963; Hafez al Assad’s stint as an underground sympathizer with the party and later his stint in combat training onboard Soviet-made MiG 17 jets very much prepared him for the future role in the Syrian society and polity. Consequently, he ruled the country as all-encompassing dictator from 1971 to 2000, and until then he always won the presidential elections in Syria by the huge margin of 99.97 percent every seven years.
That trouble can be in the form of the same role played by the Jordanian Air Force in neutralizing the Iranian warheads in support of Israel or it can be an odd scenario for a simpleton Muslim, a Jihadi outfit, the foot soldiers of Jolani, acting hand in glove with the IDF. Going forward, the Syrian file has closed on the note that the global powers have been able to fully exploit the divisions to its advantage. It would not be a strange scenario that the impending conflict between Iran and the IDF might see Syria as an active war theatre; with enough chances for either side to carry the day eventually
The purpose of providing the background to the society and polity rests in the fact that the nature of the nation state in a way guided and influenced the political movements in that society, its foreign relations as well as its role in the emerging geopolitical realities of the Middle East.
The formation of Israel in the heart of the Arab world has been the source of a clear divide between the traditional sheikhdoms and the so-called militant leftist governments; mostly the outcome of the ‘free officers’ with the rallying cry of fighting the ‘Zionist entity’. The Syrian government being under the influence of the Baathist ideology was one such government, content with the rhetoric if not any clear result-oriented action. The first test was the Black September civil war between the PLO and the Hashemite monarchy over the control of the country, which has a built-in ethnic bonding between the Palestinians and the Jordanians.
Even though the Syrian and Iraqi governments were left wing in nature, they contented themselves with lip service and their units never entered the Jordanian territory to help the besieged PLO fighters. With the 1967 military debacle in the past, the 1973 campaign by the Syrian Baath along with the fast changing Egyptian regime against the Zionist entity was designed to wash what these states felt was the ‘wounded Arab pride’. The consequent events in 1977 and onwards culminating in the 1978 camp David accord between Egypt and Israel; as a matter of fact, the fore runner of the Current ‘Abraham Accords’, effectively divided the Arab world into the compliant conservative right led by Saudi Arabia and followed by sheikhdoms, while the left wing bloc was made up of Libya, Syria, Iraq, Algeria and Tunisia, with Morocco siding with monarchies.
The left-wing Syria was not positioning itself to fight Israel in any sense, but just to maintain a deterrence. However, that was precisely the time when the turn of events put the Syrian nation state in a position, where its preferences then guided events to the point when the current Gaza campaign started.
To explain; the left-wing front was not in a mood to help the PLO, and the 1979 events in Iran rudely disturbed the balance of politics and power in the Middle East. Syria might have felt at peace with Israel next door, concentrating more on the Lebanese file; helping favorites one after another but never doing much to help the Palestinian cause, however its association with the future who is who of the new post-1979 Tehran radically helped it reposition itself. To quote the now expired widow of Islamic Ideologue Ali Shariati talking about the intellectual’s death under mysterious circumstances in United Kingdom in June 1977; mentions the Shah government’s intent to give the opposition ideologue a protocol, was torpedoed by no one else then the late Hafez Al Assad; who lined up the logistics to ensure that the Iranian ideologue was buried alongside the shrine of Imam Husain’s sister Syeda Zainab in the outskirts of Damascus.
During the eight-year Iran-Iraq war, in April 1981, the Syrian decision to allow the Iranian Air force to use its Palmyra AFB for strikes at the famous Iraqi Air Force H 3 air base deep inside Al- Anbar province sealed the friendship between Iran and Syria, which brought the country back to the resistance, which it thought might be still managed at length. The Iranian cold shoulder to an Islamist insurgency on Homs and Hama by the Syrian faction of Ikhwan ul Muslimeen despite Tehran’s declared support for anything Islamic was guided by its geopolitical expediency just like its participation in arms sale from various sources, courtesy the Iran-Contra affair.
Into the era of ‘Arab Spring’, the Syrian file blew up in the face of the leadership in Tehran in a manner in 2012 that it had to orchestrate actions which not only drained its resources but also drained its credibility. The deployment of the militant Shia outfits from Pakistan to Lebanon, specifically the Hezbollah to prop up what the Iranians called; an important pillar of ‘moqawamat’ or ‘resistance’ caused even the Hamas to have second thoughts about its sincerity to the Palestinian cause.
The Assad regime, now led by Hafez’s son Bashaar, was nominally saved in 2018 with active participation of the IRGC and Russian intervention, though it came out rather a weak dispensation out of the civil war. With so much of the Iranian resources and blood of its allies, it was all natural that the regime was on the radar of the supporters of the Abraham Accords. To decapitate the Iranian role in Lebanon, especially the South of Lebanon, it was necessary that the government in Damascus was cajoled though cash handout promises, IDF air strikes and resurgent militants to either capitulate or be ready for regime change.
The turn of events included both cash promises as well as capitulation. The Baathist set up melted away in days, making way for Syrian variants of Zelensky, the Ukrainian frontman for the NATO campaign in East Europe; to capture Damascus. The most ominous development after the fall of Damascus was the complete destruction of military assets; of navy and air force by the IDF to ensure that there was no botheration for the IDF from the Syrian borders. Given the geopolitical stances of Jolani, any student of geopolitics can conclude that Israel borders now effectively touch the Iraqi and Jordanian territory, not to ignore the threat to the Turkish mainland.
One year after the fall of Damascus; with any military opposition to IDF in shambles, any military hostilities between Hezbollah, IDF and possibly the military participation from Iran, will possibly allow IDF to use the now neutral Syria as a pressure valve to put the resistance in trouble. That trouble can be in the form of the same role played by the Jordanian Air Force in neutralizing the Iranian warheads in support of Israel or it can be an odd scenario for a simpleton Muslim, a Jihadi outfit the foot soldiers of Jolani acting hand in glove with the IDF. Going forward, the Syrian file has closed on the note that the global powers have been able to fully exploit the divisions to its advantage. It would not be a strange scenario that the impending conflict between Iran and the IDF might see Syria as an active war theatre; with enough chances for either side to carry the day eventually.
