Syria: Behind the Media and Politics 

This report is a compilation and streamlining of a series of Defense & Foreign Affairs reports prepared on the Syrian conflict during September 2013, but with the insertion of considerable areas of new and important data, particularly on Iran and Turkey.

Political and media representations of the conflict in Syria have tended to reinforce entrenched positions, making truth the primary casualty of war. Senior Editor Yossef Bodansky goes back to primary sources and historical knowledge to get to an unvarnished perspective. But the final twist in the tail may be that the Turkish leadership may have a strong lever in controlling Syria’s chemical weapons disarmament process. [Click here to go to that section.]

Analysis. By Yossef Bodansky, Senior Editor, GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs.  September 24, 2013, saw the final nail driven into the coffin of the US and Western effort to influence, let alone control, the Syrian armed opposition.  

Abdul-Aziz Salamah, the political lead- er of Liwaa al-Tawhid in northern Syria, announced that 13 of the leading armed opposition organization inside Syria decided to unite their efforts under an Islamist-jihadist banner as the “Islamist Alliance”. The Alliance claims to represent more than 75 percent the rebels fighting the Assad Administration. The Islamist Alliance was established in order to create sharia throughout Syria and to formally reject the Western-backed Syrian National Coalition (SNC) as their legitimate representative. Significantly, the group includes some of the largest ostensibly moderate Free Syrian Army (FSA) as well as al-Qaida affiliated organizations. Khalid Khoja, a senior SNC official in Turkey, estimated that the 13 groups had around 20,000 fighters and that “they effectively control northern Syria”. 

The supreme leadership of al-Qaida warmly endorsed the new alliance in a special communiqué. “A group of powerful mujahedin units rejected the authority of the pro-Western Syrian opposition leadership abroad and called for it to be reorganized under an Islamic framework,” the al-Qaida communiqué read. “These forces call on all military and civilian forces to unite under a clear Islamic framework based on sharia law, which should be the sole source of legislation.” 

The immediate roots of this dramatic shift go back to mid-September 2013, when the leaders of the main jihadist organizations and other armed groups gave up on the potentially war-winning intervention by the US-led West and started to reconcile themselves with the irreversible loss of grassroots popular support and legitimization in the Syrian interior. Under such conditions, the jihadists’ stated goal of an Islamist sharia state against the wishes of both the vast majority of Syrians and the Assad Administration has now become the only viable objective for the armed opposition. This realization was a reaffirmation of the claim by neo-salafi jihadist leaders that there could be no genuine cooperation with, and support from, the US-led West irrespective of the routine political, intelligence and military cooperation with the sponsoring intelligence services including the “Mukhabarat Amriki”: that is, US intelligence. 

This stunning reversal was both inevitable and unexpected. The jihadist forces have dominated the armed struggle inside Syria since early 2012. The aid provided by the sponsoring states — Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia; all of whom have also been fronting for the US — enabled the jihadist forces to gradually dominate and/ or destroy the localized rebel forces recruited and run under the command of local chieftains from the local popular bases (tribes, villages, townships, etc.). By the Autumn of 2012, the remaining local militias had been driven into protecting their popular bases against the jihadists and thus out of the anti-Assad fighting. By Spring 2013, the majority of localized militias were inclined to make deals with the Syrian security forces in order to jointly withstand, and where possible defeat, the ascent of the jihadist forces. A minority of the localized militias allowed themselves to be swallowed by the jihadist forces because they had become the sole source of weapons and other supplies in the destitute Syrian interior. 

Meanwhile, since Spring 2012, officials of the “Mukhabarat Amriki” have closely supervised and effectively dominated on-site the distribution of military, logistical and financial aid to the Syrian armed opposition. Although the US never “formally owned” the massive weapon shipments from Libya, Pakistan, and Qatar, and subsequently also from the former Soviet Union and the former Yugoslavia, operatives of the “Mukhabarat Amriki” instructed their allies — the formal foreign sponsors of the Syrian opposition in Turkey and Jordan — in great detail and specificity who should get what weapons and other supplies, and when. 

The sponsoring intelligence services, including the “Mukhabarat Amriki”, never had any illusion as to who was getting these weapons and what was being done with the US-endorsed and -supervised distribution of weapons and ammunition. Formally, particularly for the consumption of political Washington, these weapons went to the Supreme Military Council of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), led by Brig.-Gen. Salim Idriss, and through them to the FSA units and forces inside Syria. However, virtually all FSA-affiliated field commanders repeatedly complained that they did not get any weapons and supplies. Indeed, independent monitoring of the Turkey-origin convoys confirmed that the bulk of the weapons had always been delivered to jihadist forces. Furthermore, the jihadists intentionally received excess quantities which they used in order to lure and take over localized non-Islamist forces that were otherwise literally starving for food, supplies, and weaponry. In May 2013, a senior FSA commander reported that several FSA units with more than 3,000 FSA fighters joined the Jabhat al-Nusra in northern Syria alone. 

The current unraveling started in mid- September 2013. According to jihadist sources, more than 1,000 FSA fighters swore the oath of allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and Sham and the Jabhat al- Nusra Front in northern and eastern Syria, particularly in the province of ar-Raqqa. At the time, the jihadists already had between 7,500 and 10,000 fighters in the ar-Raqqa area. FSA sources conceded that the Raqqah Revolutionaries’ Brigade and the God’s Victory Brigade had pledged loyalty to the jihadists. The two brigades were part of the FSA as late as September 9, 2013. Thus, the last non- neo-salafi forces operating in the central Euphrates Valley — the bastion of the jihadist movement in both Syria and western Iraq — formally joined the jihadist cause. 

On September 20, 2013, the Islamic State of Iraq and Sham in eastern Syria announced that five FSA kitaeb (“battalions”) with more than 3,000 fighters swore the oath of allegiance to the Islamic State. As well, the entire Brigade of Nasr Salahuddin of the FSA joined the Islamic State of Iraq and Sham in northern Syria. 

Then, on September 24, 2013, Abdul-Aziz Salamah, the political leader of the Liwaa al-Tawhid, read the “Communiqué No.1” of the “Islamist Alliance” comprised of the 13 armed opposition organizations. 

“The mujahedin militant factions and forces that have signed this statement convened, consulted with each other, and concluded the following [four point agreement],” Salamah announced. 

“These forces and factions call on all military and civilian organizations to unite under a clear Islamic framework, set forth by the magnanimity of Islam, operating on the basis that sharia is the arbiter of governance and making it the sole source of legislation,” Salamah read. 

“This force believes that those deserving of representing it are those who have lived its burdens and shared in its sacrifices of honest sons,” Salamah’s statement reads. “This force feels that all groups formed abroad without returning to the country [and] without consulting those inside do not represent them, so the force will not recognize them.” 

The members of the “Islamist Alliance” explicitly refuse to accept the Western-sponsored political leadership. “Therefore, the National Coalition and its supposed government under the presidency of Ahmad Tumah do not represent them and will not be recognized by them,” Salamah stated. 

In conclusion, in the name of the “Islamist Alliance” Salamah urged “all militant and civilian organizations to unify their ranks and words, eschew division and discord, and put the interests of the ummah over that of any single group.” 

Of the 13 armed opposition organizations signing “Communiqué No.1” of the “Islamist Alliance”, only 11 are known: 

• Jabhat al-Nusra for the People of Sham (al-Qaida’s formal arm in Syria); 

• The Ahrar al-Sham Islamic Movement (a 20,000-strong jihadist group that leads the Syrian Islamic Front); 

• Liwaa al-Tawhid (an FSA brigade in the Aleppo area under the support of Turkish Military Intelligence); 

• Liwaa al-Islam (Saudi-sponsored neo- salafi brigade that operates in Aleppo and Damascus in the ranks of the Syrian Islamic Liberation Front); 

• Liwaa al-Suqour al-Sham (a major FSA brigade that doubles as a member of the Syrian Islamic Liberation Front); 

• The al-Fajr Islamic Movement (a large unit in the Syrian Islamic Front); 

• The al-Noor Islamic Movement (a jihadist brigade that operates in Aleppo); 

• The Noor al-Din al-Zanki Kitaeb (Saudi-backed jihadist battalions — or brigade — fighting in Aleppo); 

• The Fastaqim Kama Umirta Group (local unit based in Aleppo); 

• Liwaa al-Ansar (an FSA-affiliated predominantly jihadist brigade that fights in the Idlib and Aleppo regions); and 

• The 19th Division (the largest and best organized FSA unit that fights in Aleppo as an ally of the Liwaa al-Ansar). 

On September 25, 2013, jihadist officials rushed to further explain the earthquake. “The main goal [of the “Islamist Alliance”] is to unify the fighting forces,” explained Bashir Saleh of Liwaa al-Taw- hid. He ridiculed the relevance and influence of the Syrian National Coalition (SNC) inside Syria. “The problem is that the Coalition is outside and it doesn’t know what is happening inside,” Saleh explained. “Maybe one or two or three of the Coalition members have come and entered Syria but then they leave quickly like they are foreign visitors.” Abu-Zaki of Liwaa al-Suqour al-Sham also stressed the irreconcilable disconnect between the exiled leaders and the fighting forces inside Syria as the cause for the “Islamist Alliance” formation. “We welcomed our brothers on the outside to partake in the revolution,” Abu-Zaki explained. “But when they didn’t represent us and the demands of the revolution, then we had to release the statement.” 

The significance of the formation of the “Islamist Alliance” is not lost on the SNC leadership in Istanbul. SNC spokesman Louay al-Mokdad reported that Idriss had already called some of the rebelling leaders and commanders, “and they told us they signed this because they lost all hope in the international community”. But Idriss and al-Mokdad were quick to blame the perfidy of the US-led West for calamity that befell them. “We are really tired, Bashar al-Assad is killing us, all the West is betraying us, and they want to negotiate with the regime over our blood,” al-Mokdad quoted the commanders as telling Idriss. 

Ultimately, the prominence of Liwaa al-Tawhid and Liwaa al-Islam in the formation of the “Islamist Alliance” is the key to comprehending the true importance of the earthquake. Liwaa al-Tawhid has long been effectively controlled by Turkish Military Intelligence. The brigade is the biggest Free Syrian Army unit in the Aleppo area. It is used repeatedly by the Turks for their own purpose, for example fighting the Kurds. Similarly, the Liwaa al-Islam is one of the largest jihadist group in the Damascus area and in all likelihood was responsible for the August 21, 2013, chemical attack. The brigade is dominated by Saudi Intelligence and has performed numerous missions on the behalf of Riyadh. Hence, the mere prominence of Liwaa al-Tawhid and Liwaa al-Islam indicate the abandonment of the US and Western political effort and the chimera of moderate armed opposition not only by the FSA and jihadist forces but, significantly, by their sponsors Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and most likely Qatar. These three sponsoring states will now be focusing on the overt sponsorship of jihadist forces and neo-salafi jihadism in Syria and the entire Mashriq. 

On September 29, 2013, at around mid-day (local time), another group of 50 commanders of independent “battalions” and “brigades” in the Syrian interior announced their merger into, and pledged allegiance to, the new Islamic Army (al- Jaysh al-Islami). A printed communiqué was yet to emerge by month’s end, and the printed list of participants only identified 43 units by name. The insignia of the new organization has the jihadist black flag (the “al-Qaida Banner”) at the center and no Syrian symbol what-so-ever. 

The still-unidentified leader of Jaysh al-Islami stated that the initiative was the result of the common realization of all fighters and commanders that Islam and democracy do not combine, and that only an Islamic jihad would defeat the Assad Government and save “Bilad as-Sham” (not Syria). The leader referred to the SNC with derision, calling them “the five star hotel revolutionaries”. He stressed that nothing was being waged in Syria but an Islamist jihad against “the Nusairis” (‘Alawites, Druze, and other non-Muslims), and that this jihad would ultimately spread throughout the Mashriq. 

The political ascent of the jihadist groups in Syria and their pointed rejection of the Western-sponsored Syrian National Council (SNC) leadership in exile was a direct outcome of the Western handling of the chemical attack in Damascus. Relying on explicit assurances from SNC leaders in Turkey, the various rebel groups inside Syria expected the attack to quickly provoke a US-led Western military intervention leading to the toppling of the Assad Administration and the empowerment of an Islamist government in Damascus.  

This dynamic reinforced the earlier conclusion that the August 21, 2013, che- mical attack in Ghouta, eastern Damascus, was a jihadist self-inflicted provocation. 

Behind the Ghouta Attack 

The recent findings point increasingly toward the conclusion that the Ghouta chemical weapon use was indeed a self-inflicted attack by the Syrian opposition in order to provoke a US and Western military intervention against the Ba’athist Government of Pres. Bashar al-Assad. Ultimately, it was hoped that a detailed chemical analysis by the UN of the agents used would provide some indication as to identity of the guilty party. 

The paucity of revealed facts highlighted how little was really known about the actual attack. There was, even by the end of September 2013, still no agreed upon number of fatalities, with unverified claims ranging from the US assertion of 1,429 fatalities to the French assertion that only 281 were killed. In other words, the French Intelligence number is about 20 percent that of the US assertion. Most Syrian opposition sources now put the number of fatalities at between 335 and 355, as does the non-governmental organization, Doctors Without Borders/Méd- ecins Sans FrontiPres (MSF). This is about 25 percent of the US number. Either way, this is too huge a gap not to be explained and substantiated. 

As it transpired, the data provided by the eventual UN report raised more questions than answers. Close reading of the detailed annexes of the UN report raise doubts about the veracity of their findings given the repeated caveats pointing to likely tampering with the evidence, possibly (probably) intentionally so. The UN report acknowledged that the Mission had no freedom of movement. “A leader of the local opposition forces who was deemed prominent in the area to be visited by the Mission, was identified and requested to take ‘custody’ of the Mission. The point of contact within the opposition was used to ensure the security and movement of the Mission, to facilitate the access to the most critical cases/witnesses to be interviewed and sampled by the Mission and to control patients and crowd in order for the Mission to focus to its main activities.” 

Furthermore, the affected population of injured from whom samples and evidence were collected by the UN Mission might have been tainted in advance by the opposition fixers who organized them for the UN Mission. “A prominent local medical doctor [affiliated with the opposition] was identified. This medical doctor was used to help in preparing for the arrival of the Mission,” the report explains. “Concerning the patients, a sufficient number was requested to be presented to the Mission, in order for the Mission to pick a subpopulation for interviews and sampling. Typically a list of screening questions was also circulated to the opposition contacts. This included the queries to help in identification of the most relevant cases.” Simply put, the UN Mission could not verify independently the state and degree of contamination of the overall population. Nor could the Mission determine independently who were the injured individuals selected and brought to them by the opposition. 

To-date, the US position in documents submitted to Congress has been that the victims died as a result of “nerve agent exposure”. Orally, however, Secretary of State John Kerry claimed the US had “proof” it was sarin. The French intelligence report also attributes the deaths to “chemical agents” without further identification. The most explicit finding to-date comes from the UK’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory. Soil and cloth samples “tested positive for the nerve gas sarin”. The sarin in the cloth was in liquid form which soaked into the cloth. As discussed below, this finding reinforces the conclusion that “kitchen sarin” was used. Hence, so much will depend on the UN’s findings when their tests are completed.  

The claim that the agent used was a “military sarin” is problematic because military sarin accumulates (like a gaseous crystal) around the victims’ hair and loose threads in clothes. Since these molecules are detached and released anew by any movement, they would have thus killed or injured the first responders who touched the victims’ bodies without protective clothes, gloves and masks. However, opposition videos show the first responders moving corpses around without any ill effects. This strongly indicates that the agent in question was the slow acting “kitchen sarin”. Indeed, other descriptions of injuries treated by MSF — suffocation, foaming, vomiting, and diarrhoea — agree with the effects of diluted, late-action drops of liquified sarin. The overall descriptions of the injuries and fatalities treated by MSF closely resemble the injuries treated by the Tokyo emergency authorities back on March 20, 1995. The Tokyo subway attack was committed with liquefied “kitchen sarin”. 

The knowhow for this type of sarin came from North Korean Intelligence, and is known to have been transferred, along with samples, to Osama bin Laden in 1998. That the jihadist movement has these technologies was confirmed in jihadist labs captured in both Turkey and Iraq, as well as from the wealth of data recovered from al-Qaida in Afghanistan in 2001-02. 

Currently available evidence strongly suggests that the chemical agent used was improvised, kitchen-style sarin of the type known to be within the technical capabilities of the jihadist opposition. The Russian analysis of samples collected in eastern Damascus proved that the sarin used was “home made” — that is “kitchen sarin” — identical to the kind used in the Aleppo area by jihadist forces in March 2013, “only of higher concentration” than in the previous incidents. The UN report agreed with this finding in its analysis regarding the impact of the weather on the dissemination of the sarin, a dynamic, associated with heavy liquefied sarin, that is “kitchen sarin” and not military sarin which is dispersed by explosive power. 

Meanwhile, the mangled projectiles shown by the opposition, and which were tested by the UN inspectors, are not standard weapons of the Syrian Armed Forces. These projectiles — 330mm rockets — have very distinct ribbed-ring fins which are similar to projectiles used by the opposition in Aleppo, Damascus, and other fronts, with both high-explosives and undefined materials. The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) retrieved a video claiming to be of the attack, but is most likely of a daylight testing of the launcher. The truck-mounted launcher included a chemical sleeve which was supposed to absorb leaks from the improvised warheads and not harm the launch crew; hardly the precaution taken with a military weapon. 

Moreover, the warheads used in Damascus were cylindrical tanks which cracked and permitted a Tokyo-style mixture of liquids, rather than the pressurized mix and vaporization at the molecular level by the force of core explosion in a standard Soviet-style chemical warhead. Had Syrian militarily-trained experts built these warheads, they would have used the upper pipe for the core- charge the explosion of which would have created a significantly more lethal vaporized cloud of the toxic agent. The mere fact that the pipeline remained empty suggests the work of amateurs found in the ranks of the improvised weapon makers of the jihadist opposition. 

As well, the opposition also pointed to cracked plastic pieces which resembled shreds from large blue plastic tanks/bottles (like big water-cooler bottles) fired by chemical launchers the opposition had bragged about in the past. These weapons are in agreement with the multitude of images of victims publicized by the opposition which did not show any injury due to shrapnel which would have come from Soviet-style chemical munitions of the type known to be in the Syrian military arsenal. 

Most important, of course, is the question “Who could have done it?” given the available data. Significantly, evidence collected by numerous Arab sources on the ground in the greater Damascus area and recently smuggled out of Syria narrows the scope of potential perpetrators and the reason for the attack. This evidence points to specific commanders of Liwaa al-Islam and Jabhat al-Nusra known to be cooperating in the eastern Damascus theater.  

On the night of August 20-21, 2013, and the early morning of August 21, 2013 — a day before the chemical attack — the jihadists’ Liberating the Capital Front, led by Jabhat al-Nusra, suffered a major defeat during Operation Shield of the Capital. Operation Shield of the Capital has been the largest military operation of the Syrian Army in the Damascus region since the beginning of the conflict. The jihadists also amassed a force of more than 25,000 fighters for their Front from 13 armed kitaeb [battalion-groupings].  

The main units belonged to Jabhat al-Nusra and Liwaa al-Islam. The other kitaeb were Harun al-Rashid, Syouf al- Haqq, al-Mohajereen, al-Ansar, Abu Zhar al-Ghaffari, Issa Bin Mariam, Sultan Mo- hammad al-Fatih, Daraa al-Sham, the Jobar Martyrs, and Glory of the Caliphate. They included both Syrian and foreign volunteers. (The mere gathering of so many kitaeb for the battle of eastern Damascus refutes the assertion in the US and French intelligence reports that the opposition was incapable of conducting coordinated large-scale operations and therefore the chemical attack must have been launched by Assad’s forces.) 

Around dawn on August 21, 2013, the Liberating the Capital Front suffered a strategic defeat in the Jobar entrance area. 

The Jobar entrance was the opposition’s last staging areas with access to the heart of Damascus; a place from where they could launch car-bombs and raids. The Jobar entrance is also the sole route for reinforcements and supplies coming from the Saudi-Jordanian-US intelligence base near Jordan’s major airbase and military facilities in al-Mafraq (from where the eastern route to Damascus starts) and distributed via the Ghouta area to the outlaying eastern suburbs of Damascus. The eastern route is so important that the efforts are supervised personally by Saudi Princes Bandar and Salman bin Sultan, and overseen by Col. Ahmad al-Naimeh, the commander of the opposition’s Military Council of the Southern Region and Horan.  

The jihadists’ defeat on August 21 effectively sealed any hope of a future surge from Jordan by CIA-sponsored jihadist forces because the jihadists who, starting August 17-18, 2013, were attempting to use the western route to Damascus from the base in Ramtha, Jordan, had by now been encircled and defeated not far from the Golan border with Israel. 

As the jihadist forces were collapsing, the Front commanders deployed an élite force to block at all cost the Syrian military’s access to the Jobar entrance area. The majority of the jihadists in this force were from Liwaa al-Islam and the rest from Jabhat al-Nusra. The commander of the force was a Saudi jihadist going by the nom de guerre Abu-Ayesha. (Abu-Ayesha was identified by a Ghouta resident called Abu Abdul-Moneim as the jihadist commander who had stored in a tunnel in Ghouta weapons some of which had “tube-like structure” and others looked like “huge gas bottles”. Abdul-Moneim’s son and 12 other fighters were killed inside the tunnel by a chemical leak from one of these weapons.) 

According to military and strategic analyst Brig. Ali Maqsoud, the Liwaa al-Islam forces arrayed in Jobar included “the so-called ‘Chemical Weapons Front’ led by Zahran Alloush [the supreme leader of Liwaa al-Islam]. That group possesses primitive chemical weapons smuggled from al-Qaida in Iraq to Jobar, in the vicinity of Damascus.” 

When the jihadist Front collapsed, the jihadist leaders decided that only a chemical strike could both stop the advance of the Syrian army and provoke a US military strike that would deliver a strategic victory for the jihadists. The chemical agents were then loaded on what Russian intelligence defined as “rockets [which] were manufactured domestically to carry chemicals. They were launched from an area controlled by Liwaa al-Islam.” 

Maqsoud is convinced the chemical weapons strike was launched at the behest of Washington and on Washington’s orders. “In the end, we can say that this [post-strike US] escalatory rhetoric aims to achieve two things. The first is strengthening [the US] position as leader of the opposition and imposing conditions in preparation for the negotiating table. The second is changing the [power balance on the] ground and stopping the Syrian army’s advance,” Maqsoud told al-Safir of Lebanon. 

The identification of Liwaa al-Islam under Zahran Alloush as the jihadist force most likely to have conducted the chemical attack raises major questions regarding the Saudi involvement and particularly that of Intelligence Chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan. Zahran Alloush is the son of a Saudi-based religious scholar named Sheikh Abdullah Muhammad Alloush. During the 1980s, he worked for then Saudi Intelligence Chief Prince Turki al-Faisal in both Afghanistan and Yemen. 

Zahran Alloush was involved with the neo-salafi/Wahhabi underground in Syria since the 1990s, was jailed by Syrian Mukhabarat, and released in mid-2011 as part of Bashar al-Assad’s amnesty aimed to placate Riyadh. Zahran Alloush immediately received funds and weapons from Saudi intelligence which enabled him to establish and run Liwaa al-Islam as a major jihadist force. 

On July 18, 2012, Liwaa al-Islam conducted the major bombing of the headquarters of Syria’s national security council in Rawda Square, Damascus, assassinating, among others, Assaf Shawkat, Bashar’s brother-in-law and nominally the deputy Minister of Defense, Dawoud Rajiha, the Defense Minister, and Hassan Turkmani, former Defense Minister who was military adviser to then-Vice-President Farouk al-Sharaa. In Spring 2013, Zahran Alloush helped the Saudis weaken the Qatari-sponsored jihadist forces in the Damascus area. In June 2013, he suddenly withdrew his forces in the middle of a major battle with the Syrian army, leaving the Qatari-sponsored First Brigade and Liwaa Jaish al-Muslimeen to be de- feated and mauled. 

Significantly, in late August 2013, the opposition insisted on having Zahran Alloush and Liwaa al-Islam secure and escort the international experts team when they collected evidence in the opposition-controlled parts of eastern Damascus. Zahran Alloush entrusted the task of actually controlling and monitoring the UN team to his close allied katiba, the Liwaa al-Baraa from Zamalka. Thus, the international experts’ team operated while in effective custody of those ji- hadists most likely responsible for the chemical attack.  

According to several jihadist commanders, “Zahran Alloush receives his orders directly from the Saudi Intelligence Chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan” and Liwaa al-Islam is Saudi Arabia’s private army in Syria. A UN official told Sharmine Narwani and Radwan Mortada of the Beirut Al-Akhbar that “Saudi intelligence was behind the attacks and unfortunately nobody will dare say that.” The UN official explained that he had learned this from “rebels in Ghouta”. 

The Bandar aspect is important to understanding strategic-political aspects of the chemical strike. 

Presently, there is no independent evidence connecting Bandar, or any other Saudi official, to the supply and use of chemical weapons in Damascus. There exist, though, the long-time connections between the various jihadist commanders and both Saudi intelligence and Bandar himself. However, Bandar’s threats in the meeting with Russian Federation (RF) Pres. Vladimir Putin cast a shadow on the question of Riyadh’s foreknowledge, and, given the uniquely close relations between Bandar and CIA Chief John Brennan, Wash- ington’s foreknowledge as well. 

On August 2, 2013, Prince Bandar had an unprecedented meeting with Pres. Putin at the Kremlin. 

Their meeting covered a host of issues ranging from future energy economy to the situation in Egypt to what to do about Syria. Throughout, Bandar made a huge mistake — believing that Putin was just like the successive US senior officials Bandar has dealt with in the past — namely, that like the Americans, Putin would also be easy to bribe with flattery, weapons acquisition, and oil-related cash. 

Putin was not. 

Of significance to the issue of the chemical strike in Damascus was the exchange between Bandar and Putin regarding the future of Bashar al-Assad. Bandar wanted Putin to support the toppling of the Assad Administration and its replacement with a Saudi-sponsored opposition administration. Bandar promised that Russia’s interests in Syria would be preserved by the proposed Saudi-sponsored post-Assad government. 

In this context, Bandar sought to both allay Putin’s concerns regarding jihadist terrorism and to deliver a veiled threat. “As an example,” Bandar stated, “I can give you a guarantee to protect the Winter Olympics in the city of Sochi on the Black Sea next year. The Chechen groups that threaten the security of the games are controlled by us, and they will not move [also] in the direction of the Syrian territory without coordinating with us. These groups do not scare us. We use them in the face of the Syrian regime but they will have no role or influence in Syria’s political future.”  

Putin responded quietly. “We know that you have supported the Chechen terrorist groups for a decade. And that support, which you have frankly talked about just now, is completely incompatible with the common objectives of fighting global terrorism that you mentioned.” 

Toward the end of the meeting, Bandar again discussed the Syrian issue at length. He stressed that as far as Riyadh was concerned, there was no future for the Assad Administration. “The Syrian regime is finished as far as we and the majority of the Syrian people are concerned,” Bandar said, and they, the Syrian people, “will not allow President Bashar al-Assad to re- main at the helm.” 

Putin responded that Moscow’s “stance on Assad will never change. We believe that the Syrian regime is the best speaker on behalf of the Syrian people, and not those liver eaters.” Again, Bandar resorted to threats. He warned Putin that their dispute over the future of Syria led him, Bandar, to conclude that “there is no escape from the [US-led] military option, because it is the only currently available choice given that the political settlement ended in stalemate”. Bandar added that Riyadh saw no future for the negotiating process. 

Bandar expected such a military intervention to soon commence. 

Did he have any foreknowledge of a provocation to come? Significantly, Bandar insisted throughout his visit to Moscow that his initiative and message were coordinated with the highest authorities in Obama’s Washington. “I have spoken with the Americans before the visit, and they pledged to commit to any understandings that we may reach, especially if we agree on the approach to the Syrian issue,” Bandar assured Putin. 

Did the Obama White House know in advance about the Saudi claim to controlling jihadist terrorism in both Russia and Syria? Did the Obama White House know about Bandar’s anticipation of an US-led military intervention? 

Several Arab leaders, as well as senior intelligence and defense officials from the Arabian Peninsula are now convinced that the chemical strike was aimed to provoke a US-led military intervention which would in turn lead to the toppling of Bashar al-Assad and the empowerment of an Islamist government in Damascus. 

These senior intelligence and defense officials have privately expressed anger that the US had not [yet] struck at Syria, as was so widely anticipated in the Arab world. These notables point out that in late Spring, the top leaders of the Syrian opposition and its regional sponsors impressed on the highest authorities in Washington and other Western capitals the gravity of the situation. The opposition and sponsors warned that unless there was a major military intervention during the Summer, the struggle for Syria would be lost come Autumn. The leaders of the opposition and their sponsors now insist that they were assured in these discussions that the US and key West European powers were eager to provide such help and intervene in order to topple the Assad Administration and empower the opposition in Damascus. 

Given the political climate in the US and the West, the Arab leaders say that they were told, it was imperative for US and Western leaders to have a clear casus belli of an absolute humanitarian character. Recently (but before the chemical attack), the opposition and sponsors were asked for lists of targets to be hit by US- led Western bombing should there be a Western intervention. The opposition provided such target lists, convinced that their bombing was imminent. The leaders of the opposition and their sponsors now feel cheated, for there had just been an humanitarian catastrophe in Damascus with all the characteristics of the sought- after casus belli, and yet, there were no US and Western bombers in the skies over Damascus!  

Significantly, most of these Arab leaders and officials are not in the know. They do o’t pretend to have any specific knowledge of what happened in Damascus beyond the coverage in the Arab media. They complain so bitterly on the basis of their comprehension of how things should have been done given the overall strategic circumstances. And for them, such a self-inflicted carnage is the most obvious thing to do if that was what Washington and other Western capitals needed in order to have a viable casus belli for an intervention. 

Meanwhile, through August and September 2013,  the US case against the Assad Administration continued to crumble. 

“No direct link to Pres. Bashar al-Assad or his inner-circle has been publicly demonstrated, and some US sources say intelligence experts are not sure whether the Syrian leader knew of the attack before it was launched or was only informed about it afterward,” observed Reuters’ Mark Hosenball.  

A closer study of the much-touted electronic intercepts — which US Secretary of State Kerry cited as evidence — proves that Assad and his inner-circle were stunned by the news of the chemical attack. When the first reports of the chemical attack surfaced, a very senior Syrian military officer called in panic the artillery commander of the 155th Brigade of the 4th Armored Division of the Syrian Army which is under the direct command of Maher al-Assad. 

The senior officer wanted to know if the brigade had fired any chemical munitions in contravention of the explicit orders of the top leadership not to do so. The artillery commander flatly denied firing any rocket, missile, or artillery. He added that he had already checked and confirmed that all his munitions were accounted for, and invited the general staff to send officers to verify on their own that all brigade’s munitions were in safe storage. The senior officers took the commander to task and he was interrogated for three days as a thorough inventory of the munitions was carried out. This artillery officer was returned to duty as it was confirmed beyond doubt that no munitions were missing. (Since there was no other chemical-capable unit in the area, the claim of rogue officers should identify from where and how they had obtained chemical munitions.)  

The reaction of the Assad inner-circle was in agreement with earlier observations by German Federal Intelligence Service, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND).  

The BND reported that since the beginning of Spring 2013, Syrian brigade and division commanders had repeatedly asked the Presidency for permission to use chemical weapons against jihadist forces besieging them. The Presidency had always denied permission in strong and uncompromising terms. The BND has no indication, let alone proof, that this consistent policy changed on or before August 21. 2013. 

This was also the opinion of a very senior Iranian official in Beirut. When the news of the chemical attack first broke, a very senior HizbAllah official called the Iranian for advice. The BND intercepted the call. The HizbAllah official wondered whether “Assad had lost his temper and committed a huge mistake by giving the order for the poison gas use”. The Iranian senior official assured his HizbAllah counterpart that there was no change to Assad’s “long-standing steadfast policy of not using these [chemical] weapons”. 

The strongest evidence extrapolated from the UN report against the Assad administration is the attempted calculation of trajectories. The Mission identified a single BM-14 140mm rocket (most likely a smoke-emitting munition) in Moada- miyah, and several 330mm rockets main- ly in the Ghouta, Zamalka, and Ein Tarma areas. None of these weapons are known to be in the arsenal of the Syrian army. The calculations of trajectories by the UN and several US NGOs and media pointed out to various possible locations - all of them from the direction of, or in the vicinity of, known Syrian military units (the 104th Brigade of the 4th Armored Division on Mount Qasioun in north- west Damascus, the 155th Brigade of the 4th Armored Division in northern Damascus, and the Mezzeh Military Airport to the south-west of Damascus). All the suspected launch locations are at least five miles (8.0467 km) from the actual military facilities. While Syrian military units could, in the scenarios of the US NGOs and media, “shoot and scoot”, so, too, could opposition forces in an attempt to implicate the Syrian military.  

However, the main question alluded to by the UN report, was to what extent could the remnants of the rockets be relied upon to calculate possible trajectories. Regarding the Moadamiyah area, the report noted: “The sites have been well- traveled by other individuals both before and during the investigation. Fragments and other evidence have clearly been handled/moved prior to the arrival of the investigation team.” The UN report noted that the same applied to the Ein Tarma and Zamalka area: “As with other sites, the locations have been well traveled by other individuals prior to the arrival of the Mission. During the time spent at these locations, individuals arrived carrying other suspected munitions indicating that such potential evidence is being moved and possibly manipulated.” Indeed, the UN Mission attempted to calculate trajectories on the basis of two projectiles, while the NGOs relied on three and five projectiles for their calculations. Moreover, since nobody knows the range of the 330mm rocket, the suspected locations are essentially intersection on the map of suspected lines indicating the general direction from which the rockets were launched. 

One of the main reasons for Washington’s accusatory finger at the Syrian military was the assertion that the chemical attack took place in the context of a Syrian military effort to recapture this part of the Damascus area. Having met stiff resistance and under immense pressure to decide the battle swiftly, Washington’s explanation goes, the Syrian military used chemical weapons in order to break the opposition. 

However, the Syrian Armed Forces have a long history of training by the Soviet Armed Forces and access to Soviet- era weaponry, both chemical agents and means of dispersal. Among these are huge quantities of the vastly more lethal VX and grenade-size aerosols optimized for dense urban environments. The Syrian commando was supplied with, and trained on, these systems starting the late-1970s when preparing to fight the jihadist insurrection then in some of Syria’s main cities. Hence, had the Syrian military wanted to clear the said areas with the use of chemical weapons, they would have used VX in aerosols with greater efficiency and lethality. And why not use the same VX-filled aerosols in other key urban battle-fronts like Aleppo or Homs to expedite victory? Why use “kitchen sarin” and wide-area-effect munitions which would only hinder military advance into contaminated areas? 

Hence, what is the basis for the Obama Administration’s confidence that “Assad did it” to the point of threatening military action which in all likelihood would evolve into US involvement in Syria’s bloody civil war? The most honest answer was provided on September 8, 2013, by White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough on CNN’s State of the Union program. McDonough asserted it was “common sense” that the Syrian Government carried out the chemical attack, and provided no further evidence to back his statement. Nobody pressed McDonough on this point. 

The US has long taken sides in the Syrian civil war and all the regional wars and strife integrated into it. 

The US placed itself as the self- anointed manager and arbiter of the outcome of this fateful dynamic. Nobody in the region believes the Obama White House’s assurances about a limited strike with no intent of “regime change”. After all, this was the exact assurances given by the Obama Administration on the eve of the UNSC’s vote on Libya solely in order to convince Russia and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to abstain and let the resolution pass (which they did). Now, should the US strike Syria, alone or at the head of a makeshift coalition, the US would have crossed the threshold of active participation and leadership. Pressure would mount on the US to complete the job: to invade and get involved directly in the fighting, to secure the strategic weapon arsenals (which would take 75,000 to 100,000 troops by the Pentagon’s latest estimates), and to overthrow Assad and empower what Bandar calls “moderate” Islamists. 

Arab leaders and their Islamist protégés are now convinced that only the US can, and should, defeat the Assad Administration and empower the Islamists for them. Should the US shirk or dither, there would be more and worse provocations, and more innocent Syrians would die in the hands of their brethren and saviors until the US delivered Damascus to the Islamists-jihadists and their sponsors. 

After the catastrophe that post-Qadhafi Libya became, does Washington really want to try again in Syria? Wouldn’t confronting reality and the Islamists- jihadists be a more expedient way of doing things? 

After the US-Russia Accord, the US Courtship With Iran 

On Friday, September 13, 2013, the United States and the Russian Federation signed an agreement aimed to bring to an end the political fiasco engendered by the US Barack Obama Administration in the aftermath of the August 21, 2013, chemical attack in Damascus. 

The broad framework agreement avoided addressing the ostensible root cause for the sudden preoccupation with the Syrian chemical arsenal, and only set general guidelines for the eventual removal and/or destruction of Syria’s che- mical weapons (CW) by some time in mid-2014, provided the fratricidal violence and civil war would permit such undertaking. Significantly, the agreement applied to both the Assad Administration and the opposition.  

In return for this agreement, the Obama Administration foreswore the use of force in Syria, thus ending any chance for a US-led international intervention in Syria. While Assad’s Damascus promised to try and abide by the agreement even if the first reporting deadline is impractical, the Free Syrian Army’s (FSA’s) Brig.-Gen. Salim Idriss called the agreement “just a lie” and announced that the opposition would ignore it. 

Simply put, the CW interlude only accelerated the emergence of an old-new greater Middle East from the ashes of the “Arab Spring”. The crisis in and around Syria is thus returning to being dominated by the regional mega-trends.

See: Bodansky, Yossef: “Fragility of the Modern Middle Eastern State System Reflects a Return to Reliance on Traditional Societies”, in Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis, August 20, 2013.

The CW interlude has a lingering impact, but in the context of the US intrusion into the regional dynamics which the CW incident sought to amplify. Inside Syria, the legacy of the CW interlude is the acceleration and intensification of the existing trends. 

This acceleration is made easy by the bursting of the opposition’s expectations once the US military intervention failed to materialize. The morale devastation of the Syrian opposition — particularly the Turkey-based forces — is worse than anything the Syrian military has been capable of inflicting in more than two years of harsh war. It is probable that no amount of US-supplied weapons and funds could reverse the sense of despair and defeat. 

Syria, in May 2013, entered the final phase of the war. 

Both sides realized that barring a major Western military intervention in the Summer, Assad’s Damascus would become the irreversibly dominant power in Syria and the war would subside by Autumn/Winter (except for jihadist terrorism which would continue indefinitely). The clairvoyant old sheikhs of rural Syria have made the trend more pronounced for they predicted that Winter would be longer and colder than usual. Eid-al- Adha — the Feast of the Sacrifice — is  both the indicator of the well-being or destitution of the community (through the availability of lambs for slaughter and other quality foodstuff) and the start of the cold season. This year, Eid-al-Adha is in mid-October. This means that the destitute grassroots population would soon need even greater help in food, medicine, fuel and shelter, help which only Assad’s Damascus is currently providing unconditionally.  

In contrast, the Islamists-jihadists provide limited help only to the Sunni communities along the central Euphrates valley and on condition that they adopt Islamist ruling and governance. Hence, the slide of the population into the fold of the Assad Administration was accelerating, as anticipated.  

Assad’s Damascus is cognizant of this trend. Since the threat of a game-changing US-led intervention all but evaporated, the Syrian military has to face two major strategic threats: 

1. The lingering Islamist-jihadist cells in the urban slums and rural townships of the economic engine of Syria: the populated zone around the Damascus-Aleppo road, and weapons stockpiles they recently received from Turkey; and 

2. The possibility of a US-Jordanian-Saudi sponsored surge from the south to try and capture Damascus (tailored after the US-sponsored surge on Tripoli from Tunisia). 

Hence, Syrian military activities in September 2013 focused on addressing these two challenges. The Syrian military launched a major offensive to the south of Damascus. The military enjoyed active support from local Sunni Bedouin and Druze militias, while the local jihadist forces stayed away from the advancing forces. Hence, the Syrian forces could focus on national-level and trans-national jihadist forces (that is, Jabhat al-Nusra and its affiliates) and on blocking roads leading from northern Jordan). Throughout the rest of western and northern Syria, the military launched a multitude of localized raids and sweeps; again, with growing support from, and even participation of, Sunni Arab local self-defense militias. These localized military operations aim to destroy national-level and trans-national jihadist forces and the storage sites of the heavy weapons recently pushed into Syria from across the Turkish border. 

Localized and nationalist rebel forces largely stay out of the fighting because of the sweeping despair in their ranks. 

By late September 2013, the impact of the legacy of the CW interlude was palpable. Since early Summer, the opposition had great hopes and expectations that a US-led military intervention was imminent and would turn things around dramatically. The opposition was genuinely convinced that the defeat of early Summer would, by the magic of US and NATO bombing, transform into a strategic victory before Winter, and that the largesse and generosity of the affluent West would resolve all the endemic shortages so that Winter would not be horrendous. 

The US needed an excuse to intervene, and the opposition provided it. But no intervention happened and, in the aftermath of US-Russia agreement, none will happen. Hence, the grassroots know miracles won’t happen, and that Assad’s patron, Russia, won’t permit them to happen. Opposition commanders believe that there is no longer any point in holding on against the superior Syrian military now that it is clear that the US will not intervene militarily and turn around the otherwise lost war. Consequently, the slide into the fold of Assad’s Damascus is accelerating and expanding if only because the alternative — accepting the Islamist-jihadist reign during the harsh Winter — is unthinkable. 

The slowing down of the war in Syria was, by late September 2013, already having a devastating effect on neighboring Iraq. 

The main jihadist forces in the area — particularly the al-Qaida-affiliated Islam- ic State of Iraq and Sham — are emerging from the Syrian chaos and can afford to allocate resources (fighters, funds, weapons and bombs) to fighting the Shi’ite Arabs for the dismemberment of Iraq. The jihadist objective is to effect the de facto joining of Sunni western Iraq to the functioning jihadist al-Jazira with its bastion in the central Euphrates valley. 

Petrified about their ability to hold onto power in a region falling apart, Iraq’s Shi’ites — both the security forces and militias — are escalating their own war against the Sunni Arabs. Moreover, adamant on securing on-land lines of communications to Syria, the Iranians are deploying their own Shi’ite proxies (loosely organized under the banner of the Iraqi HizbAllah) to also fight Iraq’s Sunni Arabs. Hence the slew of car bombs by both sides and the overall fratricidal carnage should be expected to keep escalating in order to force Baghdad and Tehran into decisions they don’t want to make about the long-term Sunni-Shi’ite balance of power. 

The main unresolved issue hanging over the emerging greater Middle East is the rôle of Iran in lieu of the perplexing policy of the Obama White House. Presently, Pres. Obama was, by the beginning of September 2013, more desperate than ever before to attain a grand rapprochement with Iran and make a triumphant Nixon-style visit to Tehran. However, Mr Obama also seemed convinced that the only thing that matters to everybody all over the world are his words and not his actions. 

Since July 2013, once Hassan Rouhani started his transition to the Iranian Presidency, Mr Obama reached out in order to revive the Jarrett-Velayati venue of direct negotiations. The Obama White House sent letters, messages and emissaries to several leaders in Tehran. In late August 2013, Mr Obama sent a personal letter to Rouhani. In it, Obama proposed to “turn a new page” in bilateral relations and promised loosening of the economic sanctions. US emissaries also made all the usual promises: to prevent Israel from striking Iran; to accept a de facto nuclear Iran; to permit Iranian hegemony over the Persian Gulf and the regional energy economy; to permit the spread of Iranian influence into Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asia, etc.  

Initially, Obama seemed to be following on his promises. 

The semi-public pressure on Israel has been incessant, the disengagement from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States has been humiliating, the acceptance of Iranian domination over Iraq has been unconditional, and the protection of Egypt’s Islamists genuine if futile. Finally, Mr Obama had the financial sanctions on Iran unilaterally undermined (ostensibly in support of humanitarian causes). 

But Tehran’s profound mistrust of Washington endures. 

The sustenance of the on-land Shi’ite- dominated access to the shores of the Mediterranean is the greatest achievement of the mullahs’ rule, apart from the mere survival of the Islamic Republic. In preparations for the anticipated intervention in Syria, Washington started assuring Tehran that the Ikhwan-dominated administration which Obama’s Washington was planning to install in Damascus would not be anti-Iran and would guarantee all of Tehran’s strategic and econ- omic interests. 

Mr Obama failed to realize, however, the depth of hatred and mistrust between the Persian Shi’ites and the Arab Ikhwan. (That Iranian Intelligence and the IRGC were sponsoring Sunni jihadist entities, including Ikhwan-affiliated, against the West or Israel does not mean Iran trusts them.) Tehran cannot fathom that Obama does not comprehend the essence of Shi’ite-Ikhwan relations, and therefore interprets the Obama White House’s plans to empower Sunni Islamists in Damascus as a manifestation of Washington’s hidden agenda against the mullahs’ Tehran and Shi’ite Islam. 

Even Obama’s Washington could not ignore the adversarial impact that a US- led intervention in the Syrian war and the planned toppling of the Assad Administration would have on the nascent negotiations with Tehran. Realizing that a crisis which might affect the entire grand rapprochement was brewing, Obama dispatched his confidant, Jeffrey Feltman (the UN Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs and the former Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs under Hillary Clinton), and the Sultan of Oman to meet with Iranian Supreme Leader “Ayatollah” Ali Khamene’i just a day before the chemical attack in Damas- cus. 

Both delivered Khamene’i and the Iranian upper-most leadership guarantees of Obama’s enduring commitment to a grand rapprochement which would include the sustenance, and even increase, of Iran’s influence in Syria and Lebanon, as well as the Persian Gulf. Tehran was non-committal and reluctant to accept any dependence on the goodwill of US-empowered Sunni Islamists in Damascus. Khamene’i warned Sultan Qabus that Tehran would reexamine the trust in the US sincerity on nuclear and all other pertinent issues should Iran’s posture in Syria and Lebanon be undermined. (The timing of Feltman’s and Qabus’ trips to Khamene’i suggests that Mr Obama knew that a major provocation was coming. There is no indication whether Obama knew it would be a chemical strike.) 

And then the Syrian CW crisis erupted. 

While Tehran would hear nothing about compromise over access to the shores of the Mediterranean, Tehran grasped the extent of the desperation of Obama’s Washington. If anything, Tehran’s resolve to triumph only strengthened in the aftermath of the chemical strike. Quds Force commander Maj.-Gen. Qassem Soleimani briefed Iran’s Assembly of Experts that Iran “will support Syria to the end”. Iranian propaganda became virulent and threatened a regional war should the US strike Syria. Moreover, Iranian proxy militia groups in Iraq threatened that they would attack the oilfields of Saudi Arabia and cut off the “economic jugular” of the West if the US attacked Syria. At the same time, Iranian propaganda kept reiterating Tehran’s desire for the resumption of nuclear and other negotiations, even though Rouhani vowed Iran would not abandon or com- promise over its nuclear program. 

Hence, the moment the threat of a US- led military intervention in Syria was removed, there began a more intense direct negotiations. Tehran is both relieved and emboldened by Obama’s decision not launch strikes against Syria. Iran is determined to do its utmost to squeeze the best possible deal from the desperate Obama. In early September 2013, the Obama White House started boasting about “a possible thaw in long-frozen relations” with Iran. The Obama White House claimed to be “communicating with Tehran” and “moving behind the scenes toward direct talks” on reducing tensions, resolving outstanding problems and dis- putes, and normalizing relations.  

Obama hoped to revive direct negotiations and even potential face-to-face talks during Rouhani’s visit to UN General Assembly in late September 2013. Ultimately, Tehran seems convinced that Pres. Obama would not dare to confront Assad’s Damascus for fear of disrupting the fledgling US-Iranian bilateral negotiations, and Tehran intended to exploit this to the fullest. 

Tehran’s priorities are clear. 

In mid-September 2013, Maj.-Gen. Soleimani addressed a closed forum in Tehran about the crucial importance to Iran of victory in Syria. He stressed that “Syria’s pivotal rôle in defending the anti- US and anti-Israel resistance front [Iran, Iraq, Syria and the HizbAllah] in the region and its continued victories over the terrorists in the last one year are the cause of increased foreign pressures against Damascus.” 

He further elaborated that “the Syrian army’s continued victories against the rebel and terrorist groups in recent months have angered the enemies and increased their threats and attacks against the country”. It is therefore imperative for Tehran’s own vital interests to secure the ultimate victory of Syria. “In the eyes of the West, Zionists and the reactionary regimes, Syria’s real problem is not the ruling of the minority ‘Alawites or the lack of democracy, but the reality is that the West and the reactionary regimes know that the resistance’s powerful position in the region is indebted to the Syrian government,” Soleimani stated. 

Meanwhile, official Tehran considers the US-RF agreement the official removal of the threat of US-led Western intervention in Syria. “The new situation means in fact that any pretext for the United States and certain countries to engage in military action against Syria has been removed,” Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian stated. With the threat of a US intervention effectively gone and with Obama focused on the grand rapprochement, Iran and its proxies can increase their support for the Syrian war effort. 

The Jihadists’ Revenge 

The military and political dynamic in and around Syria continued to escalated since late in the week ending September 14, 2013, and more so in the days after that (September 15-16, 2013) with the Syrian military clearly having the initiative and the opposition forces either getting out of the war or venting their frustration and wrath on the civilian population. 

Meanwhile, Tehran continued to dominate the political exploitation of the crisis. Not to be left out, Ankara initiated on September 16, 2013, a major escalation in the fighting along the Syrian-Turkish border. 

The Syrian military intensified its offensive sweeps against predominantly jihadist strongholds in the northern and western parts of the country. This escalation evolved as ever larger segments of the nationalist and traditionalist opposition forces focused on the defense of their home communities rather than confronting the Syrian security forces. For their part, once contact is made with local leaders at the village and township levels, the Syrian Army avoids entering these communities and confronting their self-defense forces. On the contrary, the Syrian security forces are delivering both military and humanitarian aid to help the local self-defense forces withstand the jihadists. Consequently, the Syrian military can focus almost solely on jihadist enclaves: storm and clear them. 

The most intense fighting was taking place in the Idlib area and the greater Aleppo area. In the north-west, the military focused on clearing jihadist strongholds, cells and networks in the al-Arbaeen mountain area and surrounding villages in the Idlib region. The military reported the destruction of several storage sites of weapons and ammunition. The most intense fighting was against Jab- hat al-Nusra units. However, the Syrian Army also destroyed bases and arsenals of the locally-based jihadist forces of the Dra’a al-Jabal Brigade, the Squr al- Sham Brigade, the Ahrar al-Thawra Brigade, the Suyuf al-Haq Brigade, the Asar al-Sham Brigade, the al-Abbas Brigade, the Fursan al-Quds Battalion, the Ablin Battalion, the Omar al-Faruq Battalion, and the Maghawir Aryha Battalion. 

An interesting phenomenon reported by the Syrian security forces since the weekend of September 14-15, 2013, is that the food, supplies, and clothes of virtually all the jihadist fighters encountered in the northern and north-western parts of Syria were from Turkey. This meant that the opposition’s fighting forces could no longer rely on local villages for food and basic supplies, and that the majority of the jihadist fighters encountered were recent infiltrators who had to bring everything with them. 

In the greater Aleppo area, the Syrian security forces for the most part further expanded the secure zone surrounding the city and eliminated pockets of resistance inside the city. The scope and pace of these operations kept growing. Meanwhile, the jihadists’ abuse of civilian population — mainly the more affluent Sunni Arab — intensified in the greater Aleppo area. The jihadists were committing crimes, murders, and overall abuse in the name of resisting the government encroachment. Significantly, there has been discernable upsurge in crimes and abuses in the areas where the influx of jihadist foreign fighters were most pronounced. The jihadists — both local and foreign — accuse the population of betraying them and their sacred cause. They then rob and pillage in the name of jihad and for the needs of jihad. Since late in the week ending September 14, 2013, and the few days following, several thousand people were evicted from houses and apartments and forced into exile, their entire property behind. 

Meanwhile, the jihadist forces in the rural areas in northern and western Syria were increasingly focusing on taking their revenge against the civilian population who they are convinced has betrayed them and their cause. Thus, the abuse of the Christian-Aramaic city of Maaloula, and particularly the effort to force the population to convert to Islam under the threat of death, was a trend setter. The main objectives of the jihadists’ wrath are the ‘Alawites, Druze, Ismailis and all those defined as “Nusairis”. The forces of Jabhat al-Nusra received a fatwa by a very senior Islamist jurist ordering them “to kill the Nusairis, the enemies of God”. 

Late in the week (ending June 14, 2013), Jabhat al-Nusra fighters entered ‘Alawite villages in the Homs area and massacred civilians. The jihadists consider these atrocities to be more important than confronting the Syrian Army. “The people’s wall of fear has been broken, as this was the first time these villages were entered and such a high number was killed,” the Jabhat al-Nusra communiqué reads. These attacks were “in revenge for the killing in cold blood of Muslims and their women in Eastern Ghouta” by chemical weapons. 

The Turkish Leadership Connection With the OPCW 

Not to be ignored, Ankara was definitely, in mid-September 2013, making strenuous efforts to ignite the Turkish-Syrian border. 

On September 16, 2013, during the afternoon (local time), fighting between the Syrian army and jihadist forces attempting to withdraw back from the Idlib area across the Turkish border into the Hatay province escalated.  

The Syrian forces, backed and guided by one or two Mi-17 helicopters, were in hot pursuit after the jihadists. Several Turkish F-16s were scrambled from the Malatya air base to patrol over the area. According to the Turkish military, around 16:00 (local time), one Mi-17 strayed about 2 km across the Turkish border in the Yayladagi district of Hatay province. The Syrian military insists the Mi-17 was on the border line if it crossed the border at all, and if so then it was by a few meters only. Two F-16s immediately closed in and fired a few air-to-air missiles at the Mi-17 and shot it down. 

According to the Turkish military, the helicopter exploded in mid-air. According to the Syrians, the Mi-17 made an emergency landing on the border line. (There are disputes whether it came down on the Turkish or Syrian side.) According to the Syrian military, two of the aircrew were seen emerging from the helicopter alive. The Turkish military insists the two jumped by parachute and landed safely on the ground. Both the Turkish and the Syrian military agree that the two aircrew were immediately surrounded and summarily killed by jihadist fighters. Meanwhile, the jihadist forces withdrew safely across the border into Turkish territory. 

Meanwhile, in the early morning of September 16, 2013, the Turkish military committed the newly-formed jihadist brigade called Katibat al-Taliban to saving the Jabhat al-Nusra forces just across the border. In the days immediately after that, the Jabhat al-Nusra forces attempted once again to retake the town of Ras al-Ain on the Syrian border, just across from Turkey’s Ceylanpinar district in Sanliurfa, from the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) forces holding it since July 2013. 

Although Turkish artillery provided fire support to the Jabhat al-Nusra forces, they failed to push the PYD defenders. Fighting was heavy, and large numbers of jihadist casualties were transported in Turkish ambulances to hospitals in Urfa, Turkey. Hence, the Katibat al-Taliban was committed to battle in a desperate effort to save the Jabhat al-Nusra from defeat. The Katibat al-Taliban is comprised almost exclusively of Kurdish jihadists, including ex-PKK fighters who became Islamists in Turkish jails and were offered amnesty and $1,000 if they joined the new unit. The Katiba is controlled by Turkish Military Intelligence and is commanded by Turkish jihadists (both Turks and Kurds). 

In the early afternoon (local time), the PYD forces defeated both the Jabhat al- Nusra and Katibat al-Taliban forces. The PYD launched a major counterattack from inside Ras al-Ain and pushed the jihadists toward the Turkish border. The PYD’s thrust continued despite heavy fire from Turkish artillery just across the border. Hence, three F-16s were scrambled from Diyarbakir airbase. The F-16s were fully loaded with air-to-ground ordnance. According to the Turkish military, the F-16s were dispatched to conduct reconnaissance flights over the Turkish- Syrian border in order to ensure that “the intensified clashes between PYD militants and Jabhat al-Nusra fighters” did not “stray across our border”. According to the Syrian-Kurdish leadership, the F-16s bombed the PYD’s forces and positions in order to compel the PYD to not only stop the pushing back of the Jabhat al-Nusra and Katibat al-Taliban forces, but withdraw from the border area and the town of Ras al-Ain. 

After the Turkish bombing, the PYD forces stopped their counterattack and withdrew back into their fortified positions inside Ras al-Ain. Fire ended by nightfall but both sides described the situation in the entire border area as very tense. 

But the on-going Turkish escalation along the border with Syria might be even more purposeful. 

The collection and destruction of the Syrian CW was legally designated to be accomplished by, or under the supervision of, the Organization for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). 

Putting aside the question if the OPCW is capable of such undertaking, there emerged a major political quandary. The chairman of OPCW is Ahmet Üzümcü of Turkey, a close ally and confidant of both Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and Prime Minister Reçep Tayyip Erdogan. 

Even if there existed in the past a remote chance that Damascus, Tehran, or Moscow would trust Üzmücü to be objective in dealing with the Syrian CW, the vitriolic anti-Syria and anti-Assad statements made by both Davutoðlu and Erdogan in the aftermath of the border clashes obliterated any such possibility. 

There should be no doubt that official Ankara was cognizant that the raising of the military tension along the border and the virulent political rhetoric would doom Üzmücü’s relations with Syria and Russia. Hence, Ankara is now in position to argue, on the basis of Üzümcü’s reports, that there is no chance Damascus would abide by the US-RF agreement and therefore the military intervention option should be reconsidered. 

Meanwhile, the impact of the intensifying jihadism-sponsoring on Turkey is fast approaching the irreversible point. Writing in the September 23, 2013, edition of the Milliyet, Kadri Gürsel warned that Turkey had transformed into the Pakistan of the Middle East while Syria had become its Afghanistan. “Turkish territory in the border region that arches from Hatay to Gaziantep is on the way to becoming the ‘Peshawar of the Middle East,’ that is, a region where the state has no control over the border and outlawed forces move as they like,” Gürsel said. “While we are Pakistanizing, our neighbor Syria — torn by a civil war — is in the grips of Lebanonization (ethnic and sectarian polarization), Somalization (collapse of public order and state) and Afghanization (dominance of al-Qaida and jihadists), with all those processes intertwined and mutually exacerbating each other.”  

Kadri Gürsel blamed the jihad-sponsorship policy of Ankara for the unfolding regional crisis. “Those capable of reading the map of the Syrian civil war would also discern this: If Turkey had not been Pakistanizing, Syria would not have been Afghanizing. It means that the jihadists — mainly the al-Qaida-linked Jabhat al-Nusra — could not have Afghanized Syria’s northern region bordering Turkey without logistical support from quarters in Turkey and easy access to Turkish territory and the Syrian border,” Gürsel observes. And just as the jihadization and radicalization of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area have evolved into the irreversible self-destruction of both countries and the ensuing destabilization of the entire South and Central Asia, so is the comparable transformation the Turkish-Syrian border region currently threatening to not only self-destroy both countries but set an entire volatile region aflame. The emergence of the “Islamist Alliance” is therefore just another inevitable step on the path to jihadist eruption.  

Iran Cautiously Triumphal? But an Obama Political “Success”? 

On the political front, Iran was setting the agenda for exploiting the ramification of the US-RF agreement both regionally and globally. The Iranian campaign intensified markedly on September 16, 2013, during a closed conference of top commanders of the Pásdárán (the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps: IRGC). Virtually all the key leaders of Iran addressed the conference.  

Iran’s President, Hassan Rouhani, set the tone. He stressed that the ongoing crisis in Syria is “merely part of a wider conspiracy plan” the West was pursuing all over the Middle East. “We are well aware that the disputes are not over one person or one president or the coming to power of a particular faction in Syria; it goes beyond that and it is obvious that the West has plans for the whole region,” Rouhani explained. “What has happened in Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Bahrain are rings of a single chain of events which aims to impact the region and weaken the Resistance Front.” 

Rouhani asserted that Iran was not seeking to control the region. “Our discourse is one of fighting terrorism in the whole region,” he said. Regarding Syria, Rouhani emphasized, all of Iran’s “efforts are directed at restoring peace and stability to Syria, and [Tehran] will accept whomever the Syrian citizens choose to run their country”. 

The next address was by the IRGC Commander in Chief Maj.-Gen. Mohammad-Ali Jafari. He declared that “the world powers suffered their latest defeat against the Resistance Front when their conspiracy to launch a military strike against Syria failed”. However, Iran could not afford to rest of its laurels. “So far, the enemies’ plot for military intervention in Syria has failed,” Jafari warned, but that did not mean Iran’s enemies would not attempt to avenge their defeat elsewhere. It was because of Iran’s continued vigilance and military might, Jafari stated, “that almost all the schemes drawn up by the enemies against the Resistance Front have failed”.  

This development had profound ramifications for Iran’s own vital interests and strategic posture. “Given the fact that enemies cannot overcome the Resistance Front in Syria, they definitely cannot take any action against the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Jafari concluded. 

Meanwhile, US Pres. Barack Obama was intensifying his campaign to meet Rouhani in New York during the late September 2013 UN General Assembly session, and there to reach a “grand rapprochement” virtually at any cost. However, Rouhani did not want to meet in person because Obama insisted on a brotherly-hug-and-kiss which Rouhani knew would not wash in Tehran. All the substance issues — the text of Obama’s statement that effectively conceded everything to Iran — had already been agreed upon by Sec. Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. Desperate to start the rapprochement, Obama called Rouhani at the last minute and twisted Rouhani’s hand on the phone. Obama reiterated his commitment to meeting all of Tehran demands, including far-reaching strategic compromises at the expense of Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf States. “Obama’s phone call last week with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani could begin the process of normalizing diplomatic relations,” Obama National Security Advisor Susan Rice claimed.  

The greater Middle East will not be the same.

Victory in Syria: But For Whom? 

The US White House, under President Barack Obama, was, by the end of May 2013, considering how to begin more direct engagement in the fighting inside Syria. The move reflected the growing realization — and pressure from Turkey — that the forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and his Iranian allies, had already, in reality, achieved a decisive victory. Could, and should, Western/Turkish intervention try to snatch victory from the maw of defeat? 

Analysis. By Yossef Bodansky, Senior Editor, GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs. The fratricidal war in Bilad al-Sham — that is, historical Greater Syria (for the State of Syria hardly exists any more) — is about to cross its second crucial milestone. Both milestones — the first being in October 2011 — were major turning-points advancing a victory by the Assad Administration, not the Turkish- and Western-backed jihadist rebels. 

The predominantly Islamist- jihadist rebels were never close to victory. But they are now closer than ever to defeat. 

Meanwhile, the fratricidal war which keeps spreading throughout historical northern al-Jazira — the Arab interior or heartland — is consuming in its flames the territories of the states of Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Jordan, while crossing the borders of both Turkey and Israel. The essence of the tidal-wave of grassroots violence now escalating and spreading through al-Jazira is that fratricidal violence will continue for decades to come — long after the war itself has been decided at the strategic political level. 

By the time these flames subside and the dust settles, there will emerge a completely new-old Middle East full of wrath, capitalizing on the legacy of past conquests and unresolved humiliations as the raison d’être for its very existence and quest for inflicting historic retribution and revenge. 

This anticipated gloom and doom is all but inevitable given the impact of the policies of the leading Western powers who insist in intervening in the Syrian crisis as well as the rest of the Islamist intifadas they still insist on calling “the Arab Spring”. The key point missed by the leading Western powers is that no matter how important the fighting between the Assad and allied Shi’ite forces and the jihadist rebel forces and their Sunni-jihadist allies has been, the truly decisive struggle has been over the soul of the silent majority of Syrians. And in this crucial battle the jihadists had already lost in the Autumn of 2011, but Assad’s Damascus is only now — in the Summer of 2013 — showing that it is prevailing. 

The overall dynamic engulfing the Greater Middle East must be examined within regional historical frameworks, because the essence of the intifadas is the rejection of modernity as represented by the modern Arab state and the embracing of traditional Islamic-Islamist socio-political frameworks in their stead. 

Indeed, the real situation in Syria is far more complicated than a mere civil war because of the unique rôle of both historic Bilad al-Sham and modern Syria on the fault lines between al-Jazira and the Fertile Crescent of Minorities. 

Historically, the region known as the Mashriq has always been dominated by the socio-political dynamics in the Arab heartland — al-Jazira — roughly from the shores of the Arabian Sea to northern Iraq, and from eastern Iraq to the Gaza Strip. This Arab cauldron — predominantly Sunni but including Shi’ite Arabs as well — has a tendency to spread roughly from south to north through the instrument of radicalization and jihadization to the detriment of Arab nationalism. This ascent is not only contained, but at times also reversed, by three external powers that seek to advance and expand into, as well as extend their influence and hegemony onto, these Arab lands. Historically, these were the Persian Empire, the Ottoman Caliphate, and the Egyptian Caliphate (that at its peak as the Fatimid Caliphate, 909-1171, was ruled by Ismaili Shi’ites). 

Throughout history and in earlier incarnations, these three powers have had hegemonic aspirations — through various means ranging from cultural-economic influence to outright military occupation — over the Mashriq. Presently, these three powers are reincarnated as Mahdivist Iran, neo-Ottomanist Turkey, and Ikhwani Egypt. 

The fault lines between the Arab cauldron and the surrounding great powers are comprised of a thin line of minorities which, together, constitute the core of the Fertile Crescent. These minorities are, from east to west, the Ahwazi Arabs of south-western Iran, the Kurds, the Alavis/Alawites, the Druze, the Maronites, and the Jews, as well as smaller minorities such as the Armenians and Cherkess/Circassians. This Fertile Crescent of Minorities has historically provided the stabilizing buffer regulating the spread of influence of Iran, Turkey, and Egypt. Initially, these minorities were discriminated against and oppressed by the various Arab rulers of the Mashriq. Between 1517 and 1917, the minorities along the Levant shores of the Mediterranean were relied upon by the Ottoman Sultans as the primary instrument facilitating their rule over the entire Mashriq. After 1917, Western powers have considered and used the Levant minorities as the purveyors of pro- Western strategic posture, modernity, and Westernization to the Middle East. As a rule, whenever the Fertile Crescent of Minorities, and especially their Levant section, was strong and viable, it constituted the key to regional stability and purveyor of modernity and growth. 

Thus, the crux of the lingering crisis in and around Syria is the fate of the minorities’ rule in Damascus and the potentially dramatic ramifications of its demise. The Bashar al-Assad Administration is based on the dominance of the Alawites and the Druze, who control the security apparatus, and the support of the urban economic élites comp

prised of westernized Sunnis, Orthodox Christians, and the Armenians. Moreover, the situation in Syria cannot be separated from the situation in Lebanon where the local minorities — the Maronites, Druze, ‘Alawites, and Armenians — are threatened by the ascent of the Iran-sponsored Shi’ite HizbAllah in the south and center, and al-Qaida affiliated jihadists in the north and Palestinian camps in the south. Hence, with perfect grand-strategic logic, Tehran is capitalizing on the plight of Assad’s Damascus in order to co-opt Syria’s minorities and further consolidate Iran’s strategic-hegemonic presence along the eastern shores of the Mediterranean (which is supplemented by Iran’s presence in the Gaza Strip and growing influence in Pres. Mohammed Morsi’s Ikhwani Egypt). Iran-sponsored war with Israel would therefore take on the last entrenched and adamantly anti-Iran minorities: the Jews, as well as the Druze and the Cherkess/ Circassians of Israel. 

Syria was still a functioning state when violence and civil disorder erupted there in early Spring 2011. Modern Syria is essentially the balancing of three foci of power: (1) The security apparatus which relies on the ‘Alawite, Druze, and Kurdish minorities; (2) An urban-economic élite which relies on westernized Sunni families, and Armenian and Orthodox Christian minorities; (3) A radicalized, conservative, and tribal Sunni population in the rural areas and increasingly the urban slums. Power in Damascus has always been based on two foci playing against the third. Starting the early-1970s, Rifaat al-Assad (brother of then president Hafez al-Assad and vice-president, and now exiled in Western Europe) consolidated an alliance between the security and economic élites which sustained stability in the country even after the exile of Rifaat and the death of Hafez. 

Bashar al-Assad rose to power in July 2000 after the death of his father, Hafez. He immediately promised the urban economic élite widespread reforms in return for their support for him succeeding his father. Instead of delivering, Bashar sought to transform the power system into an alliance with the radicalized Sunnis under an Iranian umbrella. He expected the Syrian Islamists to be satisfied with financial handouts and growing involvement in regional jihadist causes (Iraq, Lebanon, Palestinian territories, etc.). Empowered by the Islamist intifadas all around them and inherently anti-Shi’ite, the Syrian Islamists demanded more domestic power and Sunni-Islamist character for the state. They rebelled in Spring 2011 when Bashar refused. 

It took Assad’s Damascus a few months to grasp the severity of the crisis and the intensity of the fighting. Soon afterwards, Damascus formulated a national strategy for confronting the crisis which is still in effect. The key to the Government’s strategy, starting in mid- 2011, has been the dividing of Syria into three strategic zones on the basis of their importance for the survival of the Assad Administration and the running of post-war Syria. The military priorities and resource allocation have since been based on this division: 

1. The minorities’ bloc comprised of the traditional lands of the minorities upon which the security apparatus relies. These are the ‘Alawite strip along the Mediterranean coastline between Lebanon and Turkey, the Druze area in the south-west up to the Jordanian and Israeli borders, and the Kurdish area in the north-east largely along the Turkish border but also part of the border with Iraq (where Syria’s oilfields are located). 

2. The economic-strategic belt which is the area where the national economy (industry and commerce), as well as defense industries and strategic stockpiles, are located. Geographically, this is a relatively narrow strip between Damascus and Aleppo which includes the two key industrial cities, Hama and Homs. This strip borders the ‘Alawite sector on the west and the Druze area on the south, but also borders Turkey on the north-west and north, and the rest of Syria on the east. 

3. The vast interior which is comprised of, essentially, the rest of Syria to the east of the belt and to the south of the Kurdish zone. This area enjoys access to parts of the border with Turkey and the porous borders with Iraq and Jordan. This area is inhabited mainly by Sunni tribes and extended families, both conservative Arab and Islamists, who cross over into Iraq and Jordan. This area is economically depressed because of endemic absence of water and lack of infrastructure (roads, electricity, etc.), and therefore does not have great prospects for the future. Hence, this region has been the source of internal migration to urban slums in the main cities. These areas are implacably hostile to Damascus — that is, to any government in Damascus — because of their unchangeable destitution, and are thus susceptible to radicalization. 

With the exception of the crucial slums in the main industrial cities in the economic-strategic belt and the Christian enclaves in the north-east, these strategic zones essentially overlap the three foci of power which make modern Syria. This explains the military strategy of Assad’s Damascus. 

The ultimate priority of the Assad administration — to secure the traditional regions of the key minorities — was attained in Summer 2011. A few clashes continued on the Jordanian and Turkish borders as a result of infiltration attempts. But these eruptions could not alter the basic reality that Damascus’s hold over these regions was, and still is, firm, and that the local population actively supports the Assad Administration and its war effort. Presently, these areas are essentially quiet with the local population is supporting the Administration. The minorities’ knowledge that they would be slaughtered under a Sunni-jihadist administration only reinforces their commitment to Assad’s Damascus. 

The second priority — to control the economic-strategic belt — is being implemented ruthlessly. The turning point came in the early Autumn of 2011 when the Assad Administration concluded that the crucial urban-economic élite in Aleppo and Damascus would not cast their lot with the rebels (and some would even ponder supporting the Administration). Consequently, Government forces could safely focus on forcefully suppressing the radicalized Sunni population of the urban slums and blue-collar neighborhoods who stood in the way of the region’s pacification and return to some economic activities. This approach was largely successful because rebel presence was quickly contained to several slums and neighborhoods rather than spreading into the rural areas. 

However, with the jihadist elements holding firm and even escalating strikes from their parts of Homs and Hama, the Administration’s efforts became more ruthless and desperate to the point of suppressing by heavy indiscriminate shelling and bombing some of the die-hard slums and neighborhoods in Homs and Hama. The secondary mission of the Government’s security forces was preventing the relentless efforts by Turkey-based jihadist forces to reach Aleppo in order to provoke insurrection, as well as prevent a similar jihadist infiltration from north-eastern Lebanon into nearby Homs and on to Hama. But the Assad Administration was adamant that it had to suppress the jihadist insurrection in the economic- strategic belt at all cost. By the Autumn of 2011, both Syrian Government and rebel leaders concurred that the Assad forces would soon succeed if left to their own devices. 

Strategically, the Assad Administration had already won the war in the Autumn of 2011. 

The traditional key to ruling modern Syria has always been an alliance between the minorities-dominated security and Sunni-dominated urban economic élites; and Damascus had already succeeded, by this time, in restoring this alliance. This success has been aptly demonstrated in the sustenance and cohesion of the Syrian security forces, which are predominantly Sunni, in the continuous, intense fighting and yet with minuscule rates of defection and desertion. In the strategic zones of Syria, the opposition remained — as at the end of May 2013 — contained in several slums and neighborhoods. The bitter fighting in Aleppo was, by late May 2013, a desperate yet doomed effort by the jihadists and their Turkish sponsors to challenge this status quo. 

This trend was clearly reflected in the popular support for the Assad Administration to the extent that reliable polling is possible. In the second half of December 2011, YouGov conducted a major poll commissioned by the Qatar Foundation throughout the Arab World. The key question was whether Bashar al-Assad should resign. The poll found that 55 percent of Syrians did not want Bashar al-Assad to resign as President; that is, 55 percent of Syrians wanted him to remain President. Significantly, in a poll conducted in December 2010, that is, just before the outbreak of the current crisis, only 46 percent of Syrians considered Bashar al-Assad a good president for Syria. The YouGov poll also found that 68 percent of Syrians disapproved of the Arab League sanctions. 

In contrast, the YouGov poll showed that outside Syria 81 percent of Arabs “want President Assad to step down”. The respondents based their opinion regarding Assad on the coverage of Syrian events on Arab Satellite TV news channels. In other words, Arab Satellite TV news channels such as the Qatar- based al-Jazeera and al-Arabia have had a profound impact on the regional public opinion in favor of the opposition to Assad while Syrian domestic public opinion increased its support for Assad. 

In early 2012, the Syrian deep interior remained the main lingering problem of the war. From a purely military point of view, the Government’s task was manageable. Violence and instability in the interior had negligible effect on the functioning of the Syrian State, for this depends on the minority zones and the economic belt, both of which were under the effective control of the Assad Administration. 

The primary tasks of the Syrian security forces were reducing the level of Islamist-jihadist insurrection in the area, and slowing down the flow of jihadist volunteers, weapons, and funds across the porous borders. Initially, the strategy of Damascus was based on holding onto some of the key cities in the interior and let everything else burn. To fight the jihadists, Damascus relied heavily on special operations in order to entrap and manipulate both the Syrian and Qatar-sponsored foreign jihadist elements. Ultimately, this strategy saved Damascus the need for massive use and widespread deployment of regular military forces Syria. 

Initially, the tendency of Damascus was to abandon hinterland and focus on consolidation of hold over strategic Syria — that is, the Damascus-Aleppo zone — against growing challenges from across the Turkish and Lebanese borders. Meanwhile, for the Turkey- based opposition leadership, the crux of the war for Syria was based on the realization of the strategic victory by Assad’s Damascus. Therefore, the self- anointed (although Western recognized) Islamist opposition leadership concluded that only a major military intervention by Western forces — of the kind that brought down the Qadhafi Administration in Libya and empowered an Islamist-jihadist regime in their stead — would be able to topple the Assad Administration and empower the Islamist opposition leaders in Damascus. Hence, the opposition strategy evolved around two foci: (1) Establishing conducive conditions for provoking or seducing or manipulating the US-led West to intervene militarily in Syria on behalf of the Islamists- jihadists as the US-led NATO did in Libya by creating the “Aleppo-is- Benghazi” political-media aura; and (2) Enforced Islamicization of the traditionalist Sunni Arab populace, marginalized by Assad’s Damascus even though they are the majority of Syrians, in order to demonstrate popular support for the opposition leadership and its Islamist character. 

Throughout, the economic élite desperately tried to stay out of the turmoil. This facilitated the crisis that befell on them. The jihadist suicide-bombing in Aleppo starting in February 2012 signaled a change whereupon Aleppo’s urban economic élite must get involved in war whether they liked it or not. During most of 2012, jihadist rebels projected themselves onto the hostile population. The jihadists attacked the established and well-to-do suburbs, and provoked the Syrian military into shelling and bombing areas where the population was inclined to support the Assad Administration. When this did not work, the jihadists destroyed most of Aleppo including historic and heritage sites of global importance, and emptied a few suburbs into forced exile in order to enhance the humanitarian crisis in Turkey in the hope of inducing an international military intervention. 

By the Autumn of 2012, rebel leaders in Aleppo admitted that between two- thirds and three-quarters of the indigenous population of Aleppo both hated and dreaded the jihadist rebels.  By then, the population could take the abuse no more and, starting with the Kurdish and ‘Alawite  suburbs, established local militias which took on the jihadists and pushed them out of many suburbs and neighborhoods of greater Aleppo. 

This turning point has since helped the Assad administration. 

The ascent of the jihadists was further complicated when Tehran had the Assad Administration release from jail the legendary jihadist commander and ideologist Abu-Musab al-Suri (who had been in Syria after special rendition by the US) and his close assistant, Abu-Khaled, sometime between late December 2011 and early January 2012. Back in the early 2000s, Abu-Musab al-Suri was sheltered by Iranian Intelligence and worked closely with the Quds Forces and their up-and-coming Commander, Brig.-Gen. Qassem Soleimani. Almost immediately, there began to emerge in Syria jihadist vanguard entities of the kind long advocated by Abu-Musab al-Suri. In late January 2012, for example, the previously unknown Jabhat al-Nusrah (Victory Front) published a video called “For the People of Syria from the Mujahedin of Syria in the Fields of Jihad”. A commander going by the nom de guerre al-Fatih (the Conqueror) Abu Muhammad al-Juwlani (that is, from the Golan Heights) delivered a jihadist address threatening the US, the West, the Arab League, Turkey and Iran, for their solidarity and collaboration with the Assad Government against the Sunni Muslims. He claimed that Jabhat al-Nusrah was active all over Syria — from Hama to Dara. The video concluded with a group of fighters in the contentious Idlib area who belonged to the Brigade of the Free Greater Syria (Kataeb Ahrar ash-Sham) swear their allegiance to Jabhat al-Nusrah. The implication was that these fighters now joined the real jihad: a Sunni jihad actually controlled by Assad’s closest allies in Tehran.

Meanwhile, in the Spring of 2012 there emerged a political imperative for Assad’s Damascus to reduce the level of fratricidal violence all over the country, as well as move forward toward a viable and legitimate negotiations process with the grassroots populace. Furthermore, because of family and tribal connections between the rural population in the deep interior and the slum dwellers in the western cities, as well as the tribal population in the villages surrounding the western cities and in Aleppo itself, Damascus could not ignore completely the popular dynamics and awakening in the interior. Thus, while the ongoing turmoil was incapable of threatening the Assad Administration and its continued consolidation of victory, the interior could not be left completely unattended for either.

The situation in Syria’s predominantly Sunni Arab interior remained complex.

The population there is overwhelmingly tribal and rural with pockets of urban extended families. The growing economic hardships of the past three decades, particularly the failure of the Soviet-style institutionalization of agriculture and the destruction of water resources (mainly due to experimentation with cotton growing), led to grass- roots alienation and rejection of the state system. Instead, the population has increasingly rallied around tribal and extended family frameworks in order to jointly survive the hardships. When blood-relation frameworks failed to remedy the situation, the youth abandoned the interior in quest of livelihood in either the urban slums in western Syria or in the ranks of the security forces which largely deployed near Syria’s borders and away from the interior. Hence, the population which had endured the hardships and remained stable in the Syrian interior was socially conservative and inward looking; that is, committed to the empowerment of tribe and extended family at the expense of the centralized state.

The lingering hardship, however, has left the grassroots population vulnerable to Islamist radicalization particularly by Gulf-origin charities which offered humanitarian assistance. The Islamist-jihadist leadership sought to capitalize on the population’s hardship and despair in order to impose Chechenization of the kind attempted by the jihadist leadership in Chechnya and the rest of the North Caucasus since the mid 1990s. Chechenization is the term used to describe a profound transformation of a predominantly Muslim society from its traditional, largely pre-Islamic, structure to dominance by Islamist-jihadist elements which historically have been alien to that society. The outcome of Chechenization is not only the Arabization of that society’s value system, social structure and way of life, but society’s seemingly voluntary abandonment of its own cultural heritage and forfeiture of its manifest destiny in favor of complete subservience to pan-Islamic jihadist causes the realization of which are detrimental to the existental self-interest of that society.

Although Chechnization largely failed by the middle of the first decade of the 21st century, and the heavy- handed attempted implementation played a major rôle in the Russian victory in Chechnya and the North Caucasus, jihadist leaders elsewhere continue to consider Chechenization the key to long-term hold over otherwise hostile populations. Indeed, it was not by accident that starting the Summer of 2012 the supreme commander of the Jaish Muhajireen wa Ansar (the Army of Emigrants and Supporters) has been Emir Abu-Omar al-Chichani (the Chechen). The Jaish is the main organized force of the foreign mujahedin fighting in Syria in their own units (as distinct from those foreign volunteers integrated into jihadist units based on al-Jazira people: that is, Syrian, Iraqi, and Lebanese jihadists). In the second half of 2012, there were some 6,000-10,000 foreign jihadists under Abu-Omar al-Chichani.

In late Summer and early Autumn of 2012, the grassroots population in Syria’s al-Jazira largely rejected the heavy-handed attempts to enforce Chechenization.

Overwhelmed by the hardships of self-survival, the grassroots opted to withdraw from the struggle for Syria. Hence, the distribution of the popular standing in the war was: 25 percent of the population supported the Assad Administration, 15 percent supported the Islamist-jihadist rebellion, and 60 percent were “neutrals” who hated Assad but dreaded the jihadists and therefore stayed out of the war. This rejection by the grassroots compelled the jihadist leadership to abandon dealing with the grassroots and instead focus on inducing a Western military intervention. Meanwhile, despite the Western political support for, and Western media reports about, the Free Syrian Army and other ostensibly nationalist armed opposition, internally, the entire armed opposition was jihadist. There remained hair-splitting differences between various jihadist units, albeit mainly due to the whims of their charismatic commanders and religious guides rather than policy or ideology. Furthermore, the rebels’ logistical life-lines were increasingly controlled by Turkey and funded mainly by Qatar, and both made sure that localized forces that did not toe the jihadist line were stifled and starved into inaction.

Mohammad Morsi assumed office as the President of Egypt on June 30, 2012; a move which would have a major impact on the US-led policy toward Syria. Before Morsi’s ascent, Turkey was torn between two regional approaches to the Syrian and Mashriq crisis.

On the one hand, there was the possibility of consolidating a Sunni north- south bloc with Saudi Arabia which would confront an Iran-dominated Shi’ite east-west axis. On the other hand, there was the possibility of building with Iran a coalition of the outside forces that would destroy the Fertile Crescent of Minorities and suppress the Arabian hinterland (al-Jazira).

Turkey’s near total dependence on highly subsidized Iranian oil and gas further complicated Ankara’s decision making. Ultimately, Turkey’s objective has always been controlling Sunni Islam and Arabia’s oil.

Soon after Morsi’s ascent, Cairo introduced — and Obama’s Washington enthusiastically endorsed — a grand strategic arrangement based on a tripartite alliance of the outside forces encircling the Mashriq, jointly destroying the Fertile Crescent of Minorities, and ultimately suppressing and controlling al-Jazira.

The contemporary aspirations of the Islamist Tripartite Alliance — Iran, Turkey, and Egypt — are essentially the revival of their traditional quest for spheres of influence as Mahdivist Iran/Persia, neo-Ottomanist Turkey, and Ikhwani Egypt (as both the contemporary United Arab Republic and the reincarnation of historic Bilad al-Kanana). These three powers have long had hegemonic aspirations over the Mashriq through various means ranging from cultural-economic influence to outright military occupation. Their current ascent comes at the expense of Bilad al-Sham and al-Jazira (the Arab hinterland and the Arabian Peninsula, that is, Saudi Arabia). The web of mutual economic relations — particularly cheap energy supplies from Iran and the lure of huge profits from sanctions busting — overshadows the Sunni-Shi’ite disputes (that never fade away completely). At the same time, this Tripartite Alliance would also be creating a Sunni majority bloc — Turkey and Egypt — strong enough to contain Iran without alienating it. Turkey and Egypt would thus be able to capitalize on this dynamics to gain the willing subservience of the Sunni Arab world. 

In the second half of 2012, however, the US regional policy was dominated by Pres. Barack Obama’s quest for an historical rapprochement with Iran, virtually at any cost. Although secret bilateral negotiations have been going on for a couple of years now, it was only in Autumn 2012 that a major breakthrough took place during a face-to-face meeting in Doha, Qatar. As first disclosed by former IRGC (Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps: Pasdaran) official turned CIA agent, “Reza Kahlili”, the Doha meeting was between Obama’s senior advisor and closest personal confidant, Valerie Jarrett, and Iranian Supreme Leader “Ayatollah” Ali Khamene’i’s confidant and advisor on international affairs, Ali Akbar Velayati. Jarrett was born in Shiraz, Iran, where her father managed a hospital, and knew Velayati as a child. The personal trust between Jarrett and Velayati, coupled with her unique personal stature with Obama, delivered the dramatic breakthrough the Obama White House had been seeking since 2009. 

Obama’s determination to complete the historic rapprochement with Iran overshadows all other US considerations and policies in the Greater Middle East. 

Thus, Washington’s empowerment of the US-sponsored Tripartite Alliance was dominated by its impact on Obama’s quest for that historical rapprochement with Iran. Similarly, the Obama White House continued to support and empower Islamist-jihadist movements, particularly Ikhwan-affiliated, at the expense of US traditional allies considered anti-Iran including Israel and Saudi Arabia. In Autumn 2012, the Obama White House was doggedly pursuing a twin-track policy (without declaring it, of course: 

• 1. The preference was a major deal with Iran. Under the conditions of the deal, Iran would retain preeminence/dominance in Syria (albeit without Assad) and Lebanon. Iran would also be a key member of the Tripartite Alliance with Turkey and Egypt which the US would empower over the Greater Middle East. Under such an arrangement there would be no need for Western/NATO military intervention for Iran will “deliver” Assad. 

• 2. If there was no deal with Iran, the US would support (from behind) a Turkey-led NATO military intervention which would overthrow the Assad Government and empower Islamists-jihadists affiliated with the Muslim Brothers in Damascus. The crux of the US-sponsored world “recognition” of the new Syrian Council would aim at building the political justification for such an intervention. Ultimately, the US-led recognition of the Council as the sole representative of the Syrian people precludes negotiations and sets the conditions for a costly and needless military intervention. 

With Obama’s encouragement, Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Ankara has become the dominant power behind the implementation of this strategy in tune with its neo-Ottoman convictions. Historically, the Ottoman Caliphate ruled the huge Mashriq by manipulating a devastated and oppressed Fertile Crescent of Minorities, while domineering the myriad of the Arab tribes, clans and extended families that lived within the Crescent: in al-Jazira. Fractured and devoid of national identities, these localized Arab entities could not resist the Ottoman overlordship. Presently, Ankara’s two preconditions for success in Syria and beyond closely resemble the Ottoman legacy: (1) the destruction of the Fertile Crescent of Minorities, the historic buffer between Arab al-Jazira and the outside forces; and (2) the destruction of Mashriq states, mainly Bilad al-Sham. Achieved together, these steps would effectively recreate the traditional socio-political tapestry which served the later days of the Ottoman Caliphate (of which British-ruled Egypt was not a part). 

Indeed, the primary outcome of the Autumn/Winter 2012 phase of the Syrian crisis was the demise of the modern Syrian state in favor of amalgamation of localized sub-state entities based on tribes and clans that are focused solely on self-preservation and self-survival. And the demise of the Syrian state has already reverberated in Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan. 

Meanwhile, the foreign-sponsored jihadists were focused on the “battles” for Aleppo and Damascus. They exploited the growing reluctance of Assad’s Damascus to commit the Syrian military to clashes with rebel forces. In Autumn/Winter 2012, most ground forces activities (with Damascus being the noteworthy exception) were aggressive and preventive foot patrols in contested streets and suburbs by various pro-Government militias (the ‘Alawite Shabiha, HizbAllah-trained Shi’ite forces, and a myriad of Sunni counterparts) and infantry small units. In cases of opposition attacks, the Syrian military largely preferred to respond with air-power: mainly helicopter strikes but occasionally also bombings by light strike aircraft. Thus, there was very little fighting inside Syria except for recurring acts of terrorism in the Damascus and Aleppo regions. The primary perpetrators of these fighting were jihadist forces sponsored from across the Turkish border that in Aleppo were joined by local criminal gangs now claiming higher motivations.  

However, it took a major humanitarian trauma for the grassroots starting with Eid al-Adha in late-October 2012 and continuing during the Winter of 2012/13 to profoundly change of the nature of the war in Syria. The crisis began with the communities’ handling of the unprecedented shortages during Eid al-Adha in late-October 2012. Whatever little aid reached Syria’s interior and slums — mainly meat and other foodstuff — was provided to the needy and destitute by non-government Islamist and localized charities. Thus, the quest for solution continued to take place in sub-national framework — urban slums, tribes, extended families — which, in turn, led to the ascent of militant irredentism, secessionism, separatism, and sectarianism — all of which breed insurrection, insurgency and terrorism. 

During the unusually harsh Winter of 2012/13, jihadist rebels, some controlled by Iran’s Quds Forces via Abu-Musab al-Suri, constantly destroyed UN and other international convoys of food and medical supplies, ostensibly because the supplies were to be delivered via Damascus and thus were legitimizing the Assad Administration. Consequently, the grassroots population not only suffered unprecedented hardships and shortages, but had to endure a discernible increase in the mortality of babies, infants, and the elderly. All the while, Arab satellite TV news channels such as al-Jazeera and al-Arabia continued to report and gloat over the huge sums of money donated by the West to the Syrian opposition in exile. The self-anointed Syrian opposition leaders and their Western allies were shown attending endless conferences and meetings in luxury hotels and resorts all over the world. The stark contrast between their own immense suffering and the opulence of their “leaders” made the grassroots give up on, and begin to profoundly hate, the Western-sponsored so-called opposition. Ultimately, with such prevailing trends the grassroots population could not last for long on its own and survive a harsh winter. Given the destitution of the vast majority of the Syrian grassroots population, they were now compelled to seek a source for basic aid and salvation which would not come from the Western-sponsored opposition leadership. 

Around the turn of 2013, the genuine leaders of both sides were cognizant that the war had long reached a dead end. On-site rebel commanders recognized that the ongoing “bleeding” of their forces by the Government and allied security forces in the course of the daily battles was intolerable. The jihadist forces would have crumbled absent the flow of fighters and supplies from Turkey. Meanwhile, Assad’s Damascus also gave up on regaining control of the Syrian hinterland even though one could not claim to be a viable government without controlling such major parts of the country’s territory. Hence, both positions indicated to senior Arab diplomats that “fatigue on both sides is peaking and morale is at an all-time low”. According to these diplomats, “these factors compel all sides to deal positively with the initiative and to attempt to find a political solution to the crisis”. But this was not to be. 

In early 2013, the US-sponsored Tripartite Alliance of Egypt, Turkey, and Iran was formally up and running. On February 6, the three presidents — Mahmud Ahmadi-Nejad of Iran, Mohammed Morsi of Egypt, and Hamid Gul of Turkey — met in Cairo for a formal meeting aside of the OIC (Organization of Islamic Conference) summit. 

The main issue was finding a way to bring about “an immediate settlement of the crisis and an end to the bloodshed in Syria”. The three presidents agreed on a plan based on unconditional cessation of hostilities, sending humanitarian aid, lifting all economic sanctions, and facilitating the return of all displaced to their homes. No mention was made of political negotiations or the fate of the Assad Government. The three presidents also addressed two other regional issues: (1) the growing threat of Israeli bellicosity and aggression; and (2) the deterioration of stability in the Arabian Peninsula and the adverse impact on the regional powers. Ahmadi-Nejad later described the outcome of the trilateral meeting as “very positive”.  

Nevertheless, the highest authorities in Tehran launched a major reassessment of the strategic situation in Syria and the entire region in order to formulate Iran’s grand strategic challenges and opportunities. Several leading strategic experts and senior officials were tasked by Supreme Leader Ali Khamene’i with formulating Iran’s strategy. In the first week of February 2013, the Head of the Iranian Supreme National Security Council, Saeed Jalili, visited Damascus secretly to discuss the next phases in the crisis and war ... including the possibility of a major escalation. Around March 1, 2013, Khamene’i ordered all of the armed forces and security agencies of Iran “to prepare for war” with Israel and the US. Khamene’i was convinced that Tehran reached a point of decision in its relations with Washington and that Obama would soon have to either accept Tehran’s demands or go to war as advocated by Israel. Although he had not given up on the rapprochement with Obama, Khamene’i was nevertheless determined to be ready for the other possibility as well. Concurrently, Khamene’i dispatched his close confidante, Quds Forces commander Brig.-Gen. Qassem Soleimani, to personally make a thorough inspection of the situation in Syria. Soleimani led a small group of Iranian experts on a long tour of all of Syrian’s key military and security facilities, as well as the main battle fronts. Soleimani and his delegation also visited the main HizbAllah facilities in Lebanon. Meanwhile, Tehran’s strategic views were being articulated in a series of lectures by leading experts and senior officers to Iranian officers and other defense officials who would be tasked with implementing the new Syrian strategy.  

Back on February 13, 2013, Mehdi Taeb, the head of Khamene’i’s Ammar Strategic Base (Khamene'i’s think tank), a former Basij (militia) commander, and the brother of IRGC intelligence bureau director Hossein Taeb, delivered a speech at a Basij conference in Mashhad on the importance of Syria to Iran’s national security. Taeb stressed that Syria was an integral part of Iran that was more important to the defense of the Islamic Republic than some of Iran’s traditional parts. “Syria is [Iran’s] 35th province, and it is a strategic province for us. If the enemy attacks us and wants to take Syria or Khuzestan, our top priority will be to preserve Syria. But if we lose the province of Khuzestan [to the Ahwazi Arabs] we could regain it as long as we keep Syria. [Thus,] by preserving Syria, we will be able to retake Khuzestan — but if we lose Syria, we will not be able to preserve Tehran,” Taeb asserted. Taeb told the Basij commanders of their growing rôle in the Syrian war. “Syria has an army, but it cannot wage the war within Syria’s cities. This is why Iran proposed establishing a Basij force, to conduct the fighting in the cities.” He noted that “the 60,000-strong ‘Syrian Basij’ was established; it has taken over the fighting in the streets from the army.” Taeb expected a growing number of Iranian Basij officers to be soon deployed to Syria in order to assist in training and running the Syrian Basij. 

On April 4, IRGC Deputy Commander Brig.-Gen. Hossein Salami delivered a lecture to senior officers about Iran’s regional strategy. He stressed that under current circumstances, where Iran is a major regional power, the security borders of Iran exceed by far Iran’s national territory. Iran’s support for Syria and the HizbAllah should be viewed in this context. “We have extended our security borders to the East Mediterranean and their [the US’s and Israel’s] deceptive ploys failed to stop our movement,” Salami stated. The surge westward is an important part of Iran’s ascent as a regional power with global aspirations. “Today, despite sanctions, economic pressures, psychological warfare and cultural invasion, Islamic Iran is advancing, and the people of this land will not allow the enemy to rejoice in exerting pressure,” Salami pointed out. Iran is expecting sworn enemies led by the US and Israel to resist and fight the ascent of Iran, but “Iran would achieve victory against the enemies under the guidelines of ... Khamene’i.” Salami assured his audience that Iran has unique capabilities “to deliver a crushing response to any military strike against the country” and emphasized that “any such measure could result in a war that would spread beyond the Middle East”. 

The main decisions Khamene’i reached in mid-April 2013 were that (1) Iran could not trust the US to deliver on the Tripartite Alliance or the great rapprochement; and (2) that Iran must be able to preserve and secure its vital strategic interests in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon even if the Assad Administration were to profoundly change policy or collapse. Simply put, the Iranians no longer fully trusted Assad’s Damascus to secure their vital interests should Damascus win the war. Tehran was increasingly apprehensive as to whether post-war Assad’s Damascus would follow Moscow’s regional strategy which means return to a de facto reliance on the Fertile Crescent of the Minorities (or, tacit non-belligerency toward Israel while keeping Iran at arms-length). Tehran has also become apprehensive about the possibility that the Islamist-jihadist leaders — Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia — might eventually convince the US to lead a NATO military intervention in Syria which would attempt to empower the Sunni Islamists- jihadists in a post-Assad Damascus. Either option would be unacceptable to Tehran for either would harm Iran’s vital interests. 

Immediately after Khamene’i made his decision, he dispatched very senior emissaries to Beirut to inform HizbAllah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah that Tehran decided to “put all its weight into the ongoing battle in Syria” in order to secure “key advances on the ground within the next two months”, thus guaranteeing Assad’s and Iran’s victory. Khamene’i summoned Nasrallah to a highly irregular secret visit to Iran. Meanwhile, HizbAllah’s most senior commanders were instructed by their Iranian superiors that HizbAllah should amend its doctrine to focus on fighting a “pre-emptive war that aims to thwart threats before they extend and reach us”. This doctrinal change applied both to the Syrian and Israeli theaters. 

The extent of Tehran’s apprehensions and resolve to secure Iran’s vital interests virtually at any cost were articulated during Nasrallah’s emergency visit to Tehran in the last week of April 2013. He and his key aides were instructed by Khamene’i, Soleimani, and other senior leaders about Iran’s new strategy for Syria and HizbAllah’s rôle therein. Nasrallah’s meetings with Khamene’i and Soleimani focused on “the strategic vision of the overall situation in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Iran” given “the convergence of the grand strategic interests of the states of this [Shi’ite] axis”. The conviction of the upper-most leaders in Tehran, as conveyed by both Khamene’i and Solei- mani, was that “war with Israel is inevitable” and thus must be launched locally before Israel struck Iran’s national strategic infrastructure: that is, Iran’s nuclear program. According to Nasrallah’s aides, Khamene’i decreed that Iran “cannot lose” Syria and nominated Soleimani to ensure that this did not happen whatever the cost. 

The crux of the new Iranian strategy was to build into the Iran-led Shi’ite drive to help the Syrian Administration build separate capabilities for Shi’ite forces to take over Syria should Tehran lose confidence in Assad or if the US-led West intervened and threatened Assad. The main need was to unify the myriad Shi’ite forces currently in Syria — mainly Iranian Pasdaran, Basij, Intelligence and Special Forces, HizbAllah forces, Iraqi-Shi’ite militias (such as the League of the Righteous People and Kataeb HizbAllah), Gulf-Shi’ite militias and Pakistani-Shi’ite militias — along with the Syrian Shi’ite-‘Alawite militias, Gendarmerie and Basij-type units created by the Iranians and the HizbAllah into a single Iranian “Army” with a coherent High Command and its own command and control system. The HizbAllah was briefed that the “Army” was already 150,000 to 200,000 troops strong. Soleimani was personally in command of this “Army” in addition to his rôle in the Quds Forces. 

The growing strategic importance of creating grassroots Shi’ite presence in Syria was articulated by the Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces Maj.-Gen. Hassan Firouzabadi. On May 10,  2013, he delivered a lecture to IRGC senior officers that included an assessment of the situation in Syria. Firouzabadi said that a primary reason for the success of the Syrian Armed Forces in the current phase of the fighting was that “a HizbAllah-style resistance movement has emerged in Syria”. There was an irreversible turning point in the war in Syria. Firouzabadi explained that “the resistance in Syria has emerged triumphant owing to Assad’s prudence in dealing with the extremist groups and the hegemonic powers as well as the Syrian nation’s support for him”. Most important was Assad’s success in building a militant popular support base. “Thanks to Bashar al-Assad’s strategic rôle, a popular resistance with the same nature as that of Lebanon’s HizbAllah has taken shape across Syria and is solidifying,” Firouzabadi emphasized. As far as Firouzabadi was concerned, “the war in Syria has come to an end. Therefore, the enemies had better not interfere in Syria’s affairs anymore.” 

Meanwhile, despite the publicly stated commitment to Assad’s Damascus, Tehran was also busy organizing Shi’ite volunteers and expeditionary forces in Iran, Iraq, and Pakistan in order to rush reinforcements once the “Army” has to confront Syrian and/or Western forces. Nasrallah was told that Tehran was ready to commit some 500,000 Shi’ite fighters and unlimited resources into the war to secure Shi’ite dominance over Syria and Lebanon. Tehran was convinced that Maliki’s Baghdad would also commit forces and resources to the securing of the Shi’ite access to the Mediterranean. Returning to Beirut, Nasrallah and his key aides emphasized that Khamene’i and the upper-most leaders in Tehran were serious about seizing control over Syria and Lebanon should the need arise. Furthermore, Nasrallah’s aides asserted that if pushed to the corner, Tehran would not hesitate to make use of its “ultimate/doomsday deterrence capabilities” rather than lose Syria and Lebanon. 

Khamene’i’s sense of urgency, as reflected during Nasrallah’s visit, was the manifestation of escalating tension between Damascus and Tehran despite the latter’s all out support for the survival of the former. In late April and early May 2013, the situation had become inherently explosive because of the profound transformation of relations happening under the surface and behind the close military cooperation. 

Since the consolidation of the Hafez al-Assad Administration in the early 1980s (post-Hama and post-Lebanon war) and until very recently, the Assads’ Damascus was the dominant power in the Levant. That is, Tehran was dependent on the goodwill and cooperation of the Assads’ Damascus in order to reach the shores of the Mediterranean and sustain the vital links with HizbAllah. In Spring 2013, as a consequence of the decisive rôle of Iranian-HizbAllah elements and supplies in facilitating the Syrian strategic successes, Tehran decided that Bashar al-Assad’s Damascus now depended on Tehran for survival, and that the strategic relationship along the shores of the Mediterranean should reflect this new reality. In practical terms, Tehran insists that key Syrian strategic-military undertakings — from permitting Iranian supplies to HizbAllah via Syrian seaports to take precedent over Russian naval activities, to handing over strategic weaponry to HizbAllah despite promises to Israel to the contrary — be undertaken as dictated by Tehran. 

Assad’s Damascus does not see it this way and does not believe that the Iranian support warrants the subjugation of Damascus to Tehran. 

Moreover, an integral part of the Iranian-HizbAllah operations in shielding western Syria from Lebanon-based Sunni jihadist forces has been the concurrent Shi’itization of southern ‘Alawite villages in the areas where the Iranian-HizbAllah forces operate. And this reality is infuriating Assad’s ‘Alawite core supporters. Damascus is cognizant that Tehran cannot afford to have the Shi’ite on-land access to the Levant and HizbAllah cut by Turkey- sponsored Sunni jihadists. Hence, Tehran and its proxies would continue to invest everything possible in sustaining the Assad Administration and help winning the war for Assad’s Damascus. But both sides — Tehran and Damascus — are cognizant that the crucial issue of the pecking order of the key powers in the Levant would have to be decisively resolved sooner or later. Posturing has already begun under the surface. 

Israel’s bombing in early May 2013 of several military facilities in Damascus was first and foremost a swift destruction of relatively long-range missiles about to be handed over to HizbAllah. However, some of these facilities, in the Mt. Qassioun area, were of importance to Assad’s own survival, and they were hit solely because this was where the missiles were being stored and prepared for delivery. Hence, the bombing also constituted a message from Jerusalem to both Tehran and Damascus that Jerusalem would not permit drastic change in the rules of the game regarding who’s the boss in Syria. As far as Jerusalem was concerned, Assad remained the boss in Damascus and Tehran should accept this. 

In retrospect, Tehran’s growing apprehension, starting in early Spring 2013, was also reflected in the growing involvement of Iranian intelligence with the Sunni jihadist forces, even though they have been fighting major allies of Iran including Assad, Maliki, and the HizbAllah. Back in the Winter of 2012-13, opposition leaders in the deep interior warned that some of the most prominent jihadist forces, or at least major components thereof, were cooperating with Abu-Musab al-Suri and Iran-based senior commanders. Among these forces were the al-Faruq Forces or Brigades, Jabhat al-Nusrah and other al-Qaida affiliates. Growing numbers of Syrian and foreign jihadists commanders were arriving in Syria from Afghanistan-Pakistan and Iraq via Iran, bringing with them large sums of money and weapons. Moreover, several local-nationalist opposition networks were betrayed to the Syrian security forces by jihadists, causing irreparable damage to the indigenous internal operations. 

In the second half of February 2013, the jihadist high command consolidated a centralized strategic command structure of the jihadist forces in northern al-Jazira. The new command covers an east-to-west strip of more than 500 miles: from the western suburbs of Baghdad to Damascus and on to Ein Hilweh near the shores of the Mediterranean in southern Lebanon. The command also covered northern Iraq and Syria, where most of the fighting has been taking place, as well as northern and central Jordan. 

The main tasks of the new jihadist command are guided and controlled by a shura of senior commanders and spiritual guides. At first, the shura did not seem to have a discernable chief, and the activities of this command were limited to strategic-political guidance, theological guidance (which manifests itself in sermons and communiqués), logistical and financial support, weapon transfers, and, more recently, the transfer of commanders and élite forces throughout the theater. The shura did not have supervision or command authority over the daily fighting and other activities of the various jihadist kitaeb operating in north-western Syria and central Iraq.  

Although some of these jihadist forces are engaged in various anti- Shi’ite operations — including slaughter of Arab and Iranian pilgrims — there exist coordination and communication between the jihadist shura and IRGC Intelligence via the Quds Forces and the “al-Qaida” command center in Iran. There is strong indication that Abu-Musab al-Suri, Shawqi al-Islambouli, and several other jihadist luminaries associated with the Quds Forces communicate routinely with the new shura. The messages from Iran reflected the determination of the jihadist supreme leadership to transform the ongoing crises into a strategic campaign that will most likely escalate into the long-sought onslaught on Islam’s three holiest shrines in Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem.  

In late March 2013, the regional shura was further consolidated and refined in a “summit meeting” taking place in the Lebanon-Syria border area not far from Tripoli. Senior jihadist commanders from Egypt, the Sinai, Gaza, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, and North Lebanon gathered to plan for the coming fighting season. Senior representatives from Qatari and Libyan intelligence were also present. As well, Iranian and Turkish senior intelligence officials were hovering in the flanks of this gathering but do not participate. This meeting came in the aftermath of a few high-level meetings in Qatar, Libya, and Turkey which discussed jihadist sponsorship policies of the three countries particularly regarding Syria and the Gaza Strip. The jihadist commanders recognized that they could not topple the Assad Administration, and that a regional war leading to a Western intervention was their only way to get to Damascus and then to Jerusalem, Mecca, and Medina. The jihadists strategized in this vane. 

Concurrently, there has also been a profound change in the fighting throughout Syria. In early April 2013, the Syrian military launched a complex strategic offensive under the command of Maher al-Assad. The primary objective of the offensive was to roll back recent rebel gains made possible by the flow of trained reinforcements and new weapons from Turkey. The main offensive was preceded by a series of commando raids and ambushes along and across the Lebanese border. Syrian and HizbAllah detachments hit several jihadist encampments and weapon storage sites earmarked for reinforcing the Damascus-area jihadists. The ambushes blocked the main approaches to Damascus. 

The initial focus of the main offensive was in the greater Damascus area. Syrian military activities were characterized by high-tempo offensive operations, high-quality pincer operations, and deep raids. In the other main cities — Homs, Idlib, Hama, and south-west of Aleppo — the pace of operations slowed down as greater ground forces units were committed to battle. The Syrian military was running their determined set-piece operations. The local commanders obviously lacked the newly-discovered skill and flexibility of their Damascus-area counterparts. Massive use of artillery and some commando raids supplemented the steady advance. Overall, Damascus demonstrated new resolve and vastly improved military capabilities, consolidating assertive combat operations in the major cities into a coherent strategic offensive.  

Overall, the rebels were on the defensive. 

After a couple of weeks, the Syrian military offensive was progressing rather well, although fairly slowly. Former Syrian senior officers with the opposition in Turkey expected the Syrian military to move faster. They acknowledge that the rebel forces were suffering major setbacks, that the noose around their urban strongholds was tightening, and that the isolating of the main theaters in western Syria from the cross- border safe-havens was having a major impact on the rebels’ overall posture. The only hope of the rebels was to hold long enough until the US-led West intervenes and save them. Both Syrian senior military officers and the former senior officers agreed that should the Syrian military campaign continued to evolve, it would be virtually impossible for the rebels to recover. Moreover, given the extent of the casualties already suffered by the rebels in the urban centers of western Syria, only a major influx of forces and weapons from across the borders would be able to resurrect the revolt even if the Syrian offensive was brought to a sudden halt. 

By late April 2013, the Syrian offensive focused on isolating the main cities along the Damascus-Aleppo highway from both Turkey and Lebanon. The Syrian military and HizbAllah decided not to attempt to complete the clean-up of the cities before they were certain that no reinforcements and supplies would arrive during the decisive fighting. Syrian forces now had better mobility, were better trained to use helicopters and air support. Most importantly, they were provided with excellent and timely intelligence by the local population and proved capable of exploiting it accurately, quickly, and relatively cleanly (that is, with minimal collateral casualties and damage). 

In mid-May 2013, the Syrian military with HizbAllah forces completed the occupation of Qusayr and quickly redeployed in order to complete the stifling of the jihadist pockets in Homs. The assault followed two weeks of preparatory Syrian-HizbAllah operations which isolated Qusayr from both Hermel, Lebanon, and the Syrian countryside. 

The occupation of Qusayr was a major strategic victory for Assad’s Damascus.  

The Syrian and HizbAllah forces effectively put an end to the jihadists’ ability to infiltrate weapons and reinforcements from Lebanon while the reverse route to the Sunni jihadist bases in north-eastern Lebanon — from Hermel to Tripoli — was now open for the HizbAllah to exploit. 

By the end of May 2013, it was now only a question of time before the Syrian and allied forces completed the occupation of Homs and Hama. The remaining jihadist forces in both towns have long been completely dependent on supplies and reinforcements from Lebanon. Some of the hard-core Islamist urban slums of Homs are densely built. Hence, massive use of artillery fire can be expected. 

The Syrian victory in the Qusay-Homs-Hama area left meaningful jihadist presence only in the Aleppo and Idlib areas. However, the predominantly-jihadist rebel forces in these areas were completely dependent on the flow of supplies and forces from southern Turkey. The sustenance of their operations in Aleppo and Idlib would have a huge political price for Erdogan’s Ankara. Damascus was now in position to contrast between the subsiding violence throughout Syria and the sustained violence near the Turkish border, and thus convincingly argue that only the cross-border sustenance of the jihadists kept the fighting going. 

Meanwhile, starting May 23, 2013, Tehran and Baghdad enabled sizeable Iraqi Sunni jihadist forces to reinforce the so-called “al-Qaida-affiliated” Syrian and foreign jihadist forces in central Syria, mainly in Deir-az-Zawur and Jabhat al-Nusrah-controlled Ar-Raqqah. This surge further integrated the jihadist forces in the entire al-Jazira, making future division of al-Jazira along the old Syrian-Iraqi border impossible. This surge aimed to help the key elements of Jabhat al-Nusrah and other so-called “al-Qaida-affiliated” Syrian, Iraqi and foreign jihadist forces controlled by the Quds Forces via Abu-Musab al-Suri and his group of senior jihadist commanders. As the Syrian military forces and their Iranian, HizbAllah and other Shi’ite allies have been consolidating control over the western parts of Syria, the Iran-dominated Sunni jihadists have been consolidating control over the predominantly-Sunni central parts of Syria (south of the Kurdish zone). These forces do not have to endorse Assad’s Damascus: they have to, and they do, reject the foreign-based, Western-endorsed opposition. 

Ultimately, however, the real key to the strategic success of Assad’s Damascus was the profound transformation of Syrian society during the Spring of 2013. 

These grassroots changes made the military victories of the Syrian military and their allies all but irreversible, thus sustaining the Assad Administration quite safely in Damascus. 

First indications of the major shift came in mid-April 2013. For example, when jihadist forces attempted to consolidate control over oil-rich eastern Syria, the local Masrib tribesmen asked the Assad Administration for Syrian military help against Jabhat al-Nusrah and other jihadist forces. The center of the clash was in the township of Masrib in Deir al-Zor province, where clashes between tribal militias and jihadist forces had been escalating since late March 2013. In mid-April, the tribal forces in the Masrib area found themselves incapable of resisting the better armed and better-trained jihadist forces and appealed to Damascus for help from the Syrian military. The Jabhat al-Nusrah forces retaliated by blowing up 30 houses in Masrib and killing their inhabitants. The Syrian military provided large quantities of weapons and ammunition to the tribal militias, enabling them to successfully attack the Jabhat al-Nusrah and other jihadist forces. The tribal forces reported killing 17 jihadists, including four foreign volunteers. 

The Masrib incident was the first confirmed case where major “neutral” tribal forces changed sides and joined Assad’s Damascus in order to be able to withstand and resist the jihadist onslaught. Since then, a large number of local and tribal militias have asked Assad’s Damascus for weapons, and escalated their fighting against the jihadist forces encroaching on tribal habitats and attempting to enforce neo-Salafism. The number of armed clashes between local militias and jihadist forces kept growing through May 2013. The “neutral” segment — about 60 percent of the Syrian population — hated Assad but dreaded the jihadists even more. Once the “neutrals” realized that the only way to persevere and preserve their traditional tribal way of life against the jihadist imposition of neo-Salafism was joining forces with the Assad Administration, they did. This development — rather than any military victory by the Assad military — was the key to Assad’s triumph. In early Summer 2013, the Assad Administration was getting very close to this point. 

By mid-May, information collected by various UN-affiliated humanitarian entities also confirmed that there had been a profound change in the popular attitude of the Syrian population in recent months. These unofficial conclusions were based on the aggregate data collected by the UN personnel as they have been dispensing food and humanitarian aid throughout Syria rather than a scientific polling. Still, the numbers are so distinct that they merit attention. According to the data, 70 percent of Syrians now supported the Assad Administration, 20 percent were “neutral” and wanted to be left alone, and only 10 percent supported the jihadists and other rebels. This means that the majority of the 60 percent of the “neutrals” decided that the jihadist threat was so great it merited a Faustian deal with the Assad Administration. This trend was in evidence throughout Syria since early 2013, but the data suggested that a large number of the “neutrals” had already taken side. 

The UN field people cited numerous grassroots leaders — all Sunni Arabs — explaining that it was possible to live quietly under the Assad Government for as long as one did not conspire against Damascus and that it was possible to resolve misunderstandings with talks and bribery, while the jihadists imposed themselves on every aspect of life and there was nobody to talk to. Moreover, the plight and destitution of the Winter of 2012/13 convinced the vast majority of Sunni Arabs that international humanitarian aid would reach them only if the jihadist were defeated and that only the Syrian military could accomplish this. 

Hence, ever greater segments of the population yearned to return to the Assad days, imperfect as they were. This was exactly what happened in Chechnya and the rest of the North Caucasus in the early-to-mid 2000s. Having to choose between Chechenization imposing an Arab-Islamist way of life and retaining their Sufi traditions while living under Moscow’s Ramzan Kadyrov, the population overwhelmingly opted for the latter. Bashar al- Assad, like Ramzan Kadyrov, is not going anywhere because his people prefer him, imperfect as he is, to any alternate leader the jihadists offer. 

Consequently, the case made by Assad’s Damascus that the sole remaining fighting is from the Western- and Qatari-sponsored jihadists operating from across the Turkish border in the Idleb and Aleppo areas would now be even stronger and clearer. Moreover, there was now — that is, by the end of May 2013 — a systemic and fairly organized weapons and resources distribution inside Syria which delivered weapons and funds solely to jihadist hands. The attempt to control from Turkey or Jordan who gets weapons — that is, FSA-affiliates — is an exercise in futility. FSA commanders in Turkey are intentionally obfuscating, if not lying, about their associations and affiliations inside. Hence, the ability of “the international community” to impose an anti-Assad political solution on Syria has already been nixed by the grim realities on the ground. 

Come the full onset of Summer 2013, Ankara, Doha, Washington, and their allies will have to choose between accepting defeat in Syria and the victory of the Assad Administration, and between sponsoring a major cross-border escalation and surge into Syria which, irrespective of its outcome, would be Turkish and allied intervention in all but name. Moreover, it would be politically nearly impossible for the US-led West/NATO not to intervene should this surge be defeated by Damascus and its allies. Furthermore, with Turkey’s cross-border intervention no longer deniable, Damascus and its allies will be in position to unleash Turkey’s oppressed minorities starting with the ‘Alawites/ Alavis in the areas from where the jihadists operate and bringing in the Kurds (not to be forgotten, the bulk of the PKK fighters leaving Turkey these days relocate to camps west of Lake Urmia, in north-western Iran, controlled by the Quds Forces). It will be impossible for Erdogan’s Turkish military, emaciated as it is by the purge of Westernized officers, to stem the tide. 

Neither the complexities of the inner-Syrian struggle and the awakening of the deep interior, nor the travesty of the advocated foreign intervention should distract from the overall historic context of the crisis. 

The key to the future of the region is the Fertile Crescent of Minorities (from east to west: Ahwazi Arabs, Kurds, ‘Alawites, Druze, Maronites, Jews, and Circassians), and especially their Levant section, because they constitute a buffer between the Arab Islamist upsurge and the hegemonic ascent of the Islamist outside powers: Turkey, Egypt, and Iran. Only a viable Fertile Crescent of Minorities — of which the ‘Alawites and Druze of Syria are presently the most beleaguered elements — can prevent the simmering Arab Middle East from conjoining with the Islamist- jihadist ascent of neo-Ottoman Turkey, Ikhwani Egypt and Mahdivist Iran — thus jointly creating an explosive critical mass. By then, the modern Arab states will have succumbed to fracturing along ethno-tribal lines — thus subjugating the entire al-Jazira to the dominance of the Islamist Tripartite Alliance. 

Hence, the main quandary facing the international community is not whether Bashar al-Assad the individual remains in power. Nor is it whether “his” Administration survives the upheaval. The main challenge in resolving the Syria crisis is preventing the replacement of an ‘Alawite-Druze dominated government by an Islamist- jihadist administration. No less important is the imperative to restore and preserve a viable modern Syrian state via meaningful political reforms, as well as economic recovery and modernization.  

It was — at the end of May 2013 — still possible to negotiate with the Assad inner-circle the establishment of a nationalist government in Damascus with emphasis on regionalization and diffusion of power which would ensure the rights of the Sunni Arab tribes, extended families and urban élite, as well as the nation’s minorities. Only the transformation of Syria through such negotiations would ensure that all pertinent international agreements to which Syria is beholden would remain valid. Ultimately, the restoration of Syria as a key to the Fertile Crescent of Minorities remains the real vital interest of the West. 

Thus, in addressing the turmoil in Syria special attention must paid not to throw out the baby (‘Alawite-Druze pre-eminence) with the bath water (ending the fratricidal violence). Democratic reforms must acknowledge the country’s Sunni majority and diversity of character and interests, but not at the expense of the minorities. The marginalization and destruction of the Syrian section of the Fertile Crescent of Minorities, even if in the name of democracy, not only would not elevate the Sunni majority but would cause cataclysmic upheaval throughout the greater Middle East. 

There are no instant-gratification panacea solutions to the Syrian crisis. Western leaders must resist the temptation to seek such solutions just because there are ugly images of violence on the satellite TV news. The Arab Middle East, of which Syria is a crucial component, is currently experiencing a peak in an historical convulsion spanning a quarter of a millennium. Ultimately, the Arab Middle East will have to find their own solution for their own problem. Action by the West is not a guarantee for conflict resolution.  

Western military intervention would more likely to spark a convulsion which would set the region aflame than help alleviate the crisis. Western leaders should internalize what Albert Einstein said: “If I had one hour to save the world, I would spend 55 minutes defining the problem and only five minutes finding the solution.”

The Road to Damascus is Paved With Ill-Intent 

The Biblical conversion of Paul to Christianity “on the road to Damascus” implied a turning point for the onetime antagonist of Christ. But now the road to Damascus is an unmarked and uncertain path, full of treachery and hidden motives ... 

Analysis. By Gregory R. Copley, Editor, GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs.  Events unfolding in the Levant — particularly with regard to the externally-sponsored conflict underway within Syria — during April and May 2013 were being played out like a flickering, imprecise lantern show in the international media, distorting and mis-directing major states’ policies toward the region.  

The actual events on the ground were on one planet; those same events portrayed in the international media and political arenas were on an entirely different one. But that was not by accident: there has been a strong element in reporting and policy statements of attempting to portray the origins and the “inevitability” of outcomes along the lines of wishful thinking. 

What is being disguised by all of this is an underlying series of conflicts, which Defense & Foreign Affairs has attempted to lay out over the past few years¹. Again, there are several fundamentals: 

• 1. The deep geo-strategic competition — indeed, profound strategic rivalry — between Iran and Turkey, something which is now coming to a head; 

• 2. The historical rivalry between Russia and Turkey, briefly contained in recent years, but now resurging; 

• 3. The evolving (over the past half-century in particular) fear on the part of the Sunni states and communities that Iran can and will strategically dominate them, not merely on the grounds of Iran’s Shi’a religion, but on historical Persian (ie: non-Arab) cultural and strategic drives (which have been apparent for more than three millennia); and 

• 4. The reality that there is no external power presently in the Levant-Mashreq-Arabian-Persian Gulf-Red Sea region which has sufficient authority to ensure quiescence and compliance. This has not been the case for about 500 years. 

But on the current situation: To begin with, there were reports during the first week of May 2013 that chemical weapons had been used in the conflict in Syria, and this — very significantly — followed “concerns” by the US about possible use by the Syrian Government of chemical weapons, despite the fact that there had been no suggestion of such use. 

Then there were three significant strikes by Israeli Air Force aircraft (probably F-16Is launching a series of highly-accurate SPICE smart bombs and possibly other weapons from Lebanese airspace) against targets in Syria on May 5 and — against the Republican Guard base the Mount Qassyoun military facility outside Damascus — on May 7, 2013. 

Turkish and US official agencies indicated that the two events were linked, and made misleading — and knowingly incorrect — statements on some aspects of what were, in fact, two very separate and unrelated incidents. 

The statements by US and Turkish officials seemed to indicate that a “red line” had been crossed by the Syrian Government of Pres. Bashar al-Assad, and that this opened the way for possible US intervention. 

All of this has been against a backdrop of an international portrayal of the Syrian situation that: 

• (i) The Government of Pres. Bashar al-Assad was about to collapse at any moment, a portrayal which had been defied by events for some three years; 

• (ii) A spontaneous civil war was underway in Syria, despite the reality that it was a war promoted by the US and fueled by weapons, manpower, logistics, and propaganda, from Qatar, Turkey, and, to a degree, Saudi Arabia, with those players pursuing separate agendas which all entailed the removal of a pro-Shi’a ‘Alawite Syrian Government supported by, and supporting, the Shi’a Government of Iran; and 

• (iii) The vilification of Iran for its pursuit of nuclear weapons (which was true insofar as this was the stated case by the West, but which case was supported by Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia out of their direct geo-strategic competition with Iran, in the hope that the US and Israel would actually be prompted to fight Iran on their behalf). 

What has been attempted by the Turkish, US, UK, and some other governments and media is to obfuscate some of the realities, and blur other issues so as to portray a situation which is not realistic. That is not to plead a case for Pres. al-Assad or Iran, but rather to highlight that, if policy judgments are to be taken, that they be taken in light of the facts seen in appropriate context. 

Syria and Chemical Weapons 

The Syrian Armed Forces have long held stocks of chemical weapons. The Global Information System (GIS) and Defense & Foreign Affairs Handbook have noted for some years: “Syria is considered to have chemical agents and munitions. It has a biological agents and munitions program and may already possess biological agents and munitions. Israeli and US analysts report that Syria has the capability to produce botulinum toxin, ricin toxin and anthrax at its two biological warfare centers. Additionally, Syria is considered by UK and US analysts as having the most sophisticated chemical weapons program in the Arab world. It has delivery systems suitable for use with chemical and biological munitions. Syria signed the Geneva Protocol with reservations, and signed but has not ratified the Biological Weapons Convention.” 

However, it is clear that the chemical weapons and CW doctrine and units in the Syrian Armed Forces are directly and absolutely copied from those of the (former) USSR. The claims of sarin gas being used in the current Syrian fighting, however, show a substance and use doctrine totally alien to Syrian Army practice. Defector debriefs have indicated that Syrian chemical weapons are designed for major urban warfare in which entire communities are targeted for destruction; they are not suitable, or designed, for open street warfare where Syrian Government forces would be exposed. As well, sarin is a substance — often made up in a bathtub concoction — used more by al-Qaida and other terrorist groups (such as the attack by members of Aum Shinrikyo on March 20, 1995, against civilians in a Tokyo subway).  

The principal chemical weapon in the Syrian arsenal is VX. 

“Evidence” of Syrian Government alleged use of “chemical weapons” came in the form of polluted soil samples provided by the Sunni jihadis fighting the Government. Significantly, however, there was no actual evidence of chemical weapons residual in these samples, nor in the corpses delivered as “proof” of a Government CW attack. Despite this, significantly, the US Government issued statements implying the credibility of the CW use reports by the Syrian Government, and noting that this was pushing the US closer to a situation whereby a “red line” had been crossed by the Assad Government, requiring US response. Not surprisingly, this was further promoted by the Turkish Government. 

However, by escalating a climate which, de facto, promoted a belief that the Syrian Government was using, or would use, chemical weapons, the US White House has begun to build acceptance for an escalation of US aid to the Sunni rebel groups to include, initially at least, weapons and munitions. That was strongly suggested by US Defense Dept. officials at the beginning of May 2013. 

There is clearly a process which was being created to generate or sustain the sense of “inevitability” that the tide was (still) turning against Assad, and the threat of US intervention remained high. As well, the confluence of events with the allegations of chemical weapons use and the Israeli air strikes, the impression was being given that Israel had now entered the fray in an attempt to ensure the overthrow of Assad. [However, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria, emphasized in a statement May 6, 2013, that it had reached no conclusions about the possible use of chemical weapons in Syria’s civil war, but indicated that the “rebels” appeared to have been the ones using the sarin.] 

But it was clear that Israel’s actions had nothing to do with the media froth — stirred by politicians — about chemical weapons. Neither was there any indication that Israel wished to see the end of the Assad Government. 

Israel, Syria, and Turkey and Iran: A Love-Hate Quadrangle 

The Israeli strikes in early May 2013 against Syrian targets were all very carefully delineated to ensure a message as well as a military outcome. Firstly, Israel did nothing to strike at Syrian military units conducting their campaign against the jihadist insurgents. It targeted units conveying Iranian weapons being routed to HizbAllah units for use against Israel, particularly Fattah 110 missiles. 

The strikes can be seen as parallels to the Israeli Air Force strikes in late October 2012 against the Yarmouk factory and the Sudan Technical Center, near Khartoum, Sudan because these facilities were providing similar Iranian-developed weapons to HizbAllah and Gaza-based HAMAS. 

The US Associated Press noted on May 5, 2013: “Israel says the Iron Dome [anti-missile defense system] shot down hundreds of incoming short-range rockets during eight days of fighting against  HAMAS militants in the Gaza Strip last November [2012]. HizbAllah fired some 4,000 rockets into Israel during the 2006 war, and Israel believes the group now possesses tens of thousands of rockets and missiles.” The logic of the May 2013 strikes was, for Israel, clear: Iran had attempted to test how far Israel’s restraint would go, knowing that, for the time being, Israel was anxious that Pres. Assad not be overthrown, largely because the Government of Israel believed a Sunni-dominated outcome would be far worse for Israel and the region. 

As well, from an Iranian standpoint, Tehran was conscious of the reality that it might have to move strenuously to safeguard its investment in Syria. A Sunni-dominated Syria would end, for the time being, any prospect of Iran’s strategic reach to the Mediterranean. Iran’s only other option would be to mend fences with Israel, and start to restore the millennia-old Iran-Israel partnership, as the late Shah of Iran had done. 

In the meantime, Iran has made it clear to the Turkish Government that Tehran would absolutely not allow Syria to go without a fight which could — and almost certainly would — ultimately entail “strategic actions” against Turkey on a number of fronts. Turkish Prime Minister Reçep Tayyip Erdogan is already confronted by several major challenges: (a) the fact that the Turkish Armed Forces are largely impotent, because he decapitated their leadership out of fear of a new military coup d’etat to restore the General Staff’s supremacy in government; (b) the continuing demands for Kurdish rights; and — among many other challenges — an economy which is delicate and dependent on Russian goodwill to a far greater degree than he would readily wish to acknowledge. 

Prime Minister Erdogan attempted to mitigate the growing Kurdish situation by striking what he felt was a deal with the imprisoned leader of the PKK (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan: the Kurdish Workers’ Party), Abdullah Ocalan, who still languishes in a Turkish prison under sentence of death. On March 20, 2013 (Kurdish New Year), he announced an “historic call” to end the fighting between the PKK and the Turkish Government. The ceasefire would require all the PKK’s armed fighters inside the country to leave, a process which began in early May 2013. 

This — like the triumphal “deal” to normalize Turkish-Israeli relations brokered by US Pres. Barack Obama on March 22, 2013 — was, however, illusory. PKK sources, even as they began moving to safe- havens in Iraq in the first week of May 2013, acknowledged that Ocalan had made his “call” as one more step to stave off the hangman, and his followers understood that. But the fight was not, in reality, paused or shelved, and Iran has, in fact, stepped up its active support for the PKK and other Kurdish movements fighting the Turkish Government, mostly from safe-havens in Iraq. 

Iran has the capacity to mobilize the PKK and other Kurdish movements against Turkey, and this may be a challenge which the Erdogan Government cannot ultimately meet. In all of this, as well, the issue of the Armenian community’s potential rôle in all of this cannot be under-estimated, and Armenia — with a strong lobby in the US — is an ally of Iran, Greece, and Turkey.² Moreover, the Greek and Cypriot governments have a stake in seeing an initiative to break up Turkey succeed, given the threats which Turkey has continued to make against Greek Ægean territorial waters and islands, and to continue its military occupation of more than one third of Cyprus (with attendant and ongoing blackmail of Cyprus to delay or confound the development of offshore Cypriot natural gas reserves). For now, and despite growing closeness between Mr  Erdogan and US Pres. Obama, Turkey’s chances of joining the EU are slipping further away; indeed, the EU itself is fighting for cohesion. 

Several critical strategic questions remain for Mr Erdogan, such as whether he can, through the grudging re-establishment of the restoration of “normal” diplomatic relations with Jerusalem, stave off Israel’s active participation in covert acts hostile to Turkey’s survival. At present, Israel has been persuaded that the preservation of Turkey would be in Israel’s strategic interests, but it is worth remembering that until the beginning of 1979, Israel fought hard to help sustain the unity and strength of Iran. 

That changed progressively over the subsequent decades to the point where the Binyamin Netanyahu Government of Israel has come to actively participate in steps designed to weaken and even dismember Iran. Turkey’s transformation from secular and anti-Islamist bastion to Islamist and anti-Israeli activist state may not have been hallmarked by a visible “revolution”, but its change is as profound as was the 1979 change in Iran. 

Washington may not have noticed it (although the White House has embraced it), but Israel can hardly much longer ignore it. 

In all of this, of course, Russia has a profound influence. When Turkey found itself strategically isolated at the end of 2008 and early 2009, it was forced to kow-tow to Moscow, which had the ability to cut off the flow of much of the transit oil and gas to Europe, via Turkey, from the Caspian. This would have devastated the Turkish economy, so Ankara made noises of friendship and cooperation with Moscow³. Not that there was any improvement in the historical animosity between the two, but the mutual containment situation prevailed briefly. Subsequently, however, Ankara has begun openly opposing Russian strategic interests, including Russian commitments to Syria. 

Moscow was not letting this confrontation pass unremarked. 

The US Obama Administration’s call for Russian help in removing Syrian Pres. al-Assad, therefore, should be seen as asking Moscow to act against its own interests, and yet Washington phrases the request as though Russian Pres. Vladimir Putin was somehow unreasonably supporting a dictator who was bound to fail. US Secretary of State John Kerry called on Pres. Putin in Moscow on May 7, 2013 (while also meeting Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov) in the knowledge that both sides did not wish to appear at odds over the Syria issue. But it should be seen as extremely unlikely that Russia could be persuaded to act against its own vital strategic interests merely because Obama and Kerry want to support a situation which would ultimately be inimical to Russian interests in the area. 

From another perspective, the actions of Iran in the area need also to be seen through the prism of the forthcoming (June 14, 2013) Iranian Presidential elections, in which outgoing Pres. Mahmud Ahmadi-Nejad was hoping to see a continuation of his policies through the election of his key protégé, Esfandiar Rahim Masha’i. This seems unlikely. 

This writer noted, in a report in Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis of October 6, 2009: “Finding a way in which Ahmadi-Nejad can be removed from office [by the Supreme Leader] without further damaging the image of clerical governance, and finding a suitable replacement who has the authority of a Bonapartist, yet still subservient to the ‘Revolution’.”

“One clear candidate appeals to many clerics: Tehran Mayor Mohammed Baqer Qalibaf. Mayor Qalibaf, who has strong battlefield leadership credentials from his service in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC: Pasdaran), is a strong opponent of Ahmadi-Nejad, and yet is seen as strongly nationalistic and supportive of the clerical system of government. Dr Assad Homayoun, President of the opposition Azadegan movement, told GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs that his sources indicated that there was movement toward replacing Ahmadi-Nejad with either an active Pasdaran leader, or a strong civilian such as Qalibaf.” 

That remains the outlook, and the influence of the Pasdaran should not be under-estimated, either in the election of a new leader, or in the strategic actions taken with regard to Syria. Israeli writer Brig.-Gen. (rtd.) Dr Shimon Shapira, writing in Jerusalem Issue Brief on May 5, 2013, even went so far as to say that Iran planned to take over Syria, citing a mid-April 2013 visit by HizbAllah leader Hassan Nasrallah to Tehran for meetings with Supreme Leader ‘Ali Khamene’i and Gen. Qasem Suleimani, commander of the Quds Force of the Pasdaran. Suleiman reportedly prepared an operational plan named after him and “based upon the establishment of a 150,000-man force in Syria, the majority of whom will come from Iran, Iraq, and a smaller number from HizbAllah and the Gulf states”. 

Shapira went on to note: “Mehdi Taaib, who heads Khamene’i’s think tank ... recently stated that ‘Syria is the 35th district of Iran and it has greater strategic importance for Iran than Khuzestan [an Arab- populated district inside Iran]’. Significantly, Taaib was drawing a comparison between Syria and a district that is under full Iranian sovereignty.” 

In all of this, in Iran, Israel, Turkey, the US, and elsewhere, we see the play of short-term interests — such as elections — versus long- term interests. 

Caught in the middle of all this, in many respects, is Cyprus and the development of the Eastern Mediterranean gasfields, held hostage by Ankara, which has promised to make investment and exploitation in and of the offshore Cypriot gasfields — and therefore the provision of an alternative energy supply for Western Europe, independent of Turkish transit fees — difficult. Turkey is holding out, logically, for a stake in the energy resources. 

In all of these developments, too, we see huge gambles being taken as Washington, Ankara, Doha, and Tehran attempt to win “throw-of- the-dice” gains before their situations change irreversibly.

Footnotes:

1. See, for example: “Syrian Acquisition of Iraqi Chemical Weapons Noted in 2002; Qatar Now Reported Entering WMD Market”, in Defense & Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy, 11/12-2012; “Beirut Assassination Showed Lebanese Involvement in Anti-Syrian Fighting”, in Defense & Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy, 10, 2012; “Turkey Stumbles, But Washington Pushed”, in Defense & Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy, 10-2102; “Iran at Its Strategic Juncture”, by Dr Assad Homayoun and Gregory Copley, Defense & Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy, 7-2012; and “Suspended Belief”, by Gregory R. Copley, in Defense & Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy, 3-2013; and “Turkey’s Brinkmanship Bluster Hides Major Domestic Security, Internal Power, Economic, and Regional Strategic Problems” in Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis, October 18, 2011.

2. See “Turkey-Armenia Accord Stirs a Multitude of Strategic Issues and Potential Outcomes, as US Abandons Azerbaijan to Woo Iran’s Clerical Leaders” by Gregory R. Copley and Yossef Bodansky; and “Background: The Turkey-Armenia Rapprochement”, by Yossef Bodansky; in Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis, October 14, 2009.

3. See: “Turkey Makes its Strategic Choice: Russia”, in Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis, March 3, 2009; and “Turkey’s Strategic Options Shift as the Country Becomes Increasing Isolated”, in Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis, February 27, 2009.

Meanwhile, Turkey’s antagonism of Russia — Turkey’s biggest trading partner, and the country which controls the east-west oil and gas pipeline traffic — and of neighboring Iran means that Turkey has now once again aroused two implacable and equally driven adversaries. Iran, in particular, has the power to mobilize not only Turkey’s Kurds, but also its Shi’a Muslim population. This is not to deny the continuation of day-to-day business between Turkey and Iran² in the meantime, but there should be no mistaking the reality that “the gloves are off” as far as Tehran is concerned.

In part this is because Turkey chose to side with the US Barack Obama Administration and its key regional operational ally (for the moment), Qatar, in literally declaring war on Syrian Pres. Bashar al-Assad. “No problems” with neighbor Syria became “nothing but problems”, and antagonized not only Iran — Syria’s principal ally — but also Russia. These issues have been chronicled extensively by Defense & Foreign Affairs during the past two years³.

[What was ironic, in March 2013, was that the United Kingdom Government had continued to follow the British media line which supported the propaganda of the jihadists in Syria — promoted by the Turkish Government — as representing the population of the country. The UK was, as a result, committing military aid to the Sunni sponsored war in Syria, acting against broader British interests. The US State Dept., too, in early March 2013, began to announce in public what it had been doing in private for the past year or more: it would provide supplies and other assistance to the Syrian groups opposing the Assad Government.]

Suffice it to say that despite the attraction to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) interest in having Turkey as a member, Turkey’s actions in Syria and elsewhere in the region — seen as benefiting mostly the US and its allies (even though the longer-term outcomes may not benefit the US) — have gone against the interests of the SCO’s principal players: Russia and the People’s Republic of China (PRC), both of which having strong interests in building a relationship with a stable Iran.

The vehemence of the Turkish Government’s behind-the-scenes hostility toward Iran, in part because of Mr Erdoğan’s views and in part because of the perceived utility of obliquely attacking Iran to gain Turkish leadership in the Sunni Muslim world, has also backfired, in part because the region remembered with distaste the earlier period of Turkish (Ottoman) overlordship and this counted for more than the staged anger by Ankara over the strong Israeli response to Turkish Government-backed provocation with the Mavi Marmara incident on May 31, 2010.

That the artificially-sustained political furor over the Mavi Marmara incident persists into 2013, and that observers in Israel, the West, and elsewhere even continue to take it at the face value given to it by Ankara is a distraction. The Turkish Government demands an apology for Israel’s actions in the incident. Many in Israel feel that an apology would allow Turkish-Israeli relations to resume, honor satisfied.

The reality is that Ankara will not allow any Israeli apology (for having acted in accordance with its own policies of securing its maritime quarantine of Gaza) to be acceptable. The demand for an “Israeli apology” is merely an opportunity to consistently place Israel on the defensive. The present Turkish Government has no intention of allowing for a rapprochement, even though it continues to use the “dangled carrot” as an inducement for Israel to continue to supply security equipment to Turkey and to induce Israeli cooperation on possible supply through Turkey of export gas from the Israeli Tamar offshore gas fields — the largest Mediterranean offshore organic gas deposit found to date — when it comes on line in April 2013.

Indeed, Israel did propose a pipeline to ship some gas to Europe via Turkey; Ankara failed to respond. Then, in March 2013, Israel signed a heads of agreement with Russia’s Gazprom to market those elements of the Tamar field earmarked for export. Thus Russia has continued to out-maneuver Turkey in dominating east-west energy delivery to Europe. Turkey thus clings to the hope that its military foothold in Cyprus — where Turkish forces have remained in control of 37 percent of the island since the Turkish invasion of 1974 — will enable it to extract a promise of control of some of the gas fields which extend into Cypriot waters. But this, too, is illusory: the “Catch-22” situation is that Turkish military occupation of Cyprus remains illegal and is the most critical constraint on Turkey joining the EU, of which Cyprus is already a member. But Turkey could perhaps negotiate a quid pro quo with Cyprus: military withdrawal for a special deal on gas from the Cypriot fields. Cyprus has already hinted that this could be available, but Ankara wants more than it can realistically expect to get, so it may end up with nothing at all.

Turkey’s supposed special relationship with Azerbaijan, a key supplier of transit oil and gas to Europe via Turkey, is also less secure than it might seem. As much as Azerbaijan has resisted subordination to Moscow, it is clear that Turkey has not helped Baku, whereas, very discreetly, Israel has and does support the Azerbaijan Government in many ways.

To break out of this seemingly intractable downward spiral — compounded by the reality that the Turkish economy is very much part of the “Potemkin village” and is less robust than has been portrayed — there are elements remaining in the Turkish Armed Forces who have recently and privately mooted encouraging a “military adventure” in which Turkey comes into a military clash with neighboring Greece over the issue of Ægean maritime jurisdiction (given that Turkey has not signed the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea — UNCLOS — which protects Greek claims to the Ægean islands and surrounding seabeds and exclusive economic zones).

The premise postulated by Turkish military sources is that this would either transform the Ægeran situation or, more likely, lead to the downfall of the AKP Government of Turkey. This would be, perhaps, one of the few options left to the old-school military in Turkey to rid itself of AKP Government which has oppressed it.

The litany of misadventures under the AKP include the discreet pursuit by Turkey of expanding its options in nuclear weapons acquisition. Turkey has played a key rôle as technology supplier in the nuclear weapons programs of Pakistan and Iran in the past (and therefore, indirectly, of the DPRK nuclear program). Despite the increasing dis-utility of nuclear weapons, Ankara feels that its prestige and strategic invulnerability are dependent on having weapons now held by many of the surrounding powers (EU, Israel, Iran, Pakistan, Russia).

It is not illogical, but neither is it a practicable strategic path.

Without belaboring the points, Turkey’s present dilemma includes:

• Increasing domestic division, with the potential for much more, regardless of “public diplomacy” which claims to be addressing “the Kurdish problem”;

• An economy which has had some overt indicators of growth, but which faces a real hollowness (and a discreet outflow of capital, offsetting the foreign direct investment), especially given the fact that Turkey depends existentially on the transit of energy which Russia has proven it can cut off at will;

• Increasing hostility with its key neighbors: Iran, Iraq, Syria, Israel, Russia, Armenia (a strong Russian ally), Greece, and Cyprus, including the refusal to end the state of illegal military occupation of Cyprus;

• Increasing refusal to meet the basic admission criteria for the EU, and merely using the threat of joining the SCO as a lever;

• Declining utility as a NATO ally, given NATO’s own declining mission;

• Increasing likelihood of being left out of the regional energy dynamic;

• The failure of its policy to overthrow the Assad leadership in Syria, but, worse, the prospect that if Ankara persists in this approach, Iran would likely retaliate with retribution against Turkey; and so on.

Much of Turkey’s fate lies in its potential to leverage a rôle as the energy transit zone, and — ideally from Ankara’s standpoint — a possible rôle in actual energy production from onshore or offshore reserves. Turkey presently gets some 90 percent of its gas from imports, but in early March 2013 the Turkish Association of Petroleum Geologists estimated that Turkey had more than 1.5-trillion cubic feet of shale natural gas, with most of that coming from south-eastern provinces. That may be the glimmer to which the Turkish Government can pin some hopes.

As well, in January 2013, Turkish Energy Minister Taner Yildiz signed a 10-year deal with Algeria’s state- owned energy company, Sonatrach, for supply of 140-billion cu.ft. a year of liquefied natural gas (LNG). That contract was to reduce Turkish dependence on Russia for gas supplies. That helps Turkish independence for its domestic needs.

But, with Russia able and willing to re-direct much Caspian energy away from transit to Europe through Turkey (albeit at the cost of limiting Russia’s ability to transit the Dardanelles with its Black Sea Fleet), Turkey faces constraints on its attempt to create a revived Ottoman-like influence on the region. The Davutoğlu “no problems” policy has translated into a policy of seemingly deliberate, hubris-driven antagonism, even with its greatest traditional allies of the past half- century, the US and the UK.

For the moment, the US Obama White House and the US State Department have little option but to continue to use Turkey as a staging horse in the Levant and into Central Asia. However, the Turkish Government itself is making it difficult for its US sponsors by refusing to cooperate on EU entry conditionalities or on military withdrawal from Cyprus.

What Ankara has failed to recognize is the declining US ability — or willingness — to remain engaged in Europe (and therefore be able to pressure the EU, including Cyprus), and its declining ability to support Turkey. Even the latest US military supplies to Turkey, like those to Egypt, are facing increasing scrutiny from the US Congress and media.

What the US has thus far failed to do has been to determine its alternatives in the region, given that the White House and State Dept. are reluctant to support strengthened reliance on Israel, or know how to handle Egypt’s changing situation (even though Washington helped precipitate the Islamicization of Egyptian politics). But geostrategic alternatives are possible.

The primary question is where the US — and, indeed, where the EU — wishes to go. The EU wants a degree of stability in fossil fuel energy supplies, and this has tied it to solutions dominated in large part by Russia. Turkey had also played a secondary rôle as a transit state, but Russia has demonstrated that it can dominate that situation.

Looking to the broader geography, the question then can be asked whether Iran, indeed, is not a better alternative route for much of the outside world into the Central Asian marketplace of customers and resource suppliers.

In other words, is Iran, and not Turkey, the geopolitical pivot of Eurasia, given its access into the Eurasian heartland and its dominant control over the Persian Gulf?

This gets to the heart of that east- west energy dynamic, which presently links Central Asia with Europe, either northward via Russia, or southward via Turkey (or even, potentially, south of Turkey, via Syria and through the emerging Mediterranean supply chain). That, then, gets to some of the issue over Syria.

If the Syrian “civil war” were just that — a popular uprising against an unpopular tyrant — then why has the Western media reporting been so demonstrably wrong? Why has the “imminent collapse” of the Bashar Government not yet occurred? And why is the US pushing Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia (or supporting them) in arming, financing, and training the Sunni jihadist forces fighting the Syrian Government forces?

Iran wished to run gas pipelines through, essentially, Shi’a controlled areas of Iraq and then through Syria to the Mediterranean and thence to Europe. The US has opposed this, in part to exercise control over the Iranian Government through the international blockade of Iran. Qatar wanted to run a gas pipeline of its own to Europe, via Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and then Syria to the Med. But, prompted by loyalty to Iran, Assad vetoed a Syrian rôle. Qatar, from that point (apart from its ongoing attempts to secure a Sunni defensive position against Shi’a Iran) was committed to the removal of Assad, and the installation of a Sunni leadership in Syria, a move which would ensure the flight of most of the population of minorities, including Christians, Druze, and ‘Alawites, from Syria.

Not insignificantly, Russia continues to build the macro framework for east-west energy movement, and in late February 2013 Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich was in the PRC to attend a first meeting of the bilateral intergovernmental commission on energy cooperation, meeting with PRC Vice Premier Wang Qishan to discuss ties in the oil, gas, electricity and nuclear power sectors. Turkey, which portrays itself as a potentially valuable member of the SCO and an historically embedded member of Central Asia’s Turkic community, has been proving to be a troublesome, rather than a helpful, element in all of this.

So Turkey is not seen as the “indispensable” state in this matrix by anyone other than the US. Some in the EU have suggested that the Union would regret, in the future, not having Turkey as a member. But the only reason for that has been Turkey’s rôle as a transit source for energy for the EU. And given the changing nature of energy for Western Europe — with its own access to shale gas, the possibility of gas from the Greek-Cypriot-Israeli-Egyptian Med. fields, and with potential access to fossil fuels and solar-based fuel via the Mashreq — Turkey’s “indispensability” to the EU may be very short-term.

[Russia, to a large degree, is preparing for the prospect that Western Europe has long-term alternatives to Russian energy. A Bloom- berg news service report by Jake Rudnitsky on March 7, 2013, noted: “Russia is on course to send an unprecedented 25 percent of its crude exports to eastern markets by 2015 as rising demand from China and other Asian consumers attracts sales at the expense of Europe. The country sent 1.1-million barrels a day east in February (2013), or 22 percent of exports, according to Bloomberg estimates based on loading programs and Energy Ministry data. In October (2012), before the East Siberia-Pacific Ocean [ESPO] pipeline was expanded, it shipped 18 percent to Asia. OAO Transneft, the state pipeline monopoly, says the ESPO line will reach its full capacity in two years. The growth in eastern flows shows how the $23-billion ESPO link, Russia’s most expensive infrastructure project, is helping Pres. Vladimir Putin realize the country’s aim of shifting exports away from Europe to tap the faster-growing economies of the Asia-Pacific region. China’s crude imports from Angola, Iraq, Venezuela, and Russia grew by 14 percent to 33 percent last year, according to the Beijing-based Customs General Administration.”]

Where, then, does all this leave Turkey, other than as a state determined to resurrect its caliphate-derived dominance of the Eurasian and Arabian-Egyptian Muslim world? This may be the dream in Ankara, but achieving it requires a measure of diplomatic and military skills which Ankara seems to have lost.

Iran, North Korea, and …

Iran was the perfect ally of the West until Soviet agitprop worked unwittingly and hand- in-glove with the US Jimmy Carter Administration to see the removal of the Shah. Up to that point (ie: from World War II until early 1979), Iran, the Persian Gulf, and the Arabian Peninsula were stable. That arrangement, brought to the pinnacle of efficiency during the US Richard Nixon Administration (1969-1974), literally was key to Western success in the Cold War, a victory which was almost undone by Carter’s short-sightedness.

Post-Shah Iran has achieved for Moscow what had been attempted by the Soviet Union: it broke the Western ability to dominate the Northern Tier. Ultimately, as the US distorted its strategic policy with the second Gulf War (2003-2011) and the US-led Afghan War (2001- present), the West’s ability to sustain a dominant position in the Persian Gulf evaporated, and with it control of the region’s energy. That process also led to a growing sense of insecurity within the southern Persian Gulf states (Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Qatar), and also marked the end of a phase of Western energy history.

Going forward, the West needs to ask whether the 20th Century pattern of fossil fuel acquisition, so focused for the latter part of the Century on the Middle East, is likely to be important for the 21st Century. Is it logical for the region to be of greater importance to the PRC, India, and, say, Europe as far as energy is concerned? And for how long? Are the changing dynamics of energy extraction going to transform the geopolitics of energy? Clearly, yes.⁴

But does that transforming energy pattern — including substantially increasing PRC and Indian import requirements — solely delineate the geostrategic importance of Iran? Clearly, no.

Iran, like Turkey, has historical and current aspirations to regional power. Iran, through its Persian heritage, had perhaps more of a history of cultural and civilizational dominance in the past than Turkey. Its current situation, however, is dominated not by Persian history, or even the modern history of Iran under the Pahlavi Dynasty, but by its attempt to rebuild power built around theocratic legitimacy of a type which led to confrontation with its former Western allies.

Iran’s clerical leaders, wary of rebuilding ties with old allies of the Shah, were also wary of almost all foreign suitors and most neighbors. It was logical that they should develop strong relations with other states which had experience in working outside the Western framework. But it was the relationship which developed between Iran and the Democratic People’s Republic of (North) Korea (DPRK) which has been the most strategically important for Tehran.

What has worked in this relationship, since Iran’s first theocratic leader, “Ayatollah” Ruhollah Khomeini, built a relationship with then-DPRK leader Kim Il-Song in the early 1980s, has been absolute cooperation in all strategic (and many economic) arenas. When the DPRK comes under perceived military pressure from the US, Iran creates a strategic distraction, and vice-versa. The development of strategic weapons, national command authority architecture, and so on, is all shared.⁵ The February 13, 2013, nuclear weapons explosion at an underground site at Punggye-ri, DPRK, was certainly a test of a weapon for Iran (as well as for North Korea), and paid for by Iran.⁶

But Iran has begun to expand its international networking since the original link-up with the DPRK, even though the North Korean link is the strategic key to Iran’s perceived sense of survival in a hostile world; it gives Tehran the belief that nuclear weapons possession will deter foreign attack. Now, however, Iran is attempting to operate in a world wider than merely fending off foreign military invasion; it is working to build a base of relations with Russia, the PRC, and other possible energy clients (including, for example, India).

As with Turkey, which could surge in terms of strategic goodwill from the EU and others if it achieved a face-saving way of withdrawing its forces from northern Cyprus, Iran could move from pariah to acceptable status in the international community if it agreed to abandon its nuclear weapons program. However, much of the prestige of the leadership of each country is tied to the continuation of existing policies, whether these are viable policies or not. To weaken under pressure is — unless skillfully managed — to open the floodgates for domestic opponents.

Clearly, in the case of Iran, the psycho-political case for acquiring nuclear weapons merely as a deterrent against attack is strong. However, as the Pasdaran (Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps) leadership is aware, the warfighting utility of nuclear weapons is marginal at best, and clearly is not a cost-effective capability. Indeed, the distortion of national security spending caused by the required investment in nuclear weapons and delivery systems may be sufficient to actually degrade overall military and national security effectiveness. The United Kingdom, for example, is now undergoing a massive and destructive distortion of its ability to deploy a balanced military force because of the cost of its Trident submarine- launched ballistic missile (SLBM) program. Britain, in fact, could retain strategic credibility by limiting its nuclear deterrent to submarine- and surface-ship launched nuclear equipped cruise missiles, and aircraft-delivered nuclear systems.

Iran could, like Israel, equally move toward a cruise missile-delivered theater nuclear capability which might actually have some warfighting potential, as opposed to “city-killer” ballistic missile systems of questionable viability and survivability.

What we are seeing, then, in Iran, as with Turkey, is that policies are being made without a comprehensive understanding of the strategic terrain or a balanced view of the threats and opportunities being faced. Equally, however, the friends and adversaries of Turkey and Iran fail to understand the dynamic of decisionmaking governing the leaderships in Ankara and Tehran.

If Iran is to evolve — as it must — then external leaders must weigh whether it would change more in the absence of embargoes and threat, and with positive incentive. Equally, it should be asked whether the present iteration of Iranian leadership can break with its conditioning of paranoia as to external threats so that it can embrace change. Indeed, the current set of mixed messages — carrot and stick — being proffered by Washington are hardly conducive to changing that sense of paranoia in Tehran, or in Pyongyang, for that matter.

What are some of the realities facing the Iranian clerical leaders?

• The Iranian political context has been changing since the Shah left the country in 1979, but it is having difficulty in transitioning to a fully “normal” administrative and political system which is regarded internally and externally as “legitimate”. This keeps the leadership on the defensive, but it appears not to know how to evolve fully into a comfortable — and accepted — system. But it has transformed substantially in the past three decades, albeit without the significant focus on modern- style approaches which would make its economy more efficient (à la the PRC, for example);

• Iran has developed a defensive ring of alliance partners, but primarily depends on its security relationship with the DPRK for its “poison pill”-type deterrence of any foreign (meaning, for the most part, US) military threats, However, Iran has become defined by its alliance partners, in many respects. The acquisition of nuclear weapons, equally, provides only a deterrent capability and does not assist in warfighting or power projection (except for the provision of strategic prestige within its immediate region);

• Change in Iran could well be stimulated by domestic economic conditions (either more widespread wealth or more erratic hardship spikes), but it is unlikely to be stimulated by direct external threat. Indeed, direct external threats against Iran have traditionally consolidated support for the status quo, and have caused change to be delayed or muted. The case of the Iraqi attack on Iran (the 1980-88 war) was a case in point, causing Iranians to rally around Khomeini at a time when he otherwise would have been ousted.

The Strategic Context

Turkey and the Iran-DPRK alliance are obviously not the sum total of the “complex soup” of the Eurasian, Euro- Atlantic and Asia-Pacific strategic matrix, but they represent, in many ways, the less stable elements in it. They are the components which can be described as “metastasizing”: growing a web of accidental and deliberate tentacles which cross into many arenas.

In many respects, Afghanistan may, after the US-led Coalition forces withdraw (in a meaningful sense) by 2014, may — in some areas — represent an area of ongoing instability, and may perhaps resume being a safe area for narco- traffickers and jihadis. But in itself it is not likely to be a base for the kind of broader “expeditionary” activities which could be ascribed to Turkey and Iran.

Pakistan — reconstituting itself after the Coalition operations which transited the country to and from Afghanistan — is more likely to gradually re-stabilize itself, in some respect with PRC help. The DPRK itself, as it has been for some decades, is most likely a source of strident rhetoric and nuclear and ballistic missile technology than a source of regional instability. The issues of troubles in North Korea, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and so on, will rumble along, but not in themselves in a way which should impede the continuing growth of “the new Silk Route”, which has already become so broad and multi- stranded that it should be re-named “the new Silk Carpet”.

The question will be whether this trans-Eurasian infrastructral and trading network will be focused around moving energy to Europe, or from Central Asia and the Persian Gulf to the PRC. And whether Western Europe needs Central Asian gas once its shale and Mediterranean gas flows begin.

In all of this, Turkey, for example, may have overplayed its hand and have become “surplus to requirements” as far as the EU or Russia are concerned. Even Iran might find its oil and gas commodities less valuable than at present. In this regard, the new energy technologies and sources (and particularly the shale- derived gas in the shorter term) could reinforce the US’ — and Canadian — tendencies toward introspection and (in the US case) isolationism. The Atlantic, as this writer has noted before, is becoming less contested water than it was in the 20th Century and earlier.

The PRC, meanwhile, had by March 2013 begun to take over the US’ position as the major importing nation for oil, largely because of the US’ growing ability to generate domestic energy. Will this, then, cause the PRC to redouble the kind of maritime capability to import oil across the seas? Or has it already discovered that it is worth investing its efforts in winning that energy across land routes to the Persian Gulf, Russia, and the Caspian Basin? And how much are we already seeing this begin to encroach on the low-cost energy which Western Europe has until now enjoyed? Will this in turn spur a great European regard for energy from West and North Africa, and from nuclear reactors?

Or will rising imported energy prices in Europe further dampen economic recovery, even as North America prospers? When will the United Kingdom, for example, begin shale energy exploitation on a large scale to offset its growing energy trade imbalance?

A butterfly flapping its wings in Punggye-ri in North Korea may not cause a hurricane in the North Sea, but it may be enough to eventually awaken politicians from their narrowly-focused domestic concerns. Everything is connected.

Footnotes:

1. See, for example, Copley, Gregory: “The Atlantic Vacuum; the Pacific ‘Full Sea’”, in Defense & Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy, 7/2012. Also, in the same edition, by the same author: “A Very Different Global Pattern”.

2. See, for example, Copley, Gregory R.: “Iran Effectively Sidesteps Turkey ... With a major new agreement to deliver energy to Europe via Iraq and Syria, Iran continues to transform the region, and fuels the impetus and rivalry for Turkey’s new “Ottoman Region” moves”, in Defense & Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy, 6-7/2011.

3. See, in particular, Bodansky, Yossef: “A Jihadist, Anti-Western Agenda is Being Forced on Syria”, in Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis, April 13, 2012. Also in Defense & Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy, 3/2012.

4. See: Energy Security 2.0: How Energy is Central to the Changing Global Balance in the New Age of Geography. By Gregory R. Copley, Andrew Pickford, Yossef Bodansky, and David Archibald. Alexandria, Virginia, 2011: The International Strategic Studies Association.

5. See, for example, “DPRK Nuclear Test Almost Certainly Detonated a Weapon Intended for Iran; Further Detonations Expected”, in Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis, February 15, 2013. An updated version of that report appears in this edition of Defense & Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy, on page 20, as “DPRK Nuclear Detonation Was Almost Certainly For Iran”. Defense & Foreign Affairs Daily of September 27, 2004, also carried the report “Iran, North Korea Test Deployments of National Command Authority Systems, New Nuclear Systems”. Also published as “Nuclear Age II: Iran, North Korea Test Deployments of National Command Authority Systems, New Nuclear Systems” in Defense & Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy, 10/2004.

6. Iran began, in the early 1990s, to acquire externally-produced (ex-Soviet) nuclear weapons, and later acquired other warheads, believed to be from Ukraine and the DPRK. The viability of these weapons, other than as learning tools, cannot be accurately gauged, even by Iran. See initial reporting on this in the 2/1992 Defense & Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy: “Iran Acquires Nuclear Weapons And Moves To Provide Cover to Syria”.