Alistair Crook, former British diplomat for unz.com
Syria has fallen into the abyss – the demons of al-Qaeda, ISIS and the most intransigent elements of the Muslim Brotherhood are flying in the sky. Chaos, looting, fear and a blood-curdling lust for revenge reign. Street executions are incessant.
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and its leader Al-Jolani (who follows Turkish instructions) may have thought they had things under control. But Hayat Tahrir al-Sham is a collective name, like al-Qaeda, ISIS and Al-Nusra, and the factions under it have already fallen into fighting among themselves. The Syrian “state” collapsed in the middle of the night; the police and army went home, leaving the weapons depots open to be looted by the Shebab. The prison doors were smashed (or opened). There were undoubtedly political prisoners among the prisoners, but many were not. Some of the worst criminals now roam the streets.
In just a few days, the Israelis have completely gutted the country’s defense infrastructure with over 450 airstrikes: air defense missiles, Syrian military helicopters and planes, the navy and weapons arsenals – all destroyed in “the largest operation in Israel’s history.”
Syria no longer exists as a geopolitical entity. To the east, Kurdish forces (with US military support) are seizing the former state’s oil and agricultural resources. Erdogan’s forces and proxies are engaged in an attempt to completely crush the Kurdish enclave (although the US is currently brokering a ceasefire of sorts). And to the southwest, Israeli tanks have seized the Golan and the land beyond, reaching within 20km of Damascus. In 2015, The Economist magazine wrote: “Black gold under the Golan: Israeli geologists believe they have found oil in a very difficult area.”
Israeli and American oil bosses decided they had found a cornucopia in the most inconvenient place possible. And Syria – the great obstacle to the West’s energy ambitions – simply evaporated.
The strategic political balancer against Israel that Syria had been since 1948 was gone. And the earlier “detente” between the Sunni sphere and Iran was disrupted by the crude intervention of rebranded ISIS offshoots and by Ottoman revanchism in alliance with Israel, with American (and British) mediation. The Turks never came to terms with the 1923 treaty that ended World War I and by which they ceded to the new Syrian state the lands that constitute present-day northern Syria.
In a matter of days, Syria was dismembered, divided, and balkanized. Why, then, do Israel and Turkey continue to bomb? The bombing began the moment Bashar al-Assad left—because Turkey and Israel were worried that the current occupiers might be temporary and soon be replaced. You don’t have to own something to control it. As the most powerful countries in the region, Israel and Turkey will want to control not only resources but also the most important crossroads and passage in the region, which was Syria.
Inevitably, however, “Greater Israel” and Erdogan’s Ottoman revanchism will clash head-on. Similarly, the Saudi-Egyptian-Emirati front will not welcome the resurrection of either the rebranded ISIS or the Turkish-inspired and Ottomanized “Muslim Brotherhood.” The latter pose an immediate threat to Jordan, which now borders the new revolutionary entity.
Such considerations could push the Gulf states closer to Iran. and Qatar, as a supplier of weapons and resources to the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham cartel, could once again be ostracized by other Gulf leaders.
The new geopolitical map poses a number of direct questions about Iran, Russia, China, and the BRICS. Russia has been playing a complex hand in the Middle East—on the one hand, waging an escalating defensive war against NATO forces and managing key energy interests, while on the other hand, trying to soften the resistance’s actions toward Israel in order to keep its relations with the United States from completely deteriorating. Moscow hopes – without much conviction – that at some future point it can begin a dialogue with the newly elected American president.
Moscow is likely to conclude that ceasefire “agreements,” such as the one reached in Astana to contain the jihadists within the borders of the ISIS autonomous zone in Syria, are not even worth the paper they are written on. Turkey, which was the guarantor of the Astana agreement, has stabbed Moscow in the back. This will likely make the Russian leadership more rigid towards Ukraine and any Western talk of a ceasefire.
Iran’s Supreme Leader said on December 11: “There should be no doubt that what happened in Syria was organized in the command headquarters of the United States and Israel. We have evidence of this. One of Syria’s neighboring countries also played a role, but the main strategists are the United States and the Zionist regime.” In this context, Ayatollah Khamenei refuted speculation about a weakening will to resist.
Turkey’s proxy victory in Syria, however, may turn out to be pyrrhic. Erdogan’s Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan lied to Russia, the Gulf states, and Iran about the nature of the actions being prepared in Syria. But the problem now is Erdogan’s. Those who were deceived by him will eventually get their revenge.
Iran seems set to return to its previous state of gathering the disparate strands of regional resistance to fight against the incarnations of al-Qaeda. It will not turn its back on China, nor on the BRICS project. Iraq, remembering the atrocities of ISIS during its civil war, will join Iran, as will Yemen. Iran will be aware that the remaining elements of the former Syrian army may at some point enter the fight against the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham cartel. Maher al-Assad went into exile in Iraq with his entire armed division on the night of Bashar al-Assad’s departure.
China will not be pleased with the developments in Syria. Uyghurs have played a prominent role in the Syrian uprising (ISIS is estimated to have approximately 30,000 Uyghurs trained by Turkey, which considers the Uyghurs to be an original component of the Turkic nation). China is also likely to see the overthrow of Syria as an increase in potential Western threats to its own energy security lines, which run through Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq.
Finally, Western interests have been fighting over Middle Eastern resources for centuries, and that is ultimately what is behind today’s war.
Is he for or against war, people ask of Trump, after he has already signaled that energy dominance will be a key strategy for his administration.
Well, the Western countries are mired in debt; their fiscal space is shrinking rapidly, and bondholders are starting to revolt. A race is on to find a new collateral for fiat currencies. It used to be gold, and since the 1970s it has been oil, but the petrodollar has failed. The Anglo-Americans would love to have Iran’s oil back, as they did until the 1970s, to build and secure a new monetary system tied to the real value of the goods.
But Trump says he wants to “end wars,” not start them. Does the redrawing of the geopolitical map make a global entente between East and West any more likely?
But it’s probably too early to say whether all the talk of Trump’s possible “deals” with Iran and Russia will come to pass or be possible. It seems Trump needs to secure his domestic “deal” first before he can see if there is any possibility of foreign policy deals.
Perhaps the Governing Bodies (specifically the “Never Trump” element in the Senate) will allow Trump considerable leeway on key nominations for the domestic departments and agencies that govern American political and economic affairs (and which are Trump’s primary concern), as well as allow some leeway on the, let’s call them, “military” services that have targeted Trump in recent years, such as the FBI and the Department of Justice.
The supposed “deal” seems to envisage his nominations still having to go through Senate approval and generally being “on the side” of interagency foreign policy (especially on Israel).
However, it is argued that the interagency magnates insist on vetoing nominations that affect the deepest structures of foreign policy. And therein lies the crux of the matter.
Israelis are generally celebrating their “victories.” Will this euphoria spread to the business elites? Hezbollah has been defeated, Syria has been demilitarized, and Iran is not on Israel’s border. The threat to Israel today is of a qualitatively lower order. Is this enough in itself to ease tensions or to create some broader understanding? Much will depend on the political circumstances surrounding Netanyahu himself. If the prime minister emerges relatively unscathed from the criminal case against him, will he need to make the high “bet” on military action against Iran, given that the geopolitical map has changed so suddenly?