The Syrian opposition is comprised
of a coalition of four groups who share a few common interests. First,
they are all desirous of seeing a Sunni Islamist government arise in
Syria. One of the organizations, Jabhat al-Nusra, shares ties with
al-Qaida. This week, the U.S. government placed the Syrian group on its
list of terrorist organizations. Alongside its terrorist operations
against the Assad regime, Jabhat al-Nusra also provides assistance to
the local population, a fact which further complicates U.S. and Western
attitudes toward the Syrian opposition.
Despite Jabhat’s status, the massacre
that Assad is committing against his citizens and the desire to act
against Iran has compelled the U.S. and 130 other countries to
recognize the Syrian opposition and its relevant components in the
coalition as “legitimate.”
In order to understand the forces at
work, one needs to grasp the regional and global calculus. The Muslim
world is comprised of Sunnis (90 percent of the Islamic world) and
Shiites (who make up the remaining 10%). The Syrian opposition is
wholly Sunni. Followers of al-Qaida, a Salafist group, are also Sunnis.
The Iranian and Syrian regimes are run by Shiites or ethnicities that
are related to Shiah Islam (the Alawites are an offshoot of Shiah
Islam).
“There is still no shadow government in
exile,” Shapira said. “There is no organized body that could seamlessly
replace Assad tomorrow if the regime collapses now. What we have at the
moment is a coalition of organizations that do not see eye-to-eye on
the ultimate goals of the uprising. I wouldn’t count on this current
crop of leaders to guide Syria into the future. Their joint interest
now is to topple Assad. After the regime falls, there will be a war
among the rejectionist groups as to which one gains control of the
country, and there is likely to be further bloodletting over there.”
The key player — Hezbollah
Acting on the direct orders of
Tehran, Hezbollah has thrown its full weight behind the effort to help
Assad. Within the Lebanese-based group, however, there are serious
disagreements regarding why an organization founded upon hatred of Jews
and Israel is now being asked to murder Muslims and die as Iranian
mercenaries.
While the Syrian rejectionist front is
convening for a summit in Morocco, Hezbollah, an organization that
normally stages large-scale rallies and conferences once every three
years, has put off its planned event for months. This is the conference
in which the organization updates its ideological manifesto and extends
a renewed mandate to its secretary-general.
The man who has ordered the conference to
be put on hold is none other than the secretary-general, Hassan
Nasrallah, who is wary that the gathering will offer opponents of the
Shiite militia’s current policy of aiding Assad a platform to vent
their frustrations.
“Hezbollah’s reputation has taken a huge
hit because of its support for Assad,” Shapira said. “The extent of the
damage is particularly evident in the steep drop in popular support
for Nasrallah all across the Arab world. There is also a crisis in
morale among Nasrallah’s fighters who every day are seeing the dead
bodies of their friends return from across the Syrian border for
burial. The application of jihad against Sunnis is not as effective as
waging war against the Jews.”
Lt. Col. (res.) Michael Segall, another
veteran of Israel’s intelligence apparatus who is also a research fellow
at JCPA, explains why the Iranians are so eager to come to Assad’s
aid. “From Iran’s standpoint, Syria is perceived as an important
element in its rejectionist front against the West in general, and
Israel in particular,” he said. “The Iranians refer to Syria as ‘the
golden link,’ because for years Syria has played host to terrorist
organization and it has allowed the free flow of weapons from Iran to
Hezbollah in Lebanon.”
Now this link is in danger. It is losing
its grip, so the Iranians are acting with a sense of urgency. Iranian
advisers are being dispatched to assist Assad and his military.
Operatives belonging to the Al-Quds Force, a crack, para-military outfit
belonging to the Revolutionary Guards which is responsible for
carrying out special operations abroad, have been sent to undertake
subversive actions against neighboring states while promoting Iranian
interests, just as they have done in the Gulf region as well as in
North Africa.
The Al-Quds Force is known to be active
in Syria. It is providing the regime with advanced technological
equipment in hopes of eventually breaking the spirit and the strength
of the Syrian opposition.
According to Segall, Iran is opposed to
the widely held view that the events in Syria are an outgrowth of the
Arab Spring. Instead, Tehran believes the anti-Assad uprising is the
latest effort to thwart the resistance movement against the West, which
Iran views as “the Great Satan,” and against Israel, or “the little
Satan.”
“The Iranians are operating out in the
open,” he said. “Just like nobody is trying to conceal the fact that
aid for the rebels is coming from Sunni states like Saudi Arabia and
Qatar, Iran is also making no effort to hide its role in helping the
Syrian regime.”
“Iran is a state whose goal is to gain
strategic depth,” he said. “It views the campaign around Damascus as
something much more than just saving Syria itself. This is an important
outpost for Iran as it relates to its struggle against the Western
world, and that is why it is heavily invested there.”
Segall added that the ayatollahs are
pursuing their policies despite domestic criticism from the opposition,
which would much prefer to see money poured into the fragile Iranian
economy rather than bombs designated for Syria and Hamas. This
criticism is likely to grow more ferocious the longer the Syrian civil
war continues and the more burdensome Western sanctions against Iran
become.
Conversely, the Syrian opposition groups
are not bound to anyone, according to Lt. Col. (ret.) Jonathan D.
Halevi, a JCPA research fellow who spent his career at Military
Intelligence. “[The Syrian opposition factions] owe nothing to the
West, and this will have ramifications in the future,” he said. “Today,
most of the rebel arms come from Syrian military bases that they
conquered, or from deserters from the Syrian army. Many of the rebels
went AWOL from the Syrian army, so they are skilled at using arms,
including advanced weapons like tanks and anti-aircraft missile
batteries.”
Halevi points to the Syrian military’s
gradual loss of control on the ground, a predicament starkly reflected
by the increasing use of aerial strikes. This tactic is necessitated by
the Syrian army’s inability to hold onto territory against the rebels.
As such, the military is forced to deploy other threatening means.
“We are not talking about the destruction
of just two tanks, but a massive number of planes,” he said. “The
rebels say that they have destroyed 100 jets, including planes on the
ground. The sense among the rebel groups (including one of them with
which Halevi is in contact) is that Assad’s days are numbered. The
decisive battle will be in Damascus. They will try to take advantage of
the momentum they have amassed in order to make one large push on
Damascus. Then, there will be large-scale acts of revenge and massacres
in the area outside of Damascus. We are talking about war crimes that
will eventually reach the level of genocide.”
“The opposition is joining forces along
two fronts,” Halevi said. “They established a headquarters that has
divided Syria into 15 combat zones. The organization that has gained
control of the funds flowing in from Qatar and Saudi Arabia is the
Muslim Brotherhood, which in turn is transferring the money to their
operatives inside Syria. The money is not coming directly from Saudi
Arabia, but rather through the Turkish border.”
Between Iran and Turkey
Dore Gold, the current president of
the JCPA, once served as ambassador to the U.N. and is a top
diplomatic adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He said that
the international community’s failure to take real action against Syria
can be attributed to Russia.
“The key to any U.N. decision is in the
Security Council,” Gold said. “Decisions are made in the Security
Council whenever there is unanimous agreement or consensus, so that
whoever doesn’t support it will reconcile with it and will not prevent
it.”
“With Syria, the situation is different.
Here, Russia decided to provide full support to Assad. The Russians are
fearful of Assad’s downfall and the bolstering of the Sunni position
in the regime. The way they see it, their main rival on the Islamic
side is the Sunni camp. That is who they’ve been fighting in Chechnya,
and that is the situation in Tajikistan and in the Caucuses. In these
areas, the actors operating against them are Sunnis who receive funding
from states and organizations in the Persian Gulf supported by the
Muslim Brotherhood. That is why they are backing the Iranian-Shiite
camp.”
According to Gold’s analysis, the
opposition forces now control wide swaths of Syrian territory. “The big
question is who will gain control of Syria after Assad is gone. Will
it be all sorts of politicians who are now based in world capitals? Or
will it be military forces active on the ground? In the meantime, it
seems that the people on the ground are not taking their orders from
any political entity.”
The former ambassador shines a spotlight
on Iraq, which in the post-Saddam Hussein era is being run by a Shiite
regime that is for all intents and purposes beholden to Iran. If Assad
falls, the Iranians will lose their foothold in Syria. Nonetheless, we
can expect that just across the border separating the Golan Heights
from Syria, an extremist Sunni regime will arise.
Col. (ret.) Jacques Neriah is also a
research fellow at JCPA. Neriah, who once served as a diplomatic
adviser to the late Yitzhak Rabin, believes that Iran will not let up
in its efforts to impose its influence on what is taking place in
Syria. He raised the possibility of an altogether different scenario
taking shape: an independent Kurdish entity in the north, which would
then invite Turkish intervention that in turn would trigger a more
active Iranian involvement.
“Syria can find itself under the rule of
militias, just like Libya,” he said. “While the central government is
weak, an independent, Kurdish-run entity could come about in the
northeast. There the Kurds would enjoy de facto autonomy, and they would
link up with their brethren in Iraq. This would create a problem for
Turkey. Before, Turkey had to contend with a 400-kilometer ‘Kurdish
frontier.’ Now, they will have a 1,200-kilometer border with the Kurds.
From the Turkish perspective, this is an untenable situation. In such a
scenario, there is a potential for [Turkish] intervention.”
“Either way, we have not reached the end
of the Syrian quagmire,” he said. “After the fall of Assad, we are in
for a long period of constant instability. This will be felt in Lebanon
and perhaps in Jordan as well, the two countries that share a border
with Syria. If Turkey intervenes, Iran will also intervene. There are a
number of variables at work here.”
How will all of this impact Israel?
“Perhaps the ruler that succeeds
Assad, or the organizations that take over the country, will initially
be preoccupied with rebuilding the country and will thus drop the Golan
Heights issue from the agenda. To the same extent, however, they may
need to find an issue that offers them a goal that they could all unite
around, and conflict with Israel certainly fills this need,” Neriah
said.
