by Ben Hubbard, Isabel Kershner and Anne Barnard
Hat tip: Dr. Jean-Charles Bensoussan
“If there is a war, it will be regional,” said Kamel Wazne, the founder of the Center for American Strategic Studies, in Beirut.“Any confrontation will be with the whole resistance front against Israel and its backers.”
By The New York Times | Source: Institute for the Study of War. Satellite images by Bing.
BEIRUT, Lebanon — When an Iranian drone flew into Israeli airspace this month, it set off a rapid series of strikes and counterstrikes that deepened fears over whether a new, catastrophic war was brewing in the Middle East.
That flare-up ended quickly, if violently, with the drone destroyed
and an Israeli jet downed after bombing sites in Syria. But the day of
fighting drew new attention to how deeply Iran has embedded itself in
Syria, redrawing the strategic map of the region.
Tactical
advisers from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps are deployed at
military bases across Syria. Its commanders regularly show up at the
front lines to lead battles. Iran has built and continues to back
powerful militias with thousands of fighters it has trained in Syria.
And it has brought in new technologies, like drones, to spy on enemies
and perhaps to attack them from the sky.
Both
Israeli officials and Israel’s enemies say that any new conflict
between Israel and Iran, or any of its allies, could mobilize Iran’s
expanding network of militant proxies in multiple countries, what Iran
refers to as “the axis of resistance.”
“If
there is a war, it will be regional,” said Kamel Wazne, the founder of
the Center for American Strategic Studies, in Beirut, who studies the
policies of the United States and Iran in the Middle East. “Any
confrontation will be with the whole resistance front against Israel and
its backers.”
Iran
and its allies first intervened in Syria to defend the rule of
President Bashar al-Assad against Syrian rebels after the civil war
broke out in 2011, and later helped his forces against the jihadists of
the Islamic State.
But as the rebels have lost ground and no clear threats to Mr. Assad’s rule remain,
Iran and its allies have stayed, shifting their focus to creating an
infrastructure to threaten Israel, analysts say. Iran continues to train
and equip fighters while strengthening ties with allies in Iraq and
Lebanon, in hopes of building a united front in the event of a new war.
“The
ultimate goal is, in the case of another war, to make Syria a new front
between Israel, Hezbollah and Iran,” said Amir Toumaj, a research
analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies who studies Iran.
“They are making that not just a goal, but a reality.”
Iranian
leaders speak openly of their work to build this axis of resistance
against Israeli and American influence. A key to Iran’s strategy,
analysts and officials say, is to rely not on conventional military
hardware or control of territory, which Israel can easily bomb, but on
building ties with local forces who share its goals and benefit from its
financing and expertise.
That
approach has enabled Iran to amplify its power in the Arab world while
decreasing the threat to its own forces and homeland. It has also
created a problem for countries including the United States, Israel and
Saudi Arabia, who fear Iran’s growing influence but have struggled to
come up with ways to stop it.
Some
people in Israel have started referring to a potential “First Northern
War,” meaning that Israel will have to fight across both the Lebanese
and Syrian frontiers. And many Israelis say the danger is not just from
the new Iranian-backed militias, but also from the Iranian efforts to
give advanced, high-precision weapons capable of hitting sensitive
infrastructure to Hezbollah, Iran’s most powerful and experienced
external force.
Israeli
officials have said that Iran and its allies are seeking to establish a
land corridor from Iran to the Mediterranean, via Iraq, Syria and
Lebanon, to ease the transportation of such weapons and to build
underground factories to manufacture them in Lebanon and Syria. Israel
has been bombing convoys in Syria that are believed to be carrying
advanced arms to Hezbollah, but the group’s covert nature makes it hard
to determine which arms have slipped through and whether its arms
factories are functioning.
Such
arms, coupled with heavy barrages from the more than 100,000 rockets
and missiles without high-precision targeting capability that Israel
says Hezbollah already has, could overwhelm Israel’s defenses.
“Israel
will face not only quantity, but the threat to vulnerable strategic
sites,” said Yaakov Amidror, a former Israeli national security adviser
and now a fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategic Studies.
Referring to the combination of more precise weapons and a new front, he
added: “Each one is problematic; together, they are devastating.”
Iran’s
moves in the region have alarmed the United States. “What’s
particularly concerning is that this network of proxies is becoming more
and more capable as Iran seeds more and more” of its “destructive
weapons into these networks,” Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, President Trump’s
national security adviser, said at a security conference in Munich on
Saturday. “So the time is now, we think, to act against Iran,” General
McMaster added.
In
expanding its influence in Syria in recent years, Iran has followed a
standard template. In Lebanon in the 1980s, it helped create Hezbollah,
which has since evolved into the country’s predominant military force
and a regional power in its own right, joining the wars in Syria, Iraq and Yemen. In Iraq, Iran has sponsored a range of militias while developing deep ties to the Iraqi economy and political system.
The war in Syria gave Iran a new opportunity to advance that project by linking its allies across the Levant together.
Fighters
from Hezbollah routed Syrian rebels near the Lebanese border and Iran
sent advisers to help Mr. Assad’s beleaguered forces during the early
years of the war.
But
by 2013, Mr. Assad’s forces were on the verge of collapse, and Iran
intervened more forcefully, undertaking an extensive regional operation
to train, arm and transport thousands of Shiite militiamen from abroad
to Syria to fight the rebels and the jihadists of the Islamic State.
Estimates
of the number of Iranian military personnel in Syria today range from
the high hundreds to the low thousands. While some directly participate
in combat, most are trainers, commanders or experts who advise the
Syrian military and oversee militias. It is these militias, which could
have as many as 20,000 fighters, that give Iran its true muscle.
Those
fighters include about 6,000 from Hezbollah. Most of the rest of the
militia members — who come from Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Pakistan and
elsewhere — have been enticed to fight in Syria with money and appeals
to their Shiite faith. Indeed, most see the war in Syria in religious
terms, as a jihad against enemies of their religion.
Ali
Alfoneh, a researcher at the Atlantic Council who tracks reports of
foreign militia fighters killed in Syria, said the number of deaths
reported had decreased substantially as those fighting for Mr. Assad
have gotten the upper hand in the war. But instead of leaving the
country, he said, the militias appeared to be shifting their sights
toward Israel.
“Iran
has realized that it is actually possible to maintain a front against
Israel where there is no war but also no peace,” Mr. Alfoneh said.
In
his research, Mr. Alfoneh said he had identified three main Iranian
bases that oversee operations in large parts of Syria — one near Aleppo
in the north and two south of the capital, Damascus — as well as seven
smaller tactical bases near active front lines where Iran and its
proxies have a presence.
The
idea of a permanent Iranian presence in Syria worries Israel, which
fears that it could face a threat there similar to that posed by
Hezbollah in Lebanon. Analysts close to Iran and its proxies say that is
exactly the idea.
“It’s
like a replication of the Hezbollah model,” said Ali Rizk, a Lebanese
analyst who writes for Al Monitor, a news website focused on the Middle
East. Iran is already training fighters in southern Syria, he said, so
that if Hezbollah draws down its presence there, as its leaders have
vowed to, it will leave behind a Syrian prototype.
In
recent months, at least two Iraqi militia leaders have visited the
Lebanon-Israel border with Hezbollah, and militia members say the visits
have included developing plans for how they might collaborate in a
future conflict.
Life has returned to normal
in the Israel-controlled Golan Heights since the day of battle on Feb.
10, and the ski resort on Mount Hermon has been operating as usual.
There was no immediate sense among Israelis of being on a war footing.
But
Israelis and many Lebanese have long worried that another war across
their border is inevitable. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ratcheted up the rhetoric
on Sunday at the security conference in Munich, warning Iran’s leaders
not to test Israel’s resolve and pledging that if pushed, Israel would
act “not only against Iranian proxies that are attacking us, but against
Iran itself.”
Both
sides say they do not want war, and the fear of extensive destruction
and civilian deaths has deterred new hostilities since the last war
between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006. But the more entrenched Iran’s
allies become, the greater the pressure Israeli leaders could face to
launch a strike — and the greater the chances that a miscalculation or
mistake by either side could provoke new hostilities.
Some
analysts have expressed hopes that Russia, which also intervened in
Syria on Mr. Assad’s behalf, could serve as a check on Iran’s ambitions.
Russia has cooperated with Iran during the war but also seeks to
maintain good relations with Israel.
Notably,
Russia has not publicly complained when Israel has bombed convoys
believed to be bound for Hezbollah. Others question to what degree the
Syrian population will buy into Iran’s ideological project, noting that
only a tiny portion of Syrians share Iran’s Shiite faith.
Much
remains unclear about Iran’s intentions. Days after Israel destroyed
the drone, Israeli military officials said they were still not sure
whether it had been armed, had been sent on a surveillance mission or
was merely a test of Israel’s defenses.
“It
is very important for us to understand its mission,” Brig. Gen. Tomer
Bar, the chief of staff of the Israeli Air Force, told reporters. “We
have to understand it and we will investigate it till the end.”
Ben Hubbard and Anne Barnard reported from Beirut, and Isabel Kershner from Jerusalem.
Ben Hubbard, Isabel Kershner and Anne Barnard
Source: https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/02/19/world/middleeast/iran-syria-israel.html?referer=
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