The United States and Israel face fateful decisions on Syria. Israel appears to be moving towards some level of confrontation with the Damascus regime, which is seen as allied with Erdoğan’s Turkey and identified increasingly in Israel as a threat. The US position remains unclear. But if history is any guide (and the unfortunate analogy is Lebanon in the 1980’s), Washington may be tempted to join with Israel. This likely would portend a split with Europe and the Arab world, currently warming to the new Damascus regime, generate tension with Turkey, cause a failed Syrian state, and, most seriously, see Tehran’s exploiting Syrian turmoil to reestablish its “Shi’a Crescent.” Washington and Jerusalem thus should take a deep breath before diving deeper into the Syria morass.
Syria Post-December 2024
The collapse of the Asad regime, while directly due to opposition forces and Turkey, was also the final chapter in the demolition of the Iranian proxy network. The victorious Israeli campaign against Hizbullah forced it to withdraw its ground troops—the heart of Asad’s forces—from Syria, while Israeli and American operations against Iran and its Iraqi proxies limited their ability to intervene. Given the centrality of Syria to Iran’s regional proxy empire, including sway over Syrian neighbors Lebanon and Iraq, Syria’s fall was not just the final but most decisive development of this regional war.
Regime collapse in the region usually generates new problems and international indecision on how to respond. But the story in Syria so far, compared to Iraq in 2003 or to the Arab Spring, has been positive. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) leader al-Shara’a, after seizing effective control, has largely said and done the right things with the Syrian population, avoiding overt oppression of those ethnic and religious communities over which the new government holds sway, and negotiating with others beyond its immediate control (the PKK-led Kurds and the Druze).
Al-Shara’a has been reaching out to the international community with messages of cooperation. His main ally Turkey initially pushed back the Kurds in northeast Syria (known since 2015 as the Syrian Democratic Forces) during the brief anti-Assad campaign. But since then, rather than continuing attacks, Turkey is urging the Kurds to negotiate with al-Shara’a on their incorporation into a unified state. The international community meanwhile has responded in an unusually united way, with Arab countries swallowing their distaste for Islamist upstarts like al Shara’a (and to a lesser degree Turkey’s Erdoğan) to largely embrace the new state; likewise the Europeans and the UN.
The Biden administration followed suit, lifting the $10 million bounty on al-Shara’a, waiving some of the crushing American sanctions on Syria to allow humanitarian and early recovery projects, and dispatching a senior official to Damascus. Israel, understandably given its history and particularly October 7, has been more cautious, bombing the Asad’s regime’s heavy military equipment and naval fleet, and pushing forward its troops some kilometers beyond the Golan Heights.
Israeli Intentions
Israeli concerns about Syria and its Turkish patron are growing while most other countries seek to stabilize the state. In early January, the Nagel Commission report on the future of the Israel Defense Forces was leaked to the Israeli press, warning inter alia of a growing threat from Turkey in Syria. In recent days, Prime Minister Netanyahu has announced a demilitarized zone (at least for the new Syrian army) south of Damascus, without clarity on who would secure it. More dramatically, talk in Israel at think tank conferences, media reports and other indications signal a much more aggressive Israeli policy. Reuters reported February 28 that the Prime Minister urged the US not to reach out to the al-Shara’a government, arguing it should be kept weak and divided. Even more ambitious alleged Israeli plans are appearing in the media, including support for the Kurds in their northeast bastion and other steps to keep Syria divided and prostrate.
To the extent these reports are correct, Jerusalem and Washington will have to think through the many implications. First of all, what is to be accomplished? Human undertakings, including war and diplomacy, require prioritization, in this case against threats. For most of the world, the threats emanating from Syria now center on government failure and state collapse, leading to internal conflict, new destabilizing refugee flows, resurgence of terrorist groups, and Iran reestablishing itself in Syria. For Israel, there are also threats from Turkey aligned with the regime in Damascus.
Prioritizing responses to these various threats requires analysis of how Turkey and Iran might each threaten the interests of Israel, the US and regional stability.
Turkey or Iran
Israeli concerns about Turkey under Erdoğan exploded with his ferocious response to the 2009 Gaza fighting, followed by the “Mavi Marmara” incident in 2010 when ten Turks were killed by Israeli troops when attempting to run the Israeli Gaza blockade. Despite a rapprochement in 2023, including an Erdoğan-Netanyahu meeting, the relationship deteriorated dramatically following October 7, 2023. Erdoğan and much of the Turkish population unabashedly took the side of the Gazans and to some degree Hamas.
Erdoğan, enjoying in recent years improved relations with conservative Gulf states, did not rekindle his Arab Spring regional Muslim Brothers campaign, but he went further than in earlier disputes with Israel. He cut flourishing Israel-Turkey trade relations (though not including, importantly, oil through Turkey from Azerbaijan covering almost two-thirds of Israeli consumption.) Turkish public anger at Israel’s Gaza operation arguably has been no greater than that in Arab states. But they are not functioning democracies while Turkey is, and Erdoğan’s party base includes much of Turkey’s more Islamic citizens.
On the other hand, Turkey like Israel is a status quo country. Its population generally is not inclined towards foreign military adventures, and in many ways is more oriented toward Europe. (Turks see themselves geographically, and to some degree politically and even ethnically, European, with millions of Turks well integrated in European states.) Despite twenty-two years of Erdoğan, much of the system and many Turks retain Atatürk’s secularist outlook, and apart from the truly devout there is little interest in the Arab world. In many respects it is a modern European state, a G-20 economy with industrial and service sectors and per capita income approaching that of some EU states, with 41 percent of its goods exports going to the EU.
That all said, reasons beyond Gaza and Erdoğan’s occasional megalomania can spark conflict. Israel, Turkey and Iran are undoubtedly the three strongest military states in the region. But Iran is now temporarily out, and geopolitics has long experienced the phenomenon of two “last men standing” states eyeing each other warily. Furthermore, while both Israel and Turkey are status quo states, they have long defended their security aggressively, particularly in their “near abroad,” as both have suffered decades of attacks from across their borders. With the fall of Asad, they are now sharing the same unstable Syrian “near abroad,” with little recent experience dealing diplomatically with each other. Finally, as this writer can attest, both President Erdoğan and Prime Minister Netanyahu share deep distrust of the other.
With Iran the situation is different. The entire system is organized around an expansionist, partially religious, partially historical drive for hegemony within the Middle East, with a leitmotiv of destruction of Israel as the means to win allegiance of the non-Persian Muslim masses. The population, as we have seen over the past two decades, however disenchanted with mullah rule, is routinely put down violently when opposing regime policies.
Moreover, the Iranian regime’s hegemonic designs are shared well beyond the many millions of fervent supporters of the religious state by more secular Iranians such as sometime dissident Seyed Hossein Mousavian, as he lays out in the introduction to his 2012 book, Iranian Nuclear Crisis, A Memoir. With the exception of weapons deals with Russia and hydrocarbons trade with China, the regime, economy, and popular mindset are all focused on the Middle East, and the role of Persians, Shi’a, and Muslims within it. Finally it has developed an integrated military-political-ideological force structure led by the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps, from missiles and nuclear development to terrorism and proxy armies, to advance its infiltrate-Arab-states, destroy-Israel, eject-America strategy.
What Next
Israel’s intervention so far in Syria is too limited to have a major impact on that state’s future, but US actions (or inaction) can be decisive. Given the poor state of Israeli-Turkish diplomatic contacts (likely to continue as long as Israeli troops remain in Gaza), the US would probably have to mediate were the other states interested in reconciling their Syria-related goals. And were Israel, as the above reporting indicates, interested truly in weakening and dividing Syria, the US is best placed to do so.
Trump administration policy towards Syria remains unclear, despite strong engagement elsewhere in the region, on the Gaza and Lebanon conflicts, with Gulf states, and with the maximum pressure campaign against Iran. The outreach to al-Shara’a from the Biden administration has not been continued. For the moment, US troops continue operating with the Syrian Democratic Forces, de facto shielding it from Turkish or Damascus action, and Washington maintains its unilateral actions on Syria under the Caesar Act with their debilitating impact on US and international economic engagement. In effect, by continuing long-standing policies aimed at the Asad regime and ISIS, the administration may be automatically keeping Damascus weak and Syria divided.
What is the rationale for such inaction? Inertia, given the many more pressing issues facing the White House, is one explanation. In addition, the powerful Washington anti-terrorism lobby favors continued action against ISIS, and looks askance at al-Shara’a and HTS. Erodgan is not popular in this administration beyond perhaps President Trump, and some officials might be persuaded by the alleged Israeli pitch.
The problem for Washington and Jerusalem, however, is sustaining a long-term policy of weakening and dividing the Syrian state. It would run afoul of European and Arab outreach with Damascus, collide with Ankara which is important to Washington on many accounts, and enable reconstitution of terrorist groups and Quds Force return. Twenty years ago, Washington might have intervened to build a Syria in America’s image, but that instinct is now dead, in particular among President Trump’s voters.
In the end, if faced with the alternatives of Afghanistan-style massive intervention in Syria, indefinite passive weakening of the state, or engagement along with the rest of the international community, this US administration (or a following one) might well choose the third, leaving Israel isolated. Thus, before locking its Syria policy into concrete, Jerusalem and Washington should consider General David Petraeus’s famous 2003 question regarding Iraq: “Tell me how this ends.”
