Who Gets to Pick the Winner in Syria?

As the civil war continues to murder innocents with the latest estimate approaching one-hundred-thousand murdered civilians and over one and a half million refugees fled to neighboring Turkey and Jordan there is a group of nations attempting to influence who wins. The problem is that many of these outsiders are backing different forces which serve to extend the fighting possibly endlessly producing no winners, just increasing casualties in an endless procession. First we need to define the disparate groups and then find who is backing whom. The supposed home team definition would likely have to go the current President for life Bashir al-Assad and the Alawite tribe from which he comes. There are two sets that are considered rebel forces which sometimes cooperate and at other periods work either independently or actually impede each other. One rebel group consists mostly of members from the Muslim Brotherhood while the other consists of forces aligned with Jabhat al-Nusra which is the al-Qaeda terror group. Then there are two other groups which currently support Syrian President Bashir Assad but actually represent the Iranian interests and are likely to continue to engage in the war even after Assad collapses or is killed. These two groups are Hezballah, the terrorist group whose political wing currently leads the ruling coalition in Lebanon, and the IRGC, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, a group of fighters which make up a second military force roughly equivalent in size, equipment, training and capabilities to the Iranian Armed Forces used mostly to assist in foreign interventions, terrorist training internationally and domestically as required, and any other clandestine operations which may be assigned by the leadership of Iran. So, generally speaking there exist five groups vying to take control over all of Syria.

 

Oddly enough getting the teams all figured out who are operating within Syria is difficult enough, but trying to untangle the external interests and influences is far more complicated especially when dissecting their various motives. Let us first address the most up front, above board and obvious of the external influences. The most obvious is Turkey who is steadily supplying arms to both rebel forces for the most selfish of reasons, assuring their continued preeminence as the only stable rout for oil and gas pipelines. There is a further reason driving Turkey in providing arms for the rebel groups which is that there is no love lost between Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Syria President Bashir Assad as both view themselves as a leader in some future Muslim Caliphate, Assad as leader of the Arab nations in an Iranian Caliphate and Erdogan as leader of a reborn Ottoman Caliphate. Add to this that as long as there exists some sustained level of violence which would discourage construction of new oil and gas routes through Syria then Turkey, with its already existent pipelines, would remain the uncontested and sole route of pipelines for oil and gas from the Arabian Peninsula and related reserves.

 

Another supplier of arms to one of the rebel forces is Saudi Arabia who is backing the Muslim Brotherhood aligned rebels. The Saudi interest is the opposite of Turkey as the Saudis would very much like to have an additional player supplying pipelines to the Mediterranean Sea and into Europe as competition would result in lower prices for them in transporting their oil and gas. Furthermore, the Saudis are rivals of the Iranians and thus would love to see Bashir Assad removed from ruling Syria thus breaking the Iranian crescent in which Syria is a vital link connecting Iran and Iraq through to Lebanon and the ports of the Mediterranean Sea. The Saudi Arabians are supported by the rest of the members of the GCC, Gulf Cooperation Council; whose members are of far less military capabilities thus the Saudis make all the decisions. The Saudis are also counting on support by the United States but they may run into some surprises in that relationship which we will cover later.

 

Then there are those exterior forces supporting the Syrian military and Syrian President Bashir Assad and at the same time defending the Iranian interests. These two groups are the IRGC and the Hezballah terror group. Should Bashir Assad fall either by fearing being taken by the rebel groups who would likely give him treatment similar to that used to dispatch Libyan Dictator Muammar Gaddafi, a rather unpleasant death, these two groups would simply continue the fight in support of their true masters, the Iranians. To either of these forces the continuance of Bashir Assad as the President of Syria is simply something that makes their presence in the fight more readily explainable. Remove Assad and their real motivations are revealed and Iran would be uncovered as the true force behind Assad remaining in power. Another nation supporting Bashir Assad, even if in a somewhat limited manner, is Russia and its President Vladimir Putin. Russia has thus far limited their support to continuing to fill all past weapons orders they have agreed to with Syria and are preventing any overt support for the rebels such as interventions or establishment of a no-fly zone by the United States or NATO. The most disturbing participation by the Russians is their intent to follow through with the sale and supply of their S-300 Anti-Aircraft Missile Systems which would make any Israeli strikes to prevent chemical weapons or other game-changing weapons from being transferred to the Hezballah forces in Lebanon for use against Israel in the future more hazardous. There is one potential future situation which would prove most intriguing, if President Assad should be killed or otherwise removed from the situation, would Russia continue their support giving the future weapons shipments to the IRGC and Hezballah or would their interest in the situation in Syria be terminated.

 

And then there is the most troubling foreign influence, and that is the United States and President Obama. The obvious interpretation of the United States interests is that they are aligned with Saudi Arabia and supporting the Muslim Brotherhood and against the entirety of other forces. This façade also has another participant, Turkey, who also appears to work with the Saudis while also passing weapons to their intended recipient without question. Some of these weapons are intended for Jabhat al-Nusra as they are supplied from the al-Qaeda forces and influences who were involved in Libya. There have been rumors that the truth behind the catastrophe in Benghazi may have been related to attempts to prevent powerful and game-changing weapons, possibly stinger missiles, from being sent from Libya to undesirable recipients. Even if such a proposition were true, that is one truth that will never see the light of day. As is said, some secrets are secrets for a very good reason and as such must remain nothing more than a rumor, a whisper in the tempest and nothing more.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Obama and the Middle East Dilemma

While everyone stares at the ever shifting, ever blurring Syrian Chemical Weapons red line which is now befuddling the White House, the Syrian civil war continues to wind on and on eventually to determine who will prove supreme, bad or worse. There is no good side to choose in this fight. It now comes down to Assad backed by Iran and Hezballah, the Syrian Free Army which is backed largely by the Muslim Brotherhood, and the al Nusra Front which represents al-Qaeda and even should Bashar Assad be toppled there will still be Hezballah allied with the IRGC guerilla forces attempting to preserve the influence of their Iranian masters. As far as the United States is concerned there is no actual good guy for them to back though President Obama has appeared to have a soft spot for the Muslim Brotherhood in the past.

 

The one democratic country which is very concerned over the eventual results and intermediate activities in Syria is, of course, Israel. While the Israelis are not particularly fond of any of the players, their previous knowledge of Assad may make him the least troublesome of the evils for Israel. Do not misunderstand that Assad would make Israeli leaders overjoyed as they have fought three conflicts against his forces; one in the Six Day War in 1967, once again when both Syria and Egypt launched the Yom Kippur War in 1973, and their final conflict was an air war over the Bekaa Valley in 1982 where the Israelis knocked sixty Syrian fighters from the skies in two days of dog fights losing absolutely no planes themselves. For the memory of these defeats Bashar al-Assad might be sufficiently gun shy that would make his remaining in power preferable to having to teach a new leader the perils of engaging the IDF from scratch.

 

Whatever the eventual result of the civil war in Syria the one thing Israel absolutely cannot allow is for Iran or anybody else to funnel new and more dangerous weapon systems to Hezballah in Lebanon. This is what spurred the recent air raids by the Israelis on Damascus and along the Syrian-Lebanon border over the past week. The Israelis were removing transports carrying new weapon systems which would have posed a serious increase in the threat potential of Hezballah. One can only imagine what such systems might have entailed as Hezballah already possesses at a minimum sixty-thousand rockets of various ranges with which to threaten Israel. Despite such a seemingly overwhelming threat potential, Iran has still decided it is worth the possible losses to attempt to further arm Hezballah in order to turn their threat into a certainty that Tel Aviv would be decimated in return for any actions taken against the Iranian nuclear program. Iran has made it very certain that it matters not who attacks their nuclear program, Israel will receive the brunt of the Iranian response through Hezballah and Hamas and Syria providing Syria is still a part of the Iranian Shiite Crescent across the Middle East.

 

Meanwhile, back in Washington DC President Obama is doing a number of pirouettes on the head of a pin trying to avoid being pinned down to his red line should Syria use chemical weapons threat. Syria has, according to Israeli, French, British and even most United States sources, already deployed Sarin nerve agent against the rebel forces and civilians. There have been reports of multiple usages yet President Obama continues to squirm and wrestle with these facts attempting to twist them into a cloud of doubts in order to back away from the precipice and avoid actually being forced to act. The problem President Obama is facing is that he really miscalculated when making a threat he never expected to have to ever face. Now that reality has not only caught up but has swept past his threat of action crossing over his red line, President Obama must now fudge the facts and blow enough smoke that he can claim that his red line was more flexible and has remained inviolate, but with his red line not only crossed but rather obliterated, President Obama has been left appearing completely toothless in all ways concerning Syrian use of chemical weapons.

 

There is one huge problem beyond the simple fact that President Obama has been rendered impotent concerning events in Syria; all of his threats and posturing over the Iranian nuclear program are now mute and meaningless. This can only serve to make the Iranian nuclear weapons threat even more potent as it is now obvious that President Obama never actually intended to ever take action in order to prevent the Iranians from acquiring nuclear weapons. This leaves all of Europe as well as Israel, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the other nations within the GCC, and anyone else who Iran may see as an opponent directly in the crosshairs of a potential nuclear Iran. What makes things even more clouded is that now all of the intelligence information which originated with the United States or was heavily influenced by the United States now cannot be considered to be anything other than a ruse to prevent the appearance of a need to act. This is very likely to cause a complete reevaluation of the entire Iranian situation by Israel at the very least. The backing away from his red line by President Obama has resulted in the entire world now realizing that they are on their own when it comes to the Iranian threats. This can only lead to a more dangerous Middle East, like anybody thought such was even possible.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Why Does Inaction on Syrian Chemical Weapons Use Matter?

I tried to think of an idea to write about that was important and almost everything I thought about came back to the situation of the use by Syrian troops loyal to Bashir al-Assad of chemical weapons. The problem is that when one thinks about this subject, it just does not appear all that overly vital yet it affects every other problem in one way or another. Perhaps this is due to the fact that the entire Syrian civil war touches on every vital subject facing the world at the moment. It ties to the terror bombing in Boston as the arch-terror group Hezballah is actively aiding the Syrian forces loyal to al-Assad and are responsible for most of their gains of late. It reflects on the problems in Egypt and Tunisia as the Muslim Brotherhood which currently rules both of these countries is the main impetus behind one of the two major rebel factions trying to overthrow al-Assad. On the human rights front, what could be a bigger situation for them to address than the over seventy-thousand civilians murdered and the many millions forced into refugee camps by the Syrian civil war, yet despite this the main impetus of human rights remains obsessively focused on the purported evil acts of the Israelis. But what is likely the most central importance over Syria has to do that the outcome in Syria is seen as the most central item currently addressable regarding Iran and the entire Iran-North Korea alliance which is by far the biggest threat to the world currently.

 

What I find most interesting about the Iran-North Korea alliance is how everybody attempts to separate these two problems and behave as if one has nothing to do with the other. This would be like pretending that in World War II the Japanese had nothing to do with the Germans except that Iran and North Korea are far more intertwined than they were. It is ridiculous to address the missile problem posed by North Korea while ignoring the joint research being performed largely in Iran to improve both countries missile technologies and upgrade their missile systems with longer range and more accurate heavy launch systems along with increased diversity of missile weapons systems for multiple and varied uses. Even more evident is how both Iran and North Korea have been interdependent in their pursuit of nuclear weapons as most of the research into nuclear weapons constructions has been carried out almost exclusively of late in North Korea while uranium enrichment as well as plutonium manufacturing have been pursued full-bore in Iran. Yet despite the evidence the United States and their allies have been addressing these two as completely separate threats rather than a unified front who are mutually supportive in aims of the same ends. The strongest evidence of their mutual cooperation leads us back to Syria and the fact that as Iran supplies Syria with weapons, intelligence reports, and manpower in their civil war, it was North Korea who provided Syria with their nuclear facility that Israel destroyed back on September 6, 2007.

 

But despite all of this evidence, it is the seeming lack of resolve in addressing the Syrian blatant disregard of the warnings over utilizing their chemical weapons stores that presents the biggest situational difficulty. It is blatantly obvious that the weakest link in the Iran-North Korea alliance is definitely Syria but that it is also a vital link in their chain which connects them to the Mediterranean Sea through Syria and Lebanon which is controlled for Iran by Hezballah. Syria is very much like Italy was to the German-Japanese alliance in World War II in that Italy guarded the underbelly of the European theater, Syria is the vital link to the Mediterranean Sea and through that the Atlantic Ocean as well as all of Europe. The threat to act against Syria and al-Assad if and when he introduced chemical weapons into the Syrian civil war was less important strategically about protecting the Syrian battlefield from such threats as it was about being the wedge that allowed for a casus-belli for intervention leading to the removal of Bashir al-Assad from power thus breaking the link for the Iran-North Korea axis connecting them to their Mediterranean ports and the Hezballah who serve as their enforcers. Losing their Syrian connection also wounds the Iranian Shiite alliance from their crescent of power that stems from Iran across Iraq, Syria and Lebanon presently and thus allows Iran to have influence and the ability to apply pressure throughout the Arab World and most of the Muslim world. Syria and the Mediterranean ports are also vital for the growth of the Iranian influence in South America which they have been carefully and slowly cultivating and growing for the past decade. For these reasons as well as the human rights and prevention of the potential catastrophe that could result from chemical weapons attacks make Syria the center-point of too much of the current world situation to not make each and every step well thought out and treated as the crucial elements that they are.

 

Despite all that is resting on the outcome of the Syrian civil war, President Obama appears to be taking the most passive interest in responding to the latest reports of chemical weapons use by al-Assad despite the hard evidence presented that Sarin gas was utilized. The reports of such use came from Israeli, British and French intelligence sources and not simply made by the rebel forces that could be doubted due their interest in removing al-Assad by any means available. President Obama not only reacted to this evidence by not taking any actions which would indicate the possibility of a military response, but simply restated his warning of dire consequences should chemical weapons be used by any side in the Syrian civil war. By refusing to even place some military forces on a higher alert status signaling the readiness to take the steps necessary to interdict any further use of chemical weapons, President Obama has virtually given al-Assad a pass on using these weapons as long as it is not overt and made undeniable. Why the President would refute the evidence presented by every allied intelligence report and allow al-Assad a pass is honestly disturbing. Such inaction could lead to wonder as to what outcome the United States would prefer to come as a result of the fighting in Syria. Could President Obama desire to simply allow the fighting to continue in order to drain Iran of resources and force them to be tied down by the open front threatening their Syrian connections? Time will tell but should al-Assad take the inaction by President Obama as permission for more extensive use of chemical weapons in the fight against the rebel forces one can only fear the full repercussions and the potential for unimaginable horrors should such weapons be used in an overt fashion in order to turn the tide and go for a quick end to the rebel fight. The potentials for a humanitarian disaster are too great for such a risky route to be taken. President Obama might still have an opportunity to enforce his edict of not accepting any chemical weapons usage before more general use is implemented and all the horrific consequences to the Syrian people become realized. Nobody could desire the consequences of the liberal use of such weapons and the indiscriminate and horrendous death which can be so easily dispersed literally on the winds across large swaths leaving a desolate ruin in their wake.

 

Beyond the Cusp