For most of the time since its 1946 independence from France, Syria has resisted all attempts to make it a vassal state. It has paid dearly, as a target of subversion, war, occupation and the most onerous economic sanctions in the world, for its anti-imperialism and anti-Zionism, its support for resistance to the occupation of Palestine and its participation in the Axis of Resistance, consisting of the Palestinian resistance groups, Hezbollah, Syria, the Iraqi resistance, Iran, and Yemen (Ansarallah), as well as allied countries and movements in the Arab, Muslim and anti-imperialist world. In this axis, Syria has been a keystone, both geographically and strategically. Removal of this keystone will mean a withering and weakening of the axis to the east and west of Syria, most dramatically in the case of Hezbollah, which loses its most essential lifeline for supplies and support, chiefly from Iran. And it is also why this loss becomes a life preserver thrown to an otherwise floundering state of Israel.
Until November 26, 2024, Israel was failing in almost every way. Even after enduring more than a year of genocide against the civilian population of Gaza, Hamas and the rest of the Palestinian resistance in Gaza remained as effective a force as ever, despite its reliance on weapons made in its own underground workshops from recycled and captured Israeli ordnance and other materials. In fact, the genocide assured a constant flow of volunteers to its doors, a supply of materials for its workshops, and a network of eyes and ears throughout Gaza.
The result was a guerrilla war of attrition for which the Israeli military, built and structured to deliver rapid, overwhelming blows to destroy its adversaries, was not prepared, nor to which it adapted. Losses were not huge, but they were more than Israel had previously suffered, and it seemed without end, including both soldiers and major ground equipment, such as tanks, armored personnel carriers and lightly armored bulldozers. Furthermore, Israel was simultaneously engaged in a second protracted armed conflict with a well-armed, well-trained and battled-hardened (in Syria) Hezbollah force in Lebanon, which had driven out the Jewish settler population in the north of Israel and had struck numerous military and intelligence gathering targets in the same area and beyond, with considerable effect.
In the meantime, Yemeni Ansarallah “Houthi” forces interdicted shipping from Asia through the Red Sea to the Israeli port of Eilat, and attacked the port with missiles, forcing it to close, and the ships to go around Africa and back through the Mediterranean, restricting and delaying the supply of goods and spare parts and making them more costly – or making them unprofitable to ship at all.
Much of the rest of the world also lost its taste for trade with Israel due to the stigma of its genocide in Gaza. The relatively important tourist industry dried up, as did investment. Even the arms industry slackened. A blank check from the US allowed Israel to keep its citizens supplied with paychecks and with sufficient products and services to buy, but at least 48,000 businesses closed, including agriculture in the north and in the Gaza “envelope”.
The toll on Israel was the greatest and longest in its history of warfare. Israel keeps most of its casualty figures hidden, but it admits to more than 27,000 removed from combat due to wounds suffered. Including deaths on all fronts, the casualty total is, therefore, necessarily above 30,000, almost all military, while Israel’s targets in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon are overwhelmingly civilian and more than half women and children. The Israeli military has complained that it is 20% short of the number of combat troops needed, and increasing numbers of exhausted reservists are refusing to serve. Although Gaza has lost an estimated 10% of its population to genocide, Israel has lost a similar proportion to emigration since October 8, 2023.
This was the state of Israel on November 25, 2024. Would Israel still exist after another year of this? There was reason to doubt its stamina. But the following day a truce was declared with Lebanon. There is no doubt that both Hezbollah and the Israeli military were exhausted and heavily damaged. The truce was not directly with Hezbollah but rather with the Lebanese government, because Hezbollah, in addition to its role as a defender against its aggressive neighbor to the south, participates in what is in practice a loosely consensus government, and it wants to be seen as respecting the will of all the parties.
Initially, the truce only stanched the blood on both sides of the border, and allowed both sides to halt their losses. Unfortunately, its true purpose had been determined months and even years earlier, by Turkiye, the US, Israel and their mercenary and mostly takfiri proxies in Syria. It was to make way for resumption of the war against the Syrian government, which started in 2011 but had been largely on hold since 2020. As we know now, the takfiri mercenaries, backed by Turkiye, US/NATO and Israel and furnished with the latest electronic and drone technology, quickly overwhelmed the Syrian forces, which had been weakened by years of debilitating economic sanctions and the flight of largely economic refugees, such that only half of its original population of 23 million remained. There are some reports that the operation was planned for the spring of 2025 but had been moved forward because of the losses being suffered by Israel, both economically and on the battlefield, and its internal political turmoil, as well as abandonment by a significant proportion of Zionist supporters, both through departure from Israel and from the international Jewish community.
Each of the participants in the plan had its own objectives, which are now coming to fruition in greater or lesser measure. For the takfiri forces, subsidized, trained and armed by Turkiye, the CIA, the Pentagon, and to a lesser extent Ukrainian military advisors, the Israeli military, Mossad, and radical Islamist groups in the Arabian and other countries, the objective was to conquer Syria and create a regime based on a radical and racist version of Islam shunned by most of the Muslim world. They had been recruited from at least 82 countries around the world, with the largest number from central Asia and the Arab world, including Syria, where they and their families formed a radical militant minority of 5-10% of the Syrian population allied with the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaeda and its affiliates and offshoots, such as ISIS/ISIL, that had been attempting for decades to establish a regime in Damascus that would enforce its Draconian laws on the rest of the population. In the areas of Syria that they had captured off and on since 2011, they showed what such rule might be like, by slaughtering and enslaving much of the non-Muslim, non-Sunni and more secularized Muslim population. Some of that has recommenced in the newly “liberated” territory during the last two weeks, despite attempts in the Western media to make them appear more tolerant. It remains to be seen how useful their sponsors will consider them to be now that their main role has been completed.
In the case of Turkiye, one of the major sponsors, the goals are to resettle its 3.5 million Syrian refugee population back in Syria, to capture the northern portion of Syrian territory for itself, and to reward the Turkmen and Uyghur fighters, which it recruited from central Asia, with land inside Syria, displacing the existing population with one loyal to Turkiye. In addition, Turkiye seeks to crush and displace the Syrian Kurdish population along the northern and northeastern Syrian frontier, which it considers to be terrorists in league with Turkiye’s own suppressed Kurdish population. Turkiye already is calling Aleppo its 82nd province and taking military action against the Syrian Kurds, especially in the western Kurdish communities.
Syria’s Kurdish population is itself a complex participant in the fighting. Although it has maintained a largely autonomous enclave in the northeast portion of Syria under the protection of US occupying forces, it has had nonbelligerent relations with the Assad government, which asked the Kurds to help defend Syria in the early years, and on at least one occasion offered to defend them against Turkish and takfiri forces that were invading Kurdish areas. The aim of the US sponsors of the Kurds, on the other hand, was to deny Syria sovereignty over its petroleum fields and wheat production area, in order to destroy the economy and ultimately replace the government with a compliant puppet regime. In their otherwise desperate situation, the Kurds could hardly turn away the US offer of support. The US has tried to restrain the Kurds from attacks against Turkiye, a NATO ally, but not entirely successfully, and the Kurdish leaders are drawn more from the recent immigrants/refugees from Turkiye rather than the more established population, which had stronger ties to the Assad government. Unfortunately for the Kurds, the US government now has somewhat less reason to support them after the fall of the Assad government, since that was the main reason was for their backing. Nevertheless, the larger neighboring Kurdish community in Iraq is a strong ally of the US and NATO, which may be reason enough for the US to continue support. In addition, the US may consider the Syrian Kurds to be a useful tool in restraining Turkiye’s obvious regional ambitions under Erdogan.
There is no doubt that Israel and its US patron gained the most from the fall of Syria, which had been an objective for many decades, and which was a very high priority for Israel, as described at the beginning of this piece. It arguably rescued Israel from total collapse. Besides removing the major remaining frontline belligerent state with Israel, the loss of Syria severed the supply line between Iran and Iraq on the east from Lebanon and the Mediterranean on the west. This means that troops and supplies can no longer easily pass from Iran to Hezbollah. Although Hezbollah retains much of its still unused formidable capability for the time being, it is likely to degrade over time, enabling Israel to reinstate the security of its border with Lebanon and making it safe for the refugees from the northern settlements, currently living in temporary housing, mostly in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, to return to their homes, as soon as they are repaired and rebuilt.
The takfiri seizure of Syria has also enabled Israel to destroy most of Syria’s stored weaponry and munitions in a massive aerial bombing campaign, using the vast quantity of bunker-buster and other bombs and missiles supplied by the US during the last 14 months. The Syrian stores are not only a supply that Hezbollah might have been able to use, but also one that the unpredictable takfiris might eventually decide to use against Israeli forces, should they be so inclined. It has also been an opportunity for Israel to capture additional territory, including the “disputed” Lebanese Shebaa farms region along the border of Lebanon, as well as much of the hitherto unoccupied portion of the Golan Heights, with strategic Mt. Hermon (Jabal al-Sheikh), the highest peak in the region, that has remained under Syrian control until now.
From Israel’s point of view, the disappearance of a very strategic member of the Axis of Resistance and the weakening of Hezbollah also means that Israel regains control of its northern border and will not have to devote as many troops to its defense. This in turn means that the refugee Israeli population that had to abandon its homes along the frontier can now return, although many of them will have to be repaired or rebuilt.
These developments are also likely to reduce or stop the flight from Israel, and perhaps restore confidence in Israel’s leadership and its aims. Foremost among these is the depopulation of the Gaza Strip, using some of the military forces released from the northern frontier, and its repopulation with Israeli settlers. Although Israel’s genocidal policies have alienated much of the world, as well as a growing portion of the Jewish diaspora, Israel retains a hardcore Zionist faithful who encourage and approve of its actions, and its network of sayanim and influencers in the US and other societies and governments, coordinated by the Ministry of Strategic Affairs, continues to be enormously effective in delivering to Israel whatever it may need to accomplish its goals, regardless of the views of the electorate in these countries, which are in any case heavily influenced by pro-Zionist media and censorship.
There is, finally, yet another potential benefit to Israel in the not-so-distant future. In 1967, General Moshe Dayan proclaimed at the end of the June war that Israel had achieved all of its [immediate] territorial aims – except in Lebanon. This objective, and especially southern Lebanon, had been a coveted Zionist territory since before the founding of Israel in 1948, not least because of its access to the Litani river, the largest in the eastern Mediterranean. At least four times since then, Israel has invaded the region, emptying it of most of its population of more than a million inhabitants. Each time, the resistance in Lebanon eventually repelled and defeated the incursion. With the fall of Syria, however, and the probable reduction of strength of Hezbollah, this objective now becomes more realistic and more likely in the coming years.
For the United States, the fall of Syria means a major realignment of power in West Asia, a highly important part of the globe, both strategically and for its energy production. It empowers Turkiye, Israel and other US allies in the region. It disempowers Russia, Hezbollah and Iran, and it opens the possibility of assuring that the Gulf monarchies remain in its stable, while discouraging resistance. It also potentially allows the US to reduce its forces in the region and to send them to East Asia, where it has been postponing its planned confrontation with China. For Yemen and the Ansarallah movement, little changes immediately. Its partnership with Iran will undoubtedly remain, but over time its support of the Palestinian resistance may be affected if and when that resistance weakens.
The loss of Syria is therefore a major victory for Zionism and imperialism in West Asia, and a major defeat for the Axis of Resistance and the independence, self-determination and sovereignty of nation states, both in the region and potentially across the globe.
The post The Fall of the Keystone in the Axis of Resistance first appeared on Dissident Voice.
This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Paul Larudee.
Paul Larudee | Radio Free (2024-12-16T14:00:24+00:00) The Fall of the Keystone in the Axis of Resistance. Retrieved from https://www.radiofree.org/2024/12/16/the-fall-of-the-keystone-in-the-axis-of-resistance/
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