Bashar Assad’s rapid fall as president of Syria offers Israel and the United States a chance to bolster their regional security interests, experts said on Monday during a Jewish Institute for National Security of America online event.
“The Israelis don’t know what’s coming next—whether the next Syrian government will be hostile, and they want it to be as weak as possible, so they are actively targeting the Syrian military,” said Elliott Abrams, a former U.S. deputy national security advisor.
“What’s critical from the American national security point of view is that Syria not become a terrorist state along the lines of Al-Qaeda or ISIS, and that Syria no longer continues to be a highway of support for Hezbollah,” Abrams.
Israel has been using its air force to target chemical weapons stockpiles in recent days—“something they never could have done when there was an existing Syrian state because it would have been taken to be an act of war,” Abrams said.
“There are significant American interests in the region and now with this opportunity to destroy weaponry, Russia is losing out on its bases in the Mediterranean and this will weaken President Vladimir Putin,” he said.
John Hannah, a senior fellow at JINSA’s Center for Defense and Strategy, also addressed the online event. The incoming Trump administration won’t want to spend political capital intervening in Syria, he said.
“The president is making declarations about U.S. policy and meeting with foreign leaders, so we’re in this odd situation where it’s not exactly clear what U.S. policy is at a time of enormous opportunity to further weaken our worst adversaries in the region and establish a less threatening Syria,” Hannah said.
“I hope somehow we can get our act together with the Israelis to figure out what to do, because we may not have another opportunity to achieve the most important national security imperative for the United States, preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear weapon state,” he added.
The collapse of the Assad regime demonstrates Iran’s waning regional influence, according to Hannah.
“The Iranian imperial project has been shown to be so hollow, so incapable when the chips were down of coming to save their most important Arab state ally for the last 40 years, a state that was allied with them during the Iran-Iraq war,” he said. “The rest of the region including Sunni, Christian and more pragmatic moderate Shi’ite elements are witnessing this Iranian weakness in real time.”
Washington should not spend its time figuring out what the internal dynamics of the new Syrian governing regime should be, according to Hannah.
“Our big job is to target Iran, Hezbollah and Russia, which is the main root of the vast majority of problems that the United States and Israel face in this region,” he said. “The job is not yet done, and we ought to be looking for ways that are smart, that step on that gas pedal with laserlike end-game focus of bringing an early resolution to the Iranian nuclear program and Iranian problem more broadly.”
‘Cannot afford to take chances’
Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, the leader of the rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which is largely responsible for ousting the Assad regime, has expressed interest in reclaiming the Golan Heights, which prompted the Israel Defense Forces to maintain forces in a demilitarized strip within Syrian territory itself, according to Abrams.
“Netanyahu has said they aren’t trying to seize territory permanently, they are protecting the Golan and the people that live there,” he said. “The Israelis are preempting by telling Syrian forces they cannot come anywhere near the Israeli border.”
According to Abrams, the Jewish state’s temporary move in the Golan “really gestures to the lack of confidence Israel has in the United Nations to protect that part of the border.”
“While it’s hard to believe that this rebel army, which now has to worry about governing the whole country, would want to start a fight with Israel, they, of course, cannot afford to take any chances,” Abrams said.
Israel has learned from its ongoing wars in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon about the need to be extra cautious about its borders, according to the former U.S. official.
“We are learning that there are certain issues that can’t be resolved diplomatically, but need to be resolved by force,” Abrams said. “In this case, the situation on the ground has been turned around by the IDF with both its progress in Gaza and Lebanon, and the Israelis are trying to signal a message that the Syrian border will have to remain intact.”
“They are warning Syria to not even think about touching it,” he said.