Yoni Tobin, a senior policy analyst at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, said the idea that Syria would be better-equipped to take on Hezbollah than Israel “is a fanciful one.”
“Israel has spent decades successfully fighting against, studying, and penetrating Hezbollah, and has eliminated thousands of its field operatives and missile sites,” Tobin said. “When’s the last time, for example, that Syria detonated several thousand Hezbollah walkie-talkies at once?”
Tobin warned that the prospect of Syrian forces entering Lebanon would be “dangerous” and could threaten U.S. and Israeli security interests. He noted that al-Sharaa’s close ties with Turkey are particularly alarming.
“Even if Syrian forces were to somehow succeed at disarming Hezbollah, that would only replace an Iranian sphere of influence on Israel’s northern border with – yet another – Turkish one,” Tobin said. “That prospect alone should alarm Washington.”
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