by James M Dorsey
US and Israeli responses to President Bashar al-Assad’s fall offer a masterclass on how to discourage change in Syria.
Rather than test and encourage Syria’s new leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, aka Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani, US and Israeli actions seem designed to box him in and potentially set him up for failure.
 Listen now · 12:35 |
Mr. Al-Sharaa is no run-of-the-mill rebel. He is a former Al Qaeda and Islamic State operative with a $10 million US bounty on his head. A deeply religious figure, Mr. Al-Sharaa insists he disavowed jihadism when he split with the jihadist militants in 2016.
His track record since then has been chequered but suggests his claim has merit, even though question marks remain.
US and United Nations officials have noted that Mr. Al-Sharaa has said all the “right things” regarding inclusivity, minority rights, Iran, Hezbollah, and transitional justice but want to see actions follow words.
 |
Setting a date for elections and laying out how Syria will go about drafting and approving a new constitution in line with United Nations Security Council Resolution 2254 would go some way in that direction. Adopted in 2015 the resolution provides a road map for political transition in Syria.
Mr. All-Sharaa argued this week that Syria was not ready for elections because it was still mired in turmoil with millions of Syrians internally displaced or in exile. Instead, the Syrian leader and other Hayat Tahrir al-Sham officials have spoken about the need for a technocratic government that would reform institutions.
Even so, Mr. Al-Sharaa’s statements to date and initial administrative moves were enough for US officials to enter into direct contact with Hayat Tahrir despite it being a US-designated terrorist group. It was also enough to spark debate in Washington on whether to take the group off the US terrorism list.
 |
Credit: The New Arab
However, it was not enough for the US Congress to lift the harshest sanctions imposed on Syria, one of the world’s most sanctioned countries, introduced initially to isolate the Al-Assad regime. Instead, Congress extended the sanctions, which would have expired on December 20, hours before the rebels overthrew Mr. Al-Assad.
The Congress vote puts the ball in outgoing US President Joe Biden’s court. Mr. Biden has the authority to waive many of the sanctions.
Congressmen Joe Wilson, a South Carolina Republican, and Pennsylvania Democrat Brendan Boyle urged the Biden administration to suspend sectoral sanctions and sanctions related to reconstruction while maintaining sanctions on former Al-Assad regime officials.
 |
US Congressmen Wilson and Boyle’s letter. Source: X
Messrs. Wilson and Boyle argued, “A deliberate and phased approach is required to unwind sanctions and export controls against Syria.”
Lifting the sanctions would be a gesture that allows Mr. Al-Sharaa to move ahead with the rebuilding and rehabilitation of what Syria’s newly appointed information minister, Mohammad al-Omar, described on Al Jazeera as a war-ravaged, “completely destroyed economy” that needs to be “rebuilt…from scratch.”
Even so, saying the “right things” also failed to persuade the United States to pressure Israel to limit its massive bombing campaign.
 |
The intensity of the campaign suggests Israel’s goals go far beyond depriving post-Assad Syria of whatever weapons of mass destruction, particularly chemical weapons, it may have inherited from the deposed president.
Rather than pursuing objectives targeting precise Israeli security concerns, such as ensuring Syria no longer serves as a conduit for weapons and funding to Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Lebanese Shiite militia, and Palestinian insurgents in the occupied West Bank, Israel appears determined to militarily emasculate the new Syria.
The Israeli military said it had destroyed 80 per cent of its Syrian counterpart in hundreds of sorties in the past week in what one security official described as “one of the largest attack operations in the history of the (Israeli) Air Force.”
 |
Classified Al-Assad regime documents. Credit Newlines
Classified Al-Assad regime documents leaked on social media after the president’s toppling suggest that Israeli military operations prior to the rebel takeover were calibrated to ensure the Syrian military had what it needed to keep a weakened Mr. Al-Assad in power.
In other words, Israel did not want to emasculate Mr. Al-Assad in the way it is emasculating Mr. Al-Sharaa.
The problem is emasculation is hardly a way to make friends, particularly if Israel and Mr. Al Sharaa’s new Syrian administration more likely than not have a common interest in addressing Israeli security concerns as they relate to Iran and its non-state allies, who were together with Russia, Mr. Al-Assad’s principal backers.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz asserted that unspecified “recent developments in Syria are increasing the intensity of the threat – despite the moderate appearance that the rebel leaders claim to present.”
Meanwhile, Israeli officials said Jordan was acting as a communication channel between Israel and Hayat Tahrir. The communications focused in part on preventing Iran-backed groups from smuggling weapons via Jordan to Palestinian militants in the occupied West Bank.
Israel’s failure to pursue less destructive ways of addressing its concerns amounts to a refusal to pick up on Mr. Al-Sharaa’s initial messages, including statements that Syria is war-weary, does not want a conflict with Israel, and has ended Iran’s use of Syria as a funnel for weapons and other supplies to Hezbollah and others.
 |
In that vein, former Israeli foreign ministry director general Alon Liel noted that Israeli officials refuse to acknowledge the significance of Mr. Al-Sharaa and his rebel group referencing Israel by its name as opposed to the Al-Assad regime’s labelling of the Jewish state as “the enemy” or “the Zionist entity.”
Israel also failed to note that Mr. Al-Sharaa, in stunning remarks for a Syrian leader, justified Israel’s targeting of Iranian and Hezbollah facilities in Syria during Mr. Al-Assad’s reign, arguing that the rebel takeover had eliminated the Iranian threat.
Emasculating Syria militarily, coupled with Israel’s planned expansion of settlements in the Golan Heights, suggests Israel realises that its US-backed 1981 annexation of the territory, conquered from Syria during the 1967 Middle East war, precludes the possibility of a normalisation of relations between the two countries.
So does Israel’s occupation of additional Syrian territory, including areas operated by rebel groups supported by Israel during the civil war. Areas occupied by Israel since Mr. Al-Assad’s fall include territory in the Quneitra governorate and the Yarmouk Basin in Deraa, close to the Golan Heights and the Jordanian border.
 |
Israeli military correspondents reported that local officials were collecting weapons in their villages and handing them to Israeli forces. That does not by definition mean that locals welcome the Israeli presence.
Based on recent interviews with locals, scholar and analyst Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi warned that Israeli operations were erasing goodwill Israel had garnered during the civil war when it enabled them to create a buffer zone to keep Iranian and Hezbollah operatives away from the Golan Heights and provided medical services.
All in all, Israeli troops reportedly advanced 10 kilometres from the Golan Heights further into Syria and are at Tel Hadar, 20 kilometres from Damascus.
 |
Credit: Haaretz
Israel has a history of failing to turn military victories into political successes. Syria threatens to confirm the rule.
Similarly, the Biden administration’s refusal to reign in Israel amounts to a self-defeating attempt to bite off the nose to spite the face.
With Middle Eastern states condemning Israeli operations in Syria and calling for support of Mr. Al-Sharaa’s government, US backing for Israeli actions in Syria and maintenance of sanctions risks destabilising rather than stabilising the country and the region.
Destabilisation could potentially involve Syria’s fragmentation with Kurds in the north seeking to carve out an autonomous existence of their own, despite recent advances by Turkish-backed forces, and Alawites, the Shiite Muslim sect from which the Al-Assads hail, following a similar course with possible Russian and Iranian support.
That can hardly be the purpose of the exercise.
Dr. James M. Dorsey is an Adjunct Senior Fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, and the author of the syndicated column and podcast, The Turbulent World with James M. Dorsey.