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The fall of the Syrian president Bahsar al-Assad is a blow to Russia, terror monger Iran and their Hezbollah proxies in Lebanon. But Syria’s next chapter begins with uncertainty. President-elect Trump’s goal is to restore peace in the Middle East – and the road now passes through Damascus.
“Not our fight,” Trump said. Pretty smart of him, because in 2019 he wisely abandoned outposts of about 900 US forces both at An Tanf, a crossroads near the border with Iraq, and along the oil fields at Deir Al Zour, prompting a return of the defeated ISIS caliphate blocked.
ASSAD ARRIVES IN MOSCOW, GIVES ASYLUM BY RUSSIA
Fingers crossed that the end of Assad will not be the beginning of ISIS 2.0.
Assad was terrible. Remember his use of chemical weapons against his own people? In 2013, the Assad regime launched rockets containing the deadly nerve agent sarin into the Ghouta district of Damascus. more deaths According to the US Department of State, there were more than 1,400 people and were used again in 2017. Trump ordered airstrikes on Syrian chemical weapons sites with American B-1 bombers in 2018, along with France and Britain.
Abu Mohammed al-Golani checks the damage after an earthquake in the village of Besnaya in Syria’s northwestern Idlib province, on the border with Turkey, on February 7, 2023. (Omar Haj Kadour/AFP via Getty Images)
“There is not a single household in Syria that has not been affected by the war. Praise God, today Syria is recovering,” said the leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. Abu Mohammed al-Golani in his speech at the Umyyad Mosque yesterday.
What remains to be seen is whether these rebels – who took just 11 days to depose Assad – want to launch a recovery in Syria, or return to their Al Qaeda roots. Syria’s economy is weak, unemployment is high, and Syria is still reeling from the 2023 earthquake that killed 5,500 people and affected many more. This can go either way.
As uncertain as the situation is, geopolitics is quite satisfying at the moment. Russia’s Vladimir Putin suffers a great loss. He could not keep his client Assad in power, and with Aleppo, Damascus and Homs in rebel hands, the Russian air base at the international airport near Latakia and the naval base on the Mediterranean coast near Tartus are more or less cut off. Syria was a major investment for Putin and, in a sense, his training ground for Ukraine. Now that Assad is gone, everything has blown up.
President Bashar al-Assad on May 3, 2023 in Damascus, Syria. (Borna News/Matin Ghasemi/Aksonline ATPImages/Getty Images)
As for the Iranians, they have lost a member of their so-called resistance axis. Their supply corridor to Hezbollah in Lebanon is now choked. Syria was “a playground for Iran’s ambitions,” Golani said, but no more. A senior Iranian terrorist militia was killed in Aleppo by HTS forces on November 28. Decimated by Israel and pinned down by American deterrent forces, Iran could not do much for Assad.
The bad news? Syria is now in the hands of a UN-designated terrorist group. Golani, 42 years old, has been a slick cop for years. He admires the September 11 attacks but establishes his own base in northern Syria after choosing not to ally with several al-Qaeda leaders. You get the sense that Golani calculated that he could do better in Syria on his own, rather than pledge allegiance to a major Al Qaeda outsider. It’s a bit worrying that he calls himself ‘Golani’, referring to the Israeli takeover of the Golan Heights in 1967, when his grandfather fled the Israeli armies.
For now, much depends on how Golani handles his victorious forces. If he is wise, he will make them act like liberators. And he will stay away from the Golan Heights, which were recently reoccupied by Israel Defense Forces troops.
Opposition fighters remove a government flag from an official building in Salamiyah, east of Hama, Syria, Saturday, December 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Ghaith Alsayed)
The biggest concern, of course, is keeping an eye on ISIS. In the West, Syrian forces, allied with the US, “sit on top of a prison system with approximately 10,000 ISIS fighters locked up inside,” retired general Frank McKenzie told ABC News on March 31. U.S. commanders have warned for years that the camps are seething with resentment. If released, the ISIS detainees and their relatives could filter out to strengthen other ISIS groups, potentially increasing the risk of terror attacks in the US and Europe – a “whole new chapter of ISIS violence,” in the words from McKenzie.
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My thoughts are with the American forces in Syria. Although small, they are highly capable forces, closely monitored by US Central Command air forces as part of the ongoing ‘defeat ISIS’ mission. The U.S. Air Force’s A-10 Warthogs performed a deep dive flight with ‘show of force’ in Syria on December 3 to drive away enemies, while others – probably Special Forces – destroyed mortars and armored vehicles after a rocket and mortar attack near the Euphrates military base. Throughout the year, U.S. air forces have consistently launched airstrikes against both Iranian-backed militia teams and ISIS clusters in Syria.
Hopefully Assad’s departure is a new beginning. But Syria still has a long way to go, and Trump’s team just has another crisis to solve.
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The passion of American presidents across party lines is peace in the Middle East. There hasn’t been one since Nixon who hasn’t done his utmost, from Carter’s Camp David Accords to Biden’s frantic efforts for a ceasefire in Gaza. Trump also wants peace in the Middle East, but the difference is that given his first term success with the Abraham Accords, he can get it. But that road now runs through Damascus.
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