Former IDF General Raises Alarm Over Trump’s Wavering on Iranian Military Presence in Syria: Ben Cohen, Algemeiner, July 31, 2017 — One of Israel’s foremost military intelligence experts is expressing concern that the recent deal on Syria reached between the US and Russian presidents leaves the Jewish state dangerously exposed…
Russia Woos the World with New Plan on Syria: Amir Taheri, Gatestone Institute, July 30, 2017— Caught between the hope of securing a lasting foothold in the Middle East and the fear of inheriting an impossible situation, Russia is trying to re-gauge its Syrian policy with possible support from the Trump administration in Washington.
Is Washington Ceding Syria to Russian Influence?: Jonathan Spyer, Jerusalem Post, July 28, 2017 — US President Donald Trump this week appeared to confirm a number of recent media reports suggesting that the US has scrapped the long-standing covert CIA program to provide weapons and training to Syria’s rebels.
Trump is Falling into the Same Trap as Obama on Iran: Jonathan S. Tobin, New York Post, July 17, 2017 — When President Trump met earlier this month with Russian President Vladimir Putin, their exchange about Moscow’s interference in the 2016 presidential election was all anyone seemed to care about.
Why Israel Is Concerned About American-Russian Understandings on Syria: Brig.-Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser, JCPA, July 30, 2017
Operation Good Neighbor: Israel Reveals its Massive Humanitarian Aid to Syria: Judah Ari Gross, Times of Israel, July 19, 2017
Trump Got This One Right: Thomas Joscelyn, Weekly Standard, Aug. 7, 2017
The Greatest Exodus of Our Time: Michael Petrou, National Post, July 12, 2017
FORMER IDF GENERAL RAISES ALARM OVER TRUMP’S WAVERING
ON IRANIAN MILITARY PRESENCE IN SYRIA
Ben Cohen
Algemeiner, July 31, 2017
One of Israel’s foremost military intelligence experts is expressing concern that the recent deal on Syria reached between the US and Russian presidents leaves the Jewish state dangerously exposed to the increasing presence of Iran and its proxies on the ground there.
In a forthright criticism of the Trump administration’s stance on the question of Iran’s presence in Syria, Brig.-Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser — a former director general of the Israel Ministry of Strategic Affairs and head of the Research Division of IDF Military Intelligence — argued that the American president’s oft-expressed desire to upend the Iran policy of his predecessor, Barack Obama, conveyed the “impression…that in return for allowing the Russians to keep Assad temporarily in power, [Trump] would demand from them a commitment to oust the Iranians from Syria.”
“But the latest deal reached [in Hamburg on July 7] between Trump and [Russian President Vladimir] Putin seems to ignore this commitment,” Kuperwasser wrote in a policy paper for the influential Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs think tank. “That worries Israel…because it casts doubt over the depth of American commitment, the ability of the Americans to deliver, or the relevance of the ‘Art of the Deal’ to the Middle East and international politics.” Under the terms of the Trump-Putin arrangement, four “de-escalation” zones have been created in Syria — two of them in the Daraa and Quneitra provinces in the south of the country, close to the borders with Israel and Jordan. According to Kuperwasser, the deal has given “legitimacy to the prolonged presence of Iranian and Iranian-backed forces throughout the regions of Syria nominally controlled by the Assad regime.”
Kuperwasser identified five distinct threats to Israel posed by Iran in the Syrian theater. Israel, he said, had been successful in dealing with only two of those — preventing the Iranians from gaining a foothold in the northern Golan Heights and carrying out dozens of lethal air strikes upon arms shipments sent by the Iranians to their allies in Syria, the Lebanese Shia terrorist group Hezbollah and the Damascus regime of Bashar al-Assad. However, the three other threats remain largely unaddressed, Kuperwasser said. Firstly, he noted, “Iran almost assuredly wants to turn Syria into an Iranian military base…so that instead of threatening Israel from 1,300 kilometers away, the Iranian forces could sit on Israel’s doorstep.” Secondly, Iran emerging as the hegemonic force in Syria would severely weaken the Sunni Arab states, especially neighboring Jordan.
Finally, and perhaps most worryingly, Kuperwasser suggested that Iran could continue its nuclear weapons research on Syrian soil. “Under the JCPOA [the Iran nuclear deal of July 2015], the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) can monitor nuclear activities in Iran, but has no authority to monitor Iranian activity abroad or to follow Iranian scientists,” said Kuperwasser. “Iran may use these loopholes to conduct research and development of nuclear-related material in Syria.” Kuperwasser was pessimistic over the prospects of Putin’s regime pressuring the Iranians to reduce their presence in Syria. “Russia considers Iran as an irreplaceable protector of Assad,” he wrote. “Continuous Iranian presence in Syria is a strategic interest for Moscow.”
Iran’s expansion in Syria is part of a larger regional strategy to weaken Sunni Gulf state monarchies like Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, and extend its political influence and military presence in Iraq and Yemen. One former US official quoted in a Buzzfeed report on Monday on Iran’s imperial ambitions was candid about Tehran’s mastery of its proxy militias. “In Iraq, Afghanistan, and Yemen — anywhere we’ve trained — they suck; they can’t shoot straight,” the official said. “The Iranians train these guys and they become good fighters.”
RUSSIA WOOS THE WORLD WITH NEW PLAN ON SYRIA
Amir Taheri
Gatestone Institute, July 30, 2017
Caught between the hope of securing a lasting foothold in the Middle East and the fear of inheriting an impossible situation, Russia is trying to re-gauge its Syrian policy with possible support from the Trump administration in Washington. The key feature of Russia's evolving new strategy is an attempt at changing the narrative on Syria from one depicting a civil war to one presented as a humanitarian emergency that deserves massive international aid.
Western analysts say the new narrative has the merit of pushing aside thorny issues such as the future of President Bashar al-Assad and power-sharing in a future government. Russia's other aim is to divert international attention from the investigation of war crimes and crimes against humanity that might concern not only Assad but also Moscow's own military in Syria.
A glimpse of the new Russian narrative was offered by Moscow's senior diplomat Evgeniy Zagayanov earlier this year in a paper presented to the United Nations Security Council, proposing a project to clear minefields created by ISIS in and around the desert location of Palmyra. The Security Council put the demand on the backburner after members argued that tackling the humanitarian problem in a serious way would require the removal of hurdles set by President Assad's government. "The issue of humanitarian assistance to Syria cannot be reduced to the issue of blockages and hard-to-reach regions," Vladimir Safronkov, a senior Russian diplomat, told the council a few weeks later.
Since then, Moscow experts have been working on what is labelled "master plan for relief and rebuilding in Syria." The plan envisages separate projects to restart and revitalize such key industries as oil and gas production, the extraction of phosphates, and the reopening of regional trade routes. Russia has already presented a plan, estimated to cost over $300 million, for demining 40 per cent of Syrian territory within 22 months. According to David Butter, a Syria expert with Chatham House in London, the Kremlin has already enlisted a number of Russian firms to pick up putative contracts in all those fields.
The next plank of Russia's new strategy consists of extending the so-called "de-escalation zones", currently limited to five or six localities in the south, to other parts of Syria with Idlib province regarded as the next priority. "Russia is trying to freeze the political situation and the reality of control; on the ground," says Ahmad Ansari, an Iranian researcher. "Once a de-escalation zone is set up it would matter little who is in nominal control. And, in time, people will come to focus on possible reconstruction projects [rather] than the nature of power in Damascus."
However, the proposed "frozen situation" would require at least two things: a minimum of municipal administration and a police presence to impose a minimum of security. Moscow is trying to deal with the first problem with a plan for installing provisional municipal councils in "de-escalation zones." A team of administrative experts from Moscow are expected to visit Syria next month to help with the planning needed. That would put Russia as a "firewall" between the Assad regime, kept in distance in Damascus with nominal control, and the opposition forces in actual control on the ground.
To solve the second problem, Russia is already training special police units for deployment in Syria. According to Moscow sources the first batch of 80 policemen are expected to arrive in Syria in September after a special course including training in Arabic language. According to Moscow sources, President Vladimir Putin evoked the outline of the proposed "master plan for relief and rebuilding in Syria" during his meeting in Hamburg with US President Donald Trump. Russians believe that Trump, with his background in construction and real estate, would be more likely to appreciate the "master plan" than classical politicians.
Russia also hopes that the marginalization of Iran in Syria, implicit in the new Moscow strategy, may be an added an incentive for Trump, who seems determined to clip Iran's wings through all means short of military intervention. Western experts put the cost of a comprehensive reconstruction program in Syria at over $1.2 trillion, something that Russia, with its economy in dire straits as a result of sanctions and the fall in energy prices, is in no position to offer. In fact, earlier this month Tatyana Gulikova, head of the Russian Pubic Accounts Office, reported that the number of Russians living below poverty line rose by a whipping two million, to a total of 22 million in 2016, compared to the year before…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
IS WASHINGTON CEDING SYRIA TO RUSSIAN INFLUENCE?
Jonathan Spyer
Jerusalem Post, July 28, 2017
US President Donald Trump this week appeared to confirm a number of recent media reports suggesting that the US has scrapped the long-standing covert CIA program to provide weapons and training to Syria’s rebels. There was much subsequent merrymaking regarding Trump’s supposed ‘revelation’ of the program via his preferred medium of Twitter. This commentary was not serious. The existence of the program, if not its details, has been an open ‘secret’ for a while.
Nevertheless, the decision to scrap the CIA program, now confirmed by General Raymond A. Thomas, head of US Special Operations Command, is a significant development. So is the US exiting the Syrian stage, and ceding the area in its entirety as a zone of influence to Russia. What will this mean for Syria? Does it imply the eclipse in the entirety of anti-Assad forces and an overall victory for the dictator in the long civil war in Syria?
Observation of the available facts suggests that it isn’t that simple. The CIA program, dubbed ‘Timber Sycamore,’ was created in early 2013 and was intended to support ‘moderate’ units from among the Syrian Sunni rebels, at a time when Islamist and jihadi forces had already become entrenched and prevalent among them. The first groups of fighters armed by Timber Sycamore began to appear in southern Syria in September 2013. Operating out of military operations centers in Jordan and Turkey, the program involved the vetting and training of Syrian rebels by US personnel, and from 2014, the provision of sophisticated weaponry.
The first reports, for example, of TOW anti-tank missiles in the hands of the rebels, appeared in April 2014. Media reports suggested the involvement of Saudi Arabia in the project, with Riyadh providing arms and money and the Americans responsible for training. The precise extent of weaponry provided, the list of groups supported, the type of training offered, and the affiliations of the US personnel involved in the training remain classified. However, the impact of the program can be estimated from the results on the ground.
In northern Syria, US-supported groups never managed to dislodge the dominant Salafi-jihadi groups, supported by Qatar and Turkey, most importantly the Ahrar al-Sham group and the al-Qaida-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra (subsequently renamed Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, after formally ending its al-Qaida allegiance). Instead, the US-supported groups became de facto partners with these organizations. In southern Syria, where Salafi jihadi Islamism was weaker, the program has had a greater impact. With US personnel responsible for training, mainly through the Southern Front of the Free Syrian Army, the US-supported forces (also supported by Jordan and Israel) have succeeded in largely preventing the Assad regime and its allies from reconquering Deraa and Quneitra provinces.
Parallel to the CIA program, the Pentagon has been running its own train-and-equip operation for the war against ISIS. This project, after some initial hiccups, has been notably successful and is slowly and relentlessly driving Islamic State back in its ‘capital’ city of Raqqa. The beginnings of success for the Pentagon program, however, coincide with the commencement of US cooperation not with the Sunni Arab rebels, but rather with the Kurdish YPG (People’s Protection Units).
This unlikely partnership, which began in October 2014, enabled the US to work with a ready-made coherent force on the ground, rather than to try to help establish and shape one. Subsequently, the Defense Department program has surrounded this Kurdish core with a variety of additional Arab forces, creating the multi-ethnic force which is now known as the Syrian Democratic Forces.
This program has in addition offered training and support to rebel forces in southeast Syria wishing to fight Islamic State. At present, two Arab rebel militias, Maghawir al-Thawra and Shohada al-Quartayn, are receiving training and aid from the US and allied (reportedly British and Norwegian) forces in the desert of southeast Syria. This train-and-equip program is not being wrapped up. That is, the US is not pulling out of involvement in Syria in toto. Rather, a particular project is being terminated.
So where is this likely to have an impact? For obvious reasons, in the area east of the Euphrates, where the Pentagon train-and-equip program is the relevant project, the termination of Timber Sycamore will have no impact at all. It will also have little noticeable effect on the remaining rebel enclaves in northwest Syria. There, the US-supported groups are largely irrelevant. The growing force in Idleb Province is Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which just this week drove the rival Ahrar al-Sham from 31 villages and consolidated its control in Idleb City, the last major urban center in the hands of the rebellion.
The area where the end of Timber Sycamore may have the largest impact is in southwest Syria, in the region adjoining the Golan Heights and the border with Jordan. Here the decision to end the program seems to follow from the cease-fire concluded on July 7, and the subsequent deployment of Russian ‘military police’ (i.e. re-designated Russian soldiers) to enforce the ‘de-escalation.’ Israel has benefited from the previously existing balance of forces in the southwest, which provided a rebel presence as a kind of buffer against the advance of the regime and its Iranian, Hezbollah and Shia militia allies.
The ending of Timber Sycamore and the de-escalation agreement might tip this balance. However, this is not a certainty even in the southwest. Firstly, it is possible that the vacuum left by the faltering CIA program may be replaced by another US channel of support, sufficient to prevent rebel collapse in the southwest. Secondly, Israeli, Jordanian and Gulf support for the rebels may continue to play a similar role.
Thus, the impact of the demise of the ill-fated ‘Timber Sycamore’ project may be somewhat less than might be immediately apparent. The main question facing Syria today is whether the regime (which really means Iran, Hezbollah and allied militias) will continue to expand its area of control under the cover of Russian support and in the face of confusion and lack of strategic clarity from other forces. The end of the covert CIA program of support for the rebels removes one of the less consequential barriers to this, without making it inevitable.
TRUMP IS FALLING INTO THE SAME TRAP AS OBAMA ON IRAN
Jonathan S. Tobin
New York Post, July 17, 2017
When President Trump met earlier this month with Russian President Vladimir Putin, their exchange about Moscow’s interference in the 2016 presidential election was all anyone seemed to care about. Trump’s efforts to present an agreement between the two countries on a cease-fire in Syria as a major achievement were largely ignored by a media determined to focus exclusively on allegations of collusion between the Republicans and Russia. But it turns out his critics were wrong to dismiss the Syrian pact as a distraction. It’s now clear that in his eagerness for a deal, the president fell into virtually the same trap his predecessor did when he signed the Iran nuclear deal.
The real surprise here is that the biggest critic of the Syrian pact is one of the president’s staunchest friends: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He spoke out once he discovered that Trump hadn’t taken into account Israel’s concerns about Iran being the real beneficiary of the agreement. Like it or not, the Russian and Iranian forces fighting on behalf of the barbarous Bashar al-Assad regime appear to have prevailed. Yet Russia and Iran aren’t content with just keeping their client in power. They want Western recognition not just of Assad’s victory but also of their occupation of Syrian territory.
US acquiescence to the Russian presence in Syria is the first step toward the realization of Putin’s dream of reassembling the old Soviet empire. Once President Barack Obama punted enforcement of his “red line” about Assad’s use of chemical weapons to the Russians, there was probably no way to roll back Putin’s ambitions. But what Trump has done now by trying to pull a foreign-policy victory out of his meeting with Putin is arguably almost as bad as Obama’s feckless Syrian retreat. The cease-fire terms would ensure that Iran and its Hezbollah auxiliaries get a free hand in southern Syria — and that the Iranian presence will become permanent.
Israel has kept a close watch on Hezbollah’s activities in Syria and launched strikes to prevent Iran from using the civil war as cover to transfer heavy arms to its Lebanese allies or allowing the group to establish bases close to its border. Yet if Trump’s cease-fire lets Iran put military facilities adjacent to Israel — something Jerusalem has said it can’t tolerate — that increases the chances of conflict with an Islamist regime that is dedicated to Israel’s destruction. Just as troubling is that this will enable Tehran to achieve its dream of a land bridge from Iran to the Mediterranean. Just as Obama’s bugout from Iraq allowed Iran to become the dominant power in that nation, the Trump seal of approval on Assad’s victory could give it the same power in Syria and enable it to link up with a Lebanon dominated by its terrorist errand boys. That’s the same nightmare of Iranian regional hegemony that scared Arab nations as much as it did the Israelis about the nuclear deal.
Unlike Obama, Trump isn’t laboring under the delusion that Iran’s leaders are moderates. He understands the Iranians are a threat to both the United States and its allies. The problem is that he still refuses to accept that he must choose between his good relations with Russia and getting tough with Iran. Trump spent the 2016 campaign talking up cooperation with Russia against ISIS and denouncing Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran. But events in Syria have proved him wrong. Russia and Iran are interested in Syria for reasons that have nothing to do with fighting ISIS. Indeed, the survival of their man Assad ensures that the terrorist group will continue to retain Sunni support since it is seen as the only local force resisting the regime.
Rather than ignore Israel’s warnings, the president must wake up and realize that acting as if he can tilt toward Russia while also resisting Iran means that Trump is, in effect, making his own awful Iran deal with implications that could be almost as deadly in the long run as Obama’s folly.
Why Israel Is Concerned About American-Russian Understandings on Syria: Brig.-Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser, JCPA, July 30, 2017 —The agreement reached during the G-20 meetings in Hamburg between U.S. President Trump and Russian President Putin on July 7, 2017, about establishing a de-escalation zone in southwestern Syria was accepted with mixed feelings in Israel
Operation Good Neighbor: Israel Reveals its Massive Humanitarian Aid to Syria: Judah Ari Gross, Times of Israel, July 19, 2017—The Israeli military on Wednesday unveiled the scope of its humanitarian assistance in Syria that has dramatically mushroomed over the last year to include treating chronically ill children who have no access to hospitals, building clinics in Syria, and supplying hundreds of tons of food, medicines and clothes to war-ravaged villages across the border.
Trump Got This One Right: Thomas Joscelyn, Weekly Standard, Aug. 7, 2017—Earlier this year, President Donald Trump was shown a disturbing video of Syrian rebels beheading a child near the city of Aleppo. It had caused a minor stir in the press as the fighters belonged to the Nour al-Din al-Zenki Movement, a group that had been supported by the CIA as part of its rebel aid program.
The Greatest Exodus of Our Time: Michael Petrou, National Post, July 12, 2017—Everybody has his own story about how he escaped,” says Ahmad Odaimi, a Syrian doctor from Homs, now in exile in Turkey. His began in the early days of the civil war when he covered shifts at a government hospital for a friend, a fellow doctor who would crawl through 100 metres of an excrement-filled sewer pipe to reach rebel territory and treat wounded fighters there.
