WarSclerotic

Analysis: Saudi switch against Syria’s Assad is blow to Iran – World news – Mideast/N. Africa – Iran – msnbc.com.

DUBAI — Saudi Arabia, self-appointed guardian of Sunni Islam, is deeply wary of popular uprisings that have convulsed the Arab world, but it has lost patience with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s violent attempts to crush a mainly Sunni protest movement.

Saudi-Syrian relations were rarely warm, with Riyadh riled by Syria’s alliance with its Shi’ite regional rival Iran, and they chilled further after the 2005 assassination of Lebanese statesman Rafik al-Hariri, a friend of the Saudi royal family.

But until this week Saudi King Abdullah had kept silent on the violence in Syria, which human rights groups say has cost more than 1,600 civilian lives in five months of turmoil.

Now the Saudis have taken a stand, perhaps deciding that Syria’s diplomatic isolation and the bloodshed unleashed by its minority Alawite rulers on their majority Sunni opponents have made Damascus a ripe target of diplomatic opportunity.

“They realize the regime in Syria is facing a serious, nationwide, deep rebellion and is therefore vulnerable,” said Beirut-based Middle East analyst Rami Khouri.

The kingdom, which brooks no dissent at home and helped Bahrain crush Shi’ite-led protests in March, recalled its ambassador from Damascus on Monday and denounced the violence in Syria, which Assad blames on armed gangs with foreign backing.

The Saudi decision was announced in a statement in the name of King Abdullah, who warned Syria it faced ruin over the crackdown, among the bloodiest in Arab uprisings that have already brought down the rulers of Tunisia and Egypt.

Analysts suggested that Saudi Arabia sees in Assad’s woes a chance to strike a blow at Iran, even at the cost of undermining an established ruler, with a chance of chaos — or even representative government — in a nation at the heart of the Arab world.

“The benefits of hitting the Iranian connection outweigh the negatives of a new democracy in Syria,” should one emerge in a post-Assad Syria, Khouri said.

IMPACT ON THE STREET

The Saudi shift was prefigured in the regional political blocs over which the kingdom casts a long shadow, and mirrored by the countries and institutions for which its oil wealth and claim to religious rectitude are persuasive.

The Saudi-led Gulf Cooperation Council — which includes Bahrain — on Saturday expressed its “concern and regret” over Syria’s crackdown, echoing Western calls for political reform.

A day later, the Arab League, whose new head had visited Assad soon after taking office, called for an immediate halt to violence against demonstrators during military operations in Hama, Deir al-Zor and elsewhere in Syria.

The king’s warning to Syria, said one Saudi commentator, has paved the way for more states to pile pressure on Syria’s rulers while leaving some margin for them to avoid downfall.

“The statement wasn’t isolated from the worldwide movement to put pressure on the Syria regime. Saudi Arabia is important when it comes to future decisions, actions taken to pressure the regime,” said Jamal al-Khashoggi.

“For Saudi Arabia to come out criticizing the regime will no doubt have an impact on the Syrian street. It will fuel the tension, fuel the anger … It will create pressure on Syria to recognize its position for what it is.”

The move has had the immediate effect of cranking up the chorus of condemnation surrounding Syria, already facing sanctions from the United States and Europe.

Bahrain and Kuwait recalled their ambassadors from Damascus hours after the king’s message, and Sunni Islam’s most venerable institution of learning, al-Azhar in Cairo, called the Syrian assault on protesters an unacceptable “human tragedy.”

SECTARIAN RISKS

The latter voice echoes the Sunni bonds Saudi Arabia was invoking by moving against Syria during the holy Muslim month of Ramadan, on the heels of a tank assault against a rebellious, largely Sunni city, Hama, where Assad’s father killed thousands to put down an Islamist armed revolt in 1982.

The Assads’ Alawite sect is deemed heretical by Saudi Arabia’s austere brand of Sunni Islam.

Videos posted on YouTube after the king’s message appear to show Syrians in Saudi Arabia cheering the defense of his co-religionists in Syria.

“I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this happened during Ramadan,” said Gregory Gause, a political science professor at the University of Vermont.

“There is a heightened sense of the importance and role of religion, and people in Syria, an overwhelmingly Sunni country, were sure to read it in a sectarian way,” he said.

“They (the Saudis) increasingly see Iran and the Arab upheavals as requiring them to play their hole card: We’re Sunnis, they’re Shi’a, and there are more of us than there are of them.”

Anti-Assad protesters have sometimes shouted slogans against Iran and Syria’s close Lebanese Shi’ite ally Hezbollah, once wildly popular for its confrontations with Israel.

Any appeal to sectarianism, Syria’s regime and opposition alike have warned, risks tearing Syria apart.

Yet it appears to be a risk that Saudi Arabia, having seen off a domestic challenge between 2003-2006 from militants who derived their ideology from a form of Salafism, a puritanical set of Muslim doctrine, is now willing to take.

“The leadership feels that the kind of Salafist, jihadist movement that threatened them is under control, that they’ve crushed it and controlled it ideologically,” Gause said.

“The upshot of encouraging it in the region is that I think they think they’ve got a handle on it.”

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report August 9, 2011, 10:01 AM (GMT+02:00)

Gen. Ali Habib found dead

The Assad regime’s internal crisis took another brutal turn Tuesday, Aug. 9 when the former Syrian Defense Minister Ali Habib was found dead hours after President Bashar Assad sacked him. debkafile‘s military sources report exclusively that the 72-year old general, a long associate of the Assad clan, died of gunshots from automatic weapons in the hands of the president’s henchmen. First Syrian reports claimed General Habib died by his own hand after being replaced by the chief of staff, Gen. Daoud Rajha. Our sources report that his death was the result of the internal power struggle raging in the top military command between commanders calling for a coup to remove Bashar Assad, a faction demanding to first end to the savage crackdown on protest, and factions with unclear motives.

Unexplained indications of disputes between the high command in Damascus and division commanders in the field surfaced in the last two days along with the tank onslaught on the eastern town of Deir al-Zour.

It now looks as though the generals were busier in their infighting than in subduing the popular uprising. Assad suspected Gen. Ali Habib of conniving with the officers plotting a mutiny against him and therefore had him removed and put to death.

Syria conflict descends into ‘war of attrition’ – Israel News, Ynetnews.

There is little to stop Assad from calling upon the scorched-earth tactics that have kept his family in power for more than 40 years

Associated Press

Despite five months of blistering attacks on dissent, the Syrian regime has yet to score a decisive victory against a pro-democracy uprising determined to bring down the country’s brutal dictatorship.

President Bashar Assad still has the military muscle to level pockets of resistance, but the conflict has robbed him of almost all international support. Even Saudi Arabia this week called for an end to the bloodshed in Syria, the first of several Arab nations to join the growing chorus against Assad.

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The Syrian leader is being watched carefully at home and abroad to see how long his iron regime – which is still strong but wobbling – will continue to use tanks, snipers and security forces on hundreds of thousands of fervent, overwhelmingly young protesters who keep coming back for more.

“Syria is not burying the revolution,” said Nabil Bou Monsef, a senior analyst at the Arabic-language An-Nahar newspaper. “Protests are resuming everywhere, even in areas that were subject to crackdowns.”

He added: “It is difficult for one of the sides to win. Syria has entered a war of attrition between the regime and the opposition.”

Taking cover in Hama (Photo: AP)

There is little to stop Assad from calling upon the scorched-earth tactics that have kept his family in power for more than 40 years. A longtime pariah, Syria grew accustomed to shrugging off the world’s reproach long before the regime started shooting unarmed protesters five months ago.

A military intervention has been all but ruled out, given the quagmire in Libya and the lack of any strong opposition leader in Syria to rally behind. The U.S. and other nations have little power to threaten further isolation or economic punishment of Assad’s pro-Iranian regime – unlike in Egypt, where President Barack Obama was able to help usher longtime ally Hosni Mubarak out of power.

International sanctions, some of which target Assad personally, have failed to persuade him to ease his crackdown. There had been hopes, since dashed, that European Union sanctions would prove a humiliating personal blow to Assad, a 45-year-old eye doctor who trained in Britain.

Until the uprising began, Assad had cultivated an image as a modern leader in a region dominated by aging dictators. He was seen around Damascus with his glamorous wife, Asma, who grew up in London and was the subject of a glowing profile in Vogue just before the protests erupted. The couple’s three small children added to their luster as youthful and energetic.

But the relentless military assaults on rebellious towns have only grown more deadly. The latest wave of bloodshed started a week ago, on the eve of the holy month of Ramadan, when tanks and snipers laid siege to Hama, a city in central Syria that had largely freed itself from government control earlier this year.

Residents were left cowering in their homes, too terrified to peek through the windows. The city is haunted by memories of the regime’s tactics: In 1982, Assad’s father and predecessor, Hafez, ordered the military to quell a rebellion by Syrian members of the conservative Muslim Brotherhood movement there, sealing off the city in an assault that killed between 10,000 and 25,000 people.

Since the start of Ramadan, more than 300 people have been killed in cities including Hama and Deir el-Zour, an oil-rich but largely impoverished region known for its well-armed clans and tribes whose ties extend across eastern Syria and into Iraq.

Syria has blocked nearly all outside witnesses to the carnage by banning foreign media and restricting local coverage that strays from the party line, which states the regime is fighting thugs and religious extremists who are acting out a foreign conspiracy.

Besides the secretly recorded videos that leak out of Syria every day and accounts by witnesses who whisper down telephone lines, Assad has managed to keep the eyes of the world off his bloodied nation.

But Syria’s troubles do not end at the country’s borders.

Syria is a geographical and political keystone in the heart of the Middle East, bordering five countries with whom it shares religious and ethnic minorities and, in Israel’s case, a fragile truce. Its web of allegiances extends to Lebanon’s powerful Hezbollah movement and Iran’s Shiite theocracy.

A destabilized Syria, consequently, could send unsettling ripples through the region.

Syria has a volatile sectarian divide, making civil unrest one of the most dire scenarios. The Assad regime is dominated by the Alawite minority, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, but the country is overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim.

Alawite dominance has bred resentments, which Assad has worked to tamp down by pushing a strictly secular identity. But he now appears to be relying heavily on his Alawite power base, beginning with highly placed relatives, to crush the resistance.

The uprising has brought long-simmering sectarian tensions to the surface.

In the revolt’s early days, it became clear many foreign leaders were loath to see Assad go. While few supported his policies, Assad had managed to keep his country stable and out of war with Israel.

Mindful of this backhanded support, Assad exploits those fears of chaos and sectarian warfare, portraying himself as the only man who can guarantee stability.

But the early, muted response to the bloodshed in Syria is over.

This week, Arab nations have joined the international chorus against Assad for the first time. Saudi Arabia’s king – who does not tolerate dissent in his own country – demanded “an end to the killing machine” and recalled his country’s ambassador to Damascus late Sunday. On Monday, Bahrain and Kuwait followed suit.

A statement posted on a Facebook page used by protesters lauded the Arab governments for recalling their envoys.

“Arab governments stood and faced the butcher Bashar al-Assad, and stood on the side of the great Syrian people,” said a statement on the “We are all Hamza al-Khatib” page, set up in honor of a 13-year-old boy who was killed in the crackdown.

The U.S., the European Union and even longtime ally Russia have issued scathing statements against Assad, imploring him to stop the bloodshed. The U.S. and the EU have imposed sanctions.

Despite his determination to stay in power, Assad’s regime is undoubtedly hurting.

The security forces, which are the backbone of the regime and the driving force behind the culture of fear and paranoia in Syria, are overextended, exhausted and underpaid.

The unrest is eviscerating the economy, threatening to hurt the business community and prosperous merchant classes that are key to propping up the regime. An influential bloc, the business leaders have long traded political freedoms for enriching economic privileges.

It is unlikely, however, that they will abandon the regime entirely without a viable alternative.

“Before they will help overthrow the Assads, they need a safe alternative,” Joshua Landis, director of the University of Oklahoma’s Center for Middle East Studies, wrote in a recent analysis.

“They are not going to embrace – not to mention, fund – a leaderless bunch of young activists who want to smash everything that smells of Baathist privilege, corruption and cronyism,” said Landis, who runs an influential blog called Syria Comment.

But the revolution has tapped into an underlying well of resentment in Syria, a closed society in which people had long been deeply fearful of a pervasive security apparatus. Now that protesters have broken through that wall of fear, many observers see little chance of turning back.

“The regime is now the prisoner of the security solution, and the opposition will also become a prisoner of escalation,” said Bou Monsef, the An-Nahar analyst. “Syria has entered a tunnel, and it’s difficult to know how it will end.”

Jerusalem Issue Briefs-The Syrian Uprising: Implications for Israel.

Eyal Zisser

• In Syria, the story is the emergence of social groups from the periphery and their struggle to gain access to power and take over the center. The emergence of the Baath party and the Assad dynasty in the 1960s involved a coalition of peripheral forces led by the Alawites, but many others joined who came from the periphery. Now, because of socioeconomic reasons, the periphery has turned against the regime.

• Before the uprising, Bashar al-Assad was supported by the Islamic and radical movements in the Middle East. Most Muslim Brothers supported him – in Jordan, Egypt, and Hamas. Now they have turned their back on him, led by Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, leader of the Muslim Brotherhood on a global scale, who reminds them that, after all, Bashar is an Alawite and supported by the Shiite camp.

• Turkey, under Prime Minister Erdogan, had become a close ally of Syria. But Erdogan has no reservations regarding the possibility that Muslim radicals might come to power in Syria if Bashar falls. On the contrary, the Sunni radicals and the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood are Erdogan’s close allies, as is Hamas. So Turkey has nothing to lose if Basher falls.

• If Bashar falls, the situation is likely to be similar to that of earlier decades, with a very weak central regime. This could lead to border incidents with Israel, but not a war, with terrorist acts that a weak regime cannot prevent.

• The Syrian opposition will eventually take over and, as in the case of Egypt, they know that their interests lie with friendship with Western countries like the United States, and not with Iran. So in the long run, a new Syrian regime might be better for Israel than this current regime.

The Periphery Has Turned Against the Regime

It is clear that the Syrian regime has failed in its efforts to suppress the protests, which have spread all over the country. At the same time, the regime is still there and it is still strong and can fight back. The army, including soldiers and officers who belong not only to Assad’s Alawite community but also to other sects and communities, is still ready to fight for the regime. Unlike Egypt, where the gap between the army and the political leadership became quite clear, this is not the case in Syria. And unlike Libya, when immediately following the beginning of the uprising there were many defections by ambassadors, senior officials, and army officers, this is clearly not the case in Syria.

In Egypt there was a clear generational dimension to the revolution, which was led to a certain degree by the younger generation. In Libya, the tension is between east and west – Tripolitania and Cyrenaica. In Yemen, there is the tribal factor – the struggle for power between the south and the north, and also between different tribal configurations. In Syria, the story is a struggle between the periphery and the center, with the emergence of social groups from the periphery and their struggle to gain access to power and take over the center.

This was actually the history of Syria in the 1950s and 1960s. The emergence of the Baath party and of the Assad dynasty involved the struggle of the periphery. It was a coalition of peripheral forces led by the Alawites, the Assad dynasty, but there were many others who joined this coalition and who came from the periphery. Farouk al-Sharaa, the current vice-president and previously the foreign minister, who joined the Baath struggle for power, came from Daraa. Mustafa Tlass, who served as defense minister under Hafez al-Assad for nearly 30 years, came from Rastan, a small town near Homs, where there has been severe violence.

While the key figures in the political echelon are Alawites, the majority of ministers in the government are Sunnis, which reflects Syrian society. They are Sunnis from the big cities, or Sunnis who came many years ago from the periphery and have lost any connection with the periphery. The periphery supported the Baath regime, even during a difficult time in the 1980s when the regime fought the radical Islamists. Now, because of socioeconomic reasons, the periphery has turned against the regime. Thus, this regime has lost a major base of support.

Compare this with Egypt, for example. In Egypt we have not heard about the periphery during the revolution because the movement there was led by young, educated, and middle- to upper-middle-class people who decided to take to the streets and demonstrate against Mubarak. The   young, middle-class Syrians in Damascus and Aleppo have not yet decided, and are still waiting to see what might happen. The unrest is still limited to the periphery, while the main urban centers of Damascus and Aleppo, while they may not support the regime, have not yet joined the protest. Once it reaches these places, it might be the end of the regime, but we are not yet at that stage. We should watch for a shift in the attitudes of the urban Sunni elites in both cities.

The uprising is gaining momentum. It moved from small villages to bigger towns and then it moved to some of the large cities, like Homs and Hama. The key thing to watch for is the continued cohesiveness of the Syrian army. How long will Sunni soldiers and officers be ready to shoot at demonstrators and take part in the efforts by the regime to brutally suppress the uprising?

There is no real opposition in Syria. There are many intellectuals, many critics of the regime, and many human-rights activists inside and outside Syria. Outside Syria there are some groups that call themselves the opposition, but they have no real influence over events inside Syria. Conferences of opposition activists were held in Turkey and later in Brussels which might lead to the emergence of a much more effective opposition with a clear leadership and more influence over the course of events. This could prove to be a very dangerous threat to the regime because this group might eventually be recognized by European  and later by other countries as the legitimate leadership of Syria. Right now there are no groups which could be recognized as such, but it may happen in the future.

The Bashar al-Assad Regime

Only ten years ago, Bashar al-Assad was seen as a reformer with a Western mentality. However, Bashar has said that he was raised in Syria in the house of Hafez al-Assad, and is no different from him. The Western countries and the American administration believed that there was no better alternative to the Assad regime – if this regime collapses, the case of Iraq may repeat itself with chaos, terrorism, and Islamic radicalism. But now there is a change in the attitude of the West toward Syria.

Bashar al-Assad’s Syria is an important part of the Axis of Evil, supported by Iran and Hizbullah. However, Iran and Hizbullah can do very little to help him, especially inside Syria, because part of the uprising and the unrest has to do with Sunni-Shiite tension and, clearly, Shiite Iran will pay heavily for its support of Bashar al-Assad if he falls.

Before the uprising, Bashar was supported by the Islamic and radical movements in the Middle East. Most Muslim Brothers supported him – in Jordan, Egypt, and Hamas. Now they have turned their back on him, led by Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, leader of the Muslim Brotherhood on a global scale, who reminds them that, after all, Bashar is an Alawite and supported by the Shiite camp. Now Qaradawi, as well as other Muslim Brothers all over the Arab world, and even Hamas, are having second thoughts about their alliance with Bashar.

Bashar also had the support of the pan-Arabists. An example is Azmi Bishara, a former Israeli Arab MK who now lives in Qatar. He is Christian but supported Syria as a stronghold of resistance to Israel. Now these people have come to think of Bashar as an obstacle to the revival of pan-Arabism.

Turkey, under Prime Minister Erdogan, had become a close ally of Syria. But Erdogan has no reservations regarding the possibility that Muslim radicals might come to power in Syria if Bashar falls. On the contrary, the Sunni radicals and the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood are Erdogan’s close allies, as is Hamas. So Turkey has nothing to lose if Basher falls.

Clearly, the unrest in Syria has to do with economics. We tend to think that the Syrian economy was doing well, but this prosperity involved the center and some Sunni urban elites, but it had little connection to the periphery (which is exactly what happened in Egypt as well). The World Bank was very satisfied with the conduct of the Syrian economy, but the periphery had reservations. Right now the Syrian economy is paralyzed, and Bashar has made some dramatic changes, bringing back subsidies. The tourist industry has collapsed. Even if he survives, Bashar could pay heavily and might be in desperate need not of Iranian missiles but of economic aid.

In the coming weeks and months, if the unrest continues, the Syrian economy will remain paralyzed and Bashar will have no resources to satisfy the urban elites in Damascus and Aleppo, where the middle class could turn against him. So he is playing for time, but time is not on his side. He needs to bring this unrest to an immediate halt, because if it continues, it will threaten his interests.

When Bashar speaks about reform, what he has in mind is to open new schools, to launch new tourist projects, to encourage industry. It has nothing to do with any political change or reform because this would be against the nature of his regime.

Bashar is now fighting for his life and what is happening outside Syria has no relevance right now. We know exactly what might happen to him and to all of his generals in the event of regime change. The defense minister, Ali Habib, is his relative. Since he is fighting for his life, he will do what is needed to win, and he does not care that the Americans and Europeans are condemning him for his brutality.

The Syrians do not see Egypt as a model that is relevant for them. The model that is relevant for Syria is Iraq or Lebanon. Syrians look at the Iraqi model as an example of what might happen if the regime collapses: disintegration of the state, bloodshed, and ethnic clashes.

So far the protest is limited to the Sunni periphery. We have not heard about unrest in the Druze areas in southern Syria. Christians are clearly in full support of the Assad regime, as are the other minorities. The Kurds in eastern Syria are still in a position of wait-and-see.

Syrian Relations with Israel

The Syrian regime has no interest in an escalation along the Syrian-Israeli border. Syria knows that any small incident can turn into a major war like in Lebanon in 2006. I wonder if it was indeed the Syrian regime who organized all those demonstrations along the border on Nakba and Naksa days. Clearly, when the regime was strong, it could not have happened. Now that the regime is weaker and Assad is focusing much of his attention on the riots all over Syria, such events can happen. But when it got out of control, the regime made an effort to contain and bring the events to an end. Bashar needs his soldiers to fight the Syrian people and to suppress the revolt. The last thing he needs is a war with Israel in which Israel might destroy his army, leaving him without any defensive shield against this uprising.

Making peace with Israel is not a popular idea in the Arab world. A weak leader will not even consider it. There is a consensus in Syria that one day it will be possible to think about settling the conflict with Israel, but in a weak regime with a leader under attack, this is not the right time. Nobody in Syria cared about the demonstrations on Nakba and Naksa days. All they care about is Bashar and his regime. People in Syria do not care about what the Israelis do right now.

The Syrian regime should be considered a strategic threat to Israel because Bashar al-Assad has sought to develop nuclear capabilities. He provided support to Hamas and Hizbullah – not the kind of support his father used to give them, but strategic support which turned Hizbullah into a major strategic threat to Israel. Bashar was the one who brought the Iranians to Syria and to the region. The Iranians had been present, but only as guests. Now they are in a different position and the alliance became closer. At the same time, Bashar maintained quiet on the Golan Heights border and said he wanted to sign a peace agreement with Israel.

The Syrian ruler came to the conclusion that having a nuclear capability was what saved the North Korean regime, and that what enabled the Americans to attack Saddam Hussein was the fact that he did not have a nuclear option. A different Syrian regime may not have the economic resources and the intimate links to North Korea and Iran, and might not feel the need for a nuclear capability. It could be that Syria under a new regime will be different than Syria under the Assad dynasty. Hafez al-Assad, with Western help, was able to turn Syria – a small, backward state – into a regional power. Take the Assad dynasty out of the equation and Syria will remain an important state geographically, but not the regional power it was before.

As for peace with Israel, there was something personal in the Syrian demand for an Israeli withdrawal to the shoreline of the Sea of Galilee because Hafez al-Assad, as defense minister, was the one who lost the war in 1967. If you remove the Assad dynasty from the equation, perhaps the Syrian stance will become more flexible.

A New Syrian Regime Might Be Better for Israel

The weaker Syria is, the stronger Lebanon will be. Any regime change in Syria could be a blow to Hizbullah, even though Hizbullah does represent many of the Shiites. It is a deeply rooted, authentic Lebanese Shiite power center. However, it was the help of Syria and Iran that turned Hizbullah into a regional power. Taking Syria out of the equation could reduce Hizbullah to a more reasonable size – to become a strong Lebanese party but not more than that.

Syria supported the Shiites in Lebanon, but at the same time gave some backing to the Sunnis because the logic behind Syrian intervention in Lebanon has always been: divide and rule. A Sunni regime in Syria might change the balance in Lebanon in favor of the Sunnis.

A new regime in Syria could mean a return to the 1950s and 1960s when there was a weak, decentralized Syrian government with strong regions. Each region has its own ethnic and communal characteristics, and there may be a coup d’état from time to time and a lack of stability. The worst scenario is that Syria will turn into a new Iraq, because there are now not only historical accounts to settle but current accounts as well. There have been 2,000 Syrians killed and the families will ask for revenge, not from Bashar but from their Alawite and Christian neighbors.

I do not think it is in Israel’s interest to have Bashar in power. Certainly, as in Egypt, it is always possible that the Muslim Brotherhood might take over in Syria, but I am not sure that this will be the case. If Bashar falls, the situation is likely to be similar to that of earlier decades, with a very weak central regime. This could lead to border incidents with Israel, but not a war, with terrorist acts that a weak regime cannot prevent. The Syrian opposition will eventually take over and, as in the case of Egypt, they know that their interests lie with friendship with Western countries like the United States, and not with Iran. So in the long run, a new Syrian regime might be better for Israel than this current regime.

*     *     *

Prof. Eyal Zisser is the Dean of the Faculty of Humanities, and former Head of the Department of Middle Eastern and African History and of the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, both at Tel Aviv University. He is a leading expert on Syria and has written extensively on the history and modern politics of Syria, Lebanon, and the Arab-Israeli conflict. Among his books are: In the Name of the Father: Bashsar al-Asad’s First Years in Power, Lebanon: the Challenge of Independence and Assad’s Syria at a Crossroads. This Jerusalem Issue Brief is based on his presentation at the Institute for Contemporary Affairs of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs on June 16, 2011.

Austerity vs. deterrence – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

America’s national debt crisis and Pentagon budget cuts are pushing to the margins emergency plans for an operation against Iran.

By Amir Oren