WarSclerotic

Between Hezbollah fighters and Russian missiles, Israel’s stakes in Syria war grow ever higher – Diplomacy & Defense – Israel News | Haaretz Daily Newspaper.

Nasrallah’s gamble on Assad’s behalf could tilt Israel to support rebels, but Russian S-300s could be dangerous game-changer, for everyone.

Netanyahu and Putin attend a news conference in Sochi, May 14, 2013. Photo by Reuters

As far as Israel is concerned, the news from Syria in the past few days can be divided into the good, the bad and the potentially very ugly. Taken together, the developments mark a convergence of potential game-changers that may set the stage for long, hot and possibly very dangerous summer.

The good news, if it can be called that, is Hezbollah’s increasingly direct intervention in the Syrian civil war on behalf of beleaguered president Bashar Assad. A New York Times headline on Monday described the Lebanese terror group’s involvement as a “dramatic gamble”, which Israelis, of course, are hoping it will lose.

The Times article describes Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah’s decision to send his forces to fight alongside the Syrian army in the ongoing battle over the city of Qusayr as a move that could prove critical for the future of the organization: a victory would enhance the organization’s reputation and status as a coveted member of the tripartite axis with Syria and Iran, while a defeat would weaken the group militarily, dilute its deterrent power and undermine its position of influence in Lebanese society and politics.

These theoretically high stakes of Hezbollah’s uncharacteristic foray cannot but influence Israel’s views on the conflict in Syria. Jerusalem has hitherto wavered between two conflicting interests: stability of the Syrian state and its regime as a guarantor of chemical weapons and of Israel’s northern border vs. the value of disrupting Tehran’s regional hegemony and its supply lines to Beirut.

This equation changes, however, if Hezbollah gets sucked into the Syrian imbroglio to the degree that Assad’s defeat could also spell the death knell for Nasrallah. Israel will be sorely tempted to do whatever it can to contribute to such a potentially fatal blow to an organization that, it many ways, has been Israel’s fiercest and most implacable enemy for over 30 years.

Instead of opposing the arming of Syrian rebels, or at least cautioning Western powers against hasty moves, Israel may now view an immediate strengthening of anti-Assad forces as a strategic imperative aimed at averting a decisive Assad-Hezbollah victory. Rather than having to choose between the plague and cholera, as the saying goes, Israel could come to appreciate the advantages of having the two scourges fight it out, one against the other.

From that point of view, the European Union’s decision to refrain from extending its arms embargo against the Syrian rebels could not have come at a better time. With the active and physical help of Iran and Syria, Assad has recently appeared to be not only holding on but actually gaining ground; the arming of Syrian rebels, even if they include Jihadist extremists, would serve as a potent game-changer and morale-booster for the beleaguered anti-Assad forces.

Similarly, the growing evidence of the Syrian army’s tactical use of chemical weapons, as supplied by eyewitness accounts of Le Monde reporters, may add to the pressure on the U.S. Administration to increase support for the rebels, if not to intervene directly. Senator John McCain’s jaunt into rebel territory over the weekend has refocused attention on an issue that the Administration was probably happy to keep on the sidelines.

Good or bad, all of these developments are overshadowed, of course, by the Russian announcement that it plans to go ahead and arm Assad with advanced S-300 surface to air missiles, described by the International Assessment and Strategy Center as “one of the most lethal, if not the most lethal, all altitude area defense SAM (Surface to Air Missile) systems in service.”

Moscow’s decision, if final, is a diplomatic setback for Israel, which has tried to dissuade Russia from going ahead with the deal, most recently in Prime Minister Netanyahu’s meeting with Vladimir Putin two weeks ago. More importantly, however, the deployment of the S-300s could change the military balance of air power on Israel’s northern front, with the new missiles threatening Israel’s freedom of action not only over Syria but over Lebanon and Israel’s northern areas as well.

Any Israeli decision to attack Syrian targets before, during, or after the deployment of the new missile systems could put it into a dangerous collision course with Moscow and its regional ambitions.

Given this new convergence of regional and international forces on the Syrian battlefield, there may be renewed impetus to reach a negotiated settlement at the upcoming Geneva II conference, scheduled for mid-June. But it is no less far fetched to sketch plausible scenarios by which the internal civil war develops into a regional confrontation and escalates from there into an all-out international crisis that pits Syria, Iran, Russia and possibly China on one side and Europe, the U.S., Israel and Sunni countries on the other.

If this happens during the next few months, be sure that the “Guns of August” precedent will be mentioned often. If the situation deteriorates even further, you may rest assured that scaremongers will rejoice, doomsayers will exult and Google will be awash in searches for the Apocalypse, the Book of Revelation, the Devil and the Beast, Gog and Magog and a little known place in the northern Israel, right next to Lebanon and Syria, called Megiddo – or Armageddon.

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