WarSclerotic

The IDF posted a comic photo on their official Twitter page on Monday afternoon depicting a map of the Middle East, explaining “where Iran belongs” in contrast to where they are, referring to the Iranian settlement in Damascus from which a missile was fired at Israel earlier in the week.

“The firing of the missile yesterday – a launch that could have killed civilians – was fired by Iranians out of Damascus within an area that we were promised that there would be no Iranians,” IDF spokesman Brig.-Gen. Ronen Manelis told reporters on Monday.

View image on Twitter

Israel Defense Forces

✔@IDF

Iran, you seem to be lost. Here:

This is not the first time official Israeli agencies have been trolls online.

In June 2018, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei wrote on Twitter that Israel “is a malignant cancerous tumor in the West Asian region that has to be removed and eradicated.”

The Israeli embassy in the US responded with a GIF image of the famous movie Mean Girls in which one character asks, “Why are you so obsessed with me?”

Anna Ahronheim contributed to this report.

Russian and Syrian media emphasized that Syrian air defense “repelled” the attack by Israel on Sunday. According to a spokesman for Russia’s national defense management center, the Syrians used the Pantsir and Buk air defense systems. Israel struck at a Pantsir defense system in retaliation on Monday. But why wasn’t the S-300, which Russia supplied to Syria in September, used by Damascus?

The continuing quiet among the S-300 gunners is a perplexing mystery that underpins the shadowy and deadly conflict unfolding in Syria’s skies. In late September, Russia announced it would give the Syrian regime the S-300 system in the wake of Syrian air defenses mistakenly shooting down a Russian Il-20. The Syrians had used an S-200 to hit the Russian plane, mistaking it for an Israeli warplane during an Israeli raid in Latakia.

New electronic warfare systems were also sent to Syria, including systems designed to control a “near zone” 50 km. from the system and a far zone “200 km.” away that would guard against Israeli attacks, according to a report at Janes.

Since the deployment of the S-300, there was a hiatus in attacks between October and late December. However, Syrian air defense was on alert, saying that its radars were jammed on November 30. This has led to speculation that Syrian air defense was tested several times between October and December.

An air strike on December 25 and then on January 12 were reported by Syrian media. Syria says it was able to shoot down Israeli missiles on January 12. Yet the three batteries of S-300s have apparently remained dormant. Part of the story with the S-300 can be realized from Russian media reports, which have emphasized that the system was not used or have pointed to other, older systems being used.

Is this because the Syrians are not trained on the system? All three battalions of S-300 PMU-2 systems were active by early November, Syrian media indicated. “Russian technical specialists completed the reconfiguration of the system to replace the Russian codes and letter frequencies to the letter codes and radars of Syrian ones,” a report noted.

OBSERVERS OF Syria note that the issue is not that the S-300 is ineffective. One expert who tweets under the name Tom Cat (@TomTheBasedCat) notes “the priority [of Syrian air defense] is to intercept the majority of the projectiles to minimize risk to civilians in the surrounding suburbs.” In this analysis, Syria’s goal isn’t to use air defense to strike at Israeli jets.

However, in the past Syrian air defense projectiles have strayed toward Israel. In March 2017 an S-200 reportedly was fired and intercepted over the Jordan valley by an Arrow missile. An F-16 returning from an air strike was pursued by an S-200 missile in February and crashed in northern Israel. A Syrian missile heading for Israel was targeted by Israeli air defense on December 26.

With the S-300 now in Syria, the question is why it hasn’t been used. Tom Cat argues that “the S-300 is for Theater Defense against air-breathing targets like ballistic missiles and enemy planes, not for Point Defense like tonight [January 11] and the previous times.” In this analysis Syrian air defense doesn’t use the S-300 because it’s not the right system to stop the kind of threat involved. “The game will change when the S-300 is moved southwards because then they can actually track and target the jets,” the expert tweeted on January 13.

Others have speculated that the S-300 operators are not fully trained and that they will be ready by February of this year. This joins accusations online that the S-300 has not been effective or that it hasn’t been used because of fears that if it doesn’t work as planned then it will be an embarrassment for the Syrian regime and its Russian ally which has staked some of its pride on providing the system to help deter air strikes.

Another important aspect of the S-300 discussion is the public relations value of having the system work and also deterring air strikes.

AFTER THE December air strike, there was an apparent hiatus in such strikes. But then Israel took credit for the January 12 and January 20-21 air strikes. Former IDF chief of staff Gadi EIsenkot even said in an interview that “thousands of targets” had been hit and “in 2018 alone, the air force dropped a staggering 2,000 bombs” on Syria, according to The New York Times. This appears to raise serious concerns about Syrian air defense and its inability to deter the strikes, interdict them or use its more sophisticated new technology.

Syrian state media repeats claims again and again that it has intercepted Israel’s missiles. Russian media plays this up as well, with TASS claiming on January 20 that seven Israeli guided aircraft missiles were intercepted. The point here is to show that the Buk and Pantsir systems are doing their job, and the Pantsir S-1 is providing the point air defense it was designed for.

Nevertheless, the question mark about the S-300 remains. When it was deployed it was portrayed as a game changer. But Reuters had reported in 2015 and again in October 2018 that Israel had trained against the S-300system in Greece.

Regional countries are watching, as well as world powers, because the Syrian conflict is not just a conflict but a test of two different defense and combat systems, one in Israel that is linked to Israel’s advanced technology and defense industry and the West, and one supplied by Russia. Echoes of the Cold War – when Western-supplied technology rolled into battle with Israeli forces against the Syrian army in 1967, 1973 and 1982 – overshadow what comes next.

“Turkey believes that safety starts not at its borders but from beyond its border,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in a speech on Monday. “It is not possible to be safe without being powerful.” He was referring to a “safe zone” concept that has been proposed for northern Syria in an area the US hopes to withdraw from soon. But US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says that the safe zone should make sure that US partners in eastern Syria are not attacked by Turkey, while also ensuring Turkey is not attacked by terrorists.

The latest dispute is part of tensions between Turkey and the US that have grown over the last several years. Turkey has claimed that the US is working with “terrorists” in eastern Syria because it accuses the People’s Protection Units (YPG) of being linked to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). The US has been working with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to defeat ISIS while the YPG is part of the SDF. For Ankara the threat of ISIS and the YPG in Syria is seen as the same whereas US officials tend to argue that only parts of the YPG, particularly its political wing called the PYD, are linked to the PKK.

In mid-December Ankara asserted that ISIS was defeated and that Turkey would launch an operation in eastern Syria to secure the border against becoming a “terrorist corridor.” It wanted to build on operations Euphrates Shield and Olive Branch in other parts of northern Syria that had targeted ISIS and the YPG. After a phone call between US President Donald Trump and Erdogan, Trump decided to withdraw US forces from Syria. He announced the withdrawal on December 19th and indicated it would be coordinated with Turkey.

But US officials, such as anti-ISIS envoy Brett McGurk were surprised. They argued that Turkey had not played a consistent role in the Syrian conflict and had let extremists cross Turkey into Syria. They supported sticking by US partners in eastern Syria who had defeated ISIS. US Senator Lindsey Graham said the US must not abandon Kurdish allies in Syria. Pompeo suggested Turkey would “slaughter” the Kurds. Turkey was outraged, claiming that the YPG does not represent all Kurds and that Turkey has treated its Kurdish minority well and that it could do the same in eastern Syria. But Kurdish voices, many who oppose the YPG, tended to wonder if this was the case then why hadn’t Ankara included more Kurds in its role in Afrin after defeating the YPG there in March 2018. Instead Afrin has experienced lawlessness and many Kurds have fled while Syrian Arab rebel groups have moved to Afrin.

This has set up a new crises between Washington and Ankara. Pompeo called Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu on January 21st. They discussed US-Turkey “engagement” and the coordinated US withdrawal. “Pompeo reiterated the commitment of the US to addressing Turkish security concerns along the Turkish-Syria border.” However the US was also committed to protecting the “forces that worked with the US and Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS,” Pompeo said. The Cavusoglu-Pompeo discussions indicate Turkey and the US are not on the same page.

But it is not clear how much the US State Department, Pentagon and White House are on the same page either. Trump and Erdogan have also held two recent phone calls. Turkish media emphasizes that the US is changing its view of the YPG. “The US is clearly changing its position on supporting terrorist groups,” the Daily Sabah notes. Meanwhile Senator Graham, who has been outspoken about standing by the Kurds in eastern Syria, travelled to Turkey and blamed the Obama administration for creating a “nightmare” for the Turkish by arming Kurds in Syria and working with the YPG. This seemed to be a reversal of previous statements.

At issue now is a safe zone along the border and what “safe zone” means. Trump mentioned a “20 mile safe zone” in a January 14th tweet. Trump sees the relationship with Turkey as transactional and has discussed trade increases with Erdogan. Clearly Turkey can offer the US more trade than eastern Syria which Trump has characterized as “death and sand.” Sensing that Trump is closer to Ankara’s view than the State Department or Pentagon, Erdogan said that the safe zone along the border must not become “another swamp” against Turkey. The aim of the buffer zone would be to keep terrorists away. Turkey will discuss the concept in Russia this week with hopes Moscow might broker a deal as the US withdraws. This is what Moscow did in Idlib, brokering a deal which prevented a Syrian regime offensive.

Turkey says it wants to play a role in Manbij and other border areas along the border. The US policy still appears to be juggling several agendas in Syria and has not come to an understanding with Ankara about how the withdrawal will take place without sparking a new conflict between the YPG and Turkey over the border area. There are no real proposals in the works between Turkey and the US about a border force that might patrol this “safe zone.” Despite rumors that a mixed Arab “tribal” force or Kurdish Peshmerga forces connected to the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq might play a role, none of these are realistic proposals. None of them have strong backing from regional powers, the US or Turkey either. In addition rumors that the SDF is negotiating with the Syrian regime for autonomy and incorporating its forces into the Syrian regime to become a border force appear to be a plan only in its infancy and one that will be out-matched by major power politics such as the kind unfolding in Moscow. Washington’s interlocutors also appear to send mixed messages to Ankara and to Syrian partners in eastern Syria, setting the stage for yet more controversy.