Israel’s proactive strike in Syria

Pre-emptive Israeli strikes targeting Syria’s strategic military capabilities – including chemical weapons production and storage facilities – are a sign of sensible realism amid the optimism following the collapse of the Assad regime. According to the Israel Defence Forces, more than 500 intensive airstrikes in the 48 hours that followed the flight to Moscow of the Butcher of Damascus, Bashar al-Assad, ensured the regime’s weapons stockpiles “will not fall into the wrong hands”. Israel estimates 70 to 80 per cent of Assad’s Russian and Iranian-supplied arsenals of long-range Scud missiles, cruise missiles, coast-to-coast missiles, fighter jets, radars, helicopters and stockpiles of chemical weapons have been destroyed or degraded.

With customary hypocrisy, the UN and Middle East countries led by Saudi Arabia and Turkey have condemned Israel’s defensive action that includes taking control of a so-called UN buffer zone in the Golan Heights that separates Syria and Israel. Such criticisms are not valid. It is reasonable to be mildly optimistic about the collapse of Assad’s rule and the blow to the plans of Moscow and Tehran for the region. That said, a dangerous power vacuum in critically strategic Syria could lead to a resurgence by terrorist groups such as Islamic State. It still controls parts of the country. Ahmed al-Sharaa – the real name of rebel leader Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, who claims to control Damascus – was formerly aligned to Islamic State and al-Qa’ida. His Hayat Tahrir al-Sham is designated by the US and UN as a terrorist organisation. He has a $US10m ($15.7m) bounty on his head. Since he arrived in Damascus he has sought to present himself as a moderate, willing to compromise and work with the remaining structures of the deposed regime. But there can be no certainty yet that he will not revert to type. That is why the rationale behind Israel’s pre-emptive strikes is well founded, It deserves support from countries that could again become targets for Islamist terrorism spawned in Syria.

Premature optimism about Syria post-Assad, like that which preceded the collapse of the Afghan government in 2021, would be a disaster, just as a naive misunderstanding of reality led to the Western imbroglio in Libya in 2015. The stakes for Israel in ensuring Syria does not become a base for even more menacing Islamist terrorism could not be greater. Whoever holds power in Damascus should be clear about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s warning that if the new regime “allows Iran to re-establish itself in Syria, or allows the transfer of Iranian weapons or any other weapons to (what remains of) Hezbollah, or attacks us, we will respond forcefully”. The IDF has laid down an important marker.