The Iran and Wider Middle East Thread

Update #12

The Syrian Arab Republic headed by the Syrian Socialist Baath Party has fallen, and the SAA has been dissolved. The new official government is the Syrian National Transitional Government. This Transitional Government will be headed by the Baathist ex Prime Minister al Jalili - and it is yet unclear what the future government of Syria beyond the SNTG will look like, what state actors will support the process and what Syrian parties, factions and sects will be included.


The fate of Bashar al Assad remains unknown. There is a lot of speculation that he was on a crashed plane.



The war will continue yet in a different form and with different dynamics. It's unlikely that the hodgepodge of anti Assad groups (technically not rebels anymore) will find common ground on ideology, governance, power distribution etc. In addition it will be difficult to have the warlords voluntarily relinquish their power at the behest of a central government - or include them in some sort of national army. On a regional level especially Erdogan will want to use the chaos to get something done about PKK offshoots controlling a third of Syria right on his border. The Americans have plans too, and so do the Israelis. The Saudis, Emiratis and Qatari will likely become more pro-active again in whatever way (either covering for the new government or proxy politics).

Who won't have a seat a table anymore are the Iranians and probably the Russians. The Iranians just lost their 40 year old Axis of Resistance project, and the Russians are highly likely to lose their military bases on the coast (unless a backdoor deal gets agreed on though the Russians have little to offer to anyone).

In terms of territorial control several landgrabs took place. HTS+allies swiftly moved into Latakia+Tartous province, dashing any hopes for a future de facto Alawite breakaway state. The SDF tried to secure additional areas south of the Euphrates but got into conflict with Arab militias and tribesmen. In some areas, like the Albukamal bordercrossing, the SDF retreated on US' advice.





In the area around Manbij the SNA intensified their assault. Backed by Turkish artillery and dronestrikes they managed to enter Manbij City . Current situation is unclear in terms of control

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In the South Israel by word of Netanyahu declared the 1974 non aggression pact signed with Hafez al Assad to be void due to aggressions occuring from the DMZ. The intended goal is securing the UNDOF DeMilitarized Zone (DMZ) that is controlled by UN forces. IDF will move beyond that DMZ as it is a smokescreen and manufactured casus belli. In addition to this landgrab Israel carried out several airstrikes on Syrian territory, targeting Syrian-Lebanese bordercrossings, military sites in Damascus and several targets in Daraa and Suwayda province.

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IAF striking the few remaining Syrian AD systems left (600+ strikes in the part 5 years under Bashar) to secure total air superiority over Syrian territory



As promised a statement from the Taliban on their victorious ideological cousins of HTS.

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We congratulate all Muslims in general, and the mujahideen and the families of the martyrs on the conquest of Damascus and the fall of the tyrant Bashar al-Assad. God is Great and praise be to God.
 
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In the South Israel by word of Netanyahu declared the 1974 non aggression pact signed with Hafez al Assad to be void due to aggressions occuring from the DMZ. The intended goal is securing the UNDOF DeMilitarized Zone (DMZ) that is controlled by UN forces. IDF will move beyond that DMZ as it is a smokescreen and manufactured casus belli.

Here lies the entire reason for the sudden success of the rebels.

Another piece of "Greater Israel".
 
4 years of blank-check for Israel under Biden has really paid off for the Talmuds. Best election they ever rigged, now Israel controls the middle east. Pretty soon the Talmuds won't even need American anymore.
But muh wage slaves and free US taxpayer monies...
 
4 years of blank-check for Israel under Biden has really paid off for the Talmuds. Best election they ever rigged, now Israel controls the middle east. Pretty soon the Talmuds won't even need American anymore.

Israel will always need money, servants and weapons from the US.
 
The new interim Prime Minister of Syria is Mohammed al Bashiri. Al Bashiri is close to al Jolani's circle, and was part of one of the governing bodies in the National Salvation Government of HTS controlled Idlib prior to November 27. He has degrees in Shariah Law and engineering and used to work at oil rigs before the war. Al Bashiri will be Prime Minister until his term ends on March 1, 2025.

Any hopes about peaceful coexistence are fading fast. Yesterday Jolani held a speech at the historic Ummayid Mosque in Damascus, and his vision is one of Syria under Islamic law. Minorities will be tolerated but under shariah law.

The 100 000 HTS+ allies or so fighters are currently chimping out everywhere. In the last 24 hours I've seen videos of Assad's cousin getting strung up and hung from a crane, minority villages getting ransacked and villagers killed in rural Homs, Alawis killed on the streets in Latakia, SAA captives getting executed in rural Palmyra and a famous scientist capped in Damascus - although the latter could be Israel as well. This is the stuff that gets recorded and uploaded, so the real situation is probably ten times worse.

Part of Jolani's speech.



An example of the new reality. Even though Jolani made let it explicitly known that his fighters should not (yet) impose Islamic morals on Syria's inhabitants, they have started anyway. This actress was stopped and told that from hereon she could not go out without a male chaperone (family member or husband per Islamic law) anymore.



In the North the war is intensifying. Erdogan is hellbent on destroying the SDF which is in essence the PKK rebranded. A future Syria will need to take over SDF territory as the latter controls the water, wheat basket and oil wells of Syria.

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Erdo's aggressive campaigns will undoubtedly put him in crosshairs with the USA. In prior years Washington was always able to make Turkey back off, but this time it's different. The areas West of the Euphrates are gone already, those East are on the menu

After several days of heavy fighting Manbij was vacated by the SDF. Rumours are that the US manufactured a handover after the SNA captured the Northern bridge over the Euphrates.

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On the Kobani axis at least 20+ Turkish airstrikes were reported on Qara Qozak settlement. Along the entire strip Turkish artillery strikes are taking place. An SNA offensive in this area is expected soon. The primary goal will be connecting Tell Abyad with Jarabulus

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Here too many war crimes have been recorded in the last 24 hours - especially by the Turkish backed SNA. Executions of captured enemy fighters, execution of wounded enemy fighters in hospitals etc.

Further west alongside the Euphrates the Arab tribal miltias are gaining in strength in the power vacuum that was left by the vacating SAA. Many are allegedly ideologically close to HTS, which wouldn't be surprising as this was IS heartland and in general a conservative tribal part of Syria. The SDF made a move on many Arab towns and cities on the West Bank of the Euphrates but was not welcome. Situation is currently not clear. There are demonstrations against the SDF and the SDF is using live fire to disperse (armed) protestors killing plenty




Israel has launched about 350 air strikes on Syria so far. The goal of these airstrikes is demilitarizing Syria and by extension creating a hobbled, militarily and strategically impotent state on Israel's border. After today Syria has zero power projection and deterrence. The attacks targeted military R&D sites, advanced hardware, repair facilities, key military infrastructure, radar installations and so on. In short, Syria doesn't have a Navy, airforce, and air defences anymore. Rebuilding Syria's military will take at least a decade.

On the Quneitra front Israel's advances are unclear. Reports of further advances, yet no video evidence to back it up. The IDF did however communicate an evacuation order for the town of Al Harrah, meaning that they will soon move in.

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It is my conviction that the Israelis are trying to set up a Druze controlled buffer zone on Israel's border. The Druze are in general not hostile to Israel, and Katz the other day mentioned that Shin Bet had been in contact with Druze representatives in Syria for some time. A Druze fiefdom would supplement the Kurdish (SDF) controlled areas of Syria, another minority controlled entity Israel is openly friendly with.

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As can be seen above, Israel is currently taking settlements in Druze inhabited areas. The Druze around Jebel Suwayda further East could be included too. Netanyahu has a staunch ally in Sheikh Mowafaq Tarif, who is a Israeli Druze but can use his influence to get the Syrian Druze on board. IMG_20241210_232809_880.jpg

There is a lot of talk on potential HTS - Israel collision. Reason being that so far the Israeli incursion has not yet been properly addressed by HTS leadership, and that the Israelis have yet to encounter serious/any resistance.

The future will have to show if this is true. If the IDF will cruise into Suwayda or wherever else unopposed there is a deal behind the curtains. If HTS starts sending waves of SVBIEDs into IDF tank columns there isn't. And it has to be mentioned that Bashar, despite his AoR role, never militarily contested Israeli occupation of the Golan either, nor did the SAA fire a single bullet back over the border in return for the 600+ air attacks in the last 5 years or so. Trying to down incoming missiles was a far as he was willing to go.

HTS grunts claiming they want to liberate Jerusalem and Mekka. IDF is a short car ride away, so the window of opportunity has opened.



On the diplomatic front Turkey and Israel continue to throw punches. Yet it could be staged as well - as in you get the North, we the South and let's throw in some kabuki theater for the masses.

Israeli Foreign Minister Saar tells Turkey to stop targeting Kurds/SDF



Turkish government officials tell Israel to stop targeting Syria

 
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Good writeup from Moon of Alabama:


Syria has fallen.

It is now highly likely that the country will fall apart. Outside and inside actors will try to capture and/or control as many parts of the cadaver as each of them can.

Years of chaos and strife will follow from that.

Israel is grabbing another large amount of Syrian land. It has taken control of the Syrian city of Quneitra, along with the towns of Al-Qahtaniyah and Al-Hamidiyah in the Quneitra region. It has also advanced into the Syrian Mount Hermon and is now positioned just 30 kilometers from (and above) the Syrian capital.

It is also further demilitarizing Syria by bombing every Syria military storage site in its reach. Air defense positions and heave equipment are its primary targets. For years to come Syria, or whatever may evolve from it, will be completely defenseless against outside attacks.

Israel is for now the big winner in Syria. But with restless Jihadists now right on its border it remains to be seen for how long that will hold.

The U.S. is bombing the central desert of Syria. It claims to strike ISIS but the real target is any local (Arab) resistance which could prevent a connection between the U.S. controlled east of Syria with the Israel controlled south-west. There may well be plans to further build this connection into an Eretz Israel, a Zionist controlled state "from the river to the sea".

Turkey has had and has a big role in the attack on Syria. It is financing and controlling the 'Syrian National Army' (previously the Free Syrian Army), which it is mainly using to fight Kurdish separatists in Syria.

There are some 3 to 5 million Syrian refugees in Turkey which the wannabe-Sultan Erdogan wants, for domestic political reasons, to return to Syria. The evolving chaos will not permit that.

Turkey had nurtured and pushed the al-Qaeda derived Hayat Tahrir al-Sham to take Aleppo. It did not expect it to go any further. The fall of Syria is now becoming a problem for Turkey as the U.S. is taking control of it. Washington will try to use HTS for its own interests which are, said mildly, not necessary compatible with whatever Turkey may want to do.

A primary target for Turkey are the Kurdish insurgents within Turkey and their support from the Kurds in Syria. Organized as the Syrian Democratic Forces the Kurds are sponsored and controlled by the United States. The SDF are already fighting Erdogan's SNA and any further Turkish intrusion into Syria will be confronted by them.

The SDF, supported by the U.S. occupation of east-Syria, is in control of the major oil, gas and wheat fields in the east of the country. Anyone who wants to rule in Damascus will need access to those resources to be able to finance the state.

Despite having a $10 million award on its head HTS leader Abu Mohammad al-Golani is currently played up by western media as the unifying and tolerant new leader of Syria. But his HTS is itself a coalition of hardline Jihadists from various countries. There is little left to loot in Syria and as soon as those resources run out the fighting within HTS will begin. Will al-Golani be able to control the sectarian urges of the comrades when these start to plunder the Shia and Christian shrines of Damascus?

During the last years Russia was less invested in the Assad government than it seemed. It knew that Assad had become a mostly useless partner. The Russia Mediterranean base in Khmeimim in Latakia province is its springboard into Africa. There will be U.S. pressure on any new leadership in Syria to kick the Russians out. However any new leadership in Syria, if it is smart, will want to keep the Russians in. It is never bad to have an alternative choice should one eventually need one. Russia may well stay in Latakia for years to come.

With the fall of Syria Iran has lost the major link in its axis of resistance against Israel. Its forward defenses, provided by Hizbullah in Lebanon, are now in ruins.

As the former General Wesley Clark reported about a talk he once had in the Pentagon:

"This is a memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.”
Six of the seven countries mentioned in that famous memo have by now been thrown into chaos. Iran is -so far- the sole survivor of those plans. It will urgently have to further raise its local defenses. It is high time now for it to finally acquire real nuclear weapons.

The incoming Trump administration sees China as its major enemy. By throwing Syria (and Ukraine) into chaos the outgoing Biden administration has guaranteed that Trump will have to stay involved in the Middle East (and eastern Europe).

The massive U.S. 'Pivot to Asia' will again have to wait. This gives China more time to build its sphere of influence. It may well be the only power that has been a winner in this.
 
Turkey and Israel probably worked together as a joint venture in Syria, but it's possible and even likely that without Assad as a buffer between them they will eventually come to blows.

They both want to expand in the region and their leaders are scoundrels. Who will stab the other in the back first, Erdogan or Netanyahu?
 
^Israel will use the Kurdish minority against Turkey. Turkey as well has a prominent Domneh (crypto-Jewish) population. Ataturk himself might have been part of it, he was a key player in the dismemberment of the Ottoman empire which paved the way to the creation of Israel.
Kurds are naturally violent and hyper-emotional, it could go either way.

Ataturk has been theorized to have had Donme jewish ancestry, the arguments are century old and still speculative without genetic proof. He was a freemason though, he was initiated into Freemasonry in 1907 in Macedonia Risorta Lodge #80 under the charter and constitution of the Grand Orient De France.

He led the war against the occupying allies of the victors of WWI, he abolished the sultanate in the end but not the empire itself. The Treaty of Sevres officially dismantled the Ottoman Empire and forced it to hand over territories in North Africa and the Levant. WWI only stopped in Europe on 11/18/1918, but it continued in the Middle East for almost five years under the rule of the "allies" and their sloppy carving up of the land in a hypocritical fashion that defied all the nonsense espoused by the "democracies" about people having a right to their own self-expression. This happened despite the "Armistice of Mudros" that went into effect earlier than the European theater.

Every geopolitical decision from the founding of the federal reserve in 1913 by the United States, Great Britain, and France was in lockstep with the cahoots of the founder of zionism, Herzl, who had the backing of the Rothschild bankers. The late 1800s was when this man put it into the minds of the jews in their ghettoes of a "greater horizon" that awaited them in their "ancestral" home. They just did not have the interconnected financial system to begin implementing this move with the propaganda of zionism into the head of every jew until WWI was in full swing.
 
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