August 18, 2024: Recent violence in Syria is a continuation of a long war between Iran and Israel. On August 10th eight American soldiers were injured when an explosive laden drone hit their base. The 900 U.S. soldiers in Syria are there as part of an international effort to prevent ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) and other terrorist groups from rebuilding their strength in a country that has supplied them with so many recruits in the past. Russia arranged a ceasefire between the U.S. backed Kurd militias and Syrian troops in the part of eastern Syria where American troops are. Thirteen years of civil war in Syria has created chaos in eastern Syria where Russian, Iranian and American forces have established separate zones they control.

Since Israel shares a small border with Syria, it is easy for Israeli warplanes to attack Iranian targets in Syria and neighboring Lebanon. The most recent reason for Israeli retaliation was a July 27 rocket attack from Hezbollah, the dominant faction/militia in Lebanon. The rocket exploded on a soccer field where Druze children were playing, leaving twelve dead and wounding many others, including spectators. Israel launched retaliatory airstrikes against Hezbollah, which is armed and supported by Iran as its proxy against Israel. Hezbollah poses a dangerous threat to northern Israel.

The Israeli retaliation for Hezbollah’s attack extended to Iranian targets in Syria as well as Iran, where senior Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed while a guest of Iran in Tehran, the capital. It was unclear if the seven kilogram warhead was fired from an Israeli aircraft or launched by Israeli operatives in Tehran. Israel has a lot of supporters in Iran, which has made possible several spectacular Israeli attacks and intelligence raids inside Iran. Israeli operatives inside Iran are Iranians fed up with their government and recruited by members of the pro-Israel network of Iranians. When the Iranian government discovers the identity of one of these pro-Israel Iranians, Israel usually gets their agent out of Iran safely.

The survival of so many Iranians working for Israel inside Iran is made possible by the growing anger of Iranians against their corrupt and despotic religious dictatorship government. Before this government came to power in the 1980s, Iran and Israel had long been allies and trading partners. Most Iranians would like to see a return to those times but their current government has several secret police agencies and the IRGC (Iranian Republican Guard Corps). Iranians are angry at their continued poverty and blame it on the billions of dollars the IRGC is given each year to support pro-Iran militias in Syria and Lebanon.

In April 2024 Iran fired a barrage of over 300 ballistic and cruise missiles at Israel. All but a few of these were shot down and damage to Israel was minor. Israel often responds with air strikes on Iranian targets or, more recently, on Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen who managed to get one of their Iranian-supplied cruise missiles past Israeli air defenses on July 19th and hit a building in Tel Aviv. This killed one civilian and wounded several others. Israel promptly responded with a massive attack on the Yemen Red Sea port of Hodeida, destroying fuel depots, port facilities and Houthi military bases.

Despite these recent attacks, most of the fighting between Iran and Israel still takes place in Syria where the Syrian government, run by the Assad clan, clings to power with Iranian support and Iranian threats of violence against the Assads if Iranian orders are not followed.

Iran keeps the Assad government going with billions of dollars of annual aid and the presence of IRGC operatives who are a constant threat to any Syrian officials suspected of anti-Iranian behavior. Since 2012 Syria has been where Israel and Iran fight each other. Most of the casualties are local Syrians as is most of the damage. Over a decade of war in Syria has caused most Syrians to be driven from their homes and millions have fled the country. The economy is in shambles. The only prosperity is in Damascus and the nearby port of Tartus. These two locations have long been dominated by the Shia Islam Syrian minority. The Assads are the leaders of the Syrian Shia, who live a good life paid for by Iran.

Syria is now in its thirteenth year of chaos, violence and political collapse. When the violence began in 2011 the population was about 14 million. By 2024 over half the pre-war population have been driven from their homes and many have left the country, most going to neighboring Turkey. That was disrupted in early 2023 when an unusually powerful earthquake occurred on the Turkish Syrian border. While most of the damage was in Turkey, the Turks were better prepared to deal with it than Syria. The result was more Syrians were a lot worse off because of the earthquake damage.

Back in 2021 the ruling Assad clan of Syria chose peace over religion by trying to abandon long-time ally Iran for new deals with Russia and the Arab League, as well as Israel. That’s how the Assads, who belong to the Shia minority of Syria, have survived; by changing alliances when necessary. The 2021 shift began after the 2011 rebellion of the Sunni majority against the Shia minority. The Assads almost lost but by late 2018 it was clear they had won with Iranian and Russian support. The fighting persisted into 2021 because the main participants, like Russia, Turkey, Iran, the Assad government, and several remaining rebel factions cannot agree on how to deal with the loose ends. Although initially considered likely to win, the rebels lost because of factionalism.

So far over 500,000 have died and a third of the population has fled, mainly to Turkey and Lebanon. Meanwhile the Assads received over $16 billion worth of Iranian aid between 2012 and 2021. That was joined by assistance from Russia (2015) and Turkey (2016). The civil war also morphed into a proxy war between Iran and the Sunni Arab states and their Western allies. The major factor in the rebel defeat was ISIL, which began as one of many Sunni Arab Islamic terror groups, but mainly al Qaeda and ISIL, who wanted to turn Syria into a religious dictatorship. Most Syrians just wanted peace and prosperity. The Islamic terror groups, as was their custom, put a priority on determining which of them was “the true savior of Islam”. ISIL was definitely the most ruthless and best organized and many groups submitted to ISIL, if only temporarily. That weakened the rebel effort sufficiently for the Assads to hang on and become part of a larger anti-ISIL coalition.

One thing everyone outside Syria could agree on was that ISIL had to be destroyed first and, by late 2017, that was accomplished. While ISIL was reduced to small groups carrying out terror attacks, the remaining rebels were still not united. At the time ISIL was crushed, the rebels controlled about a third of the country but were outnumbered by the Assad forces and most Syrians were increasingly war weary. Most of the deaths occurred after 2013. The killing diminished a bit in 2015 because of sheer exhaustion and picked up again in 2016 because of the Russian air (and other) support. The stubborn Assad dictatorship had a chance to win after 2015, something some Western nations saw as preferable to Islamic terrorists taking over and requiring a Western invasion to remove such a threat.

In August 2016 Turkish ground forces entered northern Syria to seal the border from ISIL and Turkish separatist PKK Kurds as well as to weaken the Syrian Kurds. The Turks were basically helping the Assads and hurting ISIL and all that made an Assad victory more likely. Before the Assads could resume control of the country, they had to deal with the fact that Israel, Jordan and the Sunni Arab oil states are opposed to the Iranian effort to establish a permanent military presence in Syria. The Assads were not happy with Iranian domination but had to keep quiet about that. Turkey was opposed to any autonomous Syrian Kurdish area in the northeast as well as a permanent Iranian presence. Turkey and Russia are technically allies of Iran in Syria and the reality is that no one trusts Iran. The Russians have quietly made it clear they would side with Israel if it came down to that.

The Turks are NATO members and traditional foes of Russia and Iran. The current Turkish government is considered unstable. Unrest and growing financial problems in Iran have reduced Iranian efforts in Syria. The Assads quietly patched things up with the Arab League, with help from Russia and, unexpectedly, Israel. At this point Iranian leaders were aware of what the Assads were going but were unsure of how to deal with it. Iran kept applying pressure, including threats to kill the Assads. That would be difficult because the key Assads tend to avoid joint meetings, the better to keep the clan alive, even if some key members get killed. Instead, Iran and the Assads worked out a discreet cooperation agreement that allowed Iran to get what they wanted from the Assads while the Assadis continued to work with the Arab League and major Sunni Arab nations like Saudi Arabia. This is how Middle Eastern politics has been conducted for thousands of years.