The Islamist attack on Aleppo is “ostensibly good news for Israel,” Daniel Rakov, a senior research fellow for the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, said in a Saturday post to X/Twitter.
Rakov is known in the JISS for being an expert on Russian policy in the Middle East and is also a reserve lieutenant-colonel in the IDF. In his post on X, he said that “the fall of northern Syria to the rebels damages the infrastructure of the Iranians and Hezbollah there and will make it difficult for them to work to restore Hezbollah.”
הנפילה של העיר הגדולה בסוריה, חלב, הלילה לידי מיליציית HTS מביכה מאד את מוסקבה, וצפויה להשפיע על הרלבנטיות שלה ביחס להסדרה בלבנון.הרוסים הופתעו מההתקדמות המהירה של המורדים מאדליב, וניסו בימים האחרונים לעשות מהלכים שהם רגילים לעשותם – לתקוף מהאוויר, להמריץ את אסד, להפעיל לחץ… pic.twitter.com/qMt8IRHPDc
— Daniel Rakov (@rakovdan) November 30, 2024
Syrian President Bashar “Assad will be more defensive, and as he fights for the survival of his regime, ostensibly helping Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon are of secondary interest,” Rakov said, implying that Israeli freedom of action in Syria will likely expand.
He also said that the attacks were “very embarrassing for Moscow,
the Russians were surprised by the rapid advance of the rebels from Idlib, and that the few military sources Russia has in the country will also serve its best interests, as opposed to assisting Iran and Hezbollah.”
Rakov said that Russian forces in Syria “have tried to make moves that they are used to making – attacking from the air, applying diplomatic pressure on the Turks to restrain the rebels, and spreading information that minimizes the incident and exaggerates…Assad’s ability to deal with it.”
The Russian policy expert also claims that Moscow is not addressing recent reports that Assad met with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Moscow to ask him for help, and then cites another report saying that glide bombs have been transferred to the Russian-operated Khmeimim Air Base in Syria.
The Israeli researcher also stated that Russian state media is largely ignoring the conflict in Aleppo while claiming that Russian commentators on global conflicts said that Moscow is not responsible for the defense failure of the Syrian city, saying that Russia had very few forces there and the incident was a huge failure for the Assad regime.
Rakov notes that Russian commentators have also said that Turkey is not responsible for Aleppo’s security failure either and that the security arrangements in northern Syria were based on agreements between Russia and Turkey but that the latter country had been distancing itself from the former.
Additionally, Ukraine, while fighting against Russia and its invasion of the country, reportedly sent aid to Syrian rebels in recent months, but it was difficult to determine how significant that aid was, he noted.
An opportunity for Israel to strike Syria?
Rakov then entertains the idea of Israel having the opportunity to attack Syria due to the weakness demonstrated by the Assad regime. He also says that the regime could be prone to attacks by Kurdish forces, rebels in southern Syria, or ISIS due to what he claims is Syria’s newfound vulnerability, with all this being terrible timing for Russia as it has set its sights on Ukraine, he argued.
“Assad’s loss of Aleppo damages Russia’s image as a power capable of projecting influence outside the post-Soviet space and threatens an important strategic asset of Putin’s, which is the bases in Syria,” he wrote. “This also reflects negatively on Russia’s image in the region.
“The Russians, as we can learn from the Ukrainian offensive in Kursk, are in no hurry to get hysterical, but the speed with which Aleppo fell will require them to respond quickly,” he wrote.
The JISS researcher concluded his post by saying that while the unstable situation in Syria may cause Assad and the Russians to open the gates more strongly for the entry of Iranian military forces, the collapse of the Assad regime may create a scenario for the growth of significant military threats against Israel.
