I am 52 and for my entire lifetime the Assad family has controlled Syria (and Lebanon).
Hafez al-Assad became leader of Syria on 14 March 1971.
His son Bashar took over in July 2000 on his father's death and reigned until today.
Israel's Oldest Enemy
Syria is Israel's longest standing enemy state.
Syria invaded Israel in 1948, 1967 & 1973 and an official state of war has existed between Israel and Syria from 1948 until today.
Iran only became Israel's enemy after 1979.
Lebanon never invaded Israel directly, just was a platform for terrorists to attack Israel and was controlled by Syria the whole time.
Syria is an important and dangerous country
In 2007 Middle East expert Barry Rubin wrote:
Syria has long been one of the most dangerous and influential countries in the Middle East.
Syria is a strategically important country which, because of its weakness and ethnic rivalries has been an exporter of war, terror and chaos since its independence in 1946.
Crucial Russian Bases
Since 1971 it has hosted important Soviet (now Russian) naval, air and intelligence bases.
The importance of these bases to Russia cannot be overstated. They gave Russia:
- a warm water port in the eastern Med, providing the ability to provision its Med Fleet;
- an airbase in a crucial location which dramatically extended the operational range of the Russian Airforce;
- an important signals intelligence gathering base;
- the ability to threaten aircraft over many hundreds of miles including Israel and UK/US airbases in Cyprus with advanced air defence systems like the S-400.
What Happened?
Syrian Civil War
As most people know, a brutal civil war raged in Syria commencing in March 2011.
Assad was losing this war and looked about to fall, but in 2015 Russia & Iran, (mainly via Hizbollah) intervened to save Assad. He was not able to regain control of the whole country but controlled the major cities and the majority of the land area. Substantial Kurdish controlled regions existed in the North East, Islamist rebel groups controlled around Idlib and US forces had bases and aligned militias in the sparsely populated East and South East.
From about 2018, with the help of Hizbollah, the most powerful Muslim military force between Turkey, Egypt and Pakistan, Assad had consolidated his control over most of Syria and the civil war, though not ended, stabilised to a low smoulder.
Oct 7 - Hamas invasion
On 7 October 2023 Hamas terrorists, backed by Iran & Qatar, launched a surprise invasion of Southern Israel with over 3000 highly trained "special forces" type fighters and supported by thousands of Gazan "civilian" invaders. They massacred families, beheaded babies in front of their parents, raped women, murdered Israelis including Muslim and Arabs and most infamously took hundreds of hostages back to the dungeons of Gaza.
Despite its success as a terror operation, Hamas's invasion was a military failure with key military objectives not taken, the invasion was beaten back on the first day by a completely disorganised but heroically fierce resistance from Israeli police and soldiers acting independently, while higher ups were ineffective and paralysed by events.
Oct 8 - Hizbollah joins in
On Oct 8 Hizbollah started firing missiles and drones at Israeli communities in the North in support of Hamas.
The IDF brass (finally realising the seriousness of the situation) rushed multiple divisions to the Northern border to reinforce and a planned Oct 7 on steroids invasion by Hizbollah special forces was deferred.
Israel fights a 7 front war
For decades Iran had carefully planned, funded and built up weapons and immensely extensive and expensive underground systems in Gaza, Lebanon and likely Syria and Yemen for a massive 7 front surprise attack on Israel. Hamas jumped the gun causing the element of surprise to be lost on other fronts, but they all joined in a massive attack on Israel progressively.
The 7 fronts from which Israel was attacked, the opponent and their chess equivalent are:
- Gaza (Hamas - Rook)
- Lebanon (Hizbollah - Queen)
- Syria (Hizbollah and other Iranian proxies - Knight)
- Yemen (Houthis - Bishop, via long range missile and drone attacks and attacks on shipping)
- Judea & Samaria (Hamas and other terrorist groups - Knight)
- Iraq (Iranian linked terrorist proxy groups - Bishop firing drones and missiles)
- Iran itself - King (via long range missile and drone attacks)
Of these enemies, the most powerful and dangerous was Hizbollah. With 300,000 missiles, up to 100,000 trained fighters and the best weapons Iran could supply, Hizbollah was Iran's Queen.
But Israel initially focussed on the most immediate threats to its heartland:
a) front 1 (defeating Hamas and recovering hostages) and
b) front 5 (destroying terrorist groups in Judea and Samaria)
while maintaining a defensive posture on other fronts.
By the end of May 2024, after the successful Rafah Offensive had cut off Hamas's supply lines to Egypt (via massive tunnels), Hamas was substantially defeated (although not completely destroyed) and Israel turned its attention to other fronts, particularly Iran's Queen.
In the ongoing attritional duel between Israel's super accurate and powerful air and artillery strikes and highly effective missile defence systems and Hizbollah missiles & drones, Hizbollah was losing assets and personnel at very high rate.
This attritional phase continued and escalated until the end of July 2024 and included elimination of many Hizbollah field commanders.
In July 2024 Israel also inflicted serious strategic damage on the Houthi's only port and source of Iranian funding (via cheap oil sales).
On 30 July 2024 Israel took out the head of Hizbollah's military wing Fuad Shukr, in response to a Hizbollah missile attack on a playground in northern Israel killing 12 Israeli Druze, mainly children. This was a warning to Nasrallah about what was to come but it was not heeded and Hizbollah continued to attack Israel.
I observed in early Aug 2024 that Iran and its proxies were starting to lose badly, but the coup de grace was yet to come.
In August and early September Israel and Hizbollah traded increasingly heavy blows with Hizbollah getting by far the worst of it.
By this point Israel's kill ratio against Hizbollah was about 50:1.
Israel wipes out Hizbollah's entire command structure
On 16 September 2024, the Israeli government added the return of the evacuated Israeli residents to the North of Israel to its official war aims.
The next day, Israel launched the most extraordinary and devastating attack on an enemy's command and control structure ever recorded in human history. The Pager Operation maimed and put out of action almost the entire officer corps of Hizbollah. Platoon, company, battalion and remaining brigade commanders and their 2ICS, all who had pagers, were taken out of the fight. All communications was either destroyed or compromised.
Then 10 days later, having forced the remaining top Hizbollah commanders to meet in person in the safest place they could find (a bunker deep beneath a UN building in Beirut) Israel killed all the remaining Hizbollah senior leadership including Nasrallah himself and his proposed replacement.
In the space of ten days Israel had done the unbelievable, completely destroying the political leadership and command structure of its most dangerous enemy. From Generals to Majors, all gone.
The significance of this is not well understood by most people, whose knowledge of war is based on Hollywood movies.
The Art of War requires the precise coordination, control and supply of tens or hundreds of thousands of troops, highly sophisticated equipment, spread out over large territories. It is an inherently very difficult task, made far more difficult by the fact that the enemy is trying to disrupt every aspect of your efforts.
As a result, all serious militaries use a very hierarchical and structured system of command and control with multiple layers of redundancy. This system relies on a large corps of officers, from the platoon commander of 20-30 men all way to the General Staff.
Take away that officer corp and you are left with a disorganised rabble, incapable of any military operation beyond the size of a section (ten men).
Never before in all the history of war has the command structure of a military force been so completely destroyed. Never before has a vast and powerful and competent military been rendered completely ineffective so dramatically.
Israel's ground operation in Lebanon
While Hizbollah was in complete disarray, the IDF launched a limited ground operation to destroy all Hizbollah weapons and vast underground infrastructure in the first line of villages looking down on Israel. Israel captured Hizbollah's Maginot Line with little resistance and proceeded to destroy it using massive amounts of explosives placed in tunnels by the IDF engineering corps.
It then extended its operation to a second line of villages and was successful there too with very low casualties.
Ceasefire!?
Perplexingly to most Israelis, Bibi then agreed to a 2 month ceasefire brokered by the US.
Given the extremely successful operation against Hizbollah and relatively easy gains on the ground in Lebanon, most Israelis thought we should continue northwards, at least until the Litani River (like in 1982) destroying as much of Hizbollah as possible.
But Bibi must have known something and seen a better way to extirpate Hizbollah and defeat Iran.
At this point it is important to note that Hamas is a Sunni, Muslim Brotherhood organisation whereas all Iran's other proxies are Shiite.
On Oct 8 Hizbollah attacked Israel in support of Hamas and vowed to continue until Israel stopped attacking Hamas in Gaza.
By agreeing to the ceasefire (which allowed Israel freedom of action but not Hizbollah) Hizbollah broke their vow to Hamas and were seen in Arab world as substantially surrendering.
This was the signal to the Sunni Islamist HTS and Sunni Turkey backed SNA to attack the hated Assad regime and its Shiite backers Hizbollah & Iran.
Without the formerly powerful Hizbollah to support it and with more limited Russian backing the Assad regime collapsed like a house of cards; its army fleeing and surrendering with little actual fighting. A few thousand Hizbollah troops in Syria were slaughtered by the rebels and those who tried to escape back to Lebanon were destroyed on the road by Israel.
In the Middle East weakness is death.
The Israeli Lion had made its kill on Hizbollah and the hyenas stripped the carcass clean.
With Syria now a no go zone for Shiites, Hizbollah is completely cut off from Iran and is unable to resupply and recover from its losses.
Its enemies in Lebanon smell its weakness and will likely finish it off.
Iran's regime is on the brink of suffering the same fate as Assad.
Watch this space. The dominoes have not finished falling.
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