Syria Is At A Crossroads. What’s At Stake Now?
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his defense minister went up to the highest peak on Mount Hermon on December 17. This area of the mountain overlooks Lebanon, southern Syria, and Israel. It is just over 2,800 meters high. The peak of the mountain used to be occupied by a Syrian army post, which looked down over Israeli posts several miles away. It’s an important strategic site, and Israel knows this. For this reason, the Israel Defense Forces sent forces up to the peak as the Syrian regime evaporated on December 8. Laid out below them in Syria is a country at a crossroads. What comes next will profoundly affect the region, U.S. policy, Israel, and many other countries.
The fall of Bashar Al-Assad’s regime was a symbolic moment. Syria was once one of Israel’s most fearsome foes. Under Bashar al-Assad’s father, Hafez, the Syrian army was well-equipped with modern Soviet-supplied tanks and warplanes. It attacked Israel in 1973, crossing part of the Golan Heights that can be seen from Mount Hermon. It almost succeeded in handing Israel a major setback. Forty years later, in 2013, Assad found his regime besieged by rebels. However, he survived and was able to return to control part of Syria with the aid of Russia and Iran. It didn’t end up as planned, though. He was pushed out of power in a blitzkrieg-like offensive by a Syrian opposition group called Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) on December 8.
I was in the Golan Heights that day, looking into Syria from the Israeli side of the line. There is a lot at stake in the country today. Syria is at a crossroads, and so is the region. The lesson of the Syrian Civil War is that what happens in Syria does not only matter to Syria or just its neighbors. For instance, the civil war helped provide fuel for ISIS and its invasion of Iraq in June 2014. That led to the genocide of Yazidis in Iraq in August 2014 and the United States and allied intervention against ISIS. Eventually, the anti-ISIS coalition grew to over seventy countries. To defeat ISIS, the United States helped the Iraqi army and Kurdish Peshmerga in Iraq. In Syria, the United States partnered with the Syrian Democratic Forces, a group in eastern Syria that is primarily rooted in the Kurdish region of Syria.
Today, the Kurdish minority in Syria faces new threats from Turkey, whose proxies have attacked their cities in the north. This is an odd situation because the SDF is partnered with the United States, and Turkey is a NATO ally. One would think that the United States could patch things up and forge a deal between the SDF and Turkey. However, Ankara is resolute to use the Syrian proxies it has recruited, called the Syrian National Army, to fight the SDF. Ankara claims the SDF is linked to the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which it views as terrorists.
This situation presents a dilemma in Syria policy for the United States and Turkey. The U.S. role in eastern Syria was highly successful. With only a handful of troops, ISIS was largely defeated by 2019. However, this military success never translated into political engagement with the SDF and Syria. This is because U.S. diplomats generally viewed the partnership with the SDF as temporary, tactical, and transactional. They did not see a way forward for this group in terms of playing a role in the future government of Syria. That has meant a missed opportunity to leverage the U.S. role.
This doesn’t mean things cannot be salvaged. In southern Syria, the United States has a garrison at Al-Tanf. This is a base seemingly in the middle of nowhere, located in Syria near the Jordanian and Iraqi borders. The United States helped train a Syrian rebel group for more than half a decade. The group, now called the Syrian Free Army (not to be confused with the Free Syrian Army), helped topple Assad by marching toward Palmyra on December 7. It’s possible that this group might help provide security in parts of the Syrian desert between Homs, Damascus, and Albukamal on the Iraqi border. However, the new Syrian government of Ahmed Sharaa, whose HTS group is a U.S.-designated terrorist group, has demanded that armed groups in Syria disband and form a new army.
Where does all this leave us? The United States has a key role in eastern Syria, but it is at risk if Turkey chooses to invade and fight the SDF. There are thousands of ISIS detainees being held in eastern Syria. Any fighting in the east could jeopardize the anti-ISIS mission. ISIS still has many cells in the Syrian desert and has by no means disappeared.
Then there is southern Syria. The U.S.-backed group in Tanf is an important and possible avenue to discuss security arrangements with the new rulers in Damascus. Moreover, the Israelis, who now have an outpost on the Hermon peak, have advanced some forces into a buffer zone next to the Golan Heights into villages that the Syrian regime once controlled.
On December 11, the head of U.S. Central Command, General Michael “Erik” Kurilla, arrived in Israel. His visit reaffirmed close relations between Central Command and the Israel Defense Forces. Israel became part of the Central Command area of operations at the end of the first Trump administration, a significant move that came about in the wake of the Abraham Accords and Israel’s closer ties with some Arab nations. What that means is that the U.S. command that plays a key role in places like Iraq and Syria now consults closely with Israel.
For its part, Israel used the days after Assad’s fall to carry out hundreds of airstrikes in Syria against former Syrian military assets, such as warplanes and munitions depots. This eviscerated many potential threats. It is a lesson learned from the fall of the Gadafi regime. If a regime with a lot of guns and tanks falls, those weapons will end up flooding the region and destabilizing countries. With the Middle East already suffering a year of war in Gaza and Lebanon, and with Iranian-backed groups destabilizing Yemen and Iraq, it’s good Assad’s old military assets have been vaporized. The big question is if the new Syrian government can bring some stability to Syria.
This is now the crossroads. Can Damascus sort things out in eastern Syria, and can Washington make sure it doesn’t miss an opportunity to leverage a decade of work in Syria with the SDF and other groups? Other countries are making the pilgrimage to Damascus to meet the new rulers. Turkey, Qatar, the UK, France, Italy, Germany, and the EU seem ready to work with the new regime. The United States should be ready to utilize its partners in Syria and work with its friends in the region to make the most of this new reality.
Seth Frantzman is the author of The October 7 War: Israel’s Battle for Security in Gaza (2024) and an adjunct fellow at The Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
Image: Mohammad Bash / Shutterstock.com.