Michael Weiss

Western powers appear to have at last recognized that they can have no real role in shaping the outcome of the Syrian conflict unless they credibly advance the threat of direct or indirect military intervention. As it now stands, preparations for a more confrontational mode with the Assad regime comes at a time when the United States and European Union are nominally committed to talking a regime, which has been deploying more and more chemical weapons, into capitulating.

 

One European statesman I met at the weekend said that even before the EU’s Sunday vote to remove the arms embargo on the Syrian opposition, Britain and France were assuring skeptical EU member states that they would not be sending weapons to the Free Syrian Army (FSA) in any case, prompting questions as to what all the fuss was about. Clearly a compromise has been struck whereby London and Paris have agreed to do nothing for now, but possibly do something at a later date. As British Foreign Secretary William Hague put it, “we are not taking any decision to send arms to anyone.” Even Austria, which had been adamantly opposed to ending the embargo, has not yet decided to withdraw its peacekeeping forces from the UN buffer zone between Syria and Israel, which it would likely do if new weapons were about to pour in. Any eventual arm flows into Syria will be subject to a “case-by-case basis” review by Brussels, which nonetheless raises concerns that, say, Romania will get creative and purchase weapons for Hezbollah instead of the FSA.

 

Sunday’s announcement was really more a preliminary telegraphing to Russia and Iran that no longer will they be the only ones able to parlay about peace while simultaneously bolstering their client’s war-making ability. Theoretically this is meant to force the pro-regime players at the forthcoming Geneva conference on Syria – a conference at which the ever urgent topic of Assad’s political future will evidently not be up for discussion – into cutting a deal that is not exclusively to their own liking. However, it is unlikely to succeed at this unless the Brits and French actually follow through with arming; otherwise this initiative, like all previous ones, will be taken by Vladimir Putin and Ali Khamenei to be just another Western bluff.

 

This is indeed how Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov appears to have taken it, given his comments following the EU vote that sophisticated S-300 anti-aircraft systems, which his government intends to sell Assad, would “stabilize” Syria and preempt “some hotheads” from dispatching warplanes to Damascus. The truth is that the S-300s will likely never reach Syria – not least because Israel’s defense minister Moshe Ya’alon has more or less promised to powder them upon arrival – and because the Kremlin’s unchanged and serially-reaffirmed rhetoric on this point is simply meant to embarrass the United States. Intentionality is everything; Russia wants badly to project a self-image of a renascent great power mired in a zero-sum game with an old and not especially doughty antagonist. Yet it may end up being this gambit more than anything that increases the chances for a Western intervention in Syria.

 

Assad, meanwhile, has left no one under any illusions as to his opinion of the “political solution.” He told the Argentinian newspaper Clarin that he is not prepared to talk to any “terrorists,” by which he of course means each and every of the more than 100,000 armed rebels currently operating in Syria, until they lay down their arms. These include those party to the US-backed Supreme Military Command of the FSA, headed by General Salim Idriss. It was Idriss who accompanied US Senator John McCain into Syria, and it is Idriss who seeks to exploit a growing rift between hardcore Islamist rebels in Syria and the more moderate forces under his direct and increasingly well-organized command.

 

According to Dan Layman of the Syrian Support Group, a US licensed aid-runner to the Syrian rebels, in Idriss’ letter to the EU foreign ministers dated May 24, he himself made EU arms contingent on his own accountability: “My staff and I are prepared to maintain the proper recordkeeping, precise shipment tracking, and appropriate monitoring and storage of weapons and ammunition supplies that we would be ready to share with the European Union authorities.” In other words, one screw-up and Idriss knows that he’ll risk forfeiting his hard-won hardware.

 

Layman thinks that “if and when” Geneva collapses, Britain and France will indeed provide weapons to the Supreme Military Command albeit under close US coordination. Washington, for its part, will likely dispatch bulletproof vests and armored vehicles and other “non-lethal” military supplies long-promised.

 

There’s another factor working in Idriss’ favor: namely, fears of weaponry falling into the hands of religious extremists are already coming to pass at the expense of his moderates - and, therefore, at the expense of any US leverage on the ground. Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda’s faction in Syria, arms itself quite easily from confiscated regime stockpiles. Martin Chulov, the Guardian correspondent who travels to Syria frequently, told me recently that Nusra’s small-arms haul from the January raid on Taftanaz airbase in Idlib province was enough to “arm an entire division for six months.” There’s also little stopping Nusra from taking rather than receiving surface-to-air missiles from regime installations. They’ve already taken tanks and armored personnel carriers this way.

 

Jordanian and Turkish intelligence have cut the importation of man-portal  air-defense systems (MANPADs) into Syria because the US and Israel fret that they’ll one day be used to down El Al planes. One British official quoted by the Guardian’s Julian Borger on Monday said that “[t]here isn’t going to be an airliner brought down by some weapon we provide,” which rules out MANPADs from the European menu. They’re are also nowhere to be found in the exceptionally fast-moving Menendez bill in the US Senate, which the Foreign Relations Committee overwhelmingly passed, and which also seeks to arm Idriss’ men.

 

This introduces a significant problem for the opposition’s allies. What’s the point of gunrunning to rebels if the guns you provide cannot degrade or neutralize the regime’s devastating air campaign? Assuming the West is serious about tilting the balance of power, it really has only one option left: grounding the Syrian Air Force through direct action either through a no-fly zone or strategic bombing campaign that takes out the runways and infrastructure of Assad’s airbases and civilian airports. As I’ve argued before, the skies are the main portal for Iranian and Russian resupplies to the regime.

 

Although the White House is doing nothing to build a consensus in Washington for another war in the Middle East, it is taking the debate about a multilateral intervention far more seriously than some had previously imagined. The same apparently goes for the preparation for this contingency. As Josh Rogin reported Tuesday in The Daily Beast, the president has requested no-fly zone planning from the Pentagon, and while President Obama is still only in “contemplation mode,” as one unnamed official told Rogin, “the planning is moving forward and it’s more advanced than it’s ever been.”

 

According to a well-placed Israeli source, when CIA Director John Brennan made his “unannounced” trip to Israel earlier in the month, he received a briefing on Syria’s air defense capabilities, which, you’ll have noticed, the Israeli Air Force has gotten rather good at circumnavigating and which the Pentagon has mythologized as more “formidable” than they actually are. “Obama via Brennan wants to know what Israel can offer – and there’s a shitload to offer,” the source told me, adding that Brennan’s education on Iran’s meddling role in the Levant was proceeding at a breakneck speed. (The new-minted intelligence chief had formerly stated on the record that Hezbollah had “moderate elements.”) 

 

In this context, it should also be intriguing that the EU has just designated Hezbollah’s “military wing,” now making an un-moderate play to recapture Qusayr from Syrian rebels, a terrorist entity.