Michael Young

Recently, an interesting news item relating to Syria seemed to remain under the public radar. In his book “Ally: My Journey Across the American-Israeli Divide,” the Israeli former ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, wrote of how the Russian plan in 2013 to remove Syria’s chemical arsenal, and in that way avoid an impending American attack against the country, originated with an Israeli minister, Yuval Steinitz. 

While the story was picked up by major American newspapers, it gained little traction. According to Oren, Steinitz first pitched the idea to the Russians, who, in turn, proposed it to the Americans. This gave the Obama administration a way out of military action against the Assad regime after it had fired chemical weapons in the eastern Ghouta, killing many civilians.

The reason Steinitz did so is not difficult to understand. The Israelis saw a golden opportunity to get rid of what worried them most in Syria, namely the regime’s chemical weapons. They were far less concerned with seeing Assad and his acolytes punished for having deployed such weapons against civilians. Once the deal was agreed, Oren writes, “the phrase ‘Assad must go’ vanished from [Barack] Obama’s vocabulary.”

Oren is critical of Obama’s handling of the episode, above all the president’s decision to seek Congressional approval for retaliation against Syria. To the Israelis, he writes, “there seemed no downside to an American military intervention aimed at deterring chemical weapons’ use and weakening a dictator allied with Iran and Hezbollah.” But a question Oren doesn’t quite answer is whether Steinitz, in his proposal, reflected another long-standing Israeli attitude toward the Assad regime, namely that, as the enemy Israel knew, it was preferable to the unknown. 

Steinitz’s version is rather different. He told the New York Times in June, “We said to ourselves, ‘What use will it be if 50 or 100 Tomahawks will land on half-empty bases in Syria?’ And if it will be a one-time strike, it won’t deter use of chemical weapons.” His scheme was a win-win situation for all, he insisted.

Perhaps, but the mood seemed very different in Damascus and Beirut in September 2013. While the Obama administration seemed to do everything possible to play down the magnitude of the retaliation (Secretary of State John Kerry famously said it would be “unbelievably small”), many Syrian officials were not convinced. There was panic in the Syrian capital that American strikes might decisively turn the tide of battle against the regime. 

This sense of anxiety was heightened by a subtle shift in Obama’s rhetoric on Syria at the time. While he had initially spoken of a “limited” operation, he later changed direction and stated on Sept. 3 that aside from degrading Assad’s chemical weapons capabilities “we have a broader strategy that will allow us to upgrade the capabilities of the opposition [and] allow Syria ultimately to free itself from the kinds of terrible civil wars and death and activity that we’ve been seeing on the ground.”

None of the accounts make it clear precisely when Steinitz made his proposal to the Russians. In his New York Times interview he said it came soon after he had issued a statement that Israel had proof that the Assad regime was behind the attack, in other words around Aug. 22. A Russian diplomat asked to see him, and said he would pass on the minister’s idea to Moscow the same day. 

It is possible that the Israeli preoccupation was solely with chemical weapons, not Assad’s survival, but if that is the case, it would also have dictated Israel’s attitude toward the Syrian president. If Assad were decisively weakened by an American assault, allowing the opposition to enter Damascus, then what happened to the weapons would have been unpredictable. 

As Oren writes, “by removing [the chemical weapons] Assad became key to the solution.” Indeed, but it also means that if Israel’s priority was a clear outcome on the chemical weapons, a prerequisite was to ensure that Assad remained in power.

That logic has continued to prevail, particularly in Washington. Whereas in 2013 the worry was chemical weapons, today it has shifted to the threat posed by ISIS and other jihadi groups. The Americans have remained incapable of defining a clear position on Syria. On Monday, Obama, in pledging to help moderate rebels, noted: “The only way that the [Syrian] civil war will end ... is an inclusive political transition to a new government without Bashar Assad, a government that serves all Syrians.” 

Yet nothing has really changed since the CIA director, John Brennan, told the Council on Foreign Relations last March that the “last thing we want to do is to allow [ISIS and other jihadist groups] to march into Damascus.” Brennan had added then, “That’s why it’s important to bolster those forces within the Syrian opposition that are not extremists.” However, at the catatonic rate the U.S. is training such forces, the chances that “moderates” will soon change the tide in Syria is negligible. 

Whether we are talking about the United States or Israel, Assad has imposed on both a very successful “either-or” equation – “It’s either Assad or chaos.” That has given the Syrian president and Iran tremendous leverage over Washington and Tel Aviv. This will only increase when, as is likely, the Americans and Iranians reach a nuclear deal. Once that happens, Iranian funds to assist Assad will be freed up and the Obama administration may more firmly recognize an Iranian “sphere of influence” in Syria. That will not sit well with Israel, but the complexities of the situation will most probably expand Assad’s margin of political survival.

Obama should bear in mind what he said about Assad. Syria’s war will not end while he remains in power. But the U.S. president has seemed unwilling to pursue his own logic in Syria. Bashar Assad has lasted thanks to such incoherence.