Israel and its Democratic Party friends complain — Trump gave Syria to Russia ‘on a silver platter’

Susan Rice speaking at J Street conference on Monday April 16, 2108. Tamara Cofman Wittes is at right.

Donald Trump launched air strikes on Syria over the weekend, and you may have noticed the reviews from Israel and its friends. The attacks were insufficient, and did nothing to destabilize the Assad regime or to keep Iran out of Syria. One Israeli official calls the Trump attack “mostly talk” that shows “actions are not going to follow.”

Liberal interventionist Democrats agree. At the J Street conference this week — which is the Democratic Party Israel lobby — I heard several hawkish statements about Syria, including saber-rattling from two former White House security aides.

Susan Rice, former Obama national security adviser, criticized Trump for not threatening regime change:

We very clearly telegraphed and very clearly now twice have demonstrated that we are not prepared to use regime threatening force to deal with the chemical weapons challenge, and therefore I think our leverage is even less than it might have been on chemical weapons before.

Rice said she was not for regime change, but she faulted Trump for not going crazy this time.

For all our handwringing and justified concern about President Trump’s temperament and how he may respond in a crisis situation, he could have played those concerns to our advantage. He could have been, had he wanted to be, demonstrably unpredictable and deliberately unpredictable, and used that to try to wrest a diplomatic opening with the Russians.

That criticism was echoed by a former Clinton security aide now running for Congress. Nancy Soderberg said Trump handed Syria to Iran “on a silver platter.” Soderberg is a candidate for the Democratic nomination for Congress in an open Florida district, and she says Jewish voters are worried:

I went to the Jewish heritage festival for the upcoming 70th anniversary [of Israel] yesterday in Florida. And I think people are nervous about what’s happening in the middle east. They’re nervous about what’s happening in Iran in particular. We just handed Syria over to Iran on a silver platter.

Soderberg also said that the Syria situation is an “opportunity” for Democrats to adopt a more hawkish policy in foreign policy and outflank Republicans:

We need a little bit stronger more honed message about, We’re the party that keeps America safe…. I’m worried about Iran, and Syria is increasingly a major threat to U.S. interests and to Israel’s interests in the region. So I think we need to be much more vocal about, we are the party of security and safety and we’ll stand up for American values, and I think that will resonate with the American people.

Sadly, these hawkish statements represent the mainstream in Democratic Party politics. Senator Bernie Sanders was critical of the strikes, of course, but he is still marginalized by the party leaders. Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland is also antiwar, but he observed that Trump ran to the Democratic Party’s left on foreign policy.

Republican libertarians have been more reliable sources of antiwar sentiment. Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky said that Trump security officials have produced no real evidence that Assad was behind the recent chemical attacks. Senator Rand Paul has written that the Syria war was never our fight.

President Trump is listening far too much to the foreign policy swamp that he fought against. Our hawkish, neoconservative foreign policy and wars of the last 17 years have brought us trillions of dollars in debt and made us less safe.

Meantime, the Democratic mainstream is pushing for a bigger war. Look at the New York Times running Ronen Bergman’s piece last week urging Israeli strikes on Syria because of a Jewish responsibility stemming from the Holocaust (!). Or Dexter Filkins calling in The New Yorker for a major pounding of Assad.

The trouble is, Assad deserves much worse, and he’s not going to get it—not from the United States, nor from the West more generally. American forces could have inflicted much greater damage—Trump could have ordered the killing of Assad and everyone around him if he had wanted to. I’m confident that neither Trump nor any of his senior military advisers have any love for Assad. But, in testimony last week, Defense Secretary James Mattis said he was worried that American military action in Syria, if it went too far, could start a wider war, principally with Assad’s chief patron, Russia.

Israel is threatening to take further action of its own, because of Iran, of course. Reuters reports that Israel is hankering to attack an Iranian “air force” and “garrison” in Syria.

“Israel is headed for escalation,” Yaacov Amidror, former national security adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told Tel Aviv radio station 103 FM. “There could be a very big belligerent incident with Iran and Hezbollah.”

Susan Rice warned at J Street about that famous Iranian landbridge “from Tehran all the way to the Mediterranean.”

While Rolly Gueron, a former Mossad official, said that Israel faces no “existential” threats, but he warned that “Israel might be forced to carry out some more aggressive measures” in Syria against Iran.

One threat is the very extreme radical Iranian ambition to establish a permanent military presence in Syria thus establishing a Shiite crescent from Iran to Lebanon and at the expense of Sunnis in the middle east who are increasingly getting weaker and weaker. Israel cannot really tolerate such a threat for very long time.

Mitchell Plitnick at Lobelog notes that Israel is not pleased with Trump’s policy, but is not willing to call him out either:

Israel has been watching developments in Syria with increasing apprehension. That concern grew considerably when the Trump administration agreed with Russia to permit an Iranian presence, under Russian supervision, in the cease-fire zone in southern Syria last year. The growing Israeli apprehension is reflected in the steadily increasing incidents of Israeli strikes in Syria, strikes which already threaten to escalate into direct conflict with Iran.

Had Barack Obama agreed to an Iranian presence in Syria so close to Israel, the so-called “pro-Israel” crowd would have said he is trying to destroy the Jewish state. Yet, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to embrace Trump, this decision was not to his or any other Israeli leader’s liking. If the U.S. now pulls out of Syria completely, there can be no doubt that Israel will take much more robust steps to counter the Iranian presence.

 

46 Comments
Most Voted
Newest Oldest
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

famous Iranian landbridge

or as they say in colloquial speech, ‘a road’.

Regime change in Syria–good for Israel; good for the U.S.

Hillary Clinton Email Archive

https://wikileaks.org/clinton-emails/emailid/18328
—————————————————————————–

UNCLASSIFIED U.S. Department of State Case No. F-2014-20439 Doc No. C05794498 Date: 11/30/2015 RELEASE IN FULL

The best way to help Israel deal with Iran’s growing nuclear capability is to help the people of Syria overthrow the regime of Bashar Assad.

Negotiations to limit Iran’s nuclear program will not solve Israel’s security dilemma. Nor will they stop Iran from improving the crucial part of any nuclear weapons program — the capability to enrich uranium. At best, the talks between the world’s major powers and Iran that began in Istanbul this April and will continue in Baghdad in May will enable Israel to postpone by a few months a decision whether to launch an attack on Iran that could provoke a major Mideast war. Iran’s nuclear program and Syria’s civil war may seem unconnected, but they are. For Israeli leaders, the real threat from a nuclear-armed Iran is not the prospect of an insane Iranian leader launching an unprovoked Iranian nuclear attack on Israel that would lead to the annihilation of both countries.

What Israeli military leaders really worry about — but cannot talk about — is losing their nuclear monopoly. An Iranian nuclear weapons capability would not only end that nuclear monopoly but could also prompt other adversaries, like Saudi Arabia and Egypt, to go nuclear as well. The result would be a precarious nuclear balance in which Israel could not respond to provocations with conventional military strikes on Syria and Lebanon, as it can today. If Iran were to reach the threshold of a nuclear weapons state, Tehran would find it much easier to call on its allies in Syria and Hezbollah to strike Israel, knowing that its nuclear weapons would serve as a deterrent to Israel responding against Iran itself.

Back to Syria. It is the strategic relationship between Iran and the regime of Bashar Assad in Syria that makes it possible for Iran to undermine Israel’s security — not through a direct attack, which in the thirty years of hostility between Iran and Israel has never occurred, but through its proxies in Lebanon, like Hezbollah, that are sustained, armed and trained by Iran via Syria.

The end of the Assad regime would end this dangerous alliance. Israel’s leadership understands well why defeating Assad is now in its interests. Speaking on CNN’s Amanpour show last week, Defense Minister Ehud Barak argued that “the toppling down of Assad will be a major blow to the radical axis, major blow to Iran…. It’s the only kind of outpost of the Iranian influence in the Arab world…and it will weaken dramatically both Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza.”

Bringing down Assad would not only be a massive boon to Israel’s security, it would also ease Israel’s understandable fear of losing its nuclear monopoly. Then, Israel and the United States might be able to develop a common view of when the Iranian program is so dangerous that military action could be warranted.

Right now, it is the combination of Iran’s strategic alliance with Syria and the steady progress in Iran’s nuclear enrichment program that has led Israeli leaders to contemplate a surprise attack — if necessary over the objections of Washington. With Assad gone, and Iran no longer able to threaten Israel through its, proxies, it is possible that the United States and Israel can agree on red lines for when Iran’s program has crossed an unacceptable threshold. In short, the White House can ease the tension that has developed with Israel over Iran by doing the right thing in Syria.

The rebellion in Syria has now lasted more than a year. The opposition is not going away, nor is the regime going to accept a diplomatic solution from the outside. With his life and his family at risk, only the threat or use of force will change the Syrian dictator Bashar Assad’s mind.

The Obama administration has been understandably wary of engaging in an air operation in Syria like the one conducted in Libya for three main reasons. Unlike the Libyan opposition forces, the Syrian rebels are not unified and do not hold territory. The Arab League has not called for outside military intervention as it did in Libya. And the Russians are opposed.

Libya was an easier case. But other than the laudable purpose of saving Libyan civilians from likely attacks by Qaddafi’s regime, the Libyan operation had no long-lasting consequences for the region. Syria is harder. But success in Syria would be a transformative event for the Middle East. Not only would another ruthless dictator succumb to mass opposition on the streets, but the region would be changed for the better as Iran would no longer have a foothold in the Middle East from which to threaten Israel and undermine stability in the region.

Unlike in Libya, a successful intervention in Syria would require substantial diplomatic and military leadership from the United States. Washington should start by expressing its willingness to work with regional allies like Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar to organize, train and arm Syrian rebel forces. The announcement of such a decision would, by itself, likely cause substantial defections from the Syrian military. Then, using territory in Turkey and possibly Jordan, U.S. diplomats and Pentagon officials can start strengthening the opposition. It will take time. But the rebellion is going to go on for a long time, with or without U.S. involvement.

The second step is to develop international support for a coalition air operation. Russia will never support such a mission, so there is no point operating through the UN Security Council. Some argue that U.S. involvement risks a wider war with Russia. But the Kosovo example shows otherwise. In that case, Russia had genuine ethnic and political ties to the Serbs, which don’t exist between Russia and Syria, and even then Russia did little more than complain. Russian officials have already acknowledged they won’t stand in the way if intervention comes.

Arming the Syrian rebels and using western air power to ground Syrian helicopters and airplanes is a low-cost high payoff approach. As long as Washington’s political leaders stay firm that no U.S. ground troops will be deployed, as they did in both Kosovo and Libya, the costs to the United States will be limited. Victory may not come quickly or easily, but it will come. And the payoff will be substantial. Iran would be strategically isolated, unable to exert its influence in the Middle East. The resulting regime in Syria will see the United States as a friend, not an enemy. Washington would gain substantial recognition as fighting for the people in the Arab world, not the corrupt regimes.

For Israel, the rationale for a bolt from the blue attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities would be eased. And a new Syrian regime might well be open to early action on the frozen peace talks with Israel. Hezbollah in Lebanon would be cut off from its Iranian sponsor since Syria would no longer be a transit point for Iranian training, assistance and missiles. All these strategic benefits and the prospect of saving thousands of civilians from murder at the hands of the Assad regime (10,000 have already been killed in this first year of civil war).

With the veil of fear lifted from the Syrian people, they seem determine to fight for their freedom. America can and should help them — and by doing so help Israel and help reduce the risk of a wider war.

He could have been, had he wanted to be, demonstrably unpredictable and deliberately unpredictable, and used that to try to wrest a diplomatic opening with the Russians.

unpredictable? in this context that sounds like a euphemism for mass casualties. as for a diplomatic opening with the Russians, we have one, it just wouldn’t lead to the ouster of the democratically elected leader of a sovereign state.

The trouble is, Assad deserves much worse, and he’s not going to get it—not from the United States, nor from the West more generally. American forces could have inflicted much greater damage—Trump could have ordered the killing of Assad and everyone around him if he had wanted to. I’m confident that neither Trump nor any of his senior military advisers have any love for Assad. But, in testimony last week, Defense Secretary James Mattis said he was worried that American military action in Syria, if it went too far, could start a wider war, principally with Assad’s chief patron, Russia.

so assad (and everyone around him) getting what he deserves, leading to a war with russia, is to be desired? these chicken hawks really are the worst of the worst. dumb as rocks too.

One threat is the very extreme radical Iranian ambition to establish a permanent military presence in Syria thus establishing a Shiite crescent from Iran to Lebanon and at the expense of Sunnis in the middle east who are increasingly getting weaker and weaker. Israel cannot really tolerate such a threat for very long time.

yes, well, that’s what you get when you start a ‘civil war’ next door. when you flood syria with foreign jihadists, you are assured that assistance fighting them will come from outside as well.

Damn depressing for those of us who think Israel is not an asset of USA, but a net gross liability.

The goal here for Israel and its firsters is not regime change, it’s failed states. This leaves Israel to take what it wants. The first thing out of Netanyahu’s mouth when Syria collapsed was the Golan Heights – all those grapes. No one thinks that if the US were to throw out the mullahs, that a stable situation would develop. It’s not the 1950s. What the Israel-firsters want for the middle east is human chaos.