Syrian Civil War and The future of Syria after liberation

[ghazi52]

Collapse of Assad regime opens new chapter in Middle East, Netanyahu says​

From CNN’s Eugenia Yosef and Michael Rios

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria has opened a new chapter in the Middle East and vowed Israel would continue working to change the face of the region.

At a news conference on Monday, Netanyahu insisted that the regime’s collapse was a direct result of the blows Israel has dealt on Hezbollah and Iran, which supported the Assad government.

He said the elimination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was crucial to weakening Iran’s so-called Axis of Resistance, comprising allied states and militias. Although the axis hasn’t been defeated, Netanyahu declared that Israel is changing the face of the Middle East.

“Those who cooperate with us, gain. Those who are against us, lose,” he said.

Netanyahu also said Israel would continue to ensure its security by maintaining its presence in the occupied Golan Heights, which it captured from Syria in 1967.

“The Golan Heights will forever be part of the Israeli state,” he said.

Netanyahu on Sunday said that he had ordered the military to “take control” of the buffer zone that separates the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights from the rest of Syria.

Defense Minister Israel Katz’s office on Monday confirmed Israel’s capture of the Syrian side of the strategic high point of Mt. Hermon, which sits on the border between Syria, Lebanon and the Golan Heights. It also called for the completion of an Israeli takeover of the buffer zone in the Golan Heights, and the creation of a “security zone” in Syrian territory beyond it “free of heavy strategic weapons and terrorist infrastructures.”

 

[The SC]

Israeli aircraft continue to target military sites and points in Syria for the second day in a row, and the raids during the past hours focused on:

- The port of Latakia on the Syrian coast, the electronic warfare department headquarters near Al-Bahdaliyah in Damascus, the helicopter airport in the Aqraba area in Damascus and the Shinshar area south of Homs, the Qamishli airport in the northern countryside of Hasakah, the 54th Regiment in the Tartab area in the city of Qamishli in the Hasakah countryside, and the scientific research center in the Barzeh area. And the Scientific Research Center in Masyaf, Hama countryside

Squadrons of warplanes, military airports, and air defense batteries were also targeted

A circulating video documents the moment Israeli raids were launched on the Scientific Research Center in the Barzeh area in the Syrian capital, Damascus.

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[UKBengali]

When Israel is done, hundreds of billions of dollars of military infrastructure, factilities, defence institutions, munitions stockpiles, military requipment, air defences sytems, fast jets will all have been destroyed.

Those individuals who are saying, "that stuff didn't work anyway" dont understand or appreciate that is 3-4 decades of equipment that is getting blown up right now.

Syria can never rebuild its military that Israel is now blasting. Never ever.

Some of the stuff was top notch like like Iranian Khordad MRSAM.

That was significantly better than the S-300s that Putin gave Syria.

Zionists are also attacking the ports and so they may be now onto destroying civilian or what they may call "dual use" infrastructure.

 

[ghazi52]

US is not reviewing HTS terrorist designation, but may do so in future, State Department says​

From CNN's Michael Conte and Alex Marquardt

People welcome the leader of Syria's Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group that headed a lightning rebel offensive snatching Damascus from government control in Damascus on Sunday.

The United States is not currently reviewing the terrorist designation of the leading Syrian rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), but could still change it in the future, according to a State Department spokesperson.

“We are always reviewing our sanctions posture with entities based on their actions, so when entities take different actions, of course, there could be a change in in our sanctions posture,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said at a briefing.

Miller noted that such designations, like all US sanctions, “are designed to be an incentive to different courses of actions.”

“We have heard them (HTS) saying the right things about inclusion and a political process forward, but ultimately we’re going to judge them by their actions and our policy response will be determined by the actions they take,” Miller said.

Miller said that despite the terrorist designation, the US has the ability to communicated with HTS and wants to “have conversations with the key groups inside Syria, either directly or indirectly,” including HTS, but declined to say whether the US intended to reach out directly to HTS leader Abu Mohammad al-Jolani.

HTS and Jolani came out of the terrorist group al Qaeda, but have attempted to distance themselves from their terrorist roots.

 

[Persian Gulf]

Ok Assad is gone

So what now ?

Israel just nuked Syria

What the hell is going

Israel is like a mad dog out of control

Syrian people wanted this

no more free Iranian oil to keep their lights on

I am sure Turkey and Israel will look out for them

 

[EugeneP]

Assad was a secular nationalist socialist. I don't think that he was even a Muslim, but what I wrote is a fact.

There was no difference between him and Gaddafi, Saddam, Saleh, etc.

He seems to have added a veneer of religiosity, compared to his father, for political stability.

Middle Eastern Societies and the West

For many Middle Eastern Muslims the "West" came to personify the ultimate "other," occupying a space that was simultaneously appealing, intimidating, and often abhorrent. The multilayered, ambivalent interaction between Middle Eastern societies and the West has been a major theme in the history...

books.google.com

 

[ghazi52]

Toppling of Assad’s regime in Syria a "big loss" for Iran, Middle East studies professor says​

From CNN’s Caitlin Danaher

The fall of the Assad regime in Syria is a “big loss” for Iran’s role in the region, according to Vali Nasr, professor of International Affairs and Middle East Studies at Johns Hopkins University.

“Iran put a great deal of blood and treasure into preventing Assad from falling during the Arab Spring (…) The loss of Assad means a great deal in terms of having all of that investment come to naught,” the professor told CNN.

The power vacuum left by Iran, now filled by an “Islamist force,” poses a threat to the United States and Israel’s interests in the region, he added.

“The Levant area — Lebanon, Syria — is now completely battered. It’s broken. It doesn’t have order. And the United States and Israel may also live to suffer the consequences of the vacuum that we are seeing right now,” Nasr said.

 

[PakFactor]

Look at history, it’s not the first time this kind of re-balancing is happening. But freezing time is simply not possible.

Otherwise, we should say, things were very settled in colonial times, no one should have yearned for freedom.

That's a different case; the white trash of the world invaded us on our soil. Even then, they should have shelved their differences and kicked out the cancer.

But right now, the issue is Syria has no cover; what little it was provided was due to Russians through its link with Assad. Tell me, is the GCC going to ramp up support and provide cover? No.

Thus, in my opinion, and I respect your right to disagree, the Arab Spring and further conflict did much more harm than any good.

 

[ghazi52]

 

[Ali_Baba]

Israel's presence in the Syrian buffer zone violates 1974 agreement, UN says​

From CNN’s Richard Roth

Israeli soldiers stand near tanks near the border with Syria on the Israeli side in the Golan Heights on Monday.
Amir Levy/Getty Images
The United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) told Israel that its presence in the Syrian buffer zone would violate the 1974 Agreement on Disengagement with Syria, the UN Secretary General’s spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said Monday.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday said that he had ordered the military to “take control” of the buffer zone, which separates the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights from the rest of Syria.

The UN has confirmed that Israeli troops entered the buffer zone and were moving within that area, where they remain in at least three locations, according to Dujarric.

“There should be no military forces or activities in the area of separation,” he said.

Dujarric also said UNDOF personnel, who are tasked with maintaining a ceasefire between Israel and Syria and supervising the areas of separation and limitation, remain at their positions and are carrying out their mandated activities.

“Currently, the situation in the UNDOF area of operations is relatively calm,” he said.

Israel has unilaterally declared the 1974 agreement as null and void and completely dead. They will never leave what they have now captured.

 

[ghazi52]

On Monday, the OPCW said it had contacted Syria "with a view to emphasising the paramount importance of ensuring the safety and security of all chemical weapons related materials and facilities" in the country.

Also on Monday, the Israeli military released photos of its troops who crossed from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights into the demilitarised buffer zone in Syria where UN peacekeepers are based.

It comes a day after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that the military had temporarily seized control of the so-called Area of Separation, saying the 1974 disengagement agreement with Syria had "collapsed" with the rebel takeover of the country.

The Golan Heights is a rocky plateau about 60km (40 miles) south-west of Damascus.

Israel seized the Golan from Syria in the closing stages of the 1967 Six-Day War and unilaterally annexed it in 1981. The move was not recognised internationally, although the US did so unilaterally in 2019.

Speaking at a news conference on Monday, Saar said the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) was only making "a very limited and temporary step" taken for "security reasons".

He also claimed that Israel had no interest in meddling in internal Syrian affairs and was concerned only with defending its citizens.

Defence Minister Israel Katz meanwhile said the Israeli military would "destroy heavy strategic weapons" - including missile and air defence systems.

 

[Ali_Baba]

did you see a single statement from HTS or Turkey about this?

Nothing at all. It surves Turkeys interests as there can never be a rebellion against their control of the bit of Syria they "carve off to keep for themselves" as there is no miliary equipment left for that rebellion. Turkey will not care what Israel does with its bits of what was once Syria.

 

[ghazi52]

On Sunday, Netanyahu branded the collapse of the Assad regime a "historic day in the Middle East".

The Assad regime received much support from Hezbollah and Russia in the country's brutal civil war. With Hezbollah involved in the Israel-Gaza war and cross-border air strikes between Israel and Lebanon, and Russia expending huge resources on its invasion of Ukraine, HTS, along with other rebel groups in Syria, were able to seize on the occasion and were ultimately able to capture large swathes of Syria.

During the 2011 Syrian uprising, Israel made the calculation that Assad, despite being an ally of both Iran and Hezbollah, was a better bet than what might follow his regime.

On Sunday, Netanyahu insisted Israel would "send a hand of peace" to Syrians who wanted to live in peace with Israel.

He said the IDF presence in the buffer zone was a "temporary defensive position until a suitable arrangement is found".

"If we can establish neighbourly relations and peaceful relations with the new forces emerging in Syria, that's our desire. But if we do not, we will do whatever it takes to defend the State of Israel and the border of Israel," he said.

Israel is likely to be more sensitive over the Golan Heights, since HTS leader Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani's family has roots there. Thousands of Israeli settlers now live in the area alongside about 20,000 Syrians, most of them Druze, who stayed on after it was captured.

Israeli strikes in Syria are nothing new. It has previously acknowledged carrying out hundreds of strikes in recent years on targets in Syria that it says are linked to Iran and allied armed groups such as Hezbollah.

 

[KingQamaR]

Israel's presence in the Syrian buffer zone violates 1974 agreement, UN says​

From CNN’s Richard Roth

Israeli soldiers stand near tanks near the border with Syria on the Israeli side in the Golan Heights on Monday.
Amir Levy/Getty Images
The United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) told Israel that its presence in the Syrian buffer zone would violate the 1974 Agreement on Disengagement with Syria, the UN Secretary General’s spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said Monday.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday said that he had ordered the military to “take control” of the buffer zone, which separates the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights from the rest of Syria.

The UN has confirmed that Israeli troops entered the buffer zone and were moving within that area, where they remain in at least three locations, according to Dujarric.

“There should be no military forces or activities in the area of separation,” he said.

Dujarric also said UNDOF personnel, who are tasked with maintaining a ceasefire between Israel and Syria and supervising the areas of separation and limitation, remain at their positions and are carrying out their mandated activities.

“Currently, the situation in the UNDOF area of operations is relatively calm,” he said.

The neighbouring countries Military need to prompt their own Governments to take immediate action now to push Zionist army back across the buffer line !!! Israel wanted to make sure that it controlled Mt. Hermon. They already controlled the SW side but only up to 2200 ft. The summit and the eastern side were unoccupied as a part of the ceasefire border agreement back in 1974. Israel occupied it in 1973, but surrendered it to the UN, at Kissinger's insistence, in the negotiations. Now, Israel has renounced that agreement and occupied that strategic location, that is important for the placement of weapons but perhaps even more important to intelligence gathering. The peak of Mt. Hermon puts all of South Lebanon as well as all of SW Syria under radar surveillance as well as enhanced visual surveillance.

 

[UKBengali]

The neighbouring countries Military need to prompt their own Governments to take immediate action now to push Zionist army back across the buffer line !!! Israel wanted to make sure that it controlled Mt. Hermon. They already controlled the SW side but only up to 2200 ft. The summit and the eastern side were unoccupied as a part of the ceasefire border agreement back in 1974. Israel occupied it in 1973, but surrendered it to the UN, at Kissinger's insistence, in the negotiations. Now, Israel has renounced that agreement and occupied that strategic location, that is important for the placement of weapons but perhaps even more important to intelligence gathering. The peak of Mt. Hermon puts all of South Lebanon as well as all of SW Syria under radar surveillance as well as enhanced visual surveillance.

What action do you propose against the now undisputed hegemon in that region?