The Last Ba’ath Regime is a Losing Bet

Israel has no choice but to strategically destroy as much as possible from the air of the Iranian nuclear weapons program as it poses an existential threat against the Jewish people and Iran increasingly approaches nuclear threshold status, something that is absolutely unacceptable to Israel. Tehran’s Lebanese proxy Hezbollah will respond with massive missile barrages of tens of thousands of missiles against Tel Aviv and other Israeli cities and the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) will have little choice but to destroy Hezbollah in both Lebanon and Syria and liberate both countries in close cooperation with the Kurdish-led SDF (Syrian Democratic Forces) which would receive full Israeli air support in its liberation of Syria. Destroying the 150 000 Hezbollah missile stockpile will require Israel to occupy Lebanon for several months and Israel would annex the Median Jewish (Alawite and Druze) regions of Lebanon and Syria and establish an Aramean Christian state as the successor state to Lebanon. Syria under the leadership of the AANES (Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria) would annex the remainder of Lebanon.

Russia has invested much in its position in Syria on the assumption that the Ba’athist regime would last. The SAA (Syrian Arab Army) stands no chance against the combined forces of the IDF and SDF and Russia knows it. Moscow would be well-advised to stay out of any war between the SAA and the SDF, remain in their barracks and align with the SDF once the war is over. The SAA is simply a losing bet as it will be crushed by the much better motivated SDF and the high tech IDF. Russia is a sophisticated player and will likely hedge its bets accordingly.

Moscow should invest in its strategic dialogue with Jerusalem which quite conceivably may be open to Moscow retaining its naval base and its air base in the Alawite region post Israeli annexation should Russia behave constructively during the war and not attack the SDF. There is every reason to believe that this can be constructively resolved through trilateral dialogue between Russia, Israel and the AANES.