Israel, rebels race to contain Syria’s collapse
Israeli jets attacked Syria’s navy suspected chemical weapons sites around Damascus as Israeli troops have reportedly deployed deeper inside Syria than at any point since the Yom Kippur War 50 years ago. But those troops aren’t moving toward the capital city of Damascus; rather, they’re “stationed within the area of separation, to protect the State of Israel,” an Israeli military spokesman said Tuesday.
Israel’s military announced the troop movement Sunday, which it said included soldiers in the United Nations-monitored buffer zone and “in several other places” in order “to preserve the buffer zone and defend Israel and its civilians…as long as necessary.”
The airstrikes against Syria’s navy occurred in the port city of Latakia, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said, describing the operation as a “great success.” He also warned Syria’s new leaders, “Those who follow Assad’s path will end like Assad.”
Latest developments: A key Syrian rebel leader says he is taking charge as interim prime minister until at least March 1, Reuters reports from Damascus. The leader isn’t Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, whose ragtag coalition of jihadists and opposition fighters stormed into Damascus on Saturday, prompting dictator Bashar al-Assad to flee to Moscow. Jolani appears to be stepping back, in a way; but he’s still playing a vital role in steering the direction of Syria’s future, as apparent in a video posted Monday from Damascus.
Trivia: Jolani still has a $10 million U.S. bounty on his head for his days leading the al-Qaeda affiliate the al-Nusrah Front. But as Charles Lister of the Middle East Institute noted, “he’s spent years operating in the open, with no concern for his safety.” If his terrorist designation was truly “rock-solid, he’d be dead by now,” Lister said Sunday.
Syria’s new interim prime minister is a man named Mohammed al-Bashir, who had previously been Jolani’s chief in charge of the northwestern Idlib region, operating under the so-called Syrian Salvation Government, since last January. (Jolani’s Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, has controlled Idlib since 2017.) Bashir was reportedly born in Idlib in the 1980s; he’s since earned an education as an engineer, which he used to get a job at a gas utility. He also holds “a degree in Sharia and law from the University of Idlib,” according to the Middle East Eye.
By the way: The U.S. could open talks with HTS in the coming weeks. White House officials “do have the ability, when it is in our interest, [to] legally to communicate with a designated terrorist organization” such as HTS, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters Monday. The Associated Press has more on that angle.
The UN’s Syrian envoy signaled his openness toward HTS, too, telling reporters in Geneva, “The reality is so far that HTS and also the other armed groups have been sending good messages to the Syrian people … of unity, of inclusiveness,” according to Reuters.
Developing: U.S.-backed Syrian troops could soon be kicked out of their remote Conoco base near the eastern city of Deir ez-Zur, Charles Lister said Monday. That’s partly because locals are increasingly keen on booting the Syrian Democratic Forces out of Deir ez-Zur, and partly because rebel forces inside Syria backed by Turkey are—at least for a short time—freed up to expand their anti-Kurd operations along Syria’s northern border.
A second opinion: “The emergence of the transitional government is liable to pose a serious problem for the SDF, which has a difficult relationship with local Arab residents,” analysts from the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War wrote Monday afternoon. “The existence of the regime—and the risk that Arab areas in northeastern Syria could fall back under regime control—acted as a dampener against large-scale uprisings against the SDF.” But that dynamic has changed now.
Big picture: “Rebuilding Syria will be a colossal task following 13 years of civil war that killed hundreds of thousands of people,” Reuters writes. “Cities have been bombed to ruin, swathes of countryside are depopulated, the rump economy has been gutted by international sanctions and millions of refugees still live in camps after one of the biggest displacements of modern times. But the mood in Damascus remained celebratory, with refugees beginning to return to a homeland they had not seen in years.”
Commentary: Will Assad’s defeat be Putin’s Waterloo? The narrative of Russia’s ascendancy in 2024 is beginning to look like more fiction than fact, argues John Deni, a research professor at the U.S. Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute.
Additional reading:
Welcome to this Tuesday edition of The D Brief, brought to you by Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston. Share your newsletter tips, reading recommendations, or feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 2015, the political wing of the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces was formed in the northeastern Syria city of Dêrik.
Pacific region
Naval alert: Taiwan says China just deployed more ships near the Taiwan Strait than at any time since 1996. Some 100 Chinese warships and various coast guard vessels have arrived in an area “stretching from the southern Japanese islands to the South China Sea,” the New York Times reports. “This is likely the first time such a large-scale maritime operation has involved multiple Chinese theater commands and its coast guard,” the Wall Street Journal reports, citing a Taiwan official.
Chinese ships seem to be building two “walls” in the Pacific, “one at the eastern end of Taiwan’s Air Defence Identification Zone and the other further out in the Pacific,” Reuters reports, citing Taiwan intelligence official Hsieh Jih-sheng. “They are sending a very simple message with these two walls: trying to make the Taiwan Strait an internal sea,” he said.
Why now? “Speculation had been growing for days that China would launch war games in retaliation for visits made by Lai Ching-te, Taiwan’s president, to Hawaii and the U.S. territory of Guam last week while on his way to the Pacific islands,” the Times reports. “Mr. Lai’s visit to Guam, during which he had a phone call with [U.S. House] Speaker Mike Johnson, drew condemnation from Beijing.”
One U.S. military POV: “I remain confident that we’d prevail in a conflict with the PRC over Taiwan,” Indo-Pacific Command’s Adm. Samuel Paparo said over the weekend at the Reagan National Defense Forum in California. “Our concern is that the margin — expressed in risk of succeeding, lost lives, lost capability, lost money, and lost time — is eroding,” he said.
Another Pentagon POV: “The advantage lies with us because our last combat was captured on somebody’s iPhone 14,” Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Eric Smith said at the RNDF. “The Chinese’s last combat was captured on oil and canvas, and they should not forget that…I would not undersell the value that our combat experience brings to this fight,” he said.
From the region:
Trump 2.0
Hungary’s Orban meets with Trump, Musk at Mar-a-Lago. Monday brought the third meeting this year between the Eastern European authoritarian and a big fan who is now the U.S. president-elect. Joining the pair at the Florida compound were Trump’s national security adviser-designate, Rep. Michael Waltz, R-Fla.; and Elon Musk, an advisor tapped to co-lead a “government efficiency” drive.
Musk’s influence—if not his actual presence—was ubiquitous at the Reagan National Defense Forum held over the weekend in Simi Valley, California. “Defense-startup executives were giddy at the prospect of gaining comparative advantage through Trump-administration attacks on Pentagon bureaucracy, while lawmakers cautioned that substantive changes would require their review,” Defense One’s Audrey Decker reported from the conference.
Also: “Trump Organization leases brand to 2 new projects in Saudi Arabia,” AP reports. In 2016, the first-time president-elect broke precedent by refusing to fully divest business dealings that could pose national-security conflicts of interest. “Each of the president’s business endeavors, critics say, offers an opportunity for foreign leaders and other actors to unduly influence U.S. policy through emoluments — or potentially, even extortion,” Defense One’s Caroline Houck wrote at the time.
AP’s story is a reminder that this year, the president-elect is refusing to divest even a little bit, as the Washington Post noted recently.
Lastly today: A day in the diplomatic life of America’s defense secretary. From his first memo on the job, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has centered the tending and extending of ties with America’s allies and military partners. “People don’t realize how much of the job of secretary of defense, particularly of this secretary of defense, is diplomatic,” said one U.S. official who accompanied Austin on the trip.
Austin’s schedule on one busy day—Wednesday, Nov. 20, about midway through a nine-day trip to Australia, Fiji, Laos, and the Philippines—offers a lens on the breadth and intricacy of his efforts. D Brief-er Bradley Peniston, who joined the traveling press pool on the trip, reports from Vientiane, Laos, here.
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