Syria – Iran Is Out…(But Nature Abhores a Vacuum)

Standing along the Sea of Galilee a few years ago, I looked up at the Golan Heights rising from its northeast shore and marveled at the military advantage it provided to whomever held it. The Golan stands nearly 2,000 feet above the plain and is cut vertically by sharp draws that make crosswise travel difficult and canalize traffic towards only a handful of obvious routes. Consequently, traffic on those same routes is exposed to abundant, long-range observation and fields of fire from nearly any position on the high ground.

But rather than build a better peace for its citizens behind such defensible terrain, Soviet-era Syria, which held the Golan at the time, chose instead to pack it with artillery tubes, mortars and rocket launchers and rain terror down upon farmers and villagers on the Israeli side of the border. Syria began fortifying the Golan in 1949, and by the mid-1960’s had occupied it with 5 infantry brigades, 3 tank brigades, over 40,000 troops, 260 tanks, and nearly 300 cannons plus assorted rockets and missiles.

That all ended in June 1967 after Egypt, threatened to shut down the Strait of Tiran, Israel’s access to the Red Sea…which was an act of war. Surrounded and greatly outnumbered by the allied forces of Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Iraq (total combined strength of 465,000 troops, 800 fighter aircraft and 2,500 tanks), Israel brilliantly defeated each one in turn and routed their forces from the key terrain the Arab units were using to prepare offensives into Israel. As a result, and as a matter of basic, military logic, Israel has held the high ground of the Golan and the hills of Judea and Samaria ever since. It’s key terrain, and key terrain provides a marked military advantage to whomever holds it. It is irrational to cede it to an adversary.

Unfortunately, another vacuum has opened in modern Syria today, and it will likely be associated with a resumption of competition between various armed Syrian groups vying for control and an influx of Turkish combat power purposed to maintain Syria as a permanently fundamentalist, Sunni ally directly along Israel’s northern border. The recent Syrian Civil War resulted in a victory for Turkish-supported, Sunni jihadi groups and the ejection of Iran’s Shia proxies from the country. From a Turkish perspective, the urgency for Ankara to consolidate its influence/control of Syria (and gain key terrain closer to Israel) cannot be overstated.

Are we out of the frying pan and into the fire?

Joining me this week on the Frontlines Report to discuss precisely that topic is Colonel Jacques Neriah, IDF (Ret). He was the former Foreign Policy Advisor to Israeli PM Yitzak Rabin (assassinated in 1995). Few understand the strategic challenge from Syria like he does. You definitely want to hear what he has to say….your chance to hear history speaking: https://frontlinesoffreedom.com/show-975/