ISIS reaches a decisive turning point

The burning alive of a Jordanian pilot reminds us how a few months ago many people, while acknowledging the savagery of ISIS, were also praising the cleverness of its leadership. Today that conclusion appears less persuasive.

The strength of groups such as ISIS is that when they are expanding, they generate momentum that draws in the undecided in countries that the group seeks to affect or take over. This was the message in the rapid ISIS advances in Syria and Iraq last summer. The group’s successes built on, and profited from, the alienation felt by Iraq’s Sunnis toward a state led by a man openly favoring the Shiite community.

The success of insurgent movements is often based on their ability to exploit existing social contradictions and cleavages. However, ISIS soon forgot how central this had to be to its strategy, and instead highlighted its sheer brutality. Violence can be a valuable tactic to sow fear among foes; but there is a stage at which it has a contrary effect. It unites previously divided adversaries; it provokes outrage and dread that makes resistance much more bitter; and it may define a group at the expense of the more important image it seeks to project.

All this has been visible in recent months. By conquering territory in Iraq and decapitating American hostages, ISIS precipitated a tacit alliance between the United States, Iran, Iraq’s government and the Gulf states, whose divisions and rivalries had allowed ISIS and other jihadi groups to grow in the first place. This coalition has turned the tide, spearheading the recapture of Diyala province in Iraq as well as large swathes of northern Iraq, making ISIS-controlled Mosul vulnerable.

The inhumaneness of ISIS has also made its enemies more determined to fight back, as we apparently saw when the group tried to take control of the Deir al-Zor military base last December. Whereas the group had seemed unstoppable in eastern Syria, it was unable to triumph this time around.

Much the same can be said of the ISIS offensive against Ain al-Arab, or Kobani, which proved to be the group’s great blunder. While the town’s strategic significance was limited, its symbolic importance was immense: it was a battle that the U.S., ISIS and the Kurds could not afford to lose. Ultimately, coalition aircraft were able to inflict far heavier losses on ISIS than was sustainable and the group was obliged to withdraw.

Moreover, Turkey emerged from the confrontation bruised, as its implicit collaboration with ISIS came under international scrutiny. Worse, the U.S. formed an alliance with Syrian Kurds close to the Kurdistan Workers Party opposed to Ankara.

The third error of ISIS was to allow itself to be characterized by its violence, when the ultimate aim of its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, is to set up a caliphate that will draw Sunnis toward him. Yet aside from psychopathic terror groups, who really wants to rally to such a repulsive, pathological entity whose sustainability is in greater doubt by the day, and whose only attribute is an ability to concoct barbaric ways to kill people?

If ISIS were ever to have appeal as a state project, it would have to incorporate elements of “soft power” into its agenda. Ironically, the Nusra Front, otherwise little better than ISIS, has attempted to do so, showing itself to be more merciful, which has shielded it in certain parts of Syria.

Baghdadi’s state has been an illusion. Hubristically, it announced some months ago that it intended to print a new currency. Yet its economic backbone is collapsing; those living in its areas appear to be less and less satisfied with their predicament; and there are even senior figures within ISIS who now regret having joined the group, as Martin Chulov reported in a recent piece for the Guardian on the formation of ISIS.

To those who might have followed ISIS once, the appeal is largely gone. The group has been so vicious, while offering no recompenses, that few see benefits in joining it. As Al-Qaeda’s Ayman al-Zawahri wrote to Abu Musaab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, in July 2005: “In the absence of ... popular support, the Islamic mujahed movement would be crushed in the shadows, far from the masses who are distracted or fearful ... Therefore, our planning must strive to involve the Muslim masses in the battle, and to bring the mujahed movement to the masses and not conduct the struggle far from them.”

While there will always be marginalized individuals who answer the call of ISIS, Zawahri was making a larger point that a jihadi movement must anchor itself in a population to thrive and survive. ISIS has done the contrary, terrorizing societies under its rule, and even senior members of its leadership who dare not challenge its policies for fear of retribution.

ISIS will remain with us, but it’s fair to say it has created a perfect storm of animosity and opposition, which means its ability to extend its authority has been decisively curtailed. Rather than pick its battles carefully, the group roused myriad enemies simultaneously. Opening new fronts can be useful when on the upswing, but ISIS has done so lately mainly to limit its losses. Baghdadi’s ambitions may have gotten the better of him and now the shortcomings are visible.

The best of enemies - New ‘rules of the game’ are emerging on the Golan

If Hezbollah and Israel avert a major confrontation of the kind that took place in summer 2006, it would show that both sides still have an enduring tendency to accept “rules of the game” to govern their contentious relationship.

In the aftermath of Hezbollah’s attack on Wednesday, which led to the death of two Israeli soldiers, many in Lebanon held their breath. Would this be a repeat of the last war between Israel and the party, which significantly reduced the number of Hezbollah attacks against Israeli forces? Apparently not, as both sides interpreted the latest operation against Israeli troops in the context of a longstanding “deterrence dialogue” and avoided a major conflagration.

According to reports on Israel’s Yedioth Ahronoth website, Hezbollah sent a message to Israel via the UNIFIL commander, Maj.-Gen. Luciano Portolano, saying that it did not seek an escalation. It described the attack as an “eye for an eye” — retaliation for Israel’s killing two weeks ago of Hezbollah members and Iranians, including a senior Revolutionary Guards commander, Mohammed Allahdadi, near Quneitra in the Golan Heights.

The Israeli attack near Quneitra was regarded as a transgression of “red lines” in the relationship between Israel and Hezbollah — and beyond that Israel and Iran. Allahdadi was not engaged in anti-Israel activity. While he could have been planning it, preemptive strikes are outside the unwritten rules of the game between Israel and Hezbollah. Subsequent reports that the general was being tracked through his cell phone suggested his was a targeted killing.

According to unconfirmed media reports, Israel, realizing the implications of its actions, anticipated a response and was prepared to absorb it. That it did not engage in massive retaliation after the Hezbollah attack, unlike Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s government nine years ago, may indicate that these reports were true.

The details of Hezbollah’s operation are worth examining. The party conducted it near Ghajar. Ghajar is a predominantly Alawite village on the western edges of the Israeli-occupied Golan. Half the village is inside Lebanese territory. By attacking there, Hezbollah was playing on the ambiguities of the place, even as the party sought to reaffirm that it had opened a new front on the Golan.

Iran and Hezbollah have revived tensions on the Golan for several reasons: In order to conduct periodic attacks against Israel, after these were more or less suspended following the 2006 Lebanon war. In that way Iran could maintain pressure on Israel at a time of continuing Israeli threats against its nuclear program.

Hezbollah, in turn, saw an opportunity to hit Israel while simultaneously shielding Lebanon, in particular the Shiite community, from Israeli retaliation. And Bashar Assad’s regime in Syria, while it may not be happy with the Golan being transformed into an Iranian card, sees advantages in maintaining instability there. It reminds Israel that things were good under the Assads, who ensured the plateau was the quietest of Israel’s borders — a message especially useful for Assad’s political survival.

Israel immediately grasped the implications, and while it has said it would not allow the Golan to be turned into a new line of confrontation, there is not much it can do. After all, it was the Israelis who first opened a Syria front against Hezbollah by bombing weapons shipments to the party passing through the country. More likely, Israel will accept a low level of violence as it did in the Shebaa Farms area before 2006, and will think twice before engaging in preemptive actions or targeting Iranian figures in the future.

Nor is such tolerance new. In 1996 the Israelis agreed to what was known as the April Understanding, an informal agreement that governed Hezbollah-Israel combat in southern Lebanon. The understanding was designed, primarily, to limit civilian casualties, but its implications greatly transcended this.

Negotiated by the United States, the agreement effectively legitimized Hezbollah’s resistance to Israel and put the party on par with a state, imposing rules that Israel would come to accept. On several occasions, for instance, when Israel violated the understanding by hitting civilian areas, its leaders abided Hezbollah retaliation targeting Israeli civilians.

Not surprisingly, after the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000 Hezbollah viewed the April Understanding as a model of sorts, its spirit to be replicated in other contexts. The Golan has provided them with such an opportunity. Israel may not be happy with the consequences, but its willingness to absorb the killing of two soldiers on Wednesday apparently shows a different face.

Rules of the game, no matter how deadly, have the advantage of providing predictability. Moreover, at a time when the United States is looking to normalize relations with Iran, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu benefits from showing to the world that Iran and its allies continue to threaten Israel.

Hezbollah can delight in what happened on Wednesday. It engaged in brinksmanship, and apparently pulled it off. Netanyahu warned of a new Gaza in Lebanon, but his focus was on containment. The rules on the Golan are still being defined, but Hezbollah took a step closer in imposing a new reality on Israel that its leaders had said they would not accept.  

Obama refuses to adapt in the Mideast

These days whenever criticism is leveled at the Obama administration’s Middle East policy, one finds sympathetic voices in the United States defending President Barack Obama. The gist of their argument is that this approach merely downplays the responsibility of regional states for the chaos in the Arab world. Perhaps, but in the past six years the region has been through monumental transformations, at a time when the United States has irresponsibly disengaged from the region. Washington’s policies have been ill-adapted to dynamics in the affected countries. Worse, the administration has done little to adjust as its policy failures have multiplied. Most perniciously, it has misinterpreted its options in order to avoid taking action.

David Ignatius discusses the latest manifestation of this shortcoming with regard to Yemen in an article on this page today. However, the combination of American lethargy, the absence of foresight and imagination, and the refusal to think through the implications of America’s inaction has applied to most of its relationships in the region since 2011.

While it’s true that the Arab world would probably have gone through the tumult of recent years whatever the United States had done, the Obama administration could not have picked a worse time to extricate itself. In many respects this only ensured that the situation would become even more dangerous.

The reason is that the United States is not like other states. Its power and regional influence means that it has the ability to push countries in certain directions, in favor of a desirable agenda. President Barack Obama could not have done much against China and Russia at the United Nations Security Council perhaps, but he could have taken the lead in coordinating the responses of President Bashar Assad’s foes in such a way as to strengthen America’s hand, reinforce the Syrian regime’s adversaries, and ensure that extremists would not hijack the Syrian uprising.

Early on Obama denied himself a range of options in Syria. He dismissed the war there as “somebody else’s civil war,” at a time when the conflict was already having dramatic regional repercussions. Obama affirmed repeatedly that the United States was not prepared to deploy troops to Syria – a misleading response to a nonexistent request, since few actually suggested that American forces be dispatched to Syria to overthrow Assad.

As for the deployment of U.S. military power in Syria, it is the president himself who first threatened it if Assad used chemical weapons against his own population. Yet when the Syrian regime did precisely that in 2013, Obama accepted Russian mediation to avoid reacting, only discrediting himself in the process.

As for more creative uses of American military power, such as establishing no-fly zones over areas of Syria to protect Syrian civilians fleeing Assad’s butchery, Obama never seriously considered them. This only further destabilized the region as millions of refugees are today living in neighboring Arab countries, with no prospect that they will soon return home.

At present, the Obama administration has shifted yet again, implicitly supporting a continuation of the Assad regime, and even Iranian influence in Syria. This was made fairly clear in Obama’s October letter to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in which the president affirmed parallel U.S.-Iranian interests in fighting ISIS, and reassured him that Assad’s forces would not be targeted by coalition airstrikes.

Beyond that, Obama and his advisers never properly anticipated the likely fallout of the Syrian conflict, and its implications for Western security. The president made American successes against Al-Qaeda a cornerstone of his re-election in 2012. But beyond his search for domestic political benefit, Obama refused to look at the issue with greater depth, to see if there were incipient terrorist threats in Syria and elsewhere in the region.

Syria was only the most evident of the administration’s abysmal responses to the evolving situation in the Middle East. But the president can also regret his mismanagement of relations with other countries, such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Each was a prominent U.S. ally, but today all of them mistrust the United States, whatever the appearances, and Obama has done almost nothing to improve the situation.

Doubtless these countries themselves are partly to blame for misunderstanding American priorities. However, issues such as Syria’s war, Western normalization with Iran, and the viability of Islamist governments have immediate, even existential, importance for them, affecting their regional sway and domestic stability. Obama has not been personally engaged in addressing regional fears on all these issues, let alone defining a consistent U.S. policy toward them. He has navigated through a labyrinth of conflicting regional interests, but the American president has not reassured his allies or sought a way to resolve the contradictions.

Can we expect change in Obama’s remaining two years in office? The president is not backed by majorities in the House and Senate, which can only handicap his foreign relations. But it is also true that his withdrawal from the Middle East has not been unpopular among many in Congress or the public. Indeed, Obama’s catastrophic negligence of the region is a consequence of the fact that there has been no price to pay for this at home.

Nor is there any indication that the White House feels a need to act very differently today. But only a blind man or a fool would argue that the U.S. pays no price for the disintegration of the region. Obama intervened against ISIS on the assumption that something had to be done. The problem is that the president refuses to apply this logic in Syria, Libya and Yemen.

The region has suffered, as has American credibility, while the framework of American power in the region has been overhauled. But such transformations must usually be conducted carefully. Obama has done so recklessly, amateurishly, creating a vacuum that has only exacerbated the traumas afflicting the region.

Like father, unlike son: how Bashar Al Assad lost control

If Hafez Al Assad could come back and see what his son, Bashar, has done in Syria, he would re-enter his mausoleum and slam the door. Virtually every principle the late president sought to impose to enhance his country’s autonomy and regional power has been ignored by his successor.

This was brought home 10 days ago when Israel killed a top Iranian Revolutionary Guard commander, Mohammed Allahdadi, in Quneitra. According to the Lebanese newspaper Al Joumhouria, which cited diplomatic sources, General Allahdadi was tracked through his mobile phone, and was reportedly assassinated only days after the establishment of a joint operations room of Iranian, Hizbollah and Syrian officers in the area.

As Lebanese journalist Hazem Al Amin observed in Al Hayat last weekend, Iran’s subsequent threat of retaliation against Israel was a way of saying: “In Bashar Al Assad’s reduced Syria I’m in charge.” For Mr Amin, just as Iran affirmed that the Golan Heights were part of “its Syria”, Israel’s elimination of the Iranian and Hizbollah members was a riposte to this.

This exchange of messages came at an interesting moment. In Cairo last week, opposition groups, including exiled groups and members of the so-called “internal opposition” tolerated by Mr Al Assad, met to reaffirm support for the Geneva communiqué agreed in 2012. The Geneva process calls for a transitional government with “full executive authority”, widely regarded as a mechanism to move away from Mr Al Assad.

This came on the eve of a conference in Moscow this week bringing together mainly internal opposition representatives and officials of the Syrian regime. Expectations of any breakthrough were low, and the regime lowered them further by appointing as its representative Syria’s UN ambassador, Bashar Jaafari, instead of the foreign minister, Walid Al Moallem.

Lately, Russia has sought to move away from the Geneva framework. In reaffirming its importance, the Cairo conference aimed to prevent efforts to find any alternative path.

By hosting the gathering in Cairo, the Egyptians seemed to be saying that the search for a diplomatic solution must be brought back into the Arab fold. What could be taking shape is an emerging framework for Arab-Iranian dialogue over Syria.

In all this, one thing is evident: Mr Al Assad’s fate, like that of his regime, is entirely in the hands of others, both allies and enemies. Yet his late father spent much time ensuring that Syria and the Syrian regime would not fall into such a trap. Hafez Al Assad doubtless remembered, and hated, how Syria had become a plaything in regional rivalries during the 1950s and 1960s.

Mr Al Assad also remembered his own experiences during the October 1973 war against Israel. At the time, the Syrian president felt that his Egyptian counterpart Anwar Al Sadat had arrived at successive arrangements with the United States that had left Syria politically and militarily vulnerable, not least the Sinai I agreement of January 1974.

Dependency on the decisions of outside powers is something Hafez Al Assad consistently sought to avoid. The wily leader’s policy was, invariably, to put Syria in a position where others would have to come to Damascus to make political requests, placing him in an axial position regionally.

Bashar Al Assad never succeeded in replicating his father’s approach. While he borrowed a favourite tactic of his father in exporting instability, so that Syria could cash in on resolving the ensuing crises, he rarely fulfilled what he promised.

This was particularly true, for instance, when he reneged on a commitment made to US secretary of state Colin Powell in February 2003 to stop smuggling Iraqi oil on behalf of Saddam Hussein’s regime. While the president was trying to maintain Syria’s margin of manoeuvrability, he missed the fact that only by carrying through on his understandings would foreign representatives have an incentive to come to his doorstep.

Today the situation has been completely reversed. Mr Al Assad is almost entirely reliant on Iran, and to a lesser extent Russia, for his political survival. Syria has returned to being a board game for regional states – as Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, and to a lesser extent Israel and Egypt as well as the United States and Russia all play a role in developments there.

Worse, Iran’s interests and Mr Al Assad’s frequently clash. Iran has facilitated Syria’s fragmentation by focusing on consolidating the regime’s hold over a portion of Syria, from Damascus to the Syrian coast, including the city of Homs, as this is the only means it has to maintain control over the country. Mr Al Assad, in turn, would undoubtedly prefer to be given the means to ultimately reconquer the whole of Syria.

Similarly, for the Golan to become an Iranian card is something Mr Al Assad cannot welcome, as recovering the territory has long been a central Syrian national issue. Losing this to Tehran can only erode the president’s legitimacy.

For Syria to be under the sway of foreign powers means that any solution will only come through an international arrangement, with Bashar Al Assad’s future remaining uncertain. One can almost hear Hafez Al Assad groaning. It was all for nothing, his spirit must be saying.

Missing in action - The absurd uproar over two beauty queens

One of the more amusing takes on the incident in which Miss Israel took a “selfie” alongside Miss Lebanon came from a satirical publication titled The Pan-Arabia Enquirer (Its motto? “Spreading the hummous of satire over the flatbread of news.”)

The online publication published an article allegedly describing how Mia Khalifa, an American pornographic actress of Lebanese origin, had been forced to apologize because one of the four men in a scene she was shooting happened to be Israeli.

“I thought he had a strange accent, but he didn’t really say anything that could actually be considered words,” the fictional Khalifa says. “It was later when someone told me and I was totally shocked. You can’t even imagine my embarrassment and the shame that this will bring on my family. For that, I’m truly sorry.”

The howls of outrage among some Lebanese media outlets after Miss Israel, Doron Matalon, posted a photograph on Instagram that she had taken with Miss Lebanon, Saly Greige, as well as with Miss Japan and Miss Slovenia, indeed invited ridicule. Jon Stewart obliged with a very funny sketch. In commenting on remarks from Al Jadeed that Greige and Matalon should not have been in the same picture, because “Lebanon and Israel are enemies,” Stewart put on his best expression of perplexity, before blurting out: “It’s a beauty pageant. They’re all enemies!”

Lebanon can do better than be characterized by its pettiness over scenes that most other countries would regard as perfectly harmless. Last year we saw a different kind of indignation when Olympic skier Jackie Chamoun happened to bare her breasts in a film about a photo shoot for a skiing calendar. There was the usual gnashing of teeth, with some criticizing and many defending Chamoun, and in the end nothing happened.

Lebanon has many faults, but when it comes to morals (and the opposition to the Miss Israel selfie was, in many ways, depicted as a moral failing) thankfully it doesn’t take itself too seriously. The Chamoun experience will most likely be repeated: Greige will never see the inside of a prison cell.

However, it was unfortunate that Greige felt the need to issue a statement on her Facebook page, saying: “The truth behind the photo: Since the first day of my arrival to participate to Miss Universe [sic], I was very cautious to avoid being in any photo or communication with Miss Israel (that tried several times to have a photo with me) … I was having a photo with Miss Japan, Miss Slovenia and myself; suddenly Miss Israel jumped in, took a selfie, and put it on her social media…”

In fact, one look at the photo shows this was probably nonsense. Greige hardly looks alarmed. She just looks like she’s having a good time, and that is precisely what pageants are supposed to give contestants. If the Lebanese authorities can’t stomach the idea of their young women mixing with Israelis, they can simply boycott Miss Universe, as they have boycotted other international events where Israelis are present. But, grasping how silly this would seem to everyone, they have not done so.

But let’s say that Matalon indeed “photo-bombed” Greige — what’s the big deal? If the Israelis are out to embarrass Arab contestants, then the best way to respond is with indifference. But more important, how did having a photograph taken with an Israeli suddenly morph into something much bigger than that? Did it somehow signal approval of Israeli policies toward the Palestinians, or even, God forbid, recognition of Israel?

There is, and must be, a cutoff point between high politics and human relations. If, let’s say, a Lebanese and an Israeli were caught on a sinking ship and needed to cooperate to save themselves, I very much doubt Al Jadeed or the Arab League’s Central Boycott Office would intervene to exact punishment.

Nor has anybody who supports legislation barring contact with Israelis ever adequately explained what the benefits are. Presumably, those who seek to collaborate with Israel for political ends will ignore such legislation; while those who accept it ultimately harm Israel in no way at all.

Most Lebanese probably look at this entire incident as an embarrassment. However, they prefer not to express anything because, as the Arabs proclaimed during the 1960s, “No voice must rise above the sound of battle.” But let’s face it, the sound of battle after a century of conflict becomes a bit tiresome, and Miss Lebanon can be forgiven for letting her guard down.

Israel’s policies merit the most strenuous condemnation, but that shouldn’t affect personal contacts with Israelis, nor in many places has it. The hypocrisy of focusing on those whose interactions have been made public, while saying nothing about the myriad dealings that haven’t been publicized, is sign enough of the double standards surrounding this idiotic issue.

All I can say is that had any beauty queen, Israeli or otherwise, taken a selfie with me, I would have advertised it. And yet it would not affect my views of Benjamin Netanyahu or Ariel Sharon, under whose bombs I spent many anxious moments.  

America’s Syria plan is bound to fail

In his State of the Union address Tuesday, U.S. President Barack Obama mentioned Syria only twice. On both occasions he did so in the context of the American-led battle against ISIS. No mention was made of the cruelties of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime, let alone how its crimes have driven extremism in Syria.

Despite reports that the United States intends to start training “moderate” Syrian rebels soon, there have been numerous signs lately that the Obama administration is changing its attitude toward Assad. Whereas it had previously insisted that any solution in Syria required him to step down, that no longer seems to be the case.

Last week, after meeting in Geneva with the United Nations envoy to Syria, Staffan de Mistura, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry expressed support for a Russian peace proposal for Syria, saying it “could be helpful.” While details of the Russian plan are unclear, nothing indicates that it calls for Assad’s departure, especially as the Syrian regime has accepted it.

Kerry’s subsequent remarks reinforced the view that Washington is no longer insisting that Assad must go. “It is time for President Assad, the Assad regime, to put their people first and to think about the consequences of their actions, which are attracting more and more terrorists to Syria, basically because of their efforts to remove Assad,” the secretary told journalists.

The remarkably duplicitous formulation, by placing the onus of stepping down on Assad himself and asking that a mass murderer and his entourage should somehow “think about the consequences of their actions,” was immediately interpreted as confirmation of an American shift.

In Lebanon, a news item further lent credence to this view. The Druze leader Walid Jumblatt leaked to Al-Joumhouria that when he met in London last December with Jeffrey Feltman, the U.N. undersecretary-general for political affairs told him that Assad’s removal was no longer a U.S. priority. “He’s staying for now,” Feltman said of Syria’s president.

The aim of the American program to train and arm moderate Syrian rebels is not for them to fight Assad’s troops, but rather to fight ISIS in coordination with the American military. In other words the rebels, abandoned for years by Washington in the face of Syria’s army, are now slated to become cannon fodder in America’s war against a terrorist organization.

Only someone naive would assume that the moderates, if they ever manage to survive as an effective militia, have the same urgencies as the Obama administration. Almost certainly, those participating in the U.S. program would have been persuaded to do so on the grounds that the weapons and training they receive will eventually be turned against the Syrian regime. Washington will have to address this disconnect.

The Obama administration still doesn’t get it. Its Syrian allies, when and if they become a serious fighting force, will struggle to regain legitimacy if they are seen by Syrians as primarily focused on fighting ISIS and not the Assad regime.

Worse, with the United States not wanting now to be rid of Assad – a widely-shared view in Syria – its Syrian allies can only suffer as a consequence. This will push the “moderates” into a dilemma of either striving to appeal to their own population or to the gray suits in Washington. They will choose the former. That could undermine the cohesiveness of the rebels and cause them to slowly break away from the American grip.

What would the U.S. do then? Cut off assistance, after the millions of dollars spent to bolster the rebels? Abandon potentially valuable allies, and in that way lend further momentum to ISIS and Nusra Front?

The American scheme is so disconnected from the reality in Syria, from the suffering of millions of Syrians left to face a miserable fate for almost four years, that it is bound to fail. The arrogance of the Obama administration in this regard is breathtaking. Rarely has the United States been so indifferent to the destiny of a people subjected to the worst abominations. Americans have, understandably, been appalled by the savagery of ISIS. But how does one square that attitude with their utter disregard for the systematic slaughter carried out by the Syrian regime and its army and security services?

The Syrians are not stupid. Like everyone else, they know an American regional priority today is to conclude a deal with Iran over its nuclear program. It is increasingly apparent that one of the byproducts of this arrangement will be that Washington is less likely to challenge Iranian stakes in the Middle East, particularly in Syria. That was implicit in a letter Obama wrote last October to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Such an arrangement would little please Turkey or the Gulf states who feel threatened by Iran’s regional power. That means that the conflict in Syria is likely to escalate as the Gulf states attempt to claw Syria away from Iran. Their only weapon may be to help more hard-line groups that have been effective in fighting the Syrian regime. By disregarding such dynamics American officials are undermining their own stated objectives.

By accepting that Assad remain in place, the Obama administration is digging deeper the hole of its abysmal Syria policy. The problem is that by the time the true extent of American failure becomes apparent, Obama will have left office.

Hizbollah will not hit back at Israel. It can’t

The Israeli attack that killed several Hizbollah members and a top Iranian Revolutionary Guard commander, Mohammed Allahdadi, near the Syrian town of Quneitra last weekend had many people speculating about how Hizbollah might retaliate. However, the party’s options remain very limited.

Attention has focused on one of the victims: Jihad Mugniyeh, the son of top military commander, Imad, who was assassinated in Damascus in 2008. Allahdadi was the bigger fish despite some suggestions that Jihad, 25, oversaw Hizbollah’s operations on the Golan Heights, Syrian territory occupied by Israel in the Arab-Israeli war of 1967.

There is nothing to confirm that the group intended to target Israelis, though there have been bomb attacks against Israeli positions on the Golan in the past. In March 2014, four Israeli soldiers were injured in an attack near the demilitarised zone. And last June, an Israeli teenager was killed in a mortar attack on a car, which Israel said was a targeted attack.

It is not clear if Jihad Mughniyeh’s convoy was hit by a helicopter or a drone. Initial Israeli statements did not indicate a targeted killing, and a source later said that the Israelis mistakenly thought the group comprised low-level guerrillas.

The Syrian media has stated that the Hizbollah members were fighting jihadists in Syria. That’s not surprising, since neither Hizbollah nor Syria has ever admitted that the party is operating against Israelis from the Golan. Indeed, in an interview last week Hizbollah’s secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah, strongly denied it.

But it would not be surprising if Jihad Mughniyeh and his comrades planned a military move against Israel. There are three reasons for this. First, Hizbollah seeks to maintain its deterrence capability vis-à-vis Israel to show that it can respond to any Israeli attack against Iran’s nuclear programme. Second, Hizbollah needs to underline that its involvement in Syria has not affected its ability to fight against Israel. Mr Nasrallah made that point in his interview. And third, Hizbollah has long tried to link its attacks against Israeli forces in Lebanon’s Shebaa Farms area to the Golan. The areas abut each other and both the party and Syria have an interest in tying the two together: the Syrians, to benefit from the military leverage Hizbollah gives them over Israel; Hizbollah, to keep the Shebaa front open indefinitely by linking it to the broader question of Israeli occupation of Arab lands.

Even so, after the summer 2006 war against Israel, Hizbollah was forced to sharply reduce its attacks in the Shebaa Farms area. The presence of a reinforced United Nations force in southern Lebanon partly hindered its actions. There were other reasons that made it difficult to carry out “resistance actions”: domestic divisions in Lebanon, the end of a Syrian presence that had protected Hizbollah’s autonomy, and Shia fatigue.

Mr Nasrallah’s denials aside, when the war in Syria began in 2011, Hizbollah saw a chance to reopen a front with Israel, compensating for its relative inactivity in the Shebaa Farms.

Yet Hizbollah had to be careful, even as it became evident that it had opened a new front. Both the party and the Assad regime sought to retain a degree of deniability for actions against Israel, maintaining ambiguity so that they could blame incidents on the generalised chaos in the border area. The ambiguity suited Hizbollah in another way too. It has long portrayed itself as a Lebanese national resistance force and could not be seen to have become a regional mercenary for Iran.

As for the Syrians, they didn’t wish to highlight Hizbollah’s role in the Golan because the Syrian regime itself has almost never used force to regain occupied land. Damascus only agreed to this after Syria descended into civil war and Bashar Al Assad felt that it would help his political survival if he showed Israel that his regime alone could stabilise the border area.

The results of this policy of deliberate obfuscation are evident: Hizbollah has found it difficult to advance a strategy that reaffirms its deterrence equation with Israel even as it has been deeply involved in fighting Mr Al Assad’s enemies inside Syria. Despite Mr Nasrallah’s claims that Hizbollah can fight on multiple fronts, the party is stretched to the limits, and the Israelis know this.

It was partly to dispel that impression that Hizbollah decided to open the Golan front. It was able to portray its Syrian campaign as adding a new dimension to its confrontation with Israel, while also isolating Lebanon from Israeli retaliation.

But if that logic holds, the party will have limited latitude to retaliate from the traditional fronts for last weekend’s attack. To spare Lebanon Israeli retribution, it will hesitate to do so from Lebanese territory. And because it has not acknowledged that its members were plotting against Israel from the Golan, it may also refrain from responding from there.

That only leaves an attack against Israelis overseas. But with the world now focused on fighting terrorism, and Hizbollah and Iran purporting to be on the right side of that battle, how probable is that? Jihad Mugniyeh’s death, like that of his father, may be followed more by a whimper than a bang.