Russia, Iran flex muscle in Syria

Intervention seen to draw more jihadi fighters to conflict

BEIRUT—Across the Middle East, America’s traditional allies are watching with disbelief as Russia and Iran mount a show of force in Syria, and they are wondering how it will end.

The US-led coalition, created to combat the jihadi threat from Islamic State (IS) in Syria and Iraq, had been eclipsed by Russian jets that pounded the rebels fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and by an influx of Iranian forces.

The question on everyone’s mind is: Will the United States and its European and regional Sunni allies intervene to stop President Vladimir Putin from reversing the gains made by mainstream Syrian rebels after more than four years of war? Few are holding their breath. Many say that the current drama is the consequence of ongoing Western inaction and US retreat at critical moments in an ever more uncontrollable conflict, whose regional dimensions are fast becoming global.

Faisal al Yafai, chief commentator at the UAE-based newspaper, The National, said that after the Russians surged into Syria, “America and its allies now looked like the only group without a plan.”

Nobody in the Middle East is counting on US President Barack Obama. The gloomy prediction of most is that a war that has killed at least a quarter of a million people and displaced half the Syrian population is about to get much, much worse.

The conflict has taken a deadly trajectory throughout. It began as a popular uprising against Assad, part of the “Arab Spring.” Then it became a sectarian war with regional patrons such as Iran and Saudi Arabia backing their local proxies.

The military interventions of Russia and Iran have pushed the war to the brink of a fullblown international conflict.

With the Kremlin’s creation in Baghdad of a center to share intelligence among Syria, Iraq, Iran and Russia, a Moscowbacked network now runs from Tehran, through Baghdad and Damascus and via Hezbollah into Lebanon.

But some analysts say Russia may be getting in over its head, entering a treacherous quagmire in Syria.

Yafai said the idea that Russia could supplant the United States in the region was fanciful.

“They don’t have the financial power,” Yafai said, referring to Russia. “They don’t need to be that involved because the Americans are leaving, so even a small presence will be enough to have a significant impact.”

The Assad government, Syria watchers say, has been lucky with its enemies as well as its allies.

What could alter this equation, some analysts said, was if Russia and Iran were to move to recapture areas of northwestern Syria seized by insurgents earlier this year.

It is in that area that Russian jets have targeted not IS but other Islamist rebels who are fighting both Assad and IS with support from Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and, in some cases, the United States.

Also, as Reuters reported this week, Iranian troops and their Hezbollah allies planned to use Russian air cover to launch a ground offensive in Idlib and Hama provinces, where the IS presence was minimal.

That risks turning all Sunni factions against Russia, while Putin is already nervous about the presence of large numbers of Chechens in Syria and about IS ambitions to build up its presence in the northern Caucasus.

Sarkis Naoum, a leading Lebanese commentator on Syria, said that if Russia decided to launch wide-scale operation in the north, it would lead to a “war on an international scale.”

Moscow’s critics, as well as non-IS rebels, said the Russian and Iranian intervention would draw more Sunni foreign fighters and jihadis into Syria.

“What will Putin do then?” asked Naoum. “If this battle takes place, then Putin would drag himself and the world into a predicament whose beginning is known but whose end is not.”