There is a very big difference between punishing and changing the regime in official and legal parlance. The imminent action against the regime of Bashar Assad will be a limited operation, intended to make him reconsider his position and refrain from using chemical gases that are internationally banned weapons. The strike might be limited, but it will have important implications and serious repercussions.
This will be the first international military offensive against Assad after 27 months of fighting. Its most important implication is Moscow’s position, an Assad’s ally, which has of late been giving enough signals approving a ground attack, even though it is continuing with its usual rhetoric on a diplomatic level.
Indeed, Russia’s position is similar to its position prior to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. At that time, it objected to the invasion, but refrained from any involvement, stating that it would not intervene militarily to protect Saddam.
The same thing will happen with Syria. And it is an important development because over the past two years Russia threatened that it would not stand idle and watch its ally being hit.
If the reading of the Russian position is correct, we are seeing an important change in the Syrian war. Notice that the Russians have surreptitiously withdrawn from Syria. They began by reducing the number of their military experts, and now they are abandoning Syria as a base for their battleships in the Mediterranean, and are in the process of moving to Greece. And of course with Russia’s withdrawal, Assad would lose his most important international ally. That leaves him with Iran and Hezbollah, but what are these loyal allies capable of doing?
They continuously threaten to burn the region, echoing what Saddam and Qaddafi used to do, but their threats died with them. Iran is more intelligent; it will not involve itself now, for it had fought once against Iraq in the 1980s, but has not been involved in any large-scale military operations for three decades since. As always, it leaves the task to its small allies, Hezbollah and Hamas. Iran knows that the price of a confrontation is too high. A month-long war will destroy what military installations it has built over 30 years.
In addition, Hezbollah would not launch rockets on northern Israel, unless it is forced to. It realizes it could not prevent a Western attack on Assad, and the weapons that frighten the Lebanese would be enough to scare Israel. Hezbollah is able to carry out terrorist attacks against the interests of Arab and foreign countries, but this also will not stop the collapse of the regime in Damascus, but rather it would increase the conviction of the world besiege Hezbollah and punish it later.
We will not see a repeat of the shocking events when American tanks entered the center of the Iraqi capital and brought down Saddam in a matter of a few days. It is expected to carry out remote strikes to selected areas in Syria, Assad’s regime will not fall but it will hasten its collapse later. Assad, despite the unparalleled support he has received from Iran, Russia, Iraq and Hezbollah, failed to win the war.
If the opposition is united, with a unified army as well, perhaps there would be no need for international military actions. Asaad is exhausted, and all Russian and Iranian support will not bring him back what land and power he has already lost.
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