The collapse of the Assad dynasty may not have been specifically predicted by diplomats and intelligence agencies but it was anticipated. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held up a map of the Middle Eastern potentialities without Russia’s and Iran’s proxy empire — an empire which at the time included Lebanon and Syria – during a speech before the UN General Assembly on Sept. 27, 2024.
Ladies and gentlemen, as Israel defends itself against Iran in this seven-front war, the lines separating the blessing and the curse could not be more clear. This is the map I presented here last year. It’s a map of a blessing.
It shows Israel and its Arab partners forming a land bridge connecting Asia and Europe. Between the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, across this bridge, we will lay rail lines, energy pipelines, and fiber optic cables, and this will serve the betterment of 2 billion people.
Now look at this second map. It’s a map of a curse. It’s a map of an arc of terror that Iran has created and imposed from the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean. Iran’s malignant arc has shut down international waterways.
The Blessing and the Curse. Turkey is notably absent from the list of Netanyahu’s blessed though it is not included in the roster of the accursed. The original “blessing” strategy of railroads, pipelines, and fiber optic cables was announced at the Sept 9, 2023, G20 meeting in New Delhi attended by Joe Biden. The India–Middle East–Europe Economic Corridor, as it came to be called, was envisioned as an alternative to the Suez Canal and deliberately designed to counter China’s Belt and Road. The agreement, “which could include Israel if it normalizes ties with Saudi Arabia, is one of several initiatives Biden is deploying to coax countries away from dealings with China," reports The Times of Israel:
The project has been delayed due to the ongoing Israel–Hamas war. The route is currently being used to bypass the Houthi blockade and is widely seen as a way to future proof the India-Europe-US supply chain avoiding the Suez canal.
At the time, it seemed far-fetched. Now, with the Israel-Hamas and Israel-Hezbollah war almost certainly over, the only thing that could foreseeably revive the Curse is continued chaos in post-Assad Syria. With Iran temporarily out of the picture, the replacement motive for sustaining unrest is the longstanding antipathy between Sunni Jihadi groups and Turkey toward an emergent Kurdistan. The Kurds have potential allies. The U.S. is one, but equally important is Israel. “In his inaugural address on 10 November 2024, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar emphasised the importance of forging a ‘natural alliance’ with the Kurdish nation," notes the Australian Institute of International Affairs.
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Naturally, Turkey would object, and the reason it has a proxy army of Jihadis in the Islamist militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) is so it can gum up the works. But Israel is in a powerful position to make HTS control over the Damascus plateau an untenable one. Turkey/HTS could probably move over the mountains from Aleppo, Hama, and Homs and reduce the coastal ports but it probably couldn't hold Damascus if the IDF comes down from the Golan, 100 km away on the Quneitra-Damascus highway. Readers will recall that after the Syrian attack on the Golan failed in the Yom Kippur War of 1973, the IDF advanced along that same highway and stopped just short of the Syrian capital. Israel has already taken the old Syrian blocking positions as Assad fell. It could potentially march on the capital again. The BBC reports:
Israel's prime minister has announced its military has temporarily seized control of a demilitarized buffer zone in the Golan Heights, saying the 1974 disengagement agreement with Syria had "collapsed" with the rebel takeover of the country.
Benjamin Netanyahu said he had ordered the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to enter the buffer zone and "commanding positions nearby" from the Israeli-occupied part of the Golan.
"We will not allow any hostile force to establish itself on our border," he said.
A UK-based war monitor said Syrian troops had left their positions in Quneitra province, part of which lies inside the buffer zone, on Saturday.
If that were not warning enough, the Israelis also took the Syrian side of Mount Hermon, 40 km in a direct line from Damascus, saying “it would not get involved in any internal occurrences in Syria, provided that no forces in Syria endanger Israeli security interests.” So while there remains the danger that Assad’s ruined state may descend into chaos, it is in the interest of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Israel, UAE, and India to stabilize the unfortunate country. War is not as lucrative as the India–Middle East–Europe Economic Corridor. Even Turkey’s objections to a Kurdistan might be overcome by cutting it in on the Blessing. Nobody wants the Curse.
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