• Some more on the general Middle East challenges of a Trump Administration from Israeli academics Eytan Gilboa of Bar Ilan University and Uzi Rabi and  Brandon Friedman of Tel Aviv University – and in an interview with American expert Shoshana Bryen. 
• Some comments on new Trump Defence Secretary pick Gen. (ret). James Mattis, here and here.
• Wall Street Journal columnist Sohrab Ahmari on the lessons of the arson terror wave amid the bushfire crisis in Israel last weekend. Plus, a report on how the crisis, which brought firefighters to help from numerous countries and the Palestinian Authority, built some bridges.
• Itamar Marcus raises the possibility that, given the PA tradition of paying salaries to imprisoned terrorists, it will soon be paying salaries to all the alleged arsonists arrested following the fires.
• Historian Trevi Troy on how, during this bushfire crisis,  the Israeli government demonstrated it had learned a lot from the last such crisis in 2010.
• Jonathan Spyer on recent Israeli military actions in Syria detailed the complexities of the IDF’s challenges in that country, as it confronts threats from both ISIS and Hezbollah.

Article 1

Syrian Rebels Can Blame America for Loss of Aleppo

The Russians and Syrian Kurds tipped the odds in the regime’s favor; the next battle will likely be in the diplomatic arena.

The battle for Aleppo hasn’t ended, but the gains made by the Assad regime and its affiliates in the eastern part of the city point to an imminent victory.

On Sunday and Monday, the forces of President Bashar Assad – backed by Russian aerial support – succeeded in capturing two important neighborhoods in the city’s northeast. This time, paradoxically, they are also being helped by the Syrian-Kurdish forces that have for some time controlled one of the neighborhoods in the north of the city.

According to opposition estimates, rebel forces have lost about half of the areas that were previously under their control in the eastern part of the city (the western part fell to the Syrian regime a while ago).

Reports on the ground indicate that several thousand civilians who were under siege managed to flee to the west and to the neighborhood controlled by the Kurds. Over the next few days, the rate of abandonment by civilians will probably increase, meaning that, after more than six months, they will be able to receive humanitarian assistance and medical care. However, more than 200,000 civilians are still trapped inside the battle zone between the rebel forces and the regime.

The regime’s control of Aleppo is likely to be a strategic turning point in the campaign across all of Syria. Aleppo is important not only because of its size and geographical location: it is on a crucial crossroads between Syria and Turkey in the north, and between Aleppo and the city of Raqqa – the de facto capital of the Islamic State group – to the east. Aleppo is a symbol of resistance to the Assad regime, and a supreme test of the ongoing ability of the rebels to dictate the course of the campaign.

Aleppo is also the crossroads of the battle between Russia and the United States, and a regime victory in the city will also signal America’s failure in conducting military campaigns and supporting the rebels.

Russia aims to achieve a final result in Aleppo before the new Trump administration begins its term on January 20, in order to determine facts on the ground ahead of the diplomatic negotiations whose renewal Russia has opposed until now – and to provide Assad with a significant achievement against the rebels.

With Aleppo in his grip, Assad will be able to report to the international convention – whose date is yet to be determined – from a position of strength, one from which he will be able to dictate his terms.

Syrian regime forces standing in the ruins of Aleppo’s Bustan al-Basha neighborhood on November 28, 2016, during their assault to retake the entire city from rebel fighters.George Ourfalian/AFP

There are several reasons for the weakness of the rebels in Aleppo, the most important being the absence of the United States from the military arena and total Russian domination of how the battles are being waged.

Under outgoing President Barack Obama, the U.S. administration “abandoned” the arena – and the support it had promised the rebels – when it decided that the war against ISIS was its ultimate objective. This decision forced the “moderate” rebel organizations, and especially the Free Syrian Army, to refrain from the fight against Assad and make do instead with defending the borders between Syria and Jordan and Turkey.

The Free Syrian Army, whose funding came mainly from Saudi Arabia and the United States, was forced to obey the U.S. dictate all the time while the aid it received from the administration was steadily declining. As a result, it relied on its partnership with Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (formerly the Nusra Front), which is affiliated to Al-Qaida – a partnership that gave Russia an excuse to attack the Free Syrian Army with the claim that it cooperates with the Islamist group.

The efforts of the U.S. administration to convince the Free Syrian Army to sever its ties with Jabhat Fateh al-Sham were unsuccessful until recently. But in light of the regime’s successes in Aleppo, the Free Syrian Army is likely to withdraw from parts of eastern Aleppo. By so doing, it will pave the way for the continued occupation of the city by Assad’s forces.

The military weakness of the Free Syrian Army was the reason why other militias decided to join Assad’s forces, thereby significantly undermining the strength of the rebels.

Another significant turning point is the addition of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), which captured one of the neighborhoods alongside Assad’s army. The irony is that these forces are defined by Turkey as terrorist organizations that must be destroyed, as Turkey did on its border with Syria, along with the Free Syrian Army. But Russia and the Syrian regime are treating them as allies, despite Turkey’s opposition.

It’s possible that the Syrian Kurds’ cooperation with Assad is based on the assessment and hope that the Assad regime will allow them to establish an independent region along the border with Turkey when the war ends. It’s doubtful whether this aspiration will be realized, but meanwhile the Kurds are likely to rely on Russian assistance in the war being waged in the Syrian-Kurdish region.

The fact that the Syrian Kurds are fighting alongside Assad is dividing the rebel forces even further. Moreover, there is a real war between the Kurds and the Free Syrian Army due to the latter’s assistance to Turkey in the border war between the two countries. This means that the capture of Aleppo is liable to increase Turkey’s military intervention in Syria, in order to prevent the possibility that Syrian-Kurdish cooperation will provide the Kurds with support in their efforts to establish an autonomous region on the border.

For the hundreds of thousands of civilians in Aleppo, the city’s occupation by Assad is likely to offer hope for the start of a long and expensive rehabilitation process. The international consensus increasingly recognizes the fact that Assad is likely to be a part of the solution, especially in light of the rebels’ impotence. The expectation, therefore, is that Aleppo will fall quickly, thus making it possible to move onto the diplomatic stage.

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Article 2

What may turn out to be the last days of the siege of Aleppo have illustrated the brutal nature of the Assad regime’s successful effort to hold on to power. Having demanded that the people of the rebel-controlled city leave, Assad joined with his Hezbollah, Iranian, and Russian allies to seek its capture. Syrian government artillery then fired upon a group of refugee families attempting to flee–killing at least 45.

Even though the bloodshed in that tortured city is far greater than in Gaza in 2014, there will be no mass protests about Aleppo in Europe, as there were when Israel sought to end Hamas’s missile launches. The world is largely unconcerned with the slaughter in Syria, which has already taken hundreds of thousands of lives. Public opinion both internationally and in the United States now appears to be coming to terms with the likelihood that Assad is about to win the civil war.

The imminent fall of Aleppo won’t end all fighting in Syria. Rebels will carry on their struggle outside of the cities they’ve lost. The half-hearted campaign against the ISIS caliphate in the eastern part of the country will also continue. But it’s clear that President Obama’s forlorn hope that the civil war would end with a political settlement that leads to Assad’s ouster was a pipe dream. Assad’s hold on power in Damascus and control of much of Syria, if not all of it, is a given. The future of the country will be determined by his Russian and Iranian patrons. The only question now is what will be the attitude of the United States toward a Middle East in which the Iranian quest for regional hegemony, co-sponsored by Russia, continues to prosper?

If you take seriously what Donald Trump said during the presidential campaign, the answer is indifference. Trump repeatedly said that he saw no reason for conflict with Russia regarding Syria and actually hoped to cooperate with both countries in the fight against ISIS. There are a number of problems with this idea. Russia’s priority is to secure control over its Mediterranean bases in Syria, not fighting the Islamic state. Moreover, the notion of a common goal in Syria runs up against the fact that, along with Assad (who gets to survive) and Vladimir Putin (who gets a leg up toward his long-term goal of reassembling the old Soviet empire), the main beneficiary of the new reality in Syria is Iran. If Trump is serious about beating ISIS, preventing Tehran from exploiting a weak nuclear deal with the West, and preventing it from continuing to make mischief in the region, he won’t do it by getting into bed with Iran’s Russian partners.

Indeed, the survival of Assad and the ascendance of Iranian influence more or less guarantees that ISIS will retain the support of Sunni Muslims in Syria who see the terrorist group as their only defense against the depredations of Assad’s Alawite minority as well as Iranian-backed Shia forces. Far from solving the problems of the region, the growing strength of the Iranian axis of terror, which now stretches from Iraq to Syria and into Lebanon, ensures that the Islamist threat will not be stamped out by great power cooperation. Rather, it will metastasize.

Acquiescence to this state of affairs is in tune with the war-weariness of the American people, who weren’t appalled by Trump’s neo-isolationist stance. It is, however, a guarantee that American influence will shrink in a Middle East dominated by Russia and Iran, while Israel and moderate Arab states look in vain to Washington for leadership. It is also likely to lead to more terrorist hot spots. Trump’s rhetoric about “kicking ISIS’s ass” won’t resolve any of this.

That’s why it’s encouraging that, with the possible exception of Senator Bob Corker, all of the serious candidates for secretary of state are men who understand that President Obama’s willingness to punt control of Syria to Russia was a mistake and who believe in a strong internationalist foreign policy. Trump’s belief that he can do a deal with Putin that won’t damage U.S. interests is a fantasy since another goal of Russian foreign policy is to diminish U.S. influence and that of its allies.

After the failures of the last two administrations, finding a new path in the Middle East won’t be easy. If Trump doesn’t wish to avoid further disasters, he should listen to some of the people he is considering for the State Department and begin plotting a Middle East policy that is not predicated on appeasing either Putin or Iran.

What may turn out to be the last days of the siege of Aleppo have illustrated the brutal nature of the Assad regime’s successful effort to hold on to power. Having demanded that the people of the rebel-controlled city leave, Assad joined with his Hezbollah, Iranian, and Russian allies to seek its capture. Syrian government artillery then fired upon a group of refugee families attempting to flee–killing at least 45.

Even though the bloodshed in that tortured city is far greater than in Gaza in 2014, there will be no mass protests about Aleppo in Europe, as there were when Israel sought to end Hamas’s missile launches. The world is largely unconcerned with the slaughter in Syria, which has already taken hundreds of thousands of lives. Public opinion both internationally and in the United States now appears to be coming to terms with the likelihood that Assad is about to win the civil war.

The imminent fall of Aleppo won’t end all fighting in Syria. Rebels will carry on their struggle outside of the cities they’ve lost. The half-hearted campaign against the ISIS caliphate in the eastern part of the country will also continue. But it’s clear that President Obama’s forlorn hope that the civil war would end with a political settlement that leads to Assad’s ouster was a pipe dream. Assad’s hold on power in Damascus and control of much of Syria, if not all of it, is a given. The future of the country will be determined by his Russian and Iranian patrons. The only question now is what will be the attitude of the United States toward a Middle East in which the Iranian quest for regional hegemony, co-sponsored by Russia, continues to prosper?

If you take seriously what Donald Trump said during the presidential campaign, the answer is indifference. Trump repeatedly said that he saw no reason for conflict with Russia regarding Syria and actually hoped to cooperate with both countries in the fight against ISIS. There are a number of problems with this idea. Russia’s priority is to secure control over its Mediterranean bases in Syria, not fighting the Islamic state. Moreover, the notion of a common goal in Syria runs up against the fact that, along with Assad (who gets to survive) and Vladimir Putin (who gets a leg up toward his long-term goal of reassembling the old Soviet empire), the main beneficiary of the new reality in Syria is Iran. If Trump is serious about beating ISIS, preventing Tehran from exploiting a weak nuclear deal with the West, and preventing it from continuing to make mischief in the region, he won’t do it by getting into bed with Iran’s Russian partners.

Indeed, the survival of Assad and the ascendance of Iranian influence more or less guarantees that ISIS will retain the support of Sunni Muslims in Syria who see the terrorist group as their only defense against the depredations of Assad’s Alawite minority as well as Iranian-backed Shia forces. Far from solving the problems of the region, the growing strength of the Iranian axis of terror, which now stretches from Iraq to Syria and into Lebanon, ensures that the Islamist threat will not be stamped out by great power cooperation. Rather, it will metastasize.

Acquiescence to this state of affairs is in tune with the war-weariness of the American people, who weren’t appalled by Trump’s neo-isolationist stance. It is, however, a guarantee that American influence will shrink in a Middle East dominated by Russia and Iran, while Israel and moderate Arab states look in vain to Washington for leadership. It is also likely to lead to more terrorist hot spots. Trump’s rhetoric about “kicking ISIS’s ass” won’t resolve any of this.

That’s why it’s encouraging that, with the possible exception of Senator Bob Corker, all of the serious candidates for secretary of state are men who understand that President Obama’s willingness to punt control of Syria to Russia was a mistake and who believe in a strong internationalist foreign policy. Trump’s belief that he can do a deal with Putin that won’t damage U.S. interests is a fantasy since another goal of Russian foreign policy is to diminish U.S. influence and that of its allies.

After the failures of the last two administrations, finding a new path in the Middle East won’t be easy. If Trump doesn’t wish to avoid further disasters, he should listen to some of the people he is considering for the State Department and begin plotting a Middle East policy that is not predicated on appeasing either Putin or Iran.

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Article 3

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