Five Takeaways From Israel’s Latest Bombing Of Damascus
The trend of Israel striking civilian areas in Syria as part of its regional assassination spree threatens to further destabilize the Arab Republic.
Israel bombed a civilian district in Damascus on Tuesday in its latest attack against the Arab Republic. RT cited Saudi media to report that the target was “a Hezbollah official in charge of Unit 4400, which allegedly supplies the Lebanese Shia militia with weapons from Iran.” It’s rare that Israel strikes civilian areas in Syria, yet it’s increasingly begun to do so since the start of the latest Israeli-Lebanese War. Here are five takeaways from this development:
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1. Israel Is On A Regional Assassination Spree
The past month has seen the Mossad leveraging its intelligence superiority over the Resistance to assassinate dozens of their members, first with pager bombs and then with airstrikes, despite predictable collateral damage to civilians. The latest bombing of Damascus is the natural evolution of this trend and signals that Israel will go to any length, including endangering civilians, to take out its targets. The Syrian capital might soon be hit as frequently as the Lebanese one if enough targets are discovered.
2. The S-300s Were Once Again Silent
Russia’s long-delayed dispatch of the S-300s to Syria in late 2018 was hyped up as a game-changer but they’ve yet to be used even once despite hundreds of Israeli bombings since then. These analyses here, here, and here shed more light on why that is, but it’s sufficient for casual readers to know that Russia won’t allow Syria to use them since it doesn’t want to provoke Israel. The complex calculations articulated in the preceding analyses still remain in place despite Israel’s intensified bombing campaign.
3. Israel Wants Syria To Split With The Resistance
Syria is unable to defend itself from Israel, both for objective reasons due to its limited capabilities and subjective ones related to Russia’s abovementioned calculations, but it could prevent more such strikes if it splits with the Resistance by discreetly asking its military members to leave the country. That’s precisely what Israel is pressuring Syria to do by ramping up its attacks against civilian areas. Assad has thus far refused to do so, but he might reconsider if the collateral damage becomes too great.
4. Syria Is Reluctant To Retaliate
Syria has never retaliated against Israel despite being bombed hundreds of times over the past decade because it knows that Israel would disproportionately respond and possibly cripple the SAA. Assad can’t afford to have that happen since it could create an opening for terrorists to exploit for plunging his country back into chaos. He’s therefore taken every one of their blows in stride, and after seeing what Israel did to Gaza and is now doing to Beirut, he’s likely even more reluctant to retaliate than ever.
5. Terrorists Might Take Advantage Of More Strikes
If Damascus becomes the next Beirut upon Israel’s discovery of enough Resistance targets there, then the abovementioned scenario might still unfold whereby terrorists take advantage of these strikes to go on the offensive, especially if this coincides with another false flag chemical weapons provocation. In that event, Russia and Syria’s calculations might change if they conclude that their restraint has been counterproductive, which could lead to another Israeli-Syrian War with unpredictable consequences.
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The trend of Israel striking civilian areas in Syria as part of its regional assassination spree threatens to further destabilize the Arab Republic, embolden terrorists there to go on the offensive, and thus risk the outbreak of another Israeli-Syrian War depending on Damascus’ response to that worst-case scenario. This could be averted if Syria splits with the Resistance by discreetly asking its military members to leave the country, but Assad might not do that, and they might also refuse to comply even if that happens.
So when Scott Ritter, or Semyon Bagdasarov, or whoever, say that the Israeli domination is over, that there is nothing Israel can do to stop Iran, that decades of U.S. unchallenged domination in the region have been brought to an end... They were wrong, wrong, wrong...
Sorry for the banality of my comment. This comment is an emotional reaction to being gaslit by supposed anti-gaslighters.
Israel, which has been placed as a military watchdog in the service of the West, functions as a zealous proxy. Control of Iran, or even war against Iran if necessary, have been part of the Empire's plans for a long time.
The Blessing and Curse cards waved by Netanyahu at the UN at the end of September are telling. Syria is among the five countries marked in black.
This regional war is deliberate. Obviously, if the Pentagon is moderating, it is not out of pacifism. This more realistic action by the state apparatus knows that the war of attrition in Ukraine has also affected the West. The Pentagon would prefer that it be after the November elections, provided that an agreement to freeze the conflict is signed in Ukraine and that this does not materially impact war plans in the Asia-Pacific zone.
Finally, the USA, caught in an irrational whirlwind because it cannot accept losing its place as world leader, is experiencing this situation in an existential way and is therefore likely to make serious, irreversible mistakes with unpredictable consequences.
The Israeli proxy also finds itself trapped in a spiral that it presents and experiences as existential. Any proxy is likely to become uncontrollable, especially if the puppeteer has himself become irrational.
Observers often forget this factor of possible irrationality and analyze events according to their own rational criteria.
Will Russia and Iran continue to procrastinate and believe that diplomacy still has its place as in a nickel chess game while the players cheat and overturn the pieces because there is no international guarantor and moderator.
To answer Dors, potentially it is over for Zionism, as it was possible to consider that Nazi Germany had lost in 1943 and Ukraine in Kyiv in 2022.
However, we should not complacently let Israel use a brutal salamis policy weakening our forces when at the crucial moment the opposing camp will strike even harder.
The empire and its vassals/proxies do not respect the law and those who respect the law. The war is here and its generalization is inevitable and paradoxically it is in the logic of their irrationality. It remains to draw conclusions.