Islam Times - Syrian Place and Role in Israeli-Lebanese War

Islam Times - Shift of war from Gaza to Lebanon was one of the possibilities raised by the experts and media outlets given the threats by Tel Aviv officials over the past months.

Based on this, indeed, the command centers in the Resistance camp have debated the scenario and the different possibilities associated with it and planned the tactics and strategies the camp needs to take in order to counter the seemingly unavoidable conflict.

Meanwhile, certainly, one of the key actors in the Axis of Resistance whose role grows bolder with the Israeli escalation in Lebanon is Syria. That is why in recent days and weeks, the Israeli and Western media propaganda directed their psychological warfare to Damascus so that, firstly, distance Syria from the orbit of war and secondly paint the Axis of Resistance strength unstable and unreliable for Hezbollah and the people of Lebanon.

Some of the aspects of psychological war against Syria especially after assassination of Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah included allegations of Mossad infiltration into Hezbollah through the Syrian army, the conservative message of Damascus to Lebanon after Nasrallah's assassination, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's unwillingness to involve in Lebanese war for the fear of impacts on the process of rapprochement with the Arab world, and above all the ridiculous claim of close relations between al-Assad and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and their coordination over war.

The claims raised as part of this psychological warfare are easily rejected. To prove this, we can refer to the documented narrative of the Syrian officials and some other resistance leaders who said that in the beginning of the Syrian war, Arab-Western camp sent a message to al-Assad that to stop terrorism in Syria and restore stability and to secure his stay in power he needed to cut off his ties to the Axis of Resistance, but he rejected the offer.

talking about weakened bonds between Syria and the resistance makes no sense now at a time Syria has restored complete stability and the Arab countries have themselves taken first steps to resume relations with Damascus, and in addition to that after the crisis Syria has accompanied the Resistance camp under the policy of strengthening the security belt around the occupied territories and putting Tel Aviv in a geostrategic encirclement and reports suggest that currently over 40,000 resistance fighters including Fatemiyoun, Zaynabiyoun, and Hezbollah brigades.

What is focused on in this report is the significance of the real Syrian position in the current Lebanese war given its role in the division of tasks under "unity of fronts" doctrine in the Axis of Resistance.

The unique geopolitical position of Syria with three factors of being located in the strategic Middle East region, being located on the eastern side of the Mediterranean Sea, and having 183 kilometers of coast and neighboring with occupied Palestine, Lebanon, Turkey and Iraq clearly shows the geopolitical importance of this country in the regional and global relations.

Beside the geopolitical element, the history of relations or better to say the confrontation of Syria with the foundation of the Israeli regime is a history full of wars and hostility, to the extent that maintaining the balance of terror— through military power and joining regional anti-Israeli alliances— has taken a center stage in the Syrian political and military strategy in the face of Israel over the past 7 decades.

Therefore, two elements of geopolitical position and historical identity constitute the distinguished position of Syria in the developments related to the Arab-Israeli conflict, and since the Palestinian cause and confrontation of the occupation is the central point for alliance of the resistance forces, Syria should be regarded the point of geopolitical bonds and essentially a supplement to the structure of the geography of resistance. As a strategic ally, Syria has a key role for security policies of Iran, Hezbollah, and the Palestinian resistance.

There is a question here: Has Syria played a role proportionate to its key position in the Resistanc camp's strategy to beat the political and military projects of Israel in Gaza and Lebanon wars?

Syria, like other branches of the Axis of Resistance, during the Gaza war has played a special role in supporting the Palestinian resistance, as during this war, it was repeatedly attacked by the Israeli regime. Most important of these attacks took place on April 1 on consular section of Iranian embassy in Damascus.

Certainly, the fear of the opening of a war front in the Golan Heights of Syria has been the most important element of the Israeli concern about Syrian involvement in the war. Over the past year, Golan front has witnessed the strong presence of resistance groups alongside the Syrian army, something that during the Syrian internal crisis, the Israelis had pursued numerous agreements and security arrangements with the US and even Russia to prevent it. But the new conditions prevented Tel Aviv from being complacent about the situation on the Golan front during the Gaza war like in the north where Hezbollah continues to pose a serious threat to the occupation.

Additionally, Syria has been part of the strategy of exerting direct pressure on the US by the resistance groups in the region to check Tel Aviv's war machine, a strategy under which numerous American bases in Iraq and Syria have become a military target for the resistance forces over the past year, and naturally, if the Syrian government did not want involvement in Gaza war, it wound not have moved to confrontation with the US. Moreover, Syria has effective as a center of logistical operations to arm the West Bank that go on in association with resistance cells among the Jordanian tribes for arms smuggling to the Palestinians.

Here, it should not be forgotten that the war between the Israeli regime and Gaza and Lebanon is very different in terms of the geography of the battle and the geopolitical situation.

In terms of geographic location, Gaza is completely encircled by Israel, and the war is completely of urban and street nature, and the war strategy and major military capabilities of Hamas - like the self-sufficiency in the production of weapons such as Yassin 105 anti-tank rockets and missiles and underground tunnels - are also based on this fact.

However, Lebanon's geography is very different from Gaza in terms of access to the sea, air connections, and land borders with Syria, and Syria has larger room to play a role in the war equations between Hezbollah and Israel based on the division of tasks of the Axis of Resistance and war scenarios under the the strategy of unity of fronts.

Hezbollah has shown well that in terms of its military capabilities and having a professional and experienced military force it is fully prepared to face the ground invasion of the Israeli army and the already-weakened enemy forces when it comes to enjoying professional and battlefront-tested forces. Still, every army or military force needs powerful logistical support to secure a supply chain.

The security of the supply chain in today's complicated wars that are mixed with advanced technologies like cyber threats, AI, and drones is one of the vital priorities. Syria is the linking bridge between Iran and Iraq to Lebanon, and this transit belt will be the winning card of Resistance camp in the condition of the Israeli ground invasion of Lebanon.

Therefore, while the strategy of the Resistance camp is dragging Tel Aviv into a war of attrition and turning the battleground into a swamp for the enemy ground forces, the logistical role of Syria is the main form of Damascus participation in the war, a role the Syrians are fully consistent with and find it a decisive factor to upset the Western-Israeli-Arab front's psychological warfare equations.