March 4: Israel's Flailing Syria Policy

Trump's tariffs in effect; U.S. pauses Ukraine aid; Russia and Iran

The Big Story

On Monday, Israel launched airstrikes near Syria’s Mediterranean port city of Tartus, where Russia maintains a naval base, Syrian state media reported. According to a statement published by the Israeli army yesterday, Israel “struck a military site where weapons belonging to the previous Syrian regime were stored in the area of Qardaha.” Since the collapse of the Bashar al-Assad regime in December, Israel has carried out hundreds of airstrikes on Syrian military assets, which it said was a bid to prevent them from falling into hostile hands, according to Al Jazeera.

The strikes follow a series of recent developments in Syria, in which Israel seems to have adopted a somewhat confused posture. Over the weekend, Reuters reported that Israel was quietly lobbying the United States to allow Russia to keep its military bases in Syria as part of a wider push to keep the country “weak and decentralized” and to prevent Turkey from consolidating its control there. Also over the weekend, Israel threatened to intervene in Damascus, Syria, to “protect” the local Druze community from what it characterized in official statements as attacks from “jihadists” supported by “the terrorist regime of radical Islam,” i.e., Syria’s new government. That government responded by deploying its security services to “protect” the Druze. Jerusalem’s fear of Turkish power in Syria has no doubt been compounded by Turkey’s recent steps to defuse its Kurdish problem in Syria; as The Scroll previously reported, the jailed leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), Abdullah Ocalan, has called for the PKK to lay down its arms and disband itself. If the Syrian Kurds listen (and it is unclear that they will), that could pave the way for the United States to withdraw its presence in Syria.

To help make sense of Israel’s posture, we turned to Tablet News Editor Tony Badran. He wrote us in an email:

At the end of last year, Israel altered the power equation in the Levant: It was the key factor in essentially eliminating Iran’s position in Syria; it crippled Iran’s army in Lebanon and destroyed the Iranian foothold in Gaza. Despite this stunning achievement, Israel’s public posture is projecting a strange combination of confusion and insecurity, namely about the rise of Turkish influence in Syria.

Some of Israel’s concerns are not irrational. Turkey is feeling ascendant in Syria today, and not without cause. Might it push its geopolitical advantage down the road and cross Israeli security red lines? It’s conceivable. Consequently, reaching an understanding that delineates spheres of influence and clarifies red lines and priorities will be necessary moving forward. The United States, as the great power ally of both states, will have an interest in mediating such an arrangement in a manner that preserves peace and stability. Regrettably, as it seeks to broadcast its security imperatives in Syria, Israel’s public diplomacy is flailing.

Israel and Turkey, Badran writes, share security concerns in Syria bound to ethnic communities that are part of each country’s social fabric. For Turkey, it’s the Kurds, and for Israel, it’s the Druze:

The problem for Turkey is the Kurdistan Workers’ Party—a terrorist organization that has waged a decades-long war against Ankara [in Turkey] and which, under the Obama administration, came to enjoy a U.S. protective umbrella in Syria. The Kurdish region in the northeastern part continues to enjoy an American military presence. Now that they have won in Syria, the Turks are looking to dismantle this armed, internationally protected PKK position on their border. The central government in Damascus is currently too weak to control all the peripheries in the east and south of the country. A direct Turkish military intervention is not optimal given the U.S. military presence. So the Turks have been again talking with the imprisoned leader of the PKK, leading to his call for the PKK to lay down its arms and dissolve. Although he has made calls in the past for an end to the conflict with Ankara and disarmament, Turkish analysts see in this call something that goes further.

Badran says that while Ocalan’s call might not lead to the immediate dissolution of PKK, it reflects the imminent reality that the group simply has run out of other options in Syria, especially if and when the United States withdraws from the country. In short, Ocalan’s call sets the stage for Turkish talks with the United States about the future of northeastern Syria, with the conditions now strongly favoring Ankara.”

Badran goes on:

In this context, the statements by Israel’s foreign minister [Gideon Sa’ar], for instance, about the need to “protect the Kurds” and ensure they maintain autonomy or what have you are a good example of what I mean by flailing. Another example is Israeli public statements concerning the Druze in the south. The Israeli relationship with the Druze is analogous to Turkey’s with the Kurds, only in reverse. The Druze have no interest in secession and are fully loyal to the state and serve in its military. And while they do have clan and familial extensions across the border in Syria, the Syrian Druze do not themselves pose a security threat to Israel. However, under Assad, the Iranians and Hezbollah attempted to establish themselves in some of those areas, especially those adjacent to the Golan Heights. Israel’s interest is in ensuring that no such threat reemerges on its border, whether it be from Iran or any of its proxies or from Palestinian groups or from any other potential Sunni Islamist group—hence Israel’s call for a demilitarized border region. And, in the event any such groups should try to force themselves onto the Druze areas, in the process threatening those Druze communities, then Israel’s interest is to deter them.

This was the background for Israel’s weekend statements about defending a Druze settlement in the Damascus suburb of Jaramana, which it said was under attack by “jihadists” affiliated with the Syrian regime. “We will not allow the extreme Islamic regime in Syria to harm the Druze,” said Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz. “If the regime harms the Druze, it will be struck by us.” There were two problems, however. One, the incident was not a “jihadist” attack. Two, the issue is not about the nature of the Syrian regime, but of the relationship between the central government and the armed groups that emerged during Syria’s civil war. Here’s Badran again:

What appears to have transpired in Jaramana is that a car with an armed member of the new central security force entered the town causing tensions with the locals. There have been such incidents elsewhere in the country with other communities, and the new regime has been overall responsive to communal sensitivities and has made a point of addressing such tensions and nipping them in the bud. Since then, things have moved toward resolution as a representative of the government met with Druze communal leaders and an agreement has been reached allowing state security back in. The Druze leadership denounced the “undisciplined mob.” So far this peaceful resolution, while likely indicative of the fragility of the new government in Syria, is a far cry from the historical precedent after Syria’s independence of the secular, central government’s attempts of forced integration of the Druze. (Google: Adib Shishakli and Jabal al-Druze).

The final example of Israel’s flailing Syria policy, according to Badran, is its proposals to keep Russia in Syria as a counterbalance to Turkish influence. “Under this clever plan, are the Russians, who will be negotiating the future of their leases in Syria with the new government (with its Turkish patron in the background), supposed to use such bases to go after that government or its closest strategic ally, Turkey?”

What Israel is trying to achieve in Syria is “hardly novel,” Badran writes. “A line that delineates spheres of influence between Syria’s northern and southern neighbors is a practice that goes back millennia. (Google: Battle of Kadesh.) Egypt traditionally was the power to the south, now supplanted by Israel. This line, and the understanding it reflects, will not emerge as a result of military conflict. Rather, it will have to come as a result of American mediation leading to an arrangement that will preserve stability.”

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The Rest

→Effective today, President Donald Trump implemented tariffs on major trade partners China, Canada, and Mexico. The specific tariffs placed on each nation’s goods can be read in the chart below, published in The New York Times:

Beijing retaliated by placing a 15% tariffs on various American farm goods and expanded the number of U.S. companies subject to export controls by a dozen, according to the Associated Press. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Canada would slap tariffs on more than $100 billion in U.S. goods over the next 21 days. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said today that she would also implement retaliatory measures but didn’t specify what they would be.

→The United States paused all military aid to Ukraine on Monday evening. Although Europe provides more than 60% of military aid to Ukraine, Trump’s decision is a major blow both to Kyiv and to Washington’s European allies, who have lobbied the United States to continue its support. Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said that Ukrainian forces could hold their own on the battlefield against Russian troops, but Ukraine would do everything possible to cooperate with the United States, according to Reuters. Since the pause of aid, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy appears to have changed his tune on the peace negotiations and the minerals deal that blew up in his disastrous meeting with President Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance last Friday. On Tuesday, he posted the following statement to X:

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said today that Trump’s decision to stop military support of Ukraine is the “best contribution to the cause of peace.”

→Russia has agreed to assist the Trump administration in communicating with Iran on the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program and its support of regional anti-U.S. proxies, Bloomberg reports. Trump expressed his interest in talks with Iran in a February call to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov says the United States and Iran should resolve their mutual issues through negotiations and that Russia is ready to do everything in its power to help bring this about, state news agency RIA reports. During talks in Saudi Arabia last month, at which officials from Washington and Moscow hashed over the fate of Ukraine, Secretary of State Marco Rubio asked Russia to broker a deal with Iran. Of course, the use of Russia as an intermediary for Iran diplomacy was a staple of the Obama and Biden administrations, with the latter using Russian officials as backchannels through which to send a revived version of the Iran nuclear deal to Tehran in 2022. Asked how Trump’s version of this diplomacy might differ from the Obama-Biden version, Tablet’s Lee Smith told The Scroll, “Trump is willing to bomb the shit out of Iran.”

→Amid the disruptive and anti-Israel and pro-Hamas demonstrations that have rocked college campuses across the country, President Trump announced plans earlier today to cease federal funding of educational institutions that allow the “illegal protests” to continue, even promising to unmask and imprison the agitators.

The threat comes one day after his administration pledged to pull $50 million in government contracts from Columbia University due to the school’s inaction in the face of anti-Israel protests. Trump’s task force to combat antisemitism said it would also review $5 billion in grant commitments to Columbia to ensure the university is compliant with federal regulations on civil rights and other subjects. Trump’s announcement has led to questions about the First Amendment rights around protests and the differences between legal and illegal protests. As the Project Coherence account points out on X:

A legal protest is peaceful, covered by the First Amendment and follows rules (like sticking to local laws.) An illegal protest is violent or destructive, has no permit (where a permit is needed,) and disrupts public order excessively. A legal protest on a college campus, however, also must follow campus rules and doesn’t disrupt education. Likewise, an illegal college campus protest also breaks campus policy, disrupts operations, and includes harassment or targeting of students or professors. From this description, we can deduce that the Trump administration indeed has a legal case for freezing federal funds to campuses on these grounds.

→Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo formally launched his candidacy to be the mayor of New York City over the weekend. In a 17-minute video, Cuomo addressed the myriad problems facing New York and pinned the blame for them largely on what he called the failed leadership of the Democratic Party. He blasted the progressive wing of the party for its calls to defund the police department and scorned the broader party for failing to adequately address homelessness. Cuomo emphasized rebuilding a more moderate liberalism, one that wasn’t “about rhetoric, it was about results.” Cuomo has a lot to prove in the eyes of Democratic voters, however, as he was removed from his role as governor after Attorney General Letitia James reported in 2021 that he sexually abused at least 11 women during his time in office. According to Emerson Polling, Cuomo currently leads the mayoral race with 33% approval. Current Mayor Eric Adams trails behind in second place, with 10%. Despite escalating calls for Adams to resign among his perceived deference to the Trump administration, Cuomo did not mention the mayor while lambasting Democratic leadership, as both candidates position themselves as tough-on-crime, moderate Democrats.

→James Dennehy, the head of the FBI’s New York office, announced that the Trump administration forced him to resign Monday. After the Epstein files released last week proved to be a dud, Attorney General Pam Bondi said the New York FBI office was partly to blame as it and prosecutors from the Southern District of New York failed to deliver documents that she ordered them to produce. She sent a letter to FBI Director Kash Patel requesting an investigation into why the office withheld the documents, according to the New York Post. But the tensions between the Trump administration and Dennehy appear to have begun last month. Dennehy, who started the post in September, told FBI investigators in an email to “dig in” and resist the Trump administration’s efforts to collect the names of FBI agents involved in the Jan. 6 investigations, according to CNN. Dennehy was informed Friday that he would be forced to resign.

→Quote of the Day

As a proponent for the LGBTQ community, for our legal community, women’s rights, I feel that it’s important that I use this platform that was thrust upon me and now look at as a blessing as opposed to the curse that it has been since 2008.

That’s Casey Anthony, who was charged with the murder of her daughter in 2008 before being suspiciously acquitted on murder charges while convicted on charges related to lying to the authorities, rebranding herself as a civil rights advocate who opposes Trump for her new TikTok channel launched yesterday. A friend of the controversial figure told the New York Post that Anthony launched the platform out of “disgust” toward the Trump administration. “She figures she can either be angry, or she can be a Trump-hating advocate for others,” said the friend. “She’ll use her influence to resist.”

→Video of the Day

This video montage produced by X account Autism Capital depicts the extreme message discipline of the Democratic Party with dozens of Democratic politicians reading from almost the exact same script for hammering the Trump administration on the prices of goods.

→Flip-Flop of the Day

Look, if there is waste and fraud in the Defense Department, which is the largest single budget item that we fund … we should go after waste, fraud and abuse over every agency of government. There’s no argument about that. But let us be very clear, what Republicans are trying to do right now is to make massive cuts in Medicaid. Over $800 billion. Cuts in nutrition programs which feed hungry children.

That’s Sen. Bernie Sanders defending the Department of Government Efficiency’s reduction of government waste in an interview with NBC News just weeks after the Vermont senator slammed Elon Musk and DOGE’s actions as “illegal” and “unconstitutional.”

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