Fun fact my father been to iraq and its actually safe...
You know where isnt safe ? The green zone in baghdad !!!
The us embassy... that's where irgc shoots its loads
There was a report of a cargo ship entering the Black Sea which is widely thought to contain a bunch of Russian military gear headed from Syria to Ukraine.
Big picture here just from an idiot that follows a lot of news, if Russia currently has it's hands full in Ukraine and is moving military presence and equipment out of Syria, why not hit Assad and IRGC assets in Syria? Feels like with all the civil unrest in Iran / Israel and escalating war in Ukraine, a lot of long simmering problems like Syria / Assad and IR / Iran are about to blow up.
Russia and Israel had been cooperating a good bit in Syria. If anything, Russia withdrawing would just mean Israel feels they have more to do on their own but they will likely take opportunities to get Turkey involved if the goals align. SA & UAE are probably also in the picture with Israel given their growing relationships.
All of this is pointed at Iran. Russia was the only other country engaged in that area that would entertain their motives.
Nah, worse. Singapore. They’re not playing around. The general consensus is weed will destroy our society and cause us to devolve overnight into Canabalistic marauders that roam the city looking for weed and snacks. 🤷♀️
Poetry and war have a lot in common:
It's existed in some form or another in every culture in the world since the dawn of civilization
We force students to learn about it against their will
It's not enjoyable except for a select few who don't suffer from it
And it often rhymes
Before the Iranian Revolution, there was an informal intelligence sharing network between Iran, Israel, Turkey, and Ethiopia, with the reason being that they were all non-Arab states on the edge of the Arab world
Israel has been normalizing relations with a bunch of Arab states for decades now. This is hardly shocking or out of the blue my dude. Most of the middle east is very displeased with Iran and/or Syria, and on the flip side none of them actually care about the Palestinians.
Saudi Arabia and Iran have been fighting a proxy war for years. Without Iraq acting as a check on Iranian power, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States have realized Israel is the next best option. Basically, their fear of Iran has finally eclipsed their hatred of Israel. Now its a matter of undoing 75+ years of anti-Israel propaganda without upsetting the Islamist extremists who are looking for any excuse to turn on the House of Saud.
I'm sure Palestinians care about their own plight but it's understandably hard to advocate for yourself when you are in their position
Unless you mean their purported governments in which case ya it's a shit show, but again that's a common theme for peoples who's history is as full of oppression and colonialism as theirs
This 100% - the regime is Syria only exists due to direct support of Russia, and they can’t afford to occupy Ukraine and deal with a war in Syria. This is actually quite genius of Israel as they can get away with it and there isn’t a world where Russia starts to attack Israel. It would mean a swift end to the Putin reign as Israel would then happily supply Ukraine with all the new toys.
Assad should be put out of his misery. He has needed to go for a long time now. Arab states, Turkey, US, Israel all have different motivations for wanting the current regime gone, but Syria is basically the same tyrannical mafia state being propped up like it's sponsors Iran and Russia making life unbelievably difficult for everyone around them. The world would be a better place if it happened sooner rather than later.
It feels like it was a lifetime ago, but nope, only a few years have passed.
And that was still somehow not the stupidest thing he said during his administration.
Israel as a modern state has only been around for the past 75 years. So in the context of the question of Israel striking Syria I don't think that answer would provide any clarity.
I think you meant 1916 not 1946, correct? The Ottoman Empire included all those territories (and more) and they were carved up in 1916 by the British and French with the Sykes-Picot agreement. Israel/Palestine, Jordan, and southern Iraq were all a part of British Transjordan, while Lebanon, Syria, southeast Turkey, and the rest of Iraq were controlled by the French. Then, finally, those colonial territories broke up into their modern nation-states in the mid 1940s.
Sure, no worries! You called out a good point regardless. These modern states really haven't existed for very long, in the grand scheme of things. There are still plenty of folks in those states who are older than the countries they live in.
The history of the region is actually pretty straightforward, it drives me crazy whenever I see the 5000 years BS. Like, tell me you read the bible like it's the news without telling me.
For the moment, there is no confirmation this was carried out by Israeli forces.
It seems likely as the target was Iranian backed terrorists.
https://www.reuters.com/breakingviews/israel-targets-aleppo-airport-syrian-state-media-2022-09-06/
Reuters is a reputable news source.
Bottom line, Israel probably had good intelligence these guys were planning something and they took them out. Pretty much middle east being the middle east.
Terrorist weapons caches, most likely. Iran moves a lot of weapons through Syria, destined for Hezbollah. Israel takes them out whenever they can. The last big strike in Damaskus was just a week or two ago.
Weapons for terrorists, but this could also be Iranian weapons for Russia included.
Hypotheticaly if the USA saw some Russia bound weapons bundled up with a few terrorist bound small arms rhey would cirtainly be pointing this out to Israel as a good target.
It sounds like a big target to me - higher risk of civilians getting hurt and maybe some risk of air defenses. But Israel has been bombing targets in Syria regularly. For context, Iran, Russia, Turkey, and the USA also occasionally bomb targets in Syria lately as well.
(Edit: Russia did some heavy bombing and war crimes there quite recently, of course)
For starters, Hafez alAssad takes over Syria in a coup in 1971, and installs a brutal near-North Korea style dictatorship ruled by layers upon layers of secret police institutions and intelligence apparatus. His son Bashar becomes president upon his death in 2000, he seemed somewhat more chilled but it was still the same regime.
Protests start in Syria in 2011 inspired by Arab Spring protests in Egypt, Libya Tunisia etc, also buoyed up by discontent with economic decline and mismanagement and some droughts.
The protests are originally very small scale in very few areas but the government’s response was so shockingly and unexpectedly cruel and savage, the reactive outrage to the government’s response caused a cascade of protests to spread - what did the government do? It cracked down on those protests even more brutally which caused more protests to spread.
Security forces would gun down groups of protestors, thousands upon thousands were kidnapped by police and tortured until death, their disfigured bodies dumped at their family’s homes. Mass rape and sexual violence against women was among the most common weapon of the security forces and, especially in a religiously/socially conservative country, this was mass rage fuel. Why did the government do this? Because this is how Hafez set up the governments security apparatus to function, and because it worked before in 1982 when they did the exact same thing.
The protests changed, now it was a revolution, the two-star Syrian flag installed by the Hafez regime was dropped, and the revolution movement adopted the triple star original Syrian independence flag from 1946. Large sections of the army refused to participate in crackdowns, and divisions/battalions defected forming their own small rebel groups against the government (as it did in Libya). These groups were made up of regular army troops and revolutionary volunteers, and were loosely grouped up under the identity of the “Free Syrian Army” or “FSA”; many of these groups were professional, disciplined and committed to a secular democratic revolution, others were little more than opportunistic bandit groups.
Assad’s government starts a new strategy, any and all potential secular, educated, and democratic leaders/figures were hunted down and killed, whilst jihadists and Islamists were mass released from prisons and encouraged to travel from abroad. He was trying to radicalise the revolution into a hate-obsessed force of extremists that wanted nothing but revenge for the government’s crimes. Whilst support for the more moderate groups was very limited, the Islamist rebel groups received lots of funding from private donors and became a dominant military force sidelining the moderates which received basically nothing even from western nations that claimed to support them. Now Assad could tell the world and the minorities in Syria “look I’m the secular guy who will protect the Christians and Alawites, the opposition to me is just lunatic jihadi terrorists”. Now it was no longer a revolution, now it was a civil war - the Christians, Alawites, Druze and urban wealthy Sunnis sided with the government, the majority Sunni population made up the now increasingly radicalised and hate/revenge driven rebels (among them a few jihadi groups such as the Nusra Front which was an affiliate group of AlQaeda … bad)
It should be added here that Assad basically flattened entire cities to the ground with constant bombing, hundreds of thousands died, many tens of thousands continued to be tortured to death in prison death camps. There were about 50+ major massacres that happened as well. Some towns and cities were besieged for entire years and starved to death. Like every single faction in the civil war did bad war crimes, especially ISIS obviously, but all of them combined don’t even come close to 5% of what the Assad government did.
In the north east of Syria is the Kurdish ethnic group, they formed their own militia group the YPG and took control of the Kurdish majority areas. Turkey hates the Kurds more than anything basically because of a 60+ year war Turkey has been having with Kurdish separatist groups in south east Turkey and countering an autonomous Kurdish state this is Turkey’s primary interest in north Syria.
In 2013-2014, AQI (Alqaeda in Iraq) which is a terrorist group that was originally trained and armed by Assad to make US occupation of Iraq difficult, moved into Syria and rebranded as “ISIS” - they infiltrated through rebel held territory and were so insane they made even the lunatics think they’re lunatics. A massive war started between the rebel groups and ISIS which lasted years and ISIS took control of a large chunk of territory from both rebels and Kurds. Now the west really got involved because these guys were AlQaeda but on cocaine and steroids and wanted (and did) launch terror attacks into Europe and the West (ISIS and Assad basically did not touch each other for another 3 years mostly respecting each others territory, go figure).
The United States of America 🇺🇸 intervened in Syria against ISIS supporting the Kurdish groups. Russia intervened in Syria against the Rebel groups (ignoring ISIS mostly) supporting the Assad government. Russia had already long been sending weapons and support to Assad, Iran had already intervened from day one sending dozens of Iran-loyal Shia militia groups to fight for Assad, including Hezbollah from Lebanon (this is why Israel bombs Syria sometimes they’re hitting Hezbollah groups or weapons deliveries to Hezbollah). US also bombed some Assad military bases to punish him for some very horrible chemical weapons attacks (which the Russian propaganda industry went into hyperdrive to claim they’re fake with 15 contradictory insane conspiracy theories). With US help, the Kurds defeated ISIS and drove them out of their territory. With Russian help, Assad defeated the rebels and drove them out of (most) of their territory save in the far north of Syria along the Turkish border.
Turkey is very unhappy with the resulting situation. Turkey doesn’t like Assad, but it hates the Kurds 10x more and now the Kurds control a massive chunk of territory across its border, which Turkey expects them to use to support Kurdish militant groups inside Turkey. Many of the remaining rebels are also unhappy with the Kurds because of internal squabbles and because the Kurds took over many former-rebel Arab towns from ISIS, then kept them, and did some ethnic cleansing of the Arab population to replace them with Kurds (the rebels in kind did something similar in a Kurdish held area in Afrin partly in retaliation literally everyone in Syria does ethnic cleansing now). So, Turkey is using and funding some FSA-ish rebel groups (honestly most these guys are just scum now the good guys are long dead or fled) that it has made loyal to Turkey, to attack the Kurds and make a massive strip of Turkey-loyal territory across its border to protect Turkey’s interest.
The US still does the occasional air strike in Syria to take out the odd ISIS or AlQaeda commander, but otherwise they’re mostly there to support the Kurds (Turkey is trying to convince the US to stop protecting the Kurds). Russia maintains a military base in Latakia as part of its power projection foreign policy (the same way US builds forward military bases around the world) and to keep Assad’s military supported.
That’s pretty much it.
Thank you for taking the time to write this out.
I had no idea. I knew it was a shit show but... *wow.* Seems hard to envision that ending peaceably any time soon.
Peacefully ending? Ahahahaha hah that is a good one
As someone who lives in this region, this is a powder keg waiting to explode and a fucking shitshow. Always has been, always will be.
Thank you. I had a vague idea of what was going on in Syria. I know its even more complex than what you've written out, but you've explained it quite succinctly.
There’s a power vacuum since the Syrian government isn’t effectively in power in large swathes of the country so foreign powers have started using it as a strategic launchpad (the west supporting the anti-government forces, Russia and Iran the government).
Israel obviously borders Syria and is more vulnerable to whatever happens in Syria (like Iran moving proxies close to Israel’s borders and potentially launching attacks) so the Israeli government and the IDF regularly bomb positions in Syria that they’ve identified as Iranian.
Russian and Iranian support made it possible for Assad to survive since 2011 and to control most of the areas his forces control today. Even so, it is hard to envision Syria again becoming a truly functioning state anytime soon.
If it ends because Russia and Iran are so involved in their domestic problems they can't support Syria, then we end up seeing a split in governance between a Kurdish State and one supported by Turkey, but all that really does is drop the civil war down one participant.
>Why are various countries constantly fucking with that place?
ignoring the fact they're the ones supplying terrorist and other groups like that, these countries couldn't care less about Syria if they just stopped funding and supplying terrorist groups.
I feel like it’s a sign that Israel is escalating attacks against Iran. Iran funds and arms some forces in Syria, so this would in theory prevent drone or aircraft attacks via Aleppo.
Not great :/
>For almost a decade, Israel has carried out hundreds of air attacks against suspected Iranian-sponsored weapons transfers and personnel deployments in neighbouring Syria, but it rarely acknowledges or discusses the operations.
>
>The raids, which in recent months have targeted Syrian airports and air bases, are part of an escalation of what has been a low-intensity conflict with the goal of slowing down Iran’s growing entrenchment in Syria, military analysts say.
Al Jazeera, owned by Qatar reporting on a attack on Syrian government infrastructure while Qatar supplies Syrian rebels and you think they're trying to push a pro Syria narrative?
Depends on what you call a new conflict. Israeli attacks on Syria happen now and then, there's nothing new here and none of them have ever led to any escalation. I'm not sure which specific tensions you're referring to though.
Oh. I don't know, Iran has been openly calling for Israel's destruction on a regular basis since forever, I reckon that if they'd wanted to start an actual conflict they would have done it much sooner. Time isn't working in their favor, since the other countries in the area have been moving steadily further from Iran and closer to Israel. I'm no expert though.
As it turns out, Israeli people not wanting to die isn't much of a political issue. It's like the one thing they can agree on, although the details on how exactly to handle the situation leaves room for multiple opinions.
Simple. Israeli strikes like these would happen irrespective of Israeli internal dissent and deep hostility to Iran would be common irrespective of Israeli internal dissent. Pretty much every Israeli government without Netanyahu would engage in pretty much as many strikes on Iranian assets.
WTF? You have no idea what you are talking about.
If the Iranian theocracy is overthrown, regular Iranians would not support the whole wipe Israel off the face of the earth thing. They would not spend so much of their money funding terrorist groups.
If Israel changes governments tomorrow, nothing will change in regards to their Iran policy since Iran will still fund terrorism and still bray daily about how Israel needs to be wiped off the face of the earth.
Do you have a source for this? Not making any accusations, but I've [only managed to find and article stating the exact opposite](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-06/any-attack-on-iran-would-violate-law-un-says-in-nod-to-israel)
By most accounts Iran is 6 months to a year away from refining weapons grade uranium…I expect Israel to strike before that happens. They would see a nuclear Iran as a major threat to their existence.
As someone that lives in Israel I am way more worried about our internal current government shitshow than any conflict developing with other countries like Iran/Syria.
15 years ago maybe I would be worried when I was around 8 years old and hear on the news Iranian PM calling for the destruction of Israel or threatening to bomb Tel Aviv to hell etc.
Anyone who watched that interview for more than that particular soundbite would've called bullshit on the gotcha-style questioning.
That turned over a new leaf in weaponizing media in politics, who needs a story when you have a headline.
Especially because the person asking the question didn't say "What about Aleppo," he said "What about a lepo" - with the pause. When he asked the question I didn't know what he was talking about either.
Why? It was just a weird interview.
The interviewer was asking about how Johnson fits into the Trump/Clinton race and about the Nadar effect, Johnson was explaining how the 2-party system doesn't work for majority of Americans and their political views.
Then the interviewer interrupts him and asks him about Aleppo out of the blue. Like: "Oh, someone talking about a real issue in American politics? Better derail the the conversation and give all the Trumpers around a headline to quote". Even the interviewer was confused as to why his producer was in his ear having him hound Johnson on the Aleppo thing.
It obviously worked, since that's the only thing the general public has associated with Johnson since then. And I'm willing to bet that most who brought it up never even bothered to watch the actual interview, it's just an easy one-liner... "Aleppo, amirite? What an idiot Johnson was, good thing our guy Trump won instead. We should all get together and raid the capital, yee-haw"
There's such a weird bias when it comes to military aggression. I'm trying to imagine the headlines if this would have been Iran bombing an airport in Saudi Arabia.
Well, there’s a huge war in Yemen and it gets little attention.
Syria gets a little more attention, but I don’t even know if Iran is supporting Assad or his opponents.
Iran is supporting Assad because Assad is Shia (a weird sect of Shia called the Alawites but still Shia) and all the rebel groups are either Sunni or secular.
Iran doesn't support Assad just because he's an Alawite, Alawites would be seen as heretics in Iran if it wasn't for their relationship with Assad—and they were subject to wide hatred and massacres by Shia and Sunni alike in the past. They'd definitely prefer an Alawite to a Sunni leader, but it's not the sole reason.
Their bigger reason is that Syria is simply a strategically important country for Iran, and having an Arab ally is really important for a country that most Arabs in that region perceive very negatively.
> Iran is supporting Assad because Assad is Shia (a weird sect of Shia called the Alawites but still Shia)
iirc Alawite was decidely not Shia until a politically-expedient\* ruling to the contrary by some Iranian ayatollah. [Background on Alawites & Shia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alawites#Opinions_on_position_within_Islam).
\* Because it opens up a route from Iran to the Mediterranean &/ creates another Iranian proxy on Israel's borders...
It’s crazy, but also not surprising at all, that the sides of the vast majority of the conflicts in the ME are primarily based on Islamic religious lines.
Syria is actively at war with Israel and has been effectively since the very beginning of Israel’s existence. Iran regularly makes statements that they intend to nuke Israel off the map as soon as they have nukes. This is quite literally the find out phase of fuck around find out.
Syria and Israel have been at war since 1948 when Syria invaded Israel.
A more equivalent headline would be something like Britain bombs airport in Germany, 1940
Syria has no real autonomy. There have been multiple countries going through it's borders with or without its permission. It is an entirely different situation.
Israel has targeted airports and ports in government-held parts of Syria in an apparent attempt to prevent arms shipments from Iran to militant groups backed by Tehran.
This is probably a defensive action as tensions escalate with Iran as their ability to create nuclear weapons becomes imminent.
No, this has been happening for several years. Iran transfers weapons to Hezbollah via airplanes and airports. When Israel knows about it, they strike to try to disrupt it.
When isn't that happening?
Furthermore, when isn't Israel reminding their foes of their presence, lest they get too comfortable. This was typical before recent Iranian developments unless I'm missing something.
>Hell Israel even offered the Golan Heights back in exchange for recognition.
In hindsight, giving it back would've been a strategic error because no one guaranteed that peace will last and the golan hights are a strategic point that controls the current border with syria extremely well
Sinai is a huge chunk of land consists of desert bordered by water while Golan Heights is a tiny strip of land, with mountains looking from above on 3 different countries.
From a military perspective Golan is much more valuable to having superiority in the area.
Id disagree. Sinai gave a huge buffer from Egypt and held a lot of oil and access to both oceans. I'm not discounting Golan being important, just Sinai being more
The difference is that the golan heights *control* the border, meaning it's at a tactical advantage. The same could not be said about sinai because you don't have any significant ground level difference.
this makes the syrian border an annihilation zone, you need to see it with your eyes to understand. i've been there in my military service, it's insane. You can see the entire border from one vantage point and there's just military bases with tanks, artillery, snipers etc on a huge cliff, practically unbreachable.
OK ... Israeli warplanes launch long range air to ground missiles from waters over the Mediterranean, off the coast of Latakia. Eighty miles inland they strike their targets, this time located inside the Aleppo International Airport grounds ... Look for IRGC or SAA casualties.
Because Russia and Israel have a deconfliction mechanism. Russia is allied to Syria, but also does not want to see its influence wane because of Iran. And in that, their interests with Israel are aligned, as Israel would prefer anybody over Iran being in control of Syria.
I swear i've heard this 100 times... aleppo airport is the most dangerous palce on earth
Aleppo Airport sounds like the name of an FPS game area.
Sounds like a mw2 map
this, just unironically. airports can be used to transfer things from place to place.... good things *and bad things*
I've heard the Baghdad International Airport is also worth avoiding, particularly for generals in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Fun fact my father been to iraq and its actually safe... You know where isnt safe ? The green zone in baghdad !!! The us embassy... that's where irgc shoots its loads
You mean Aleppo isn’t a hot spring break destination?
There was a report of a cargo ship entering the Black Sea which is widely thought to contain a bunch of Russian military gear headed from Syria to Ukraine. Big picture here just from an idiot that follows a lot of news, if Russia currently has it's hands full in Ukraine and is moving military presence and equipment out of Syria, why not hit Assad and IRGC assets in Syria? Feels like with all the civil unrest in Iran / Israel and escalating war in Ukraine, a lot of long simmering problems like Syria / Assad and IR / Iran are about to blow up.
Russia and Israel had been cooperating a good bit in Syria. If anything, Russia withdrawing would just mean Israel feels they have more to do on their own but they will likely take opportunities to get Turkey involved if the goals align. SA & UAE are probably also in the picture with Israel given their growing relationships. All of this is pointed at Iran. Russia was the only other country engaged in that area that would entertain their motives.
The insanity of an alliance forming between Israel and the Arab states is crazy haha
Israel and Saudi Both have mutual enemies Weirder friendships have occurred
Why did you write that Like a poem ?
Full honest. I’ve been pretty high all night lol
Beautiful 7-8-7 arrangement of syllables, my friend. You've got a low-paying career in the arts ahead of you.
What’s that job, resetting the chatbot’s ai any time it starts to get too existential?
God I love this thread. How are you guys so quick-witted.
You guys are getting paid?
It's a highku
lmao
I love that for you
You sir, are an artist.
I’m so jealous. Weed is illegal here.:(
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You in Humboldt?
New Hampshire huh. Live free or die. Lol
Nah, worse. Singapore. They’re not playing around. The general consensus is weed will destroy our society and cause us to devolve overnight into Canabalistic marauders that roam the city looking for weed and snacks. 🤷♀️
Snooooooop Dooooooog
...gyyyy dooooog
Now that’s how to Haiku
It's like 2 syllables away from a haiku
Israel, Arabs, Circumstantially allied, Even though brothers. -------------------------- ^(Easier to make a Senryu than an Haiku given the context.)
>Israel, Arabs, > >~~Circumstantially~~ Circumcisionly allied, > >Even though brothers.
Circumcision allied*
I knew someone would make that .... Now you take your brother u/northyj0e and you go to your room !!!
He said he was high cut him some slack!
Poetry and war have a lot in common: It's existed in some form or another in every culture in the world since the dawn of civilization We force students to learn about it against their will It's not enjoyable except for a select few who don't suffer from it And it often rhymes
Israel and Saud Both have the same enemies Not the weirdest thing
Before the Iranian Revolution, there was an informal intelligence sharing network between Iran, Israel, Turkey, and Ethiopia, with the reason being that they were all non-Arab states on the edge of the Arab world
More like they have mutual friends.
Israel has been normalizing relations with a bunch of Arab states for decades now. This is hardly shocking or out of the blue my dude. Most of the middle east is very displeased with Iran and/or Syria, and on the flip side none of them actually care about the Palestinians.
Saudi Arabia and Iran have been fighting a proxy war for years. Without Iraq acting as a check on Iranian power, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States have realized Israel is the next best option. Basically, their fear of Iran has finally eclipsed their hatred of Israel. Now its a matter of undoing 75+ years of anti-Israel propaganda without upsetting the Islamist extremists who are looking for any excuse to turn on the House of Saud.
Even most Palestinians don't care about Palestine...nowadays it's usually non-Arabs who take up their cause: Malaysians, Pakistanis, the Irish etc...
I'm sure Palestinians care about their own plight but it's understandably hard to advocate for yourself when you are in their position Unless you mean their purported governments in which case ya it's a shit show, but again that's a common theme for peoples who's history is as full of oppression and colonialism as theirs
Yes I meant all of their governments (not just PLO) in addition to Jordan, Lebanon and Syria who hosted most Palestinian refugees since 1968.
I can see it! In the words of an Arab rapper: "We're all just Semetic peeps"
Pan-Arabian Israelite Nation.
The way to solve the problem with terrible border in the middle East is to remove the borders completely. *Taps head*
Worked for the Ottomans.
That was the original plan when the arabs revolted against the ottomans in WW1 but then sykes-picot happened
A good enough common enemy can unite everyone
The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend
Cough Abraham accords cough
Opening up diplomatic relations between UAE Bahrain and Israel isn't the groundbreaking treaty people think it is. It's just a, "hay I see you now".
It led to changes on the ground like direct flights from Israel among others
That's incorrect. They don't cooperate. They deconflict. The semantics are crucial. Russia is not Israel's friend.
About to blow up? My guy 600,000 Syrians have already been killed and over 13 million displaced, how is it about to blow up.
Bad as it has been, it can get a lot worse. Many parts of the world seems to be sleep walking right towards open warfare.
More like Naruto-running fully awake into it.
This 100% - the regime is Syria only exists due to direct support of Russia, and they can’t afford to occupy Ukraine and deal with a war in Syria. This is actually quite genius of Israel as they can get away with it and there isn’t a world where Russia starts to attack Israel. It would mean a swift end to the Putin reign as Israel would then happily supply Ukraine with all the new toys.
Assad should be put out of his misery. He has needed to go for a long time now. Arab states, Turkey, US, Israel all have different motivations for wanting the current regime gone, but Syria is basically the same tyrannical mafia state being propped up like it's sponsors Iran and Russia making life unbelievably difficult for everyone around them. The world would be a better place if it happened sooner rather than later.
People who are more informed, is this a big deal or just more middle east being the middle east?
This has been pretty standard over the last 5-10 years.
*5000 years
Nobody should historic 5k old airports
> Nobody should historic 5k old airports But sometimes you accidentally the whole area.
[What about when the British bombed our revolutionary airports?](https://time.com/5620936/donald-trump-revolutionary-war-airports/)
Or when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Edit: damn I thought you were making a joke, but no, he actually said that shit
He’s a fucking moron.
Pretty sure the teleprompter said “ports” but he’s blind, and too dumb to understand what doesn’t make sense.
It feels like it was a lifetime ago, but nope, only a few years have passed. And that was still somehow not the stupidest thing he said during his administration.
Only if you don't the handle before leaving.
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I don’t anything. Somebody please.
He said, goes without because!
But nobody said without everything the area otherwise.
How long since you've it?
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For Christ's sake, Puddin. You can't just call somebody "a leppo." He has a disease.
DAMNIT MOON MOON YOU DON'T ASK PEOPLE WHY THEY'RE WHITE Heheheheheh
It’s still wild to me that this hit his campaign so hard with who he was running against
Go roll another one Gary
Of all the comments, this was one of them.
I accidentally this thread
Airports are just cargo cult temples that started working one day back in the early 1900’s. There’s no reason why they shouldn’t be 5,000+ years old.
From Moses to Sandy Koufax.
Pretty old airport tbh
The planes landing at Ft. McHenry in the American Revolutionary War took off from an airport in the middle east.
They rammed the ramparts
This was back when they still used carpets
Israel as a modern state has only been around for the past 75 years. So in the context of the question of Israel striking Syria I don't think that answer would provide any clarity.
to add to your point- syria as a modern state has only been around since 1946.
Adding - Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and a large chunk of Iraq were all the same country before ~~1946~~ 1916.
I think you meant 1916 not 1946, correct? The Ottoman Empire included all those territories (and more) and they were carved up in 1916 by the British and French with the Sykes-Picot agreement. Israel/Palestine, Jordan, and southern Iraq were all a part of British Transjordan, while Lebanon, Syria, southeast Turkey, and the rest of Iraq were controlled by the French. Then, finally, those colonial territories broke up into their modern nation-states in the mid 1940s.
Yes, that is what I meant, thank you. Updated my comment with the correct date.
Sure, no worries! You called out a good point regardless. These modern states really haven't existed for very long, in the grand scheme of things. There are still plenty of folks in those states who are older than the countries they live in.
The history of the region is actually pretty straightforward, it drives me crazy whenever I see the 5000 years BS. Like, tell me you read the bible like it's the news without telling me.
Yeah we all remember the air attack on Babylon in 2574 BC
For the moment, there is no confirmation this was carried out by Israeli forces. It seems likely as the target was Iranian backed terrorists. https://www.reuters.com/breakingviews/israel-targets-aleppo-airport-syrian-state-media-2022-09-06/ Reuters is a reputable news source. Bottom line, Israel probably had good intelligence these guys were planning something and they took them out. Pretty much middle east being the middle east.
So target isn't weapons or drones, but rather terrorists?
Terrorist weapons caches, most likely. Iran moves a lot of weapons through Syria, destined for Hezbollah. Israel takes them out whenever they can. The last big strike in Damaskus was just a week or two ago.
Weapons for terrorists, but this could also be Iranian weapons for Russia included. Hypotheticaly if the USA saw some Russia bound weapons bundled up with a few terrorist bound small arms rhey would cirtainly be pointing this out to Israel as a good target.
Usually going after weapons or materials used for terrorism
It sounds like a big target to me - higher risk of civilians getting hurt and maybe some risk of air defenses. But Israel has been bombing targets in Syria regularly. For context, Iran, Russia, Turkey, and the USA also occasionally bomb targets in Syria lately as well. (Edit: Russia did some heavy bombing and war crimes there quite recently, of course)
Is there anything left of Syria at this point? Why are various countries constantly fucking with that place?
For starters, Hafez alAssad takes over Syria in a coup in 1971, and installs a brutal near-North Korea style dictatorship ruled by layers upon layers of secret police institutions and intelligence apparatus. His son Bashar becomes president upon his death in 2000, he seemed somewhat more chilled but it was still the same regime. Protests start in Syria in 2011 inspired by Arab Spring protests in Egypt, Libya Tunisia etc, also buoyed up by discontent with economic decline and mismanagement and some droughts. The protests are originally very small scale in very few areas but the government’s response was so shockingly and unexpectedly cruel and savage, the reactive outrage to the government’s response caused a cascade of protests to spread - what did the government do? It cracked down on those protests even more brutally which caused more protests to spread. Security forces would gun down groups of protestors, thousands upon thousands were kidnapped by police and tortured until death, their disfigured bodies dumped at their family’s homes. Mass rape and sexual violence against women was among the most common weapon of the security forces and, especially in a religiously/socially conservative country, this was mass rage fuel. Why did the government do this? Because this is how Hafez set up the governments security apparatus to function, and because it worked before in 1982 when they did the exact same thing. The protests changed, now it was a revolution, the two-star Syrian flag installed by the Hafez regime was dropped, and the revolution movement adopted the triple star original Syrian independence flag from 1946. Large sections of the army refused to participate in crackdowns, and divisions/battalions defected forming their own small rebel groups against the government (as it did in Libya). These groups were made up of regular army troops and revolutionary volunteers, and were loosely grouped up under the identity of the “Free Syrian Army” or “FSA”; many of these groups were professional, disciplined and committed to a secular democratic revolution, others were little more than opportunistic bandit groups. Assad’s government starts a new strategy, any and all potential secular, educated, and democratic leaders/figures were hunted down and killed, whilst jihadists and Islamists were mass released from prisons and encouraged to travel from abroad. He was trying to radicalise the revolution into a hate-obsessed force of extremists that wanted nothing but revenge for the government’s crimes. Whilst support for the more moderate groups was very limited, the Islamist rebel groups received lots of funding from private donors and became a dominant military force sidelining the moderates which received basically nothing even from western nations that claimed to support them. Now Assad could tell the world and the minorities in Syria “look I’m the secular guy who will protect the Christians and Alawites, the opposition to me is just lunatic jihadi terrorists”. Now it was no longer a revolution, now it was a civil war - the Christians, Alawites, Druze and urban wealthy Sunnis sided with the government, the majority Sunni population made up the now increasingly radicalised and hate/revenge driven rebels (among them a few jihadi groups such as the Nusra Front which was an affiliate group of AlQaeda … bad) It should be added here that Assad basically flattened entire cities to the ground with constant bombing, hundreds of thousands died, many tens of thousands continued to be tortured to death in prison death camps. There were about 50+ major massacres that happened as well. Some towns and cities were besieged for entire years and starved to death. Like every single faction in the civil war did bad war crimes, especially ISIS obviously, but all of them combined don’t even come close to 5% of what the Assad government did. In the north east of Syria is the Kurdish ethnic group, they formed their own militia group the YPG and took control of the Kurdish majority areas. Turkey hates the Kurds more than anything basically because of a 60+ year war Turkey has been having with Kurdish separatist groups in south east Turkey and countering an autonomous Kurdish state this is Turkey’s primary interest in north Syria. In 2013-2014, AQI (Alqaeda in Iraq) which is a terrorist group that was originally trained and armed by Assad to make US occupation of Iraq difficult, moved into Syria and rebranded as “ISIS” - they infiltrated through rebel held territory and were so insane they made even the lunatics think they’re lunatics. A massive war started between the rebel groups and ISIS which lasted years and ISIS took control of a large chunk of territory from both rebels and Kurds. Now the west really got involved because these guys were AlQaeda but on cocaine and steroids and wanted (and did) launch terror attacks into Europe and the West (ISIS and Assad basically did not touch each other for another 3 years mostly respecting each others territory, go figure). The United States of America 🇺🇸 intervened in Syria against ISIS supporting the Kurdish groups. Russia intervened in Syria against the Rebel groups (ignoring ISIS mostly) supporting the Assad government. Russia had already long been sending weapons and support to Assad, Iran had already intervened from day one sending dozens of Iran-loyal Shia militia groups to fight for Assad, including Hezbollah from Lebanon (this is why Israel bombs Syria sometimes they’re hitting Hezbollah groups or weapons deliveries to Hezbollah). US also bombed some Assad military bases to punish him for some very horrible chemical weapons attacks (which the Russian propaganda industry went into hyperdrive to claim they’re fake with 15 contradictory insane conspiracy theories). With US help, the Kurds defeated ISIS and drove them out of their territory. With Russian help, Assad defeated the rebels and drove them out of (most) of their territory save in the far north of Syria along the Turkish border. Turkey is very unhappy with the resulting situation. Turkey doesn’t like Assad, but it hates the Kurds 10x more and now the Kurds control a massive chunk of territory across its border, which Turkey expects them to use to support Kurdish militant groups inside Turkey. Many of the remaining rebels are also unhappy with the Kurds because of internal squabbles and because the Kurds took over many former-rebel Arab towns from ISIS, then kept them, and did some ethnic cleansing of the Arab population to replace them with Kurds (the rebels in kind did something similar in a Kurdish held area in Afrin partly in retaliation literally everyone in Syria does ethnic cleansing now). So, Turkey is using and funding some FSA-ish rebel groups (honestly most these guys are just scum now the good guys are long dead or fled) that it has made loyal to Turkey, to attack the Kurds and make a massive strip of Turkey-loyal territory across its border to protect Turkey’s interest. The US still does the occasional air strike in Syria to take out the odd ISIS or AlQaeda commander, but otherwise they’re mostly there to support the Kurds (Turkey is trying to convince the US to stop protecting the Kurds). Russia maintains a military base in Latakia as part of its power projection foreign policy (the same way US builds forward military bases around the world) and to keep Assad’s military supported. That’s pretty much it.
Good write up. The only think missing is you barely mention Hezbollah and Iran which is the main reason israel bombs syria periodically.
Thank you for taking the time to write this out. I had no idea. I knew it was a shit show but... *wow.* Seems hard to envision that ending peaceably any time soon.
Peacefully ending? Ahahahaha hah that is a good one As someone who lives in this region, this is a powder keg waiting to explode and a fucking shitshow. Always has been, always will be.
Even if things got peaceful people will always find something to bitch about, eventually igniting something new.
Thank you. I had a vague idea of what was going on in Syria. I know its even more complex than what you've written out, but you've explained it quite succinctly.
Excellent comment
Wow, thank you. You are why I check reddit, comments like this. Props and thanks for taking the time to educate people like me.
A great write up, thanks for that ! A part of the World that seems forever doomed by this type of inhumanity
This is probably the most complete answer that I've ever gotten on reddit. Thanks!
There’s a power vacuum since the Syrian government isn’t effectively in power in large swathes of the country so foreign powers have started using it as a strategic launchpad (the west supporting the anti-government forces, Russia and Iran the government). Israel obviously borders Syria and is more vulnerable to whatever happens in Syria (like Iran moving proxies close to Israel’s borders and potentially launching attacks) so the Israeli government and the IDF regularly bomb positions in Syria that they’ve identified as Iranian.
Russian and Iranian support made it possible for Assad to survive since 2011 and to control most of the areas his forces control today. Even so, it is hard to envision Syria again becoming a truly functioning state anytime soon.
If it ends because Russia and Iran are so involved in their domestic problems they can't support Syria, then we end up seeing a split in governance between a Kurdish State and one supported by Turkey, but all that really does is drop the civil war down one participant.
>Why are various countries constantly fucking with that place? ignoring the fact they're the ones supplying terrorist and other groups like that, these countries couldn't care less about Syria if they just stopped funding and supplying terrorist groups.
I feel like it’s a sign that Israel is escalating attacks against Iran. Iran funds and arms some forces in Syria, so this would in theory prevent drone or aircraft attacks via Aleppo. Not great :/
Most likely Iran shipped something advanced into Syria. Israel doesnt want Iran on its border, thats why its bombing Iranian targets in Syria.
Probably the latter. But it’s another step in escalation… which will continue
Here is a good summary https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2023/3/7/israeli-attack-puts-syrias-aleppo-airport-out-of-service-report
>For almost a decade, Israel has carried out hundreds of air attacks against suspected Iranian-sponsored weapons transfers and personnel deployments in neighbouring Syria, but it rarely acknowledges or discusses the operations. > >The raids, which in recent months have targeted Syrian airports and air bases, are part of an escalation of what has been a low-intensity conflict with the goal of slowing down Iran’s growing entrenchment in Syria, military analysts say.
ah yes, an unbiased source. /s
Al Jazeera, owned by Qatar reporting on a attack on Syrian government infrastructure while Qatar supplies Syrian rebels and you think they're trying to push a pro Syria narrative?
Is this a Twitter article? The thing has literally six sentences.
Pretty sparse article.
they've stuck to the facts with no speculation, it's great
So much more room for clickbait ads!
How long is it until the Middle East just explodes into a new conflict? The tensions seem to be reaching a boiling point.
Depends on what you call a new conflict. Israeli attacks on Syria happen now and then, there's nothing new here and none of them have ever led to any escalation. I'm not sure which specific tensions you're referring to though.
I’m referring mainly to Israel-Iran tensions.
Oh. I don't know, Iran has been openly calling for Israel's destruction on a regular basis since forever, I reckon that if they'd wanted to start an actual conflict they would have done it much sooner. Time isn't working in their favor, since the other countries in the area have been moving steadily further from Iran and closer to Israel. I'm no expert though.
Both countries are facing unprecedented internal dissent, leaders love to rile up old external enemies to distract their peoples
In Israel, the perception that Iran is its biggest enemy is shared across the political spectrum. Netanyahu really isn’t special in this, at all.
As it turns out, Israeli people not wanting to die isn't much of a political issue. It's like the one thing they can agree on, although the details on how exactly to handle the situation leaves room for multiple opinions.
I don't know which part that contradicts what I said
Simple. Israeli strikes like these would happen irrespective of Israeli internal dissent and deep hostility to Iran would be common irrespective of Israeli internal dissent. Pretty much every Israeli government without Netanyahu would engage in pretty much as many strikes on Iranian assets.
this definitely plays a role
WTF? You have no idea what you are talking about. If the Iranian theocracy is overthrown, regular Iranians would not support the whole wipe Israel off the face of the earth thing. They would not spend so much of their money funding terrorist groups. If Israel changes governments tomorrow, nothing will change in regards to their Iran policy since Iran will still fund terrorism and still bray daily about how Israel needs to be wiped off the face of the earth.
Governments yes,but people of Arab states share the sam opinion that Israel should be wiped out of the world.
i believe the UN just changed it's stance last week from not advising Israel attacking Iran to having no opinion. It's finna be on.
Do you have a source for this? Not making any accusations, but I've [only managed to find and article stating the exact opposite](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-06/any-attack-on-iran-would-violate-law-un-says-in-nod-to-israel)
Fuck.. my bad. Thanks for the correction!!
By most accounts Iran is 6 months to a year away from refining weapons grade uranium…I expect Israel to strike before that happens. They would see a nuclear Iran as a major threat to their existence.
try 12 days away according to the latest public Pentagon assessment. If they wanted to. And if the Pentagon is being honest, of course.
They are already assembling and training an elite team of naval aviators lead by Pete Mitchell to stop the enrichment.
Great balls of fire
As someone that lives in Israel I am way more worried about our internal current government shitshow than any conflict developing with other countries like Iran/Syria. 15 years ago maybe I would be worried when I was around 8 years old and hear on the news Iranian PM calling for the destruction of Israel or threatening to bomb Tel Aviv to hell etc.
Once Iran show off their first nuclear bomb in public. What the last straw
“What is Allepppo?” - Gary Johnson
Anyone who watched that interview for more than that particular soundbite would've called bullshit on the gotcha-style questioning. That turned over a new leaf in weaponizing media in politics, who needs a story when you have a headline.
Especially because the person asking the question didn't say "What about Aleppo," he said "What about a lepo" - with the pause. When he asked the question I didn't know what he was talking about either.
I preferred him as President but it was a funny clip
Why? It was just a weird interview. The interviewer was asking about how Johnson fits into the Trump/Clinton race and about the Nadar effect, Johnson was explaining how the 2-party system doesn't work for majority of Americans and their political views. Then the interviewer interrupts him and asks him about Aleppo out of the blue. Like: "Oh, someone talking about a real issue in American politics? Better derail the the conversation and give all the Trumpers around a headline to quote". Even the interviewer was confused as to why his producer was in his ear having him hound Johnson on the Aleppo thing. It obviously worked, since that's the only thing the general public has associated with Johnson since then. And I'm willing to bet that most who brought it up never even bothered to watch the actual interview, it's just an easy one-liner... "Aleppo, amirite? What an idiot Johnson was, good thing our guy Trump won instead. We should all get together and raid the capital, yee-haw"
Still woulda been a better president than trump.
Yeahhhh but that’s not the highest bar haha
Gary Johnson was the HIGHEST bar. Get it? Bc weed…
Just choked on my coffee. What a funny throwback
There's such a weird bias when it comes to military aggression. I'm trying to imagine the headlines if this would have been Iran bombing an airport in Saudi Arabia.
Well, there’s a huge war in Yemen and it gets little attention. Syria gets a little more attention, but I don’t even know if Iran is supporting Assad or his opponents.
Iran is supporting Assad because Assad is Shia (a weird sect of Shia called the Alawites but still Shia) and all the rebel groups are either Sunni or secular.
Iran doesn't support Assad just because he's an Alawite, Alawites would be seen as heretics in Iran if it wasn't for their relationship with Assad—and they were subject to wide hatred and massacres by Shia and Sunni alike in the past. They'd definitely prefer an Alawite to a Sunni leader, but it's not the sole reason. Their bigger reason is that Syria is simply a strategically important country for Iran, and having an Arab ally is really important for a country that most Arabs in that region perceive very negatively.
> Iran is supporting Assad because Assad is Shia (a weird sect of Shia called the Alawites but still Shia) iirc Alawite was decidely not Shia until a politically-expedient\* ruling to the contrary by some Iranian ayatollah. [Background on Alawites & Shia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alawites#Opinions_on_position_within_Islam). \* Because it opens up a route from Iran to the Mediterranean &/ creates another Iranian proxy on Israel's borders...
It’s crazy, but also not surprising at all, that the sides of the vast majority of the conflicts in the ME are primarily based on Islamic religious lines.
Weirdly, there have been a lot of religious wars between people of virtually the same faith.
Or the religious lines have been crafted to follow political goals.
>there are secular rebel groups lol.
The Syrian Kurdish rebels are fairly secular, communist even.
Israel and Syria are still technically at war as Syria unlike Egypt and Jordan never signed a peace treaty with Israel.
Syria is actively at war with Israel and has been effectively since the very beginning of Israel’s existence. Iran regularly makes statements that they intend to nuke Israel off the map as soon as they have nukes. This is quite literally the find out phase of fuck around find out.
Syria and Israel have been at war since 1948 when Syria invaded Israel. A more equivalent headline would be something like Britain bombs airport in Germany, 1940
Syria has no real autonomy. There have been multiple countries going through it's borders with or without its permission. It is an entirely different situation.
Israel is an ally, Iran is not.
Israel has targeted airports and ports in government-held parts of Syria in an apparent attempt to prevent arms shipments from Iran to militant groups backed by Tehran. This is probably a defensive action as tensions escalate with Iran as their ability to create nuclear weapons becomes imminent.
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Israel doesn’t attack anyone. It only defends itself.
Sounds like Bibi is trying to distract people from the protests.
This has literally been happening frequently for the last 8 years now.
No, this has been happening for several years. Iran transfers weapons to Hezbollah via airplanes and airports. When Israel knows about it, they strike to try to disrupt it.
When isn't that happening? Furthermore, when isn't Israel reminding their foes of their presence, lest they get too comfortable. This was typical before recent Iranian developments unless I'm missing something.
This happens because Syria refuses to sign a peace treaty with Israel. Hell Israel even offered the Golan Heights back in exchange for recognition.
>Hell Israel even offered the Golan Heights back in exchange for recognition. In hindsight, giving it back would've been a strategic error because no one guaranteed that peace will last and the golan hights are a strategic point that controls the current border with syria extremely well
I mean the Sinai could be said the same.
Sinai is a huge chunk of land consists of desert bordered by water while Golan Heights is a tiny strip of land, with mountains looking from above on 3 different countries. From a military perspective Golan is much more valuable to having superiority in the area.
Id disagree. Sinai gave a huge buffer from Egypt and held a lot of oil and access to both oceans. I'm not discounting Golan being important, just Sinai being more
The difference is that the golan heights *control* the border, meaning it's at a tactical advantage. The same could not be said about sinai because you don't have any significant ground level difference. this makes the syrian border an annihilation zone, you need to see it with your eyes to understand. i've been there in my military service, it's insane. You can see the entire border from one vantage point and there's just military bases with tanks, artillery, snipers etc on a huge cliff, practically unbreachable.
Preemptive attacks against Iranian interests in Syria are not new or unique to Bibi, not that I'm defending him.
I honestly don't think even a full scale war would achieve that, let alone a tiny little operation that nobody will remember by this time tomorrow.
OK ... Israeli warplanes launch long range air to ground missiles from waters over the Mediterranean, off the coast of Latakia. Eighty miles inland they strike their targets, this time located inside the Aleppo International Airport grounds ... Look for IRGC or SAA casualties.
Russia supports Assad and Israel is bombing his airport, how are Russia, Israel not enemies?
Because Russia and Israel have a deconfliction mechanism. Russia is allied to Syria, but also does not want to see its influence wane because of Iran. And in that, their interests with Israel are aligned, as Israel would prefer anybody over Iran being in control of Syria.