Former British spy and diplomat Alastaire Crooke, writing in Consortium News over the weekend, correctly outlines a new Middle East trajectory based on Syria having weathered the storm of a six year long proxy war while remaining largely in-tact: "Plainly, Syria’s success – notwithstanding the caution of President Bashar al-Assad in saying that signs of success are not success itself – in resisting, against the odds, all attempts to fell the state suggest that a tipping point in the geopolitics of the region has occurred." At the same time, Foreign Policy predicts in its latest Syria analysis, headlined Israel Is Going to War in Syria to Fight Iran, that Israel will continue ramping up hostile actions against Syria as "Israeli officials aren't shying from confronting Tehran's forces - since no one else will."
Such desperation has increased due to the entirely new geopolitical order which has emerged as a result the Syrian state's perseverance and which runs directly counter to Israeli plans in the region. As Crooke explains further, "But, aside from the geopolitics, the Syria outcome has created a physical connectivity and contiguity that has not existed for some years: the border between Iraq and Iran is open; the border between Syria and Iraq is opening; and the border between Lebanon and Syria, too, is open. This constitutes a critical mass both of land, resources and population of real weight." Crooke also assesses that Western officials have been "wrong on almost everything pertaining to Syria." Failed predictions, miscalculations, and an underestimation of the Syrian state's resolve has defined much of both Israel's and West's approach to Syria throughout the war.
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