What did the Israeli attack in Syria reveal?

Following Israel’s strike on the Abu al-Duhur Airbase in Syria on August 18, relations between Damascus and Tel Aviv have reportedly broken down. Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Hassan Sheybani announced in the wake of the attack that all communication with Israel had been severed. “We anticipate that talks regarding a security agreement with Israel will resume in the near future. At present, we do not trust Israel. Our priority is the cessation of attacks against our sovereign territory,” he stated.

The minister’s utter helplessness reverberates through his words.

The post-Assad regime in Damascus ascended to power on the back of American and Israeli support. Consequently, the United States and Israel stand as the primary arbiters of Syria’s destiny. It is precisely for this reason that the Damascus administration has abandoned all claims to its rights over the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights—virtually resigning itself to the occupation and striking it from the agenda. Upon seizing power, it pledged immediate fealty to Washington: “We will pose no security threat to Israel, and we shall thwart anyone who attempts to do so.” It operated under the delusion that it could forge a functional relationship with Israel—led by Netanyahu, a perpetrator of genocide and a convicted war criminal—by appeasing it through concessions. It was gravely mistaken.

For Israel currently holds sway over a substantial portion of Syrian territory. It establishes military outposts across the country, carries out airstrikes at will, and deploys its armor unimpeded.

Similarly, the Israeli-backed PYD-YPG terrorist organization exercises control over an expanse of land vastly disproportionate to its actual strength—territory exceptionally rich in energy resources—solely through the patronage of the US and Israel. Leveraging that very support, it wrenches outsized political, military, and administrative concessions from the Damascus government.

Evidently, the displacement of Iranian and Russian influence in Syria by that of the United States and Israel has brought profound satisfaction to certain circles in our country. Yet what these quarters fail to see, refuse to see, or cannot bring themselves to acknowledge even when confronted with it, is this fundamental reality: Washington envisions a Middle Eastern order wherein Israel commands supremacy, projects expanding power, and dictates terms, while Türkiye raises no objection whatsoever and instead accommodates itself to this architecture. To compel Türkiye’s acquiescence, the US is actively deploying its vast and varied arsenal of leverage.

Lest we forget, the United States had already brought several Arab states to the desired threshold through the Abraham Accords. That process was ultimately intended to culminate in the open, formal consecration of the de facto rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Israel. That trajectory has not been abandoned; it has merely been placed on ice for the time being. Behind the scenes, Washington maintains an intense flurry of diplomacy with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and Jordan. Once the wider Middle East, the Islamic world, and the Arab sphere have been fully conditioned to accept the ongoing reality in Gaza—and once the oppressed, grieving, and beleaguered Palestinian people have been driven entirely from their ancestral homeland—this shelved agenda will be revived.

We know that the Zionist establishment in Israel, aligned with American imperialism, chose not to strike Iran first before confronting the Iranian-backed Axis of Resistance, the Shia Crescent, and Tehran’s proxy forces. It executed the exact inverse: it struck first at Syria, at Hamas in Palestine, and at Hezbollah in Lebanon. Only after eroding their efficacy did it turn its sights directly upon Iran. In Syria, the previous regime held out far longer than anticipated—enduring for 13 years and 8 months. As a consequence of the civil war that erupted in March 2011, Assad was ultimately overthrown, finding refuge in Moscow.

When 61 years of Baathist rule, including 53 years of the Assad dynasty, came to a close in December 2024, the emergent regime in Damascus wasted no time in pledging its allegiance to the United States, to Israel, and to the Arab states that backed it, chief among them Saudi Arabia. It proclaimed that it would erect a bulwark against Iran, raise not the slightest objection to Israel, and execute Washington’s directives to the letter.

A broad demographic in Türkiye that welcomed this turn of events swiftly began asserting—under the banner of religious and sectarian fraternity—that this transition worked entirely in Türkiye’s favor. The sheer fallacy of this premise was exposed in short order.

And how was it exposed?

It was exposed by Israel immediately laying the groundwork for a Syria partitioned into four enclaves (Druze, Kurdish, Alawite, and Arab). It was exposed by the renewed revelation that the US-Israel axis intends, sooner or later, to carve up Syria along sectarian and ethnic fault lines—mirroring the precedents of Lebanon and Iraq—in a country roughly composed of 70 percent Sunni Arabs, 10 percent Alawites, 10 percent Kurds, 5 percent Christians, and 5 percent Druze and Turkmens.

It was exposed by the fact that the PYD-YPG terrorist organization, even if denied the entirety of its territorial ambitions, has managed to secure a portion of its political, military, and administrative demands through US–Israeli patronage, thereby being permitted to preserve its existence by settling for a reduced perimeter.

And it was exposed by the resilience of Iran, which, despite suffering immense exhaustion and attrition in the face of American and Israeli aggression, refused to capitulate and maintained its resistance. It was exposed by the failure of the US-Israel tandem to achieve its overarching political and military objectives in Iran, bringing to the fore once again the undeniable truth that Iran possesses an institutionalized state tradition, a national consciousness, and an armed force of a depth and resilience that defy any comparison to Libya, Iraq, or Syria.