A reinforced deployment of tanks and heavy guns is parked along Israel’s frontier with Syria as the civil war that transformed the balance of power in the Middle East appears headed into its final stretch.
The fighting in Syria has come full circle as its army sets its sights on retaking Daraa province, where the regime’s brutal reaction to anti-government graffiti on a school wall sparked the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad in 2011. The offensive against one of the last two major opposition strongholds has brought Syrian forces close to the Israeli-held section of the Golan Heights, captured from Syria in the 1967 Middle East war.
As the thud of shells echoes across what has for decades dependably been Israel’s quietest frontier, fears of new conflicts have risen.
Iran, whose forces helped to propel Assad to the brink of total victory, has a presence on the doorstep of archenemy Israel.
With the U.S. on the sidelines, only Russia has the clout to prevent the Israeli military from being drawn deeper into what remains of Syria’s war.
“None of us here is foolish enough to believe things will just go back to the way they were,” said Qasem Sabagh, a member of the Golan Druze community that came under Israeli control, as he looked out at a United Nations post where Syrian relatives once came to shout greetings through a loudspeaker. “The entire world wants a piece of Syria -- Iran, the U.S., Israel, Russia.”
It was Russia’s military intervention in Syria in September 2015 that turned the course of the war in Assad’s favor. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will fly to Russia on Wednesday for the eighth time since it entered the conflict. He’s said he’ll press for Iran’s ejection from Syria and demand that Syria “strictly” uphold the 1974 disengagement accord that set out a buffer zone.
Read more: Netanyahu to Discuss Syria Red Lines in Meeting with Putin
Both objectives are complicated, and if they’re not achieved, the Middle East could see the first head-to-head war between regional powers since Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon.
Several confrontations have taken place in the past few days. Over the weekend, a mortar shell from Syria exploded in the buffer zone, provoking Israeli artillery fire. Syria accused Israel of attacking the T-4 airbase used by the Syrian air force and Iran’s Quds Force. And Wednesday, the Israeli military, without giving further details, said its missile defenses shot down a drone that infiltrated Israel’s airspace from Syria.
There will be limits to how far Putin will press Iran, and his strategy is to find a middle ground between the conflicting interests of major players, said Andrei Kortunov, head of the Russian International Affairs Council, a research group that advises the Kremlin.
The Russian leader may agree to keep letting Israel bomb Iranian convoys transporting advanced weapons to Hezbollah while allowing Iran to maintain a route for arms supplies to Hezbollah that would stretch from Iran through Syria to Lebanon, he said.
Iranians are deeply embedded in the Syrian security forces, and if they “stay in large numbers, the potential for greater conflict between Israel and Iran in Syria will remain high,” added Ford, now a senior fellow with the Middle East Institute.
Iran, some analysts said, is playing a long game. It’s sitting out the campaign in southern Syria, deeming it less risky to let Assad’s troops win back territory near the Israeli-held section of the Golan, said Omar Lamrani, senior military analyst at Stratfor, a Texas-based advisory firm.
“This is the Iranians themselves accepting that for the sake of the success of the offensive, it’s better they sit it out,” Lamrani said.
Then, at a time of their choosing, they can try to penetrate the border area, said Ehud Yaari, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
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