The Tartus Conundrum

So the city of Damascus has fallen.

AP reported (Sunday December 8) the arrival of Assad in Moscow:

“Syrians poured into streets in celebration on Sunday after a stunning rebel advance reached the capital, ending the Assad family’s 50 years of iron rule. Russian state news agencies were reporting that President Bashar Assad and his family had arrived in Moscow and were given asylum. Russia said Assad left the country after negotiations with rebel groups and that he had given instructions to transfer power peacefully”.

Now Assad has gone we should anticipate at least the likelihood of violent conflict beteween what we can loosely describe as:

(1) those Syrian Army units that are still intact;

(2) those elements amongst the anti-Assad fighters that can be described as indigenous (many of them extremist Sunni);

(2) those elements that make up the invading terrorist groups under the loose leadership of HTS, some of them foreign Al-Qaeda style imports from other parts of the Arab and Islamic worlds;

(3) others that are Syrian but have been holed up alongside terrorist groups in Idlib province since the peace settelements of 2020;

(4) those elements that are directly backed by and funded by Turkiye in the form of the so called Syrian National Army;

(5) those elements that trace their lineage back to the original oppositional forces, pre-2011, some of whom have genuinely pro-democracy credentials;

(6) the Israeli army and Israeli-backed militia that have already it seems (and the Arab League is already complaining about it), more territory of the Golan Heights;

(7) nor should we forget the extraordinary complication of the control by Kurdish forces, SDF, in alliance with a 1,000 US force that control a large swathe of territory in the north east of Syria where the most fertile lands of Syria and the bulk of Syrian oil deposits are to be found;

(8) further complicated by the potential involvement of Iraqi militia currently patrolling the border areas between Iraq and Syria, and Iranian militia, and, potentially, Hezbollah militia based in either Iran or Lebanon.

In effect, the West has won in a manner similar to its destabilization and destruction of Libya, and Yugoslavia. See this Belgium expert’s conclusion, reported by Tele-Sur:

“Malcotte recordó el precedente de Libia, un país que aún no logra recuperarse de su destrucción, puntualizando que Siria podría enfrentar un destino similar si no media una intervención diplomática efectiva de sus aliados estratégicos”.

Might any of this have anything to do with the recent conversation that took place between Brown (US) and Gerasimov (Russia), picking up on the narrative provided this morning by Gilbert Doctorow?:

“On 27 November chief of the Russian General Staff Gerasimov phoned his American counterpart, Charles Brown, head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, ostensibly to carry out ‘deconflcting’ obligations and to forewarn the Americans about the about-to-start Russian naval exercises in the Eastern Mediterranean during which there would be test firings of various hypersonic missiles, perhaps to include the Oreshnik. The Americans were advised to clear their naval vessels from the area of the exercises. It is widely assumed that Gerasimov directly warned Brown against any further ATACMS going into Russian territory lest American military assets in the Middle East be destroyed by Russian missiles”

Doctorow tells this story as background to an argument about how the US has finally seen sense since Russia’s demonstration in combat of the so-called “game changer non-nuclear missile, the Oreshnik, and helping to explain the recent diminution in Western ATACMS attacks on Russia from Syria.

But: notice this reference to Russian naval exercises in the Eastern Mediterranean and the testing of hypersonic missiles. Now, the position of Russia in the Mediterranean is complicated (see here: Marshall), but I think everyone will agree that Russia’s Syrian base in Tartus, at the eastern end of the Mediterranean is strategically important to Russia as its air base close-by in Khmeimim, Latakia.

If Russia was about to launch exercises in the Eastern Mediterranean, involving hypsonic missiles, how likely is it that these exercises would not involve major support activity in Tartus and Khmeimin?

I would think “not likely.” And, if I am right, then one has to ask whether there is a connection between the Brown-Gerasimov conversation of November 27, and what we can correctly refer to as the Turkish invasion of a week ago? Certainly, the invasion has been long planned, but what constituted the trigger?