Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that Israel and Russia are to form a joint team to examine the withdrawal of foreign forces from Syria.
Israel is seeking the removal of Iranian forces and has vowed to keep its main enemy from entrenching itself militarily in the neighbouring country.
Netanyahu met Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday in Moscow to discuss Iran's presence in Syria.
"I made it unequivocally clear that Israel will not allow the military entrenchment of Iran in Syria, and I also made it unequivocally clear that we would continue to take military action against it," Netanyahu told his cabinet.
I have long expected Israel to strike the terror proto-state Hezbollah with its light infantry army (and missile and rocket arsenal aimed at Israel) hard with a major multi-division ground raid into Lebanon while the terror organization is still heavily engaged in Syria on behalf of Assad. And lately I've been connecting more dots to paint that picture.
Is this meeting a sign of a Russian green light for Israel to go into Lebanon to target Iran's primary foreign proxy force there?
Would Russia stand aside if Israel also hammered Hezbollah in Syria in that campaign?
And would Assad quietly welcome an Israeli operation that cripples Iran's influence in Syria now that the rebellion has been crippled? If so, Assad needs to add his quiet assent quickly before Iran sinks its claws too deeply to be removed easily as Lebanon's experience with Hezbollah shows (and why we can't let up on pressure for Iraq to defeat and disband the pro-Iran militias there before it is too late):
Iranian military advisers in Syria are reportedly forming a new militia in the country under their supervision with the aim of boosting an Iranian agenda in the region, a rights group said in a recent report.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor that has researchers across Syria, said in a recent report that Iran has recruited at least 1,200 militiamen from different parts of Syria to form the new military force.
Past Iranian efforts were different by focusing on local defense forces in the context of the civil war. By recruiting across Syria, Iran can hope to have a post-civil war offensive force not tied to self defense and not controlled by Assad. So that is very different. Different enough to be a threat to Assad.
Mind you, that joint Russian-Israeli focus would include America and our allies as "foreign forces." As long as the Syrian Kurds and Assad can come to an agreement on local autonomy, we have no reason to remain on the ground in eastern Syria if Iran is ejected, too. We could count on locals to control the ground to deny ISIL safe haven and identify targets for our air power if such a threat does regenerate.
Well, assuming that an isolated Turkey is contained and blocked from going after the Syrian Kurds.
UPDATE: Well that's interesting:
The U.S. military has deployed its most advanced air and missile defense system to Israel for the first time, U.S. and Israeli military officials said on Monday.
That would be THAAD, which is useful for shooting down longer-ranged ballistic missiles (but not ICBMs). Like something launched from Iran, for example.
That would be a useful asset and deterrent to prevent Iran from intervening in a war between Israel and Hezbollah by firing missiles at Israel.
