Daily Times

On 14 April 2018, the world heard the tidings that the US in coalition with Great Britain and France launched a military attack on Syria against the chemical attack in Douma. Syrian conflict erupted in the year 2011 during the Arab spring, which overthrew many Arab countries. The Syrian government is famous for using chemical attacks against their own civilians, and there is no question about the fact that the recent chemical attack in Douma on April 7 was carried out by the Syrian Air Force that killed at least 75 people, including children and women. However, the Syrian government has denied it.

The US-led coalition attack was a non-accomplished military mission that left many doubts. The western collation fired 103 — and in some news 120 — Tomahawk missiles. Of them, 70 missiles were intercepted by the Syrian missile defence system, as claimed by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights established in the UK. The attacks were only carried out against the chemical factories, not against the military facilities. The Russian Federation had already admonished the US that if their missiles hit Russian bases or any single Russian army personnel, the new war would start against the US and the West. Surprisingly, in the recent attacks, none of the Russian or Syrian military or civilian individual was hit by the US coalition attacks.

The attacks only seemed a threat or warning, nothing more, and such types of warnings do not bring Assad down. Syrian President Bashar al Assad has become more potent since he united the Russian Federation in coalition and successfully defeated the IS (Islamic State) in Syria. Russia is a new global superpower in the region, and it holds veto power in the security council, which is a great support for the Syrian president Assad to remain in power. The King of Saudi Arabia Salman bin Abdel Aziz’s first official visit to Russia in October 2017 acknowledged the new authority of Russia in the Middle East. Russia has many military bases in the Middle East, and three of them are in Syria, which control the Russian interests in the region. Saudi Arabia is a leading actor in the Syrian war theatre and has maintained mutual cooperation with Russia. The Kingdom knows very well that without collaboration with Russia, it cannot run the show in the theatre. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia realised that the US or the Western countries are not capable of kneeling Russia down, so the only option left is to establish a political dialogue with Russians in terms of reducing Iranian influence in the region.

On 7 April 2018, Syrian government conducted heinous acts against humanity by using chemical weapons against unarmed civilians and on 9 April 2018, just two days after the chemical onslaught, the state of Israel launched missile attacks in Syria that killed several Iranian militias and eradicated their military installations. Israel is a hugely capable state since it can launch military strikes against its enemy countries whenever it feels the national threat. It is not the first time, but there are many occasions in which Israel has launched missiles in Syria regarding Iranian activities near her border.

In a recent retaliation from Israel against Iran’s attack, where its private militias fired 20 rockets into Israel, the Israeli military conducted the most extensive strike against the Iranian military bases in Syria, in which dozens of installations had been completely destroyed and more than two dozen foreign military personals also killed. Israel’s 28 air fighter jets participated in an air military operation and fired around 70 missiles against the successful targets.

Iran is growing its military and intel force in Syria and is using Lebanon based Shia militia, the Hezbollah, to carry out clandestine operations against the national interests of Israel and the Gulf states

Israel has a strong intelligence network in the region and the US intelligence services conduct intelligence operations in collaboration with the Israeli intelligence services. Israeli Human Intel (HUMINT) is far stronger and active than the US one in the Middle East, especially when the Middle Eastern countries lost their trust and reduced their cooperation by sharing the intel with the US Intelligence service ever since America’s relations with Iran stabilised under the Obama presidential term. No doubt, Iran is a fast-growing menace in the Arab region, and its influence is spreading rapidly around the Arab Sunni countries, from the border of Iran to the border of Israel, which covers Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen and Bahrain, where the majority of the population belongs to the Shia sect. The rising influence of Iran is not entirely a direct peril to the Sunni Arab states, but likewise to her historical rival, the nation of Israel, whom Iran threatened to wipe out from the map of the universe.

The US betrayal to the Arab countries brought new and imminent ties with Israel. The Arab nations had fought three major wars against the Jewish state but lost all battles badly. Today, Arab countries see Israel as their only option because no Arab country is more militarily capable of fighting with Iran than Israel. Therefore, their only opportunity to defeat Iran is to shake hands with their old opponent Israel, which is far more powerful not only to fend for her borders but to secure Arab countries, respectfully, through sharing the intelligence.

In the past, the world has seen that Israel successfully accomplished air operations to destroy the Iraqi nuclear reactors in the 1980s and no Arab country dared to challenge such Israeli operation. Israel is also close to completing its political and diplomatic war against Iran’s nuclear project and it would not hesitate to consider any military action against Iran if it sees the West and the US are failing to stop Iran from making a nuclear reactor which would be the direct threat to the survival of the lone Jewish state. Despite the fact that Israel has conducted many successful but unknown intel operations in the region, it also has a great military technology in the space that traverses the entire Middle East map to keep an optic on the enemy’s move. Israel has many intelligence stations in the Middle Eastern countries that provide the comprehensive human intel on a daily basis, but since the Gulf countries joined Israel’s Intelligence Sharing Network (ISN), it boosted Israeli intelligence network up to the level where no western intel network can reach but collaborate with Israeli counterparts.

The Gulf countries still cooperate with the US Intel departments, but it is a fact that the US has greatly lost its HUMINT in the Middle East for few strong reasons. a) Rising Russian influence; b) Iranian alliance with Qatar; c) Gulf countries’ collaboration with Israel in the Middle East. There are few other strong reasons that declined the US Intelligence Sharing Network (INS) in the Middle East, and they have limited resources to gather the sold and secrete intel without the assistance of Israel. Another main reason the US Intel departments’ capability to obtain the comprehensive intel has weakened is that they have lost the people’s hope on them. The people of the Gulf countries have started considering the US as an untrusted ally which can abandon them whenever its interest finishes. These perceptions lead to the failure of the US operations in the burning region.

According to the Institute for National Security Institute (INSS) Israel, report:

“The Global war on terror, particularly in the Middle East region, had been totally dependent upon HUMINT methods. By removing the HUMINT factor from intelligence operations, the reliance on technical means of intelligence gathering supersedes all other forms of intelligence collection.”

The HUMINT has been collected mostly through interrogations and by using the method of torture by the US authorities in the region, but since the Obama administration came into power, they immediately stopped using the method of HUMINT in the regions. In the first six months of the Obama’s presidential term, the HUMINT resource dropped greatly, and it did not only weaken the US Intel capability but the defence posture as well for the next several years in the Middle East.

Iran is growing its military and intel force in Syria and is using Lebanon based Shia militia, the Hezbollah, to carry out clandestine operations against the national interests of Israel and the Gulf states. Iran is the only country after the state of Israel that can both openly and secretly fight on many fronts in the region. There are many examples that Iranians are fighting in many Middle Eastern fronts such as Yemen (against KSA), Iraq, Lebanon (against Israel), Syria (against the West) and many secret intel operations to destabilise Arab countries.

The Gulf countries should be united to counter Iran’s influence in the Arab peninsula. They should fully cooperate with the state of Israel. But, first of all, they have to defend their national boundaries and secure themselves from the local insurgencies within their borders supported and trained by foreign states.

The writer is a author of books, director of the Middle East Affairs at CommandEleven. He is a counter terrorism researcher based in the UK. Twitter @DahriNoor2

Published in Daily Times, May 25^th 2018.