George Friedman on Regional Fallout of the Syrian Crisis (Agenda)
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Editor’s Note: Transcripts are generated using speech-recognition technology. Therefore, Stratfor cannot guarantee their complete accuracy.
Video Transcript:
Colin Chapman: The mixed messages from the Middle East this week have left many confused. Defections from the al Assad regime, including the prime minister, a pullback by rebel forces in Aleppo, the detention in Lebanon of a pro-Syrian former minister and rising tensions in Egypt and Iraq are just part of the mix.
Welcome to Agenda with George Friedman. And George, let's start with what the media billed as a defeat for rebels in Aleppo.
George Friedman: But I don't think the battle is really in the streets of Aleppo. The battle right now and where Assad is fighting for his life is within his own regime. The defections that are developing are getting pretty significant. And the question that is going on in the minds of many supporters of al Assad is that if they stay too long with al Assad, they may well wind up victims of the revolution, of foreign intervention or anything else. Whereas if they defect, they may play some role in the future of Syria and the problem al Assad has is he's surrounded by people carefully making these calculations. And more of them are choosing to abandon him. The army is still fighting, not as effectively apparently as it was before. But at a certain point to defections and higher levels are going to be reflected in defections and other levels and the question is how long is it going to hold together. The Alawite faction that he's part of has many reasons to stay together. And at the same time, they have reasons to make deals without al Assad if that's necessary. So rather than worrying about the battle of Aleppo, which is not trivial by any means -- people are dying there -- or what's happening in Damascus, I think the real focus has to be on what is happening among al Assad's supporters. How are they calculating their future? And the end could come suddenly -- suddenly in the sense that a sufficient number of his supporters decide that they're going to try to save the regime without saving al Assad and create a new regime. Some his supporters -- the Tlass family, who are Sunni -- have left the country. They met recently with Foreign Minister Davutoglu who was very friendly to them, so they are fairly high profile in the region and they are among many who are jockeying for this succession. It's not very healthy to have a regime where everybody is jockeying for succession. So it is possible it will last a long time, but it's starting to look to me like something that has a much shorter runway.
Colin: In the absence of Western intervention, what are possible scenarios if these defections continue?
George: Well first, I think there is a Western intervention. It is not military intervention overtly, but there's political intervention, aid and I have no knowledge of this but I wouldn't be surprised to find that Western special operations groups are training the resistance, organizing them and so on. So there's weight coming in from the outside. The probable … there are two outcomes that are possible, which is to complete collapse of the regime and the creation of a brand new one. Given the nature of the opposition, that's going to be extremely difficult; it's very fractured. It's not altogether representative. They are united in opposing al Assad but divided in many other ways. The other strategy, which I think is emerging, is the idea of eliminating Assad and some and his family and closest supporters by various means that we can imagine -- anything from assassination to defection or leaving for another country if they can find a place to go -- and replacing him with a coalition of the opposition and some former members of the regime. That would have the advantage from the West point of view of continuity and avoid destabilization. So you'd however regime that is still capable of doing the things that the regime does without having to invent it de novo. I think the most likely scenario in my mind is something that goes along that direction, because the neighbors of Syria, particularly the Turks and Israelis, are really afraid of an Iraq-sort of situation -- of high fragmentation, total chaos and it's spilling across their borders. And they and their western allies I think are going to try to manage this to some sort of landing. Unfortunately, many of the members of the Syrian regime who themselves have been fairly serious abusers of human rights are likely to survive within that regime under that scenario so that will receive international opposition. It is a very difficult thing to do but I doubt … but the one outcome that I am increasingly doubting is that this regime with al Assad as its head is going to survive.
Colin: You mentioned Israel. They're nervous about Syria. They may try to take out Syria's chemical weapons and they talk about acting against Iran. And then there's instability in Egypt and this week's actions in the Sinai.
George: What I would say about Israel is that its fears have outstripped its resources. It's in a region where, as you said, Egypt has destabilized; it appears that the regime is cracking down in the Sinai. It's not certain yet whether it'll succeed. Syria has destabilized. Lebanon, as a result of this, may destabilize. And they're worried about Iran a thousand miles away and what to do about their nuclear capability. Israel is a significant power in the region. But it's still a very small power, and its ability to handle all of these things simultaneously is not obvious. So Prime Minister Netanyahu speaks about striking Iran. They also speak about engaging in Syria over the chemical weapons, engaging in Lebanon over the chemical weapons, they have to maintain an over watch on the Sinai desert. Boy, that's a lot of things for them to be trying to do, and it's unlikely that they're going to be able to do it. The memories of the 2006 war against Hezbollah where the Israelis were at least stalemated if not defeated certainly weighs heavily. The military has trained very carefully not to have that happen again. But the problem is that chemical weapons are not along the border -- they're deep inside the country, deep inside Syria. The quality of Israeli intelligence as to where it's located is uncertain. Certainly they want to do something about it, but wanting to do something about it and being able to be effective in doing something about it are two different things. I've no doubt that if they focused on that alone they could carry out necessary operations. But they're talking about an awful lot of things that they're going to do in a very short period of time. And they're going to have to choose carefully.
Colin: And then there's the spread of the conflict to Lebanon.
George: The issue in my mind is not really whether Syria is going to destabilize Lebanon. It's whether both are going to become equally unstable at the same time, which is why when I spoke about the scenario of saving the regime without saving al Assad and why that's so attractive to Western governments even if it's abhorrent to some others, this is a strategy that is going to have the best chance of stabilizing the situation. But Lebanon can very well become chaotic again, especially as people are starting to arrest people who support Assad and so on and so forth. As you go into that scenario, the chance of conflict in Lebanon is substantial.
Colin: We're nearly out of time. One final observation?
George: Well, I mean, the battle of Syria is really the battle of Iran. Iran has been on a role. If al Assad survived, Iran being a tremendously powerful position. But if al Assad doesn't survive, which I think he's not going to, you're in a situation in which Iran has suffered a very serious reversal by losing an ally. That raises questions of what's going to happen in Iraq -- we've already seen al Qaeda strike in one situation. The politicians there are recalculating just how strong Iran is. And whereas previously had been indifferent to unrest inside Iran or in my view of the green revolution was that it wasn't much or revolution was easily suppressed. You have to wonder with Ahmadinejad, Ayatollah Khomeini and its foreign policy that has now led them to defeat I think in Syria as well as a western sanction regime that apparently is having some significant effect on them. You know, how legitimate is this government going to be? I'm not saying the regime will fall. But there are a lot of people in the regime who are enemies of Ahmadinejad and want a sort of different regime. And they may gain power So I think the most interesting thing to watch here as the agony of Syria plays itself out is how it impacts Iran, and that in fact be more substantial than people are expecting.
Colin: George Friedman ending Agenda this week. Thanks for being with us at Stratfor. Bye for now.
