The Israeli prime minister helped topple Assad, but that wasn’t planned, analysts say

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed on Sunday that the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad in Syria was a direct result of Israeli actions in the region, which analysts in Israel were only partially true.

While under growing domestic pressure over the fate of Israeli hostages in Gaza and a corruption trial, Netanyahu said Assad’s death was “a direct result of the blows we inflicted on Iran and Hezbollah, Assad’s main supporters.”

Danny Citrinowicz, a research fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, told AFP that while it was true that Israel hastened events in Syria, Assad’s downfall was an unintended consequence.

“It’s obvious that what Israel did definitely led to this, but I doubt they had a strategy for it,” he said.

Netanyahu warned Assad on November 27, the day the Syrian rebel offensive began, that he was “playing with fire” by supporting Hezbollah and helping transfer arms to Lebanon.

“But he never knew that Jolani wanted to launch an attack,” Citrinowicz said, referring to Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, the Islamist leader of the rebel group that led the offensive in Syria.

“And of course no one has calculated how the fact that Iran and Hezbollah are so weakened would affect Assad’s ability to protect himself and his regime.”

Analysts also pointed to Russia, a key backer of the military, being distracted by Ukraine as a factor that led to Assad’s downfall, something that was beyond Netanyahu’s control.

Aviv Oreg, an analyst at the Meir Amit Center and a former military intelligence officer, said Netanyahu’s claims were somewhat legitimate.

“It’s like dominoes… you let the first one fall over, then the second one falls over and so on,” he told AFP.

He pointed out that attacks against Hezbollah in both Syria and Lebanon, which Israel dramatically escalated in late September, were a key factor in Assad’s downfall.

“Hezbollah had many, many troops in Syria and now they have left the country or moved away,” he said.

But he also drew attention to the Syrian rebels’ ability to “carry out such an aggressive offensive.”

– Change of strategy –

Analysts have also highlighted that Israel has not supported a change of government in Syria throughout the civil war.

Didier Billion of the IRIS think tank in Paris said in a speech before Assad’s ouster that Israel had long appeared to prefer “maintaining” Assad “to taking power by Islamists or jihadist groups.”

Oreg said that Netanyahu could not have predicted the consequences of Israel’s actions for Syria, but that the prime minister’s decision to quickly escalate the fight with Hezbollah was a “huge success, militarily.”

Hezbollah was a key supporter of Assad during the civil war, sending thousands of fighters.

Citrinowicz, however, said Netanyahu’s recent decisions represented a change in long-held strategies forced on him by the surprise Hamas attack on October 7, 2023.

Before the Gaza war, Netanyahu was “very afraid of kinetic interaction with the Axis,” Citrinowicz said, referring to Netanyahu’s reluctance to attack Iran’s network of anti-Israel militant groups, including Hezbollah.

Since the Hamas attack, however, Israel not only waged an all-out war with Hezbollah, but also killed most of the group’s top leadership, including longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah, as well as several Iranian commanders.

“There was no strategy, but it went so well that in retrospect you can say, ‘Amazing strategy,'” Citrinowicz said.

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