On the Risks Facing Syria and Lebanon

Author: عبد المجيد سويلم

If the reports about the leaked security agreements between the Assad regime and the occupying state are true, and it is highly likely they are, as evidenced by the absence of any "denial" from the Golan regime, which we have yet to hear and may never hear, then if the news is accurate, Syria as we have known it until today has been sold off, with at least ten thousand square kilometers of its territory carved out into regions that have exited the political jurisdiction, including the nominal jurisdiction of the "ruling" regime in Damascus.

Sweida has formed its own army and possesses regular forces with serious and heavy weapons, and it is no longer willing to return to a "central state" except on a federal basis that recognizes its "complete independence," except for some forms of shared services with other federations that are expected to be formed soon.

According to leaked news about the security agreement between the Golan regime and the occupying state, the entire Daraa region will be demilitarized, and local internal security will be the only form allowed by Israel.

As for the area controlled by the occupying state throughout southern Syria, it has been agreed that it will be entirely under Israeli security protection.

It is said, and it is highly likely that what has been said regarding the occupied Syrian Golan is an open lease for 25 years, with reports of a 50-year automatic renewal, thus effectively transforming the Zionist state's decision for final annexation into a decision approved by Syria through the open lease formula.

As for the "SDF" region, the "hope" of its entry into the framework of the supposed "central state" has ended, and the matter has been settled towards a region, as part of the future federal system.

The northern Syrian countryside of Aleppo and Idlib remains entirely under Turkey's temporary guardianship until a region is established in the new federal system, while the fate of the Syrian coast is left to upcoming developments, as the entire coast and the Alawite Mountain remain without direct guardianship from anyone so far.

Turkey has understood the lesson well, and the most important thing it has understood is that it no longer has a long reach, after the Golan regime aligned itself with the United States and Israeli hegemony, and even its short reach will be amputated if it attempts to rebel against the new reality.

Turkey has fallen into the trap that was set for it, or it has ensnared itself in it, and it is no longer capable of changing this equation unless it uses its strong cards, or those it still believes are strong against the Golan regime itself, which is a matter fraught with great risks for the Turkish state itself.

With the new agreements that have leaked, the Turkish state has been stripped of the sources of strength in its regional role, has been constrained, and has retreated into Turkish territory practically, as it has lost the advantage of confronting the "SDF" forces, and has lost control over the groups that now form the backbone of the Golan regime's power, and its role as a guardian is now a temporary one until the official "announcement" of the new federal system. Even its role in Azerbaijan is no longer decisive after Iran and Russia objected to the project of transforming the Armenian-Azerbaijani region into an investment corridor that encircles Iran and affects the geography of the Russian state's vital space.

Not only that, but Turkey and Qatar are no longer willing to support rapid economic recovery operations in Syria as long as the alignment of the Golan regime with the new security agreements has directly contributed to besieging Turkey's regional role amid the tragic deterioration of living conditions in Syria, with 90% of discussions about upcoming investments turning into sales of state assets in real estate and land in particular, and the sale of these assets has turned into massive operations of corruption, bribery, and the division of spoils among warlords, new leaders, and the "international forces" coming from China, Uzbekistan, Chechnya, and other countries that export armed militants and terrorists overseen by Western intelligence for many years. Not to mention, of course, that thousands of leaders of "Nusra" are fully aware of the relationship that binds them to Israeli intelligence.

Thus, Syria as we have known it until today has been transformed into a failed and incapacitated state, possessing nothing but the ability to sell and lease what it has seized from assets and wealth, in order to keep the Golan regime in power until the day comes to rid itself of it, either at the hands of the Americans and the occupying state, or at the hands of Turkey if it still thinks of any future regional role, and the "Sunnis of the Levant" themselves are allies of Turkey, and they are no longer allies of the Golan regime.

It is clear that Donald Trump has abandoned his country's direct role in the Levant in favor of the Israeli role, while taking on the direct role in Iran and the Gulf region, and thus the new Syrian role is to play with Lebanese cards after the latter has turned into a system whose political jurisdiction is confined to the four cities: Damascus, Hama, Homs, and part of Aleppo.

After the failure of attempts to disarm the Lebanese "Hezbollah," and the Americans' failure to force the occupying state to stop its aggressions and withdraw from the five hills, the only possible solution now is to explode the internal Lebanese situation, hoping to build a "Sunni-Christian" alliance with the help of the Golan regime to force the Shiite component to "submit" to a new equation based on the displacement of the people of the south, and transforming the south into a real estate investment area connected to an investment project extending into Syria in areas being carved out in favor of these trends that have been dubbed the upcoming "prosperity" phase, and are being promoted by Tom Barrack himself.

If the new attempt to explode Lebanon fails, and to besiege the Shiite component, the American-Zionist alliance will resort to dividing Lebanon into a "Christian" protectorate, a "Druze Mountain," and a Sunni alliance with the Assad regime that may reach the carving out of Tripoli, while keeping western Beirut as a contact and conflict area between Sunnis and Shiites, as some estimates and information in Western and Arab intelligence circles suggest.

The new Lebanese equation is becoming clearer day by day, presenting it with two options, with no third option:

Either a state that submits to Israeli control over the south, and its acceptance here means its satisfaction with sovereignty outside the scope of Israeli hegemony, that is, submission to that hegemony, or internal conflict, and federalizing the Lebanese situation among regions that do not coexist with each other on constitutional or charter bases, including the "Taif" formula, but rather on the basis of sectarian and religious groups with their own governments and jurisdictions.

The formulas that the occupying state is considering for Lebanon are either a completely subservient state or no state at all, and after exhausting the Golan regime's project and its inevitable failure, Syria will return to the same equation, either a federal state at best that turns Syria into regions that are only connected to the motherland (Syria) by a crippled economic system and security protections that do not pose any threat of any kind.

This is what the policy and national security research centers in the occupying state are thinking about, and they feed the corresponding centers in America, and the "fascist right" in the occupying state goes further than that, as everything is still under discussion, and the Israeli geographical expansion may be the first item on the agenda before the arrangements we mentioned.

This is what they see and what they plan for, but all of this will not see the light of day, nor is it destined to happen, and it is unlikely to occur, because the occupying state has reached the highest levels of internal weakness that do not qualify it to perform these roles in the visible reality, and it will collapse internally before it can move forward with these plans, and its rhetoric contains more empty ideologies than it does facts and realities that can transform into real equations.