The Predictable Treachery of Sharaa: From Rat Line to Capitulation
The reports of Ahmed al-Sharaa, Syria’s new president, entering “advanced security talks” with Israel under American mediation are being hailed by Western media as diplomacy and pragmatism. From a realist perspective, however, they represent the closing act of a carefully engineered strategy. What is presented as compromise is in fact capitulation. The Syrian state has been brought step by step to its knees, stripped of its autonomy, and forced into a settlement that cements Israel’s dominance.
This outcome has not come suddenly. Years before the outbreak of war, the United States had already built the scaffolding of regime change. Exile networks and opposition media were quietly cultivated to delegitimize Damascus and prepare a compliant political class. Barada TV, broadcasting from London, received millions of dollars in U.S. State Department funding between 2006 and 2011. The National Endowment for Democracy supported outlets such as Enab Baladi, which would later become prominent opposition voices. These efforts were not neutral “civil society support.” They were the slow assembly of an alternative Syrian elite ready to inherit the state under U.S. and Israeli terms.
When unrest spread in 2011, this political groundwork was matched with militarization. Seymour Hersh documented the covert “rat line,” an arrangement in which the CIA and MI6, financed by Gulf monarchies and routed through Turkey, smuggled Libyan weapons into Syria. The effect was to prolong the conflict and drain the state of capacity. The war quickly became a proxy contest, designed less to empower Syrians than to make Syria ungovernable and dependent.
The 2013 Ghouta chemical attack marked the moment of decisive delegitimization. United Nations inspectors confirmed that rockets carrying sarin had been used, and human rights organizations pointed to regime culpability. Whether or not alternative actors possessed such capabilities, the policy outcome was the same: Assad’s government was branded internationally as a pariah. The event provided Washington with leverage to threaten intervention and forced regime insiders to recognize that survival would mean accommodation on external terms. The truth of Ghouta became secondary to its utility.
The strategic rationale for all of this was laid bare in the Clinton emails later released by WikiLeaks. One memorandum argued explicitly that “the best way to help Israel deal with Iran’s growing nuclear capability is to help the people of Syria overthrow the regime of Bashar Assad.” The logic was clear. Removing Assad would cut Hezbollah’s overland supply line, isolate Iran, and free Israel from the permanent threat of a two-front war. Another note captured the cynical calculation in a single line: “AQ is on our side in Syria.” The meaning was unmistakable. As long as it weakened Damascus and constrained Hezbollah, almost any battlefield alignment was tolerable.
Today, Ahmed al-Sharaa embodies the fruition of that long plan. Having risen from jihadist commander to interim leader, he now serves as the acceptable face for surrender. His foreign minister, Asaad al-Shibani, met an Israeli delegation in Paris in mid-August 2025, while American envoy Thomas Barrack held parallel talks with Prime Minister Netanyahu and senior Israeli ministers. The objective was not peace but the re-activation of the 1974 disengagement regime on the Golan Heights. That agreement, reached after the October War, created a United Nations-monitored buffer and imposed strict limits on Syrian deployments in adjacent zones. What is being discussed now is a tightened version of the same, one that expands demilitarization on the Syrian side and prohibits categories of weapons Israel defines as threatening, while offering U.S. and Gulf rehabilitation packages in exchange.
For Israel this is a strategic prize. For decades, Syria provided the artery connecting Iran to Hezbollah. That corridor forced the Israel Defense Forces to keep substantial forces in the north, always mindful that a two-front war could erupt. By crippling Syria and locking it under a reinforced disengagement regime, Israel can now redeploy troops southward. The logistical pipeline to Hezbollah is degraded by constant Israeli strikes on convoys and depots inside Syria, and by Damascus’s own weakness. This reduction of northern pressure enables Israel to tighten its siege on Gaza with less fear of Hezbollah retaliation. The vision articulated in the Clinton memo—a Syria broken to relieve Israel’s security dilemmas—has been realized.
This settlement also integrates smoothly with Israeli doctrine. The Dahiya Doctrine, formulated after the 2006 Lebanon war, calls for disproportionate punishment to deter resistance. Its credibility depends on neutralizing Hezbollah’s depth. The Mabam strategy, Israel’s “Campaign Between Wars,” enshrines pre-emptive strikes on adversary build-ups. A fragmented and demilitarized Syria provides the permissive environment for these operations, which have become routine. What was once escalation is now normalization.
The re-activation of the 1974 agreement will be presented to the world as peace. In truth it cements Israel’s annexation of the Golan, removes Syria from the Palestinian file, and locks the country into a posture of permanent inferiority. Syria is folded into the normalization track not as a partner but as a defeated state.
The Syrian people have endured a double tragedy. They suffered first under Assad’s tyranny. They now suffer under a foreign-designed capitulation that strips their state of independence. Ahmed al-Sharaa’s diplomacy is not a national strategy. It is the final mask of defeat, the last step in a long plan that has achieved its aim: to dismantle the axis of resistance, weaken Hezbollah, and give Israel freedom to impose starvation on Gaza without fear of the north.
COMPASS, 25/08/2025
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