(Dec. 20, 2024 / JNS) A few months ago, some of the rebel leaders in Syria contacted Mordechai Kedar, a renowned Israeli scholar of the Middle East, specializing in Arab culture. They proposed that he come to the Idlib region in northwestern Syria, where they had been spearheading their activity and preparations for the final push towards the great revolution.

“Come to Turkey, and we’ll pick you up from there,” they suggested.

Kedar was keen to meet them. His contacts sought coordination and ties with Israel. They saw in Kedar, a feisty academic with whom they were familiar from his frequent appearances on the Qatari TV channel Al-Jazeera, a potential go-between between themselves and the Israeli establishment.

However, the way to the rebel stronghold passed through Turkey, with a connecting flight from Istanbul. Kedar, who has often lambasted Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in his articles, was told that it might be wiser for him to avoid getting involved in such an adventure. So he eventually decided to give up on the idea.

A few days before the rebels defeated the regime of Bashar al-Assad and the masses toppled his statues across Damascus and Homs, once again Kedar received messages from the rebel organizations. The first one came from Muhammad A, one of the members of the National Coordination Committee for Democratic Change, who wrote to him as follows: “We shall build a relationship of friendship, love, and brotherhood with our brothers and sisters in Israel and shall be a role model for all the regional states.”

The second message was from Fahad al-Masri, a member of the Syrian National Salvation Front and one of the rebel leaders, currently in France. Al-Masri wrote that the Israeli flag would soon be flying over the Iranian embassy in Damascus and Beirut.

Kedar passed on these overtures to the political and security establishment in Israel. Only a few days later, he gazed in wonder at the lightning-fast fall of the Assad regime and the ensuing flight of its soldiers. Did Israel play a part in the rebels’ victory? Kedar said he doesn’t know, but noted that “the routing of Hezbollah, the rebels’ biggest enemy, considerably helped them.”

‘THE SUNNIS CAN SMELL BLOOD’

Mordechai Kedar is 72 years old, a reserve lieutenant colonel who served for 25 years in the Israel Defense Forces’ now famous military intelligence Unit 8200. He is now closely monitoring the developments in Syria.

Q: Over a decade ago, the current leader of the rebels, Abu Mohammed al-Julani, in conjunction with others, founded a branch of ISIL in Syria, as well as a Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda, Jabhat al-Nusra. In 2013, the United States offered a bounty of $10 million for him. This does not exactly dovetail with the spirit of moderation and reconciliation in the messages that you’ve been receiving.

A: You’re absolutely right, and so we really need to wait and judge the developments based on the reality of the situation and their actions. At least from al-Julani’s initial announcements, he appears to be trying to portray an image of a new and legitimate Syrian leader. He has asked his men not to fire in the air so as not to injure anybody. He has also asked them to refrain from burning down government ministries as these offices are “the property of the Syrian people.” He has left Assad’s government intact, cognizant of the fact that the state and its civil institutions—sewage, electricity, the health system and hospitals—need to continue to function. So far, he has behaved in a relatively rational manner. On the other hand, there have already been incidents of rebels abducting women, murdering and abusing supporters of the fallen regime, and they even destroyed a church. We must be ready for any eventuality.

Q: You and other experts have described the recent events in Syria as another heavy blow to Iran, which has now lost an additional hub of power and influence. What should Israel do now?

A: I believe that this event will see Iran withdrawing further into itself. Iran has abandoned its proxies—Hamas, Hezbollah and Assad. The glue that has held the Shi’ite alliance together is now disintegrating, and the Sunnis can smell blood. The Sunnis are about to open a can of worms. I sense that Iraq, too, might disavow the Iranian presence there in the not-too-distant future, and we could even witness the fall of the Houthis in Yemen. The events in Syria have provided a real boost to the Sunnis everywhere, encouraging them to get organized against the Iranian presence. This ripple effect might even have an impact inside Iran too, mainly due to the active social media there and the ensuing potential for division.

Q: What is our place in the picture that you are portraying?

A: Together with others, we need to encourage the minorities in Iran to rise up against the Persian hegemony, both the religious leadership under the mullahs and also the secular leadership dating back to the period of the Shah of Iran [‪Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi]. In practice there is no Iranian people. There are Persians and other large groups, such as Baluchis, Arabs, Kurds, Azeris and Turkmen, alongside an additional 40 or so smaller groups. For years, there have been a large number of separatist groups trying to dismantle the Iranian state. We should attempt to encourage a similar process as that which deconstructed Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union, which were divided on an ethnic basis. I believe that in Iran today, at least 80 million out of the 90 million people there are over the moon about what has been happening in Syria, as this is a blow to the Iranian government and its plans to spread out over the entire Middle East.

Q: Is there also room for Israeli intervention in the new Syria, which is taking shape before our very eyes?

A: The answer is yes, but everything should be done with the utmost caution. The gigantic proportions of events there are opening up opportunities for us. We already have excellent ties with the Druze in southern Syria, and they are not hiding this fact. The Kurds too, with whom we had links in the past, are also a group with good potential.

WINNERS AND LOSERS

Among those set to profit from the new order in Syria and across the Middle East, which is currently being re-molded in front of our very eyes, Kedar lists the citizens of Syria, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, the government of Yemen, Erdoğan and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. 

Among the losers—Iran, former U.S. President Barack Obama, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris—”I intentionally listed Obama first as he invested heavily in the Iranians and Hezbollah”—Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Houthis in Yemen, the Shi’ite militias in Iraq and Russia.

Kedar wrote his PhD dissertation (which he then turned into a book, titled “Asad in Search of Legitimacy”) on Syria under Hafiz al-Assad (Bashar’s father).

“The question arose among academic scholars as to just how popular Assad was among the masses,” Kedar explained. “All that both Assad the father and his son ever did was an attempt to generate legitimacy for themselves, when it is now clear to all and sundry that all their actions were as far from legitimacy as you can get. … Many people regarded Assad as a man who succeeded in having stabilized his country. That is how he managed to buy legitimacy for himself. I bitterly disagreed with them,” he said.

Kedar mapped out the sequence of events that have taken place in the “New Middle East” that is currently taking shape, and what perhaps is yet to come.

“It began with Hamas, then progressed to Lebanon, Hezbollah, Syria, and could apparently continue to Iraq and then further inland into Iran itself, to whose eventual dissolution we too here in Israel can certainly contribute,” he said.