THE PINCH
businessinsider.com
The easiest way to achieve regime change is no mystery to policymakers or to Pentagon war planners. Its initial phase might be called regime isolation. The United States should degrade or destroy the Assad regime’s aerial resupply capacity. This would entail no deployment of U.S. forces to Syria, nor would it spell the collapse of the regime overnight. But it would hinder his ability to move men and weapons around inside Syria.
The strategy would have the added benefit of isolating Syria from its allies. Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, has repeatedly downplayed the importance of the Syrian Air Force, claiming, for instance, that of all the Syrian fatalities in the two-and-a-half-year war, only about a tenth have been caused by rockets and bombs dropped from Assad’s aircraft. But this statistic elides a more important aspect of the regime’s use of airports, helicopters, and planes: Russian and Iranian military and commercial planes arrive daily to offload weapons (some of them advanced air or sea defense systems), ammunition, and personnel. Iran is spending an estimated $500 million a month to keep its ally afloat.
As a consequence, Iran has virtually inherited the Syrian security portfolio. By Syrian security officials’ own admission, Iran and Hezbollah have helped Damascus construct a 100,000-strong sectarian militia called the National Defense Force, without which, as The Wall Street Journal concluded on August 26, those recent regime victories in Homs would simply not have been possible. In some cases, Iran has even been flying conscripts for the National Defense Force to Tehran where they receive guerrilla warfare training. Because all of Syria’s borders -- save the one with Lebanon -- are either controlled by the rebels (Turkey, Jordan) or are easily monitored by them (Iraq), land transports of equipment and personnel are growing less frequent. But the shipments that make it to Damascus International Airport and Mezze airbase, which is controlled by the Fourth Armored Division and located southwest of the capital, are not.
So, it's as simple as this: if you take out the runways, Iranian and Russian planes cannot land, nor can Syrian planes take off.
The good news is that there aren’t many high-use tarmacs left to hit. Of the 27 airbases in Syria that are capable of assisting with the Syrian Air Force’s primary missions, just six are left in full use. The others are either rebel controlled or fiercely contested. Chris Harmer, senior naval analyst at the Institute for the Study of War, has shown that the Syrian Air Force is down to around 100 fixed-wing mission-ready aircraft. In a series of intricately detailed briefings, Harmer has also outlined a credible plan of action for seriously degrading Assad’s air capability without “any US aircraft entering Syrian air space.” Instead, the United States would rely chiefly on naval-launched cruise missiles or aircraft stand-off systems fired from international or allied territory. Israeli, Jordanian, Saudi Arabian, Turkish, and even Italian soil could all be used for this purpose. Those countries would all allow it, too.
Already, the USS Mahan, the USS Barry, the USS Ramage, and the USS Gravely -- all Arleigh Burke-class destroyers carrying Tomahawk land-attack missiles -- are en route or in position in the eastern Mediterranean. All are equipped with defensive weaponry against which any Syrian naval assault would be ineffective. (Tomahawks have a range of 1,000 nautical miles; Assad’s most advanced anti-ship missile, the P-800 Yakhont, has a range of 180.) The number of Tomahawks in the region could effectively double if the United States deploys attack or cruise missile submarines there, too. Furthermore, as Harmer notes, if the USS Harry Truman aircraft carrier division, which includes two Ticonderoga class cruisers and two additional Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, were repositioned from the Red Sea, where it is now, to the eastern Mediterranean, “it would significantly increase the striking power available to hit targets in Syria.” Targets for these munitions can and should include runways, stationary rotary and fixed-wing aircraft, air traffic control towers, army vehicles, air defense systems, naval ships, and regime headquarters.
SUNNI AWAKENING
No direct U.S. military engagement would work without a concomitant commitment to building up the armed opposition, which has also been a long-neglected official U.S. goal. A responsible and trustworthy rebel army could be tasked not only with fighting the regime and its manifold proxies but also with safeguarding U.S., European, and regional interests from the rise of extremists in the Levant.
Following Assad’s earlier violation of Obama’s red line on chemical weapons, the White House announced that it would begin sending light weapons to the Supreme Military Command, a United States-backed coordination and logistics umbrella for the Free Syrian Army (FSA) led by Salim Idris, a man with whom every Western intelligence agency has grown quite familiar. To date, however, few if any weapons have been delivered. The status quo policy of allowing indirect gun-running in the Gulf states does persist. |
