Washington Institute for Near East Studies: Assad was advised to stay away from the war in Gaza
Senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Studies, Andrew Tabler said that the few missile attacks from Syria towards the Israeli-occupied Golan heights, with most of the shells landing in open areas, are being read in the United States and elsewhere as a signal from the Syrian president Bashar al Assad that he wants to stay out of the ongoing war in Gaza.
According to Tabler, the Syria president’s remain on the sidelines of the Gaza war is due to his exhausted regime, in light of the deficit, hyperinflation, and loss of control over most of the country’s oil fields and agricultural lands, and that his military forces are weakly deployed and exposed to attacks from ISIS, and opposition factions in northern Syria.
Tabler noted that Russia and the UAE urged Assad to stay out of the Gaza war, and he believed that the continued de facto division of Syria between the United States, Türkiye, Russia, and Iran, especially the latter’s militias, which spent months striking US forces in eastern Syria, shows good reason for the advice that was given to him by Moscow and Abu Dhabi.
