Iran, Israel Need to Talk About Syria
Meir Javedanfar writes that Iran, Hezbollah and Israel share a common and deadly enemy in Jabhat al-Nusra and radical Salafist groups, whose influence is growing.
Israel and Iran's ally Hezbollah will soon miss the old days of fighting each other.
The reason: Fundamentalist al-Qaeda-affiliated movements who hate both Jews and Shiites with a passion are emerging in Syria. These include groups such as Jabhat al-Nusra, which has openly and publicly pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda commander Ayman Al Zawahri.
Such groups are growing in numbers. According to an article in the Small Wars Journal quoting the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights report for December 2012, “Newly formed opposition groups are more likely to affiliate and attach themselves to Islamist factions such as Jabhat al-Nusra than to the FSA [Free Syrian Army] or other less radical opposition groups.”
Hezbollah is already facing such groups in Syria, causing it to lose four to five fighters a day. Once Assad falls or even before, extremist al-Qaeda-affiliated groups are very likely to increase the ferociousness of their attacks against Shiites and Alawites living in Syria. Bosnia-style massacres or even larger ones can not be ruled out. Such groups could also start attacking Hezbollah-controlled points on Lebanon's border with Syria. There is also a significant chance that they will try to permeate Lebanon in order to attack its Shiite citizens using suicide bombers — a well known method used by al-Qaeda against Shiites in Iraq for many years.
