Cables From The Diplomatic Frontlines - Syria implications: Israeli airstrikes, calculus, and unintended risks.

Israel captures a buffer zone and launches preemptive airstrikes.

• Israel's military response to the new status quo in Syria has caused a lot of controversy.

• Specifically, the extension of the buffer zone in the Golan Heights area and the capture of Mount Hermon, raised the worries that Israel was on the path for additional territorial expansion.

• In addition, more than 350 airstrikes on Syrian airfields, air force assets, and a navy base in Latakia and strategic weapons reserve sites (allegedly mostly chemical weapons), have led to a lot of commentary critical of Netanyahu's actions.

• Indeed, that Syria didn’t destroy all of its (declared - but probably much bigger stockpile) 1,300 tons of chemical warfare agents and precursors and 1,230 unfilled WMD-delivery munitions (across 41 facilities at 23 different locations) after 2013 (when it joined the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC)) is obvious: since (they were used in 2017 - prompting Trump to order Tomahawk cruise missile strikes on the relevant air bases from which they were deployed.)

• And just last year, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) reported that the Assad regime may possess undeclared stockpiles of chemical weapons.

• (side note: as part of the West’s normalization with the HTS, there should be a requirement that the new Syrian government commits to joining all chemical and biological weapons conventions, and welcome UN inspectors to verify that no chemical weapons remain in the country. Indeed, the requirement that all of these stockpiles must be verifiably destroyed could then be used as yet another milestone on the path of lifting the foreign terrorist organization designation on Syrian rebel groups like the HTS.)

• In spite of all this, many analysts are quick to condemn these actions by labeling them as opportunistic attacks to weaken the neighboring state that is currently in the process of a rebirth.

• And indeed the UN called on Israel to halt these attacks.

• However, it is improper to characterize the strikes with a broad brush: either defending them or condemning them definitively.

• There's a lot of nuance here, and multiple different factors, interests, and angles need to be taken into consideration.

Israeli interests and potential pitfalls.