Weekly Overview Cables - Ukraine war updates, Assad Regime falls.
Ukraine war updates
1) U.S. Military Aid: Antipersonnel Land Mines.
The United States has announced a $725 million military aid package for Ukraine, which includes antipersonnel land mines alongside other critical assets such as HIMARS rockets, NASAMS interceptors, and anti-tank systems.
This package represents a significant boost to Ukraine’s defensive capabilities:
Ukraine is expected to receive advanced systems like ADAM area-denial munitions, MOPMS, and Volcano scatterable mines.
These tools will allow rapid deployment of mines across contested zones, creating formidable barriers against Russian advances.
Mines have proven critical in disrupting Russian infantry operations, providing Ukraine with an effective tool to counterbalance Russia’s numerical advantages.
2) Ukraine’s Drone Program: Ambitions for 2025.
Ukraine’s innovative use of unmanned systems continues to redefine modern warfare.
Kyiv’s ambitions for 2025 reflect a shift toward developing advanced capabilities:
In 2025, Ukraine aims to produce 30,000 deep-strike drones capable of targeting Russian assets (especially the military-industrial production sites) far behind enemy lines.
Plans include deploying AI-enabled autonomous drones to enhance precision and survivability: a game-changer in drone-on-drone combat.
Both Ukraine and Russia are increasingly using fiber-optic-connected FPV drones to bypass electronic countermeasures.
Ukraine’s focus on innovation could give it a decisive edge in this domain.
3) Ukraine’s “Peklo” Long-Range Missile Enters the Battlefield.
Ukraine has officially unveiled its latest long-range strike weapon, the Peklo - marking a significant milestone in the country’s defense capabilities.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced the successful delivery of the first batch of these missiles to the Ukrainian Armed Forces, highlighting their immediate deployment in combat operations.
Initial reports suggest the Peklo boasts an impressive range of up to 700 km and a top speed of 700 km/h (and carrying a 50kg/110 pound payload).
While images depict a compact, cruise-missile-like design, the weapon has intriguingly been classified as a missile drone.
Assad Regime Falls: A New Balance of Power in Syria and the region Beyond.
Everyone reading these cables should be happy to see this vile Syrian dictator gone from the scene.
(side note: Assad escaped to Moscow - where he was granted asylum. Putin is now collecting failed dictators in Russia. Assad is now the second exiled dictator in Moscow - after Ukraine’s Yanukovich (who escaped in 2014.)
Unlike other dictators that sought national or personal glory and used terror and repression as a means to an end, Assad had no such minimally redeeming qualities that his supporters could have used in his defense.
This was a man defined by greed and sadism - willing to torture, kill, imprison, and displace hundreds of thousands of his own people, and for what?
All done solely for his own personal and familial enrichment - a parasite in a human form that sucked the life and wealth out of his own nation.
In a way, the sheer inexcusable injustice inflicted by Assad on his own people, and a total lack of defensibility of his actions (unless you are Tulsi Gabbard) made it easier for the Syrian people to get rid of him without many external powers trying hard to prevent his fall.
Indeed, one can imagine that if Assad had been a competent and/or reform-minded governor who resorted to repression as a means only, cynical foreign leaders may have been tempted to help him stay in power.
One can imagine a gullible and short-sighted admin like that of Biden’s (an admin known for all the worst possible decisions in the Middle East) finding a reason to back Assad against the ‘‘terrorists’’ taking him on.
(side note: there are good reasons to believe that these are in fact not actual Jihadis/terrorists like ISIS or AQI (Al-Qaeda in Iraq) - more on that later below)
After all, it was Biden that declared Saudi Arabia a ‘‘pariah’’ state for journalist-chopping (at the Saudi embassy in Istanbul) - yet then proceeded to fist bump the Saudi crown prince responsible for that very atrocity...
The fall of Assad’s rotten regime has not only redrawn the map of Syria, but has also shifted the broader regional balance of power.
There are naturally, wider regional implications that stem from this development.
We will discuss how the new configuration will affect Israel, the U.S. Iran, Russia, Turkey and key Arab states in the upcoming cables, but for now, we will highlight some key early observations:
1) Assad could have possibly prevented this outcome by acquiescing to Turkish demands.
The rebel March on Aleppo and then onto Hama, Homs and Damascus started with a green light given by Turkey to the HTS and the SNA - two rebel factions that it backs.
But this green light wasn’t really inevitable.
The fundamental reality is that for Assad, all this could have potentially been prevented if he was to accept Erdogan’s ‘‘extended hands’’ (his own words) and negotiated a new relationship with Turkey this last summer.
The tentative normalization/renegotiation efforts last summer between Turkey and Syrian regime fell due to Assad’s rejection of Erdogan’s demands for an extensive buffer zone of at least 22 miles.
Assad was only happy with 8.
And now Assad is gone and Turkey-backed rebels occupy Damascus.
One wonders what the outcome may have been had Assad submitted to Turkish demands.
It is still possible that Turkey would still greenlight this offensive.
After all, Erdogan has an excellent sense of timing, and he greenlit this operation after seeing Iranian proxies and Hezbollah decimated in Syria (thanks to the Israeli pummeling).
But he may have also gone against this move - calculating that Turkish interests were sufficiently satisfied to risk any further campaigns in Syria.
2) Fall of Assad was the natural outcome - once no one else intervened.
It is important to note how no Syrian rose up to defend this regime.
There were mass defections and rebels were welcomed as liberators everywhere in Syria - especially in the heartlands of the regime in Damascus.
Note also how rebels would first take over prisons where political prisoners were being held.
Some of the footage coming out from these prisons is truly heartbreaking - people rotting away in horrific conditions and shocked at their own liberation by the rebels.
This regime lacked basic legitimacy and support from the people that it had tyrannized and Syrians of all stripes were happy to see them go.
Assad didn’t even have loyal commanders - many of them defected and cut deals with the rebels.
And this was always the natural outcome once foreign powers like Russia and Iran were unable/unwilling to come to Assad’s rescue.
It is also important to note that no one really helped these rebels directly - true, Turkey offered support and arms to both the HTS and the SNA.
But the actual campaign didn’t witness air cover/airsupport and/or missile strikes or even Turkish advisers on the ground.
The actual fighting was all done by the rebels - with zero access to airpower.
They simply marched onto Damascus in a blitz campaign without fighter jets /bombers clearing their way
On the contrary, it was Assad that still had access to airpower, and Russia did drop bombs on crucial targets to forestall rebels’ momentum - at the end, to no avail.
In fact, if one was to look at the latest military assessments conducted by the IISS, one would not bet on rebels estimated at a mere 10k soldiers vs Assad’s military estimated at 130k.
But rebels had something that Assad missed all along: power of Syrian people supporting their march onwards.
3) Assad was duplicitous and cynical to the very end.
Once it was clear that he was abandoned by Russia/Iran, Assad was willing to turn around and throw them under the bus.
It has been reported that as a last ditch effort, Assad reached out to the UAE, and asked to broker a deal with the U.S. and Israel - offering to kick out the IRGC/Iranian militia in return for help to stay in power.
(side note: and he did that because the U.S. was apparently willing to weaken sanctions on Assad in exchange for distancing from Iran. In other words, there was unfortunately a potential demand for his pathetic last attempt to stay in power.)
It is of course hilarious that Assad was trying to offer something that no longer even existed: there was no significant Iranian contingent remaining in the country at all.
(side note: it is also humiliating for countries like the UAE to oppose Assad for a decade, only to relent and restart his rehabilitation at the very end - for all of this embarrassing Machiavellian behavior to be wasted in the end..)
In fact, it was clear that Assad’s rule had ended once even the IRGC started to evacuate its last remaining assets.
(side note: there is a good FT report on how the leaders in Iran were aware of Assad’s treachery and backstabbing well before last week’s events. A senior Iranian official told FT: "For more than a year, it was clear his time had passed. He had become an obstacle, a liability ... His inaction cost us dearly, and he aligned himself with regional actors who promised him a future that never materialized.”)
But one can see how a gullible leader in Washington could have bought into this narrative of helping Assad against ‘‘terrorists’’ (ostensibly, a bigger of the two evils).
4) Assad-toppling Rebels have a potential to turn out well.
Rebel HTS leader Al-Jolani was interviewed by CNN - it is a must watch for all that worry excessively about the possibility of a ‘‘Jihadist terrorist takeover”.
Jolani is clearly very polished and astute - his comments were aimed at the ears of key decision-makers in the West.
But we don’t really need to take him on his words alone either..
After distancing itself from both ISIS and Al-Qaeda, HTS actually fought and killed members of these two Islamic terrorist organizations.
And it is a fact that Jolani’s governance of Idlib province in the north was thus far pretty exemplary (all things considered).
There wasn’t any sectarian/religious violence and discrimination in Idlib for the duration of the HTS rule thus far (6-7+ years - depending on how you count the actual start of the formal governance).
And all the evidence from liberated cities thus far points to HTS care to make sure that ethnic minorities and Christians were treated well.
Even a catholic bishop of Aleppo praised these rebels
(side note: and said Bishop was apparently (though unconfirmed) considered for a political governance role in Aleppo. But even if this was true, it is hard to see how the Vatican could approve a formal political role for its Bishop..)
5) The true scale of human suffering at the hands of Assad is hard to comprehend.
Social media is full of videos coming from Sednaya prison - the main location where political prisoners were being held.
The prison itself is a labyrinth and there are many cells that were hidden in underground dens and built into concrete.
Rebels are sometimes struggling to find the location of these cells (where the cries for help emanate from).
This is a good moment for the West to establish good relations with the new Syrian government and offer humanitarian assistance.
In addition, many government institutions were abandoned in short order - it will be interesting to see details of regime secrets in those files.
It would be particularly interesting to see if there were many western politicians and collaborators propping up this rotten regime.
6) Israeli interests receive a major boost - new opportunities open.
Netanyahu said that the toppling of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime represented a “historic day in the history of the Middle East” and that it was “a direct result of the blows we delivered to Iran and Hezbollah.”
Netanyahu also argued that Assad’s fall marked the collapse of “a key link in Iran’s axis of evil.”
He is correct in all these claims.
Israeli leaders must be pleased with the immediate outcome: the land corridor for Iran seems shut.
The rebels that took over Damascus are clear enemies of Iran and especially Hezbollah - whom they fought for many years.
On the other hand, there is so far no reason for rebels to butt heads with Israel.
With that said, Israeli troops occupied the buffer zone in Golan Heights - but this is reasonable given that Syrian troops simply abandoned their positions.
And the IDF did conduct airstrikes against Syrian military targets and air bases.
There were reportedly also strikes against the possible locations of chemical weapons.
It makes sense for Israel to destroy as many of these chemical weapons as possible - since if they were to fall into wrong hands, the repercussions could have been catastrophic.
But Netanyahu is also aware of opportunities for rapprochement - they and rebels have a common enemy: Iran/Hezbollah.
One should not discount the possibility of Iran concocting some form of a comeback via proxy militias - like they did in Iraq.
Opportunity for Iran to do precisely this will present especially if there was to be a lot of infighting between rebels that took over Syria.
And so it was prudent for Netanyahu to declare that Israel was ‘‘extending its hands’’ to the new political power in Syria.
And it would be even more prudent for rebels to accept this gesture and quickly establish civil ties with Israel.