On Wednesday, forces fighting for the Syria-Russia-Iran alliance deliberately opened fire with tanks and artillery on U.S.-backed forces, crossing the “deconfliction” line established to separate the two parties. The U.S. responded forcefully, killing some 100 of Bashar al-Assad’s troops. On Saturday, Israel shot down an Iranian drone in its airspace and subsequently lost an F-16 during a retaliatory raid. In turn, Jerusalem responded with intensive airstrikes that reportedly destroyed nearly half of Syria’s air defenses. All of these events represent serious escalations of Syria-related turmoil, which, far from winding down with the collapse of Islamic State (IS) and the major territorial losses suffered by anti-Assad opposition, may be expanding. Christopher Kozak writes:

Israel and the Russo-Iranian coalition are poised for future conflict over the Golan Heights. Iran and Lebanese Hizballah have entrenched a network of foreign and domestic proxies across Syria under the umbrella of Russian armed forces. Iran and Hizballah have also exploited the terms of the de-escalation zone brokered by Russia, Jordan, and the U.S. in southern Syria to develop further their military infrastructure along the Golan. Israel and the U.S. have failed meaningfully to constrain or reverse this trend. . . .

The Syrian civil war is not over. The wars after IS have begun. Syria remains a dangerous nexus for overlapping regional conflicts and great-power struggle despite the claimed defeat of Islamic State in eastern Syria. The confrontation between Iran and Israel in Syria is only one of the fissures that will fuel the next stage of the Syrian civil war. Turkey opened its direct conflict against the Syrian-Kurdish YPG with its military intervention into the majority-Kurdish Afrin canton in northern Syria on January 20. Turkey, Iran, and Russia are also engaged in a three-way struggle over the long-term future of the opposition-held Idlib province that resulted in the downing of a Russian Su-25 [plane] on February 3. . . .

The increasing tempo of these incidents is not a coincidence but rather the predictable outcome [of everything that has happened until now]. The U.S. has long attempted to distance the anti-IS campaign from the wider context of the Syrian civil war. This artificial division is not—and was not—sustainable. The U.S. must craft a coherent strategy to meet this new reality lest it find itself reactively mired in the next phase of the Syrian civil war.

If Iran succeeds in obtaining nuclear weapons, the war in Gaza, let alone the protests on college campuses, will seem like a minor complication. Jonathan Schachter fears that this danger could be much more imminent than decisionmakers in Jerusalem and Washington believe. In his view, Israel seems to be repeating the mistake that allowed it to be taken by surprise on Simchat Torah of 2023 and Yom Kippur of 1973: putting too much faith in an intelligence concept that could be wrong.

Israel and the United States apparently believe that despite Iran’s well-documented progress in developing capabilities necessary for producing and delivering nuclear weapons, as well as its extensive and ongoing record of violating its international nuclear obligations, there is no acute crisis because building a bomb would take time, would be observable, and could be stopped by force. Taken together, these assumptions and their moderating impact on Israeli and American policy form a new Iran concept reminiscent of its 1973 namesake and of the systemic failures that preceded the October 7 massacre.

Meanwhile, most of the restrictions put in place by the 2015 nuclear deal will expire by the end of next year, rendering the question of Iran’s adherence moot. And the forces that could be taking action aren’t:

The European Union regularly issues boilerplate press releases asserting its members’ “grave concern.” American decisionmakers and spokespeople have created the unmistakable impression that their reservations about the use of force are stronger than their commitment to use force to prevent an Iranian atomic bomb. At the same time, the U.S. refuses to enforce its own sanctions comprehensively: Iranian oil exports (especially to China) and foreign-currency reserves have ballooned since January 2021, when the Biden administration took office.

Israel’s response has also been sluggish and ambiguous. Despite its oft-stated policy of never allowing a nuclear Iran, Israel’s words and deeds have sent mixed messages to allies and adversaries—perhaps inadvertently reinforcing the prevailing sense in Washington and elsewhere that Iran’s nuclear efforts do not present an exigent crisis.