For Iran, the Turkish Invasion of Syria Is a Mixed Blessing

Since the Syrian civil war began, Tehran has firmly supported Bashar al-Assad while Ankara has aided those fighting against him. Thus, the Iranian president’s recent condemnation of the Turkish incursion into Syrian Kurdistan should come as no surprise. Yet, argues Doron Itzchakov, while Turkey is now helping Sunni Islamist groups seen by Iran as a threat, the two country’s interests are not entirely at odds:

Tehran does not want to risk its relationship with Ankara, which allows it to circumvent U.S. sanctions and constitutes an essential channel for the supply of Iranian gas to major European countries. . . . Kurdish national aspirations, [moreover], pose significant challenges to all four countries that contain large Kurdish populations, [of which Iran is one]. The precedent of a Kurdish autonomous territory in Syria is unacceptable to the Iranian establishment, which remembers the uprising that led to the establishment of [a short-lived Kurdish polity in Iran] in January 1946. . . .

[In fact], the Turkish offensive could advance Iranian interests. . . . The [recently concluded] defense agreement between the Kurds and the Assad regime, enabling the deployment of Syrian military forces in Syrian Kurdistan, will whet Iran’s appetite and prompt its Revolutionary Guards and their subordinate militias to consolidate their presence in northern Syria, with Assad’s approval. As has happened before, Iranian troops will be disguised by Syrian army uniforms.

The Iranian regime [also] has high hopes that the international community will turn its eyes to Turkish aggression. A global focus on Ankara’s actions will divert attention from Tehran’s attempt to expand its [own] strategic depth, as did the world’s attention to the problem of fighting Islamic State. . . . Iran is likely to make extensive use of the Turkish incursion into northern Syria to expand its hold on the region, with the aim of threatening Israel’s border.

Tehran’s condemnations of the Turkish invasion thus look like mere lip service, as the revolutionary regime may well benefit from the new situation created by the U.S. withdrawal. . . . For Israel, by contrast, this is a zero-sum game, because the promotion of Iranian interests is an inherent threat. Israel should prepare itself for challenges to come.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Hassan Rouhani, Iran, Israeli Security, Kurds, Syrian civil war, Turkey

 

It’s Time for Haredi Jews to Become Part of Israel’s Story

Unless the Supreme Court grants an extension from a recent ruling, on Monday the Israeli government will be required to withhold state funds from all yeshivas whose students don’t enlist in the IDF. The issue of draft exemptions for Haredim was already becoming more contentious than ever last year; it grew even more urgent after the beginning of the war, as the army for the first time in decades found itself suffering from a manpower crunch. Yehoshua Pfeffer, a haredi rabbi and writer, argues that haredi opposition to army service has become entirely disconnected from its original rationale:

The old imperative of “those outside of full-time Torah study must go to the army” was all but forgotten. . . . The fact that we do not enlist, all of us, regardless of how deeply we might be immersed in the sea of Torah, brings the wrath of Israeli society upon us, gives a bad name to all of haredi society, and desecrates the Name of Heaven. It might still bring harsh decrees upon the yeshiva world. It is time for us to engage in damage limitation.

In Pfeffer’s analysis, today’s haredi leaders, by declaring that they will fight the draft tooth and nail, are violating the explicit teachings of the very rabbis who created and supported the exemptions. He finds the current attempts by haredi publications to justify the status quo not only unconvincing but insincere. At the heart of the matter, according to Pfeffer, is a lack of haredi identification with Israel as a whole, a lack of feeling that the Israeli story is also the haredi story:

Today, it is high time we changed our tune. The new response to the demand for enlistment needs to state, first and foremost to ourselves, that this is our story. On the one hand, it is crucial to maintain and even strengthen our isolation from secular values and culture. . . . On the other hand, this cultural isolationism must not create alienation from our shared story with our fellow brethren living in the Holy Land. Participation in the army is one crucial element of this belonging.

Read more at Tzarich Iyun

More about: Haredim, IDF, Israeli society