Last December, Bashar al-Assad’s forces, together with their Iranian and Russian allies, began a second major offensive into the northwestern province of Idlib, the country’s last major rebel stronghold. A few weeks later, Ankara—which until now has supported various rebel groups but kept its own intervention minimal—took an active role in the conflict, with its troops engaging in direct and extended clashes with Assad’s. Why, asks Jonathan Spyer, has Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan taken this particular moment to join in the fighting, when the civil war could very well be nearing an end?

At the most basic level, [Erdogan] fears the prospect of another wave of Syrian refugees entering Turkey. Around 3.6 million Syrians have already arrived there in the course of the civil war. This is far more than in any other country. . . . To prevent [an additional influx], and to have a chance of partly reversing the situation, Erdogan needs the Idlib rebel enclave to survive.

But there is more than the refugee issue at stake here. Erdogan supported the Sunni Arab rebellion in Syria earlier and harder than any other leader. His backing of it forms a part of the broader, erratic, and floundering foreign policy in which he has sought to set himself up as the natural leader of Sunni Arab causes and of political Islam in the Arabic-speaking world.

To accept the complete crushing of the Syrian rebellion at this juncture would constitute a humiliating blow to the Turkish leader. It would severely tarnish his strongman image, and perhaps stretch the credulity of his adoring base at home beyond breaking point.

But, Spyer continues, there is little chance that a full-scale Turkish-Syrian war will erupt, primarily because Erdogan doesn’t want to find himself facing off with Vladimir Putin:

Moscow has a treaty-based alliance with the Assad regime. Assad owes his survival to Putin. But Russia also has a strategic objective of drawing Turkey away from the West. This effort has been proceeding well over the last half-decade. . . . At its heart, Turkey is a revanchist power, seeking to grow at the expense of the retreating U.S.-led order in the Middle East. Moscow also wants to upturn that order. [Thus], in spite of local differences, [Turkey’s] natural strategic connection is to Russia, which sees Turkey as a major prize. If winning it means that Assad has to wait a while before planting his flag along the border, Putin is likely to make him wait. [Ultimately], Russia remains the decider in Syria west of the Euphrates.

While conventional wisdom in the Western press believes that the war with Hamas has left Jerusalem more isolated and scuttled chances of expanding the Abraham Accords, Gabriel Scheinmann points to a very different reality. He begins with Iran’s massive drone and missile attack on Israel last month, and the coalition that helped defend against it:

America’s Arab allies had, in various ways, provided intelligence and allowed U.S. and Israeli planes to operate in their airspace. Jordan, which has been vociferously attacking Israel’s conduct in Gaza for months, even publicly acknowledged that it shot down incoming Iranian projectiles. When the chips were down, the Arab coalition held and made clear where they stood in the broader Iranian war on Israel.

The successful batting away of the Iranian air assault also engendered awe in Israel’s air-defense capabilities, which have performed marvelously throughout the war. . . . Israel’s response to the Iranian night of missiles should give further courage to Saudi Arabia to codify its alignment. Israel . . . telegraphed clearly to Tehran that it could hit precise targets without its aircraft being endangered and that the threshold of a direct Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear or other sites had been breached.

The entire episode demonstrated that Israel can both hit Iranian sites and defend against an Iranian response. At a time when the United States is focused on de-escalation and restraint, Riyadh could see quite clearly that only Israel has both the capability and the will to deal with the Iranian threat.

It is impossible to know whether the renewed U.S.-Saudi-Israel negotiations will lead to a normalization deal in the immediate months ahead. . . . Regardless of the status of this deal, [however], or how difficult the war in Gaza may appear, America’s Arab allies have now become Israel’s.