Key points
- Israeli intelligence officials pondered “positive side of Syrian civil war”
- They also believed Assad’s fall would weaken Iran in Middle East
- Rise of extremist factions to power was a concern: report
ISLAMABAD: An email sent to then US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on July 23, 2012, and published by WikiLeaks has revealed that Israeli intelligence officials believed, and their Western counterparts knew, that the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria would spark a Sunni-Shiite war in the Middle East, benefiting Israel and its Western allies.
According to WikiLeaks files, one particular source stated that the British and French intelligence services believed that their Israeli counterparts were convinced that there was a positive side to the civil war, that in Syria, if the Assad regime topples, Iran will lose its only ally in the Middle East and will be isolated.
In the opinion of this Israeli intelligence official, the Assad government’s fall “would distract and might obstruct Iran from its nuclear activities for a good deal of time”.
In addition, certain senior Israeli intelligence analysts believed that this turn of events may even prove to be a factor in the eventual fall of the current government of Iran.
The controversy
During her tenure as United States secretary of state, Hillary Clinton drew controversy by using a private email server for official public communications rather than using official State Department email accounts maintained on federal servers.
Shortly before she was sworn in as secretary of state in 2009, Hillary Clinton set up an email server at her home in Chappaqua, New York, according to BBC.
She then relied on this server, home to the email address [email protected], for all her electronic correspondence – both work-related and personal – during her four years in office.
She did not use, or even activate, a state.gov email account, which would have been hosted on servers owned and managed by the US government, the British public broadcaster reported.
The emails, containing classified information, eventually ended up being published on WikiLeaks.
Insights
The in-depth analyses of these emails and similar US cables leaked by WikiLeaks provide insights about the foreign policy of the United States and Israel’s plans for the Middle East during the so-called Arab Spring.
A December 13, 2006 cable, titled, “Influencing the SARG [Syrian government] in the End of 2006” indicated that, as far back as 2006 – five years before Arab Spring protests in Syria – destabilising the Syrian government was a central motivation of US policy.
The author of the cable was William Roebuck, at the time chargé d’affaires at the US embassy in Damascus.
The cable outlined strategies for destabilising the Syrian government.
The tactics
In his summary of the cable, Roebuck wrote: “We believe Bashar’s weaknesses are in how he chooses to react to looming issues, both perceived and real, such as the conflict between economic reform steps (however limited) and entrenched, corrupt forces, the Kurdish question, and the potential threat to the regime from the increasing presence of transiting Islamist extremists.”
He went on to state that “This cable summarises our assessment of these vulnerabilities and suggests that there may be actions, statements, and signals that the USG can send that will improve the likelihood of such opportunities arising.”
Similar US cables also reveal that the US and Israel played on fears in Syria that the Iranians were active in both Shia proselytising and conversion of, mostly poor, Sunnis.
Roebuck thus argued that the US should try to destabilise the Syrian government by coordinating more closely with its allies to fan sectarian tensions between Sunni and Shia, including by the promotion of “exaggerated” fears of Shia proselytising of Sunnis and of concern about “the spread of Iranian influence.”
Since the fall of Assad, Israel has occupied a demilitarised zone inside Syria and carried out bombing campaigns, reflecting Israel’s intentions for future manoeuvres.
