Implications of the US Withdrawal

from Syria

By Dr. Yehuda Blanga

Originally Published on BESACenter.org

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The withdrawal of US forces from the Kurdish areas of northern Syria will help strengthen Iran’s standing in the country, make Russia the leading power in the region, and possibly lead to the resurgence of ISIS terror. All these outcomes will have far-reaching policy implications for the Middle East’s pro-Western actors and for the war on jihadist terror.

On the morning of October 24, 1973, the Israeli ambassador in Washington was summoned for an urgent discussion with White House Chief of Staff Gen. Alexander Haig. The meeting marked the high point of the pressure the US was putting on Israel to halt the fighting on the Egyptian front and lift the siege of the Egyptian Third Army. Haig did not mince words and warned that if hostilities were to continue, President Nixon would consider disengaging from Israel.

For the first time since the special US-Israeli relationship emerged in the early 1960s, Israel’s position and interests were on a direct collision course with Washington. The Nixon administration, which laid the foundations for normal US relations with Egypt during the Yom Kippur War, did not intend to let Israel spoil this process even at the cost of a crisis and damage to US-Israeli ties. Thus did Israel experience firsthand the price of friendship with (and dependency on) “Uncle Sam.” Jerusalem was forced to accede to the American dictate.

Read the full article here.