On 27 August, UK Prime Minister David Cameron said that his country had a duty to take action against the Syrian government for its alleged use of chemical weapons against civilians, highlighting how momentum is building among Western powers for some form of military intervention in Syria.
IHS Global Insight perspective | |
Significance | The United States and its allies look increasingly likely to launch attacks on Syrian targets, such as missile capability and missile command and control facilities and Air Force targets. This is regardless of any future report from UN chemical weapons inspectors, which would be a game changer only if it was definitive one way or another about whether chemical weapons were used |
Implications | However, the US, UK, and France have little appetite for a more sustained campaign targeting the Syrian Army more broadly or its command-and-control centres within Syria. |
Outlook | Failure to respond to any proven use of chemical weapons would undermine Washington’s international deterrent capability, including with regard to the 'red line' of Iranian uranium enrichment. |
US Secretary of State John Kerry stated on 26 August that the Syrian government's use of chemical weapons in attacks on 21 August was “undeniable”. However, UN chemical weapons inspectors yesterday (27 August) delayed a planned visit to the site of the alleged attacks on civilians, claimed by opposition activists to have taken place on 22 August in Maadamiya in the western Ghouta belt surrounding the capital Damascus, and Zamalka and its surrounding areas in the eastern Ghouta belt, on 21 August. The opposition claims that up to 1,300 civilians may have died in the attack, although there is no independent verification of this.
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Members of the local Syrian community in Allentown, Pennsylvania, protest |
Regardless of any future report from the UN chemical weapons inspectors, which would be a game changer only if it was definitive one way or another, the US and its allies such as the UK and France look increasingly likely to launch attacks on Syrian targets; these could include missile capability and missile command-and-control facilities, and Air Force targets. Such action by the US is likely to be supported or joined by the military forces of the UK and France.
Scenario pathways
Given that air strikes are unlikely either to end the civil war in Syria or lead to the securing of all Syrian chemical weapons, IHS is assessing what could happen two to eight weeks after any putative US strikes. IHS is attempting to identify the response of regional and international actors – including Russia, Iran, and non-state actors such as Hizbullah – to any strikes, and the associated risks (both political and violent) to which businesses, individuals, and governments are likely to be most exposed, either in the Middle East region or internationally.
In the event of US-led air strikes on Syria, IHS has identified the following possible scenario pathways, although at this stage these make no assessment of probabilities. This report, the first in a planned series, enables contingency planning by identifying a number of potential scenario pathways that could follow air strikes in Syria, and their potential impact. The scenarios and outcomes in this report are not mutually exclusive; some are inter-related, meaning that the unfolding of one particular scenario would make others either more or less likely. We have included both outlier (very unlikely) scenarios with potentially very high impact on business and government, as well as more probable scenario pathways. In subsequent articles, IHS will score scenarios for probability and to update scenario descriptions and probabilities and/or add further scenarios in light of indicator/trigger events or analysis or data inputs on key analysis questions. IHS will also look at the impact for the civil war inside Syria itself in future reports.
Israel, Lebanon and Gaza/West Bank
Israel's settlements along the Lebanese border and near Gaza would likely be targeted by at least short-range missiles from Gaza and Lebanon. The objective of Hizbullah and Iranian-allied groups in Gaza would be to claim that the attack on Syria was part of a broader pro-Israel campaign by the West. The duration, size, and targets of such strikes would determine the risk of an all-out war between Israel and either Hamas or Hizbullah. If either Hizbullah or Hamas targeted, for instance, Israeli military command centres in northern Israel, airports, major cities and ports such as Haifa or Tel Aviv or Ashkelon, using weapons such as the Fajr-5 artillery rocket or the Fateh 110 surface-to-surface missile, there would be a severe risk of an Israeli war with Hizbullah and/or Hamas during or immediately after a Western strike on Syria.
Hamas is seeking to restore its relationship with Iran in order to help it scuttle Israel's negotiations with Fatah, and, even if Hamas is not involved, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other groups would still likely do Iran's bidding. Any attacks on Israeli targets by Hamas or other groups would be as a result of instruction from Iran, in order to make it more difficult for the US to engage in a prolonged campaign against Syria. Hizbullah, for its part, sees the survival of the Syrian regime as crucial to its own survival. While it may resort to missile strikes directly, it is more likely to use smaller Palestinian groups allied with it in order to give itself plausible deniability. This would reduce the risk of larger missile attacks against Haifa, for instance. Hizbullah is likely to believe that such missile strikes would make a prolonged campaign against Syrian president Bashar al-Assad more unacceptable to the Arab public.
Additionally, there is also a high risk that Israel would target Hizbullah's weapon storage facilities in the Bekaa Valley, the southern suburb of Beirut and in villages in south Lebanon, or some of its weapons during transit along roads in those areas, especially if these weapons are coming through Syria. During a Western campaign against Syria, Israel would probably assume that Hizbullah would seek to avoid having to fight on multiple fronts. Israel sees Hizbullah as the primary military threat it is currently facing, and will therefore take advantage of a favourable international atmosphere to try to weaken the group Hizbullah, for its part, is likely to calculate that the US will restrain Israel in order to avoid giving the Arab populations in the Middle East the impression that the US intervention in Syria is intended to further Israeli interests. This calculation would therefore increase the risk of Hizbullah retaliating forcefully to any Israeli attack on it, for instance, by targeting Ben Gurion Airport, other military command-and-control centres in northern Israel, or the city of Haifa. This would in turn raise the risk of war through miscalculation.
A scenario of all-out war in Lebanon is tied to the above two scenarios and would be made more likely if either of them takes place. Such a war would carry a high risk of direct Syrian military involvement, at least in skirmishes along the Golan Heights but also potentially the use of longer range missiles against Israel. While the use of Iron Dome air defence systems would probably reduce the risk to Israeli targets, it is likely that Hizbullah in particular would have the capability to overwhelm the Iron Dome system by firing large volleys at a time. This risk is especially high for settlements in northern Israel.
However, Hizbullah probably has a limited number of longer-range rockets, and storage facilities for these rockets would likely be targeted early on in any war by the Israeli military. As such, Tel Aviv would likely be considerably safer than Haifa, and the safety of Tel Aviv would probably increase as the war continued. Ben Gurion Airport and the city of Tel Aviv would likely be priority targets for Hizbullah, but would also likely have dedicated batteries protecting them. The port of Haifa would therefore be at higher risk.
A weakening of Assad's military forces as a result of Western air strikes would probably lead Hizbullah to send even more troops and equipment to Syria. This would likely increase the intent and the relative capability of Sunni groups to target Hizbullah personnel and areas it controls in Lebanon, such as Nabatiyeh, Dahiyah (the southern suburb of Beirut), Baalbek, Hermel and the area of Jebel Mohsen in Tripoli. Attacks would include small-arms, rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), mortars, and vehicle-borne IEDs (VBIEDs). It would also make Hizbullah supporters more likely to attack Sunni communities in Beirut's Tariq Jdeedeh, Corniche al-Mazraa and Basta areas, in the western Bekaa Province and in Aarsal. This is due to the increased perception among Lebanon's Shia community that Sunni communities in the region are supporting what they assess to be Western-Israeli military and non-military targeting of Hizbullah and Syria. Sunni-Shia fighting would be exacerbated if designated Lebanese prime minister Tammam Salam and President Michel Suleiman assessed that Western intervention in Syria was an indicator of future action against Hizbullah, leading to the likelihood of them forming a new cabinet excluding the group.
Attacks on Western and Turkish assets
After a strike on Syria, some groups supporting Syria are likely to use IEDs to target assets including the French contingent in the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) or UNIFIL more broadly, and Turkish, French, UK and/or US assets in Lebanon, including cultural centres, banks and other businesses. The risk of Westerners and Turks being kidnapped in Lebanon would also increase, moreover, protests at the UK, British, French and Turkish embassies would be likely, and would involve a severe risk of embassies being broken into by protesters. Turkey has said that it would support intervention in Syria without a UN mandate.
There would be a severe risk of Shia groups such as the Mahdi Army and Kataib Hizbullah using IEDs targeting especially Turkish firms, including Turkish Airlines, in southern Iraq and in Baghdad. Personnel at US, French and UK energy companies in the country would also be at higher risk.
More broadly in Iraq, disruptive street protests against an intervention in Syria that cause road closures would probably take place in the Shia-dominated areas of Najaf and Basra and in Sadr City in Baghdad in the run-up to and during any intervention in Syria. There would also be a high risk of protests at oil fields close to population centres, such as Zubayr and Rumaylah, intended to pressure Western companies, and by extension their governments.
In the event of an intervention in Syria, there will be a high risk of IED or VBIED attacks targeting French, UK, and US assets, especially diplomatic assets, in third countries, such as Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Nigeria, Romania, Tanzania, and Thailand.
Risks in Turkey and Jordan
Within Turkey, should the peace process between the Turkish government and the insurgent Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan(PKK) fail, Iran is likely to support the PKK with weapons, explosives expertise, and funds in order to allow it to conduct more attacks aimed at destabilising the Turkish government. From Iran's perspective, this would also distract the Turkish military from involvement in Syria. Iran would likely provide such support to the insurgent Devrimci Halk Kurtulus Partisi-Cephesi (DHKP/C) in any intervention scenario. Both groups would probably focus on government and security forces targets, with a higher probability that the DHKP/C would also target diplomatic assets.
Relations between the Turkish Army, which is reluctant to interfere in Syria, and the government, which has taken a far more aggressive attitude, would probably worsen. This would especially be the case in the event of a costly and mismanaged ground intervention by Turkey. In this scenario, the PKK operational tempo would increase significantly and the army might use this as a bargaining chip to warn off further encroachment by the government. Moreover, in the event of a major worsening of the relationship between the two sides due to either factor, the government is likely to seek to force the army to divest from some of its economic assets in order to force it back into line, or target these assets with corruption probes.
In Jordan, protests both supporting and opposed to any Western intervention in Syria would take place at or near the US, UK, French and Syrian embassies before and during any intervention. These would be likely to involve hundreds of protesters and pose a low risk of death and a moderate risk of injury. Some East Bank Jordanians are so opposed to the Islamists in Jordan that they prefer to see Assad win in Syria, while other Jordanians, predominantly of Palestinian origin, fully support the uprising against Assad.
Syria is likely to sponsor groups in Jordan should the latter’s territory be used to launch attacks against Syria. These groups would include Salafist-jihadist groups that would give the Syrians plausible deniability to conduct attacks against shopping malls, hotels and government targets. Hotels are typically well secured in Jordan, mitigating the risk. Malls such as Mecca Mall in Amman would be less likely to be targeted given that their clientele is primarily local. Assets in Abdoun in Amman would probably be at higher risk due to the perception that they have a larger foreign clientele.
Gulf states
The Shia community in Bahrain would protest against any military intervention in Syria. Such protests would be unlikely to reach the centre of the capital Manama and foreign embassies, but would probably focus on closing key highways, possibly through go-slow action in vehicles. An intervention in Syria would increase the risk of the direct targeting of Westerners either through beatings and harassment, or through generally low-capability IED attacks by Saray al-Ashtar or Saraya al-Muaqawama al-Shabiyya against foreign banks or against malls and hotels. Iran is very likely to have militant cells affiliated to the Islamic Revolution Guards Corp's Quds Force on the island in anticipation of a strike against its own nuclear facilities.
Meanwhile, the Shia community in Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province would protest against any military intervention in Syria. Such protests will probably be contained to the areas of Qatif, Safwa and other small Shia towns, and would probably not extend to Dammam, Khobar or Jubail. They are likely to involve fighting with security forces, with protesters using Molotov cocktails and stones.
Given the likely Qatari support for an intervention in Syria, there would be an increased risk of attacks by Iranian proxy groups against malls, hotels and other public places where foreigners congregate. These would probably be intended to demonstrate to the Qatari government the high cost of Qatari involvement in Syria, and would therefore not cause large-scale property damage or a high casualty rate. The risk of larger, more sophisticated attacks, including against government targets, would be proportional to the duration of a campaign against Syria and the extent of damage it causes to Assad's ability to fight his enemies in the civil war.
Outlook and implications
The US, UK and France have little appetite for a more sustained campaign targeting the Syrian Army more broadly or its command-and control-centres within Syria. However, failure to respond to proven use of chemical weapons would undermine Washington’s international deterrent capability, including with regard to the 'red line' of Iranian uranium enrichment. IHS will issue further reporting to score scenarios for probability and updating scenario descriptions and probabilities in light of indicator/trigger events.