What had been covert has been overtly declared. The regional map is suddenly crisscrossed with red lines
The sequence of events was unmistakable, if not its trajectory. Hassan Nasrallah confirmed for the first time that Hezbollah fighters were helping Bashar al-Assad and warned that any Sunni attack on the Sayyida Zeinab Shia shrine south of Damascus would trigger "dangerous retribution"; Shia fighters from Iraq and Lebanon flocked to the shrine after another Shia tomb to the north of the Syrian capital was desecrated; Israel carried out two airstrikes in as many days against stores of Iranian missiles purportedly in transit to Hezbollah; Iran said it was ready to train Assad's army.
It was already well established that Iran and Nasrallah's powerful Lebanese Shia militia were involved in the Syrian civil war. But in the space of one short week, and one dramatic weekend, what had been covert has been overtly declared. The regional map is suddenly crisscrossed with red lines. However one parsed the statements and the air strikes, Syria now threatens to become a much wider and more volatile regional conflagration.
Israel is clearly betting that neither Syria nor Hezbollah will react. Assad, it gambles, has more immediate concerns, and Hezbollah is not yet ready for another all-out war with Israel. But it is always easier to know how things begin in the Middle East than to know where they will end. By its actions, Israel was dangerously close to declaring that its northern front was quiet no more, and that a peace that had held for 40 years with a hostile but quiescent neighbour held no longer.
Israel says its red line is the Iranian Fateh-110 missile, the latest version of which is more accurate than the 40-50 of those surface-to-surface missiles the Pentagon believe that Hezbollah has already got. The next question is whether Syrian territory could be treated by the Israeli air force, much like Gaza and southern Lebanon. Presumably, Sunday's air strikes will not be the last. There were hard, pragmatic reasons why, up until now, Israel had been content to let the fire of Syrian revolution burn itself out on its border without applying the hose. It was not in its interest to see a weakened foe in Assad, replaced by rebel groups that may number even more radical Islamist elements. On the contrary, Israel calculated that its interest lay in Assad becoming steadily weaker, but not being overthrown. It has thrown that caution to the wind.
Iran reacted to the airstrikes on Sunday by saying it would do more than just arm Assad. Iran's ground forces commander, General Ahmad Reza Pourdastan, said it would support Syria's army with assistance in training, although he denied Iran would have active involvement in operations. Syria's deputy foreign minister said the Israeli strikes were an act of war, designed to help the "terrorists". The strikes do indeed only help Assad make the argument that the Syrian rebels are the pawns of a western-backed plot designed to undermine resistance to Israel. The Syrian rebels were split in their reaction to the air strikes. The rebel Damascus Military Council used them as a rallying call for all groups to work together, and mount focused attacks on government forces. The exiled opposition coalition made a different argument: a Syrian regime strong enough to kill tens of thousands of its own citizens was too weak to prevent attacks from "external occupying forces".
If they do nothing else, the air strikes reveal the yawning lack of direction from Barack Obama. Unlike in Libya, he cannot lead this conflict "from behind". To claim that Israel is entitled to act is to say nothing about the regional consequences of those actions. To assume that, with the lightest guidance, events on the ground can be relied on to move towards the rebels, as he desires, now looks more presumptuous than before. If anything, the rebel assault on Damascus has stalled in the face of a series of counteroffensives around the capital and Homs in the north. Could Assad be here in a year's time, after many more massacres and thousands of deaths? There is little to indicate that he will not. Nothing America is doing, or not doing, is preparing for that possibility.