The Syrian president's calculations may change, however, if his regime's grip on power slips further. As Middle East expert Kenneth Pollack argues, Assad still thinks he can win this thing; but if he becomes desperate, he will be far more willing to lash out, using everything in his arsenal to prevent defeat. Attacking Israel would be a desperate move -- but Assad is becoming a desperate man.
Israel's second gamble is that Hezbollah will not retaliate. Since the bloody 2006 war, Israel's border with Lebanon has largely been quiet -- indeed, the quietest it has been for generations. After that destructive and indecisive conflict, Hezbollah silenced its guns, fearing that provoking Israel would lead to another bloody clash for which it would take the blame. Now, however, the Lebanese militant group is in a box. With Hezbollah forces fighting side-by-side with Assad, they have lost popularity in Lebanon and throughout the Arab world. Once lauded as heroes for standing up to Israel, now they are scorned for siding with a butcher against his own people.
Meanwhile, within Lebanon, the Syrian war is stoking sectarian tension, leading militant Sunnis to condemn Hezbollah and Shias in general, and diminishing Hezbollah's claim that it is a champion of all Lebanese, not just Shias. But with Israel striking at Hezbollah's crown jewels, its weapons supplies, a non-response damages its credibility. The temptation to restore its reputation -- and create a distraction that turns Israel's attentions from Damascus -- may prove too great.
Israel's third gamble is one shared by Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and perhaps the United States -- that increased meddling by neighbors will lead to the collapse of Syria. In Israeli eyes, the only thing worse than Assad's regime in Syria would be chaos in Syria, with either Hezbollah gaining access to Syria's arsenals or jihadist groups allied with al Qaeda (like Jabhat al-Nusra) assuming control of swathes of Syrian territory. In this scenario, Syria would then become an incubator of jihad on Israel's border, much as Israel fears that Sinai, to its south, has already become. Hezbollah, at least, can be deterred, but the roving al Qaeda groups have no fixed address and care little about protecting ordinary Syrians from Israeli retaliation, making them far harder to deter. Jihadists might use Syria's ballistic missile and chemical weapons arsenals against Israel, forcing an invasion in response, or at least repeated attacks. Israel's Syrian border, so peaceful -- through deterrence -- for so long, would again be a war zone.
Israel is preparing for all of these possibilities by increasing its intelligence gathering operations (evidenced by the successful attacks this weekend) and bolstering its border defenses. Old guard posts on the Golan have been re-staffed and the Israeli northern command has recently drilled a whole reserve division in a mock-emergency call-up exercise. Israel also deployed Iron Dome anti-missile batteries and temporarily closed the civilian airspace in the north of the country. Such preparation may decrease the carnage any Syrian or Hezbollah response causes and give Israeli leaders some political breathing space -- but they won't solve the fundamental tensions caused by the chaos and uncertainty in Syria and Lebanon.
Perhaps the best Israel -- or any of America's regional allies -- can do now is to try to protect its interests in Syria, while managing the unrest and violence that spills out of the country. Yet here the United States has an important role to play. In different ways, key U.S. allies -- Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, Turkey, and now Israel -- are intervening in Syria. Ideally, the United States would make its own objectives and strategy clear to its allies and convince them to bolster America's own policy. But for now the Obama administration does not seek overtly to lead the international response to the Syria crisis. That's not quite good enough. At the very least, Washington needs to coordinate allied interventions so together they make it more likely that Bashar's regime will fall and Syria will return to stability. At the very least, the administration must make sure they are not working at cross purposes and that the actions of one power do not harm the interests of another.
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