Hyopthetical Israel/Syria war

Let us assume that Israel decides the Syrian government must be toppled, for whatever reason (e.g. Israel says Syria is supporting Hizbollah in Lebanon, it is a "sponsor of terror," it has weapons of mass destruction, etc...) Israel has in this scenario made a ceasefire with Hizbollah in Lebanon or occupies part of South Lebanon and has pushed the Hizbollah rocket sites out of range of Israel.

Israel's objectives against Syria are

A. Cause a regime change in Syria (e.g. by bombing until pro-Western elements are able to stage a coup/rebellion)
B. Destroy Syria's capacity to wage war against Israel

Syria's objectives are

A. For the regime to remain in power
B. To maintain Syrian territorial integrity

How do the two sides go about attempting to acheive their objectives? Or would their objectives be different?

I think Syria learned its lesson from the Six Day and Yom Kippur Wars. They aren't going to attack Israel. They would probably try to fight similarly to how Hezbollah has, hitting cities with rockets and missles, targeting tanks with ATGMs and trying to draw the Israelis in and then harass and cut them off. Of course, Syria has tanks, planes and other nice toys that Hezbollah doesn't have so they would be able to hit Israel with more firepower. But if Israel wanted to bomb the Syrians back to the Abbasid Caliphate, they could. And if they wanted to punch through and take Damascus, they could. I doubt that Israel would try to force reigme change though, as any reigme that replaced the Assads would be Islamic and more hostile to Israel, not pro-western.

Finn McCool said:

But if Israel wanted to bomb the Syrians back to the Abbasid Caliphate, they could. And if they wanted to punch through and take Damascus, they could.

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Compare with

" We will send them back 20 years" and

"If they wanted to they would punch through and take Beriut".

Now take the above and then read through the news. Haaretz is reporting "autorization" of "widening of offense" third time or what?? And yeah please do also read about lates 15 casualties on the same page.

This is a very non-serious commentary on the events taking shape, but it sheds light on a lot of things which are strikingly true (and it's funny too...as funny as a terrible thing like a war could be)

I have previously researched the Syrian air defences and generally become quite familiar with their weaponry. (guess who is me there, lol).

My thoughts are that Syria has little chance of preventing Israel gaining air superiority over Syrian air space although Israeli loses would be a given.

If Syria gets ex-Russian MiG-31 Foxhounds (as rumored; MAKO is promoting the MiG-31 to unspecified existing middle eastern MiG-25 operators - Syria fits the bill (so do Libya and Algeria. Iraq is not thought to be in the game for obvious reasons).... well, it'd reduce the odds somewhat.

Although Syria has many ballistic missiles which would do some damage to Israeli cities, despite any lasers/Arrow ABMs/Patriot Israel deploys (IMO), these are fired from fixed sites and and at any rate would be more than equalled by Israel's vast array of stand-off weapons, mostly air delivered.

planeman said:

I have previously researched the Syrian air defences and generally become quite familiar with their weaponry.

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(guess who is me there, lol).

My thoughts are that Syria has little chance of preventing Israel gaining air superiority over Syrian air space although Israeli loses would be a given.

If Syria gets ex-Russian MiG-31 Foxhounds (as rumored; MAKO is promoting the MiG-31 to unspecified existing middle eastern MiG-25 operators - Syria fits the bill (so do Libya and Algeria. Iraq is not thought to be in the game for obvious reasons).... well, it'd reduce the odds somewhat.

Although Syria has many ballistic missiles which would do some damage to Israeli cities, despite any lasers/Arrow ABMs/Patriot Israel deploys (IMO), these are fired from fixed sites and and at any rate would be more than equalled by Israel's vast array of stand-off weapons, mostly air delivered.

Click to expand...

The question is what Israel is willing to stake and for what. Syria or Syrian Regime to be more accurate as Syrian people hardly matter to their junta, will hate to end up in life death situation with Israel. Israel can beat the crap out of them in all the conventional sense. BUt then if Syrians try to do what Hizbollah is doing with way more than what Hizbollah has, Israel will feel a lot of pain. Secondly, Israel decides on bringing the regime down and they would for sure fire all their scud armed with chemical and bilogical weapons. Yes we know Israle have nukes and they would use em too. But, the junta doesn't care about people anyway. Thirdly any such confrontation is bound to make Israel so weak that it will become a potential easy target for Hamas, Hizbollah and everyone else who has a score to settle with Israel. We are not talking about shock and awe to bring armies to their knees by threatening their capital, "rulers"and "Kings". It's about holding on to all that territory and facing what Hizbollah is throwing at IDF. Only that order of magnitude will be much larger. And to be honest with you i myself am shocked by the way IDF has conducted itself so far. But then to be fair with them, maybe this is not what they are meant to handle.

maglomanic said:

But then to be fair with them, maybe this is not what they are meant to handle.

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You would think that after eighteen years in Lebanon and the US adventure in Iraq would make the Israelis think twice though before going ahead with this campaign...

crazyinsane105 said:

You would think that after eighteen years in Lebanon and the US adventure in Iraq would make the Israelis think twice though before going ahead with this campaign...

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They are working against a limited window of opportunity based upon
an analysis of their previous defeat.

They must act now because the world is becoming multi-lateral much faster
than expected and they believe that they lost the last time because they used
too little force

Analysing Syria's Actions with Relation to its Foreign Policy Goals

Planeman-I like Abovetopsecret too. I'm not a member though, I just read it.

They are working against a limited window of opportunity based upon
an analysis of their previous defeat.

They must act now because the world is becoming multi-lateral much faster
than expected and they believe that they lost the last time because they used too little force

Click to expand...

I agree, I think that Israel no longer cares about "winning hearts and minds". Israel believes that groups like Hamas and Hezbollah cannot be negotiated with as they have given up Gaza and South Lebanon, which Hamas and Hezbollah were fighting for, but the war still has not stopped. Israel realizes that the problem is not it's occupation of territories, it is Israel's exsistance, so Israel will use all the force it wants to use. However, I think that the Israelis want to get out of Lebanon quickly. I believe that they will end up attacking all the way up to the city of Baalbek, then withdraw.

All of Syria's moves are geared to the survival of the reigme. That is why the have such an extensive fortification network, as Planeman showed/wrote in his abovetopsecret link. That is also why the won't use their military-They want it to protect the reigme but won't voulntarily risk defeat by attacking Israel. The status quo is good for Syria-they have a powerful ally in Iran, the US is tied down in Iraq, Israel is tied down in Lebanon, allowing Syria to hurt them by helping Hezbollah. Oil prices are high, keeping the Assads afloat. I think that Syria is as afraid of organizations like Hamas and Hezbolllah as the are of Israel. Populist Islamist organizations like Hamas are as much of a threat to the Assads as Israel is. Therefore, Syria has been very clever in palying its enemies off against each other. Syria needs to have a sort of buffer zone against possible enemies; the Iraqi insurgency covers them against the Americans, Hezbollah covers them against the Israelis, their occupation of Lebanon also served that purpose. if we take into account all of the above Syria's actions make perfect sense. To ensure reigme survival they will not confront Israel openly. However to protect the status quo and it's "buffer zone" in Lebanon (Hezbollah) they will play with fire by covertly aiding Hamas and Hezbollah. However, it would not make sense if they attacked Israel, so any agression would have to come from Israel.

^ I think the odds of Syria getting into this conflict are slightly higher than you say at the beginning. Mainly because of what you say at the end. Syria has been a transport hub for insurgent armaments since the Iraqi war turned into guerilla warfare. There are two consequences to this.

Having committed itself so far. It cannot possibly stay "neutral" in this conflict. The internal forces in Syria calling for a blow against Israel (shoulder to shoulder with their Hezbollah brothers) may be stronger than Assad can control. I've also seen news reports that the government is preparing the population for war by fanning anti-Israeli sentiments.

The second consequence is that Israel will surely take the fight to Syria itself to eliminate the flow of supplies to Hezbollah. That is when Syria will be drawn into the conflict. Knowing well this would likely happen, I'm certain the Syrian government is now preparing for the fight of its life.

If there is going to be a conventional conflict with Syria (no matter who starts it, Israel or Syria), the IDF will gain air supremacy in less than a week and reach Damascus in less than 10 days. After all this is what they trained for since 1982. The Israeli standoff weapons, BVR and EW have evolved a lot since than, while the Syrian capabilities are roughly the same. This course of action however seems highly unlikely, at least for me.
For the rest of this issue, I completely agree with what Finn McCool wrote.