Sovereignty Support Movement Sovereignty for West Asia
by Marwa Osman, comments from Facebook, December 24, 2025
Gang wars in Aleppo. Again. How sad. [jb]
What is unfolding today in Syria, particularly the clashes between the Syrian government and the SDF in Aleppo, is not an isolated security incident. It is a pressure point in a much wider regional reordering, unfolding deliberately and at a very precise moment.
Over recent weeks, Turkey has intensified efforts to secure a role in any future international so-called “stabilization force” in Gaza. This move was framed diplomatically, but its strategic implications were clear: a Turkish presence near Zionist Israel’s borders, even under an international umbrella, is unacceptable to Tel Aviv. Israel’s rejection was categorical.
This rejection did not come in isolation. It coincided with two parallel tracks: first, renewed Israeli engagement with the SDF in northeastern Syria and second, a visible acceleration of Israeli strategic coordination with Greece and Greek Cyprus.
The emerging Greek, Cypriot, Israeli axis is not new, but it is now moving from energy cooperation and symbolic military exercises into a more explicit security alignment. High-level trilateral meetings have discussed missile defense coordination, regional deployment options, and the potential positioning of Israeli defense systems on Greek islands close to Turkey. This was never about Gaza alone. It is about constraining Turkey’s strategic depth from the Eastern Mediterranean to northern Syria.
Against this backdrop, the instability in northeastern Syria begins to make sense.
Israel’s engagement with the SDF is 100% transactional, not ideological as Israel would like the world to believe. Any support comes with expectations, primarily the ability to disrupt Syrian territorial consolidation, keep pressure near the Turkish border, and maintain leverage in a geography Israel considers critical to its northern security equation.
This is why renewed clashes between SDF and Julani gangs and accusations of agreement violations are surfacing now. A destabilized Syria, particularly near Turkey’s frontier, serves multiple objectives: it limits Turkish maneuverability, delays Syrian recovery (as if it will ever be allowed to recover), and preserves Israel’s freedom of action and aggression against Syria.
This brings us back to a warning repeatedly articulated over the past decade by Martyr Sayyed Hassan Nasrullah.
Sayyed Nasrullah consistently argued that Syria was not merely a battlefield, but a central pillar of regional balance. His message to regional and international actors was clear: weaken Syria, fragment its sovereignty, or dismantle the resistance infrastructure in the region and the fire will not stop at Damascus, nor at Beirut.
Zionist Israel, he warned, would not be satisfied with containing Lebanon or Syria; its logic is constant terrorism, expansion, deterrence through dominance, and perpetual pressure on every neighboring front.
Today, that warning appears less rhetorical and more structural.
The presence of figures like Julani, terrorists often framed as transitional or pragmatic actors when it serves the US and its allies, fits into this broader logic. Their role is not to stabilize Syria, but to manage a phase: neutralize resistance pathways, soften borders, and create permissive conditions for regional re-engineering. Once that role is exhausted, history suggests they will either be sidelined or removed.
Meanwhile, the United States watches carefully, balancing two relationships it considers vital: its strategic alliance with Israel, and its functional partnership with Turkey. Washington does not seek open confrontation between its allies, but it has consistently allowed Israel operational latitude in the form of aggressive attacks, even when that latitude contributes to long-term instability.
Reading regional events carefully opens one’s eyes to clashes in Syria, as they are best understood not as a “civil dispute“,but as the opening phase of a controlled, low-intensity regional confrontation. A war of positioning rather than declarations.
The message being sent is unmistakable:
- No Turkish role in Gaza.
- No Turkish proximity to Zionist Israel’s northern frontier.
- And a Syria kept weak enough to remain a contested arena.
Whether this strategy succeeds or backfires, as similar strategies have before, remains an open question. But one fact is already clear: Syria is once again the central chessboard, and the consequences will not be confined within its borders.
Marwa Osman is a Lebanese journalist. She works for PressTV, and has a Telegram channel called MidEaStream. Marwa is a long time supporter of the Resistance in the region and currently lives in Beirut with her husband and daughters.
