DISINFO: Escalation in Syria could have been orchestrated by Israel and the US
SUMMARY
It is possible that the US and Israel, leveraging the situation in Ukraine, tensions with Iran, and Ankara’s anti-Israel stance and refusal to join anti-Russian sanctions, instigated unrest in Syria to achieve several objectives.
Some experts see the resurgence of terrorism in northern Syria as a US-Israeli plot aimed at destabilising West Asia after the IDF “failure” to confront Hezbollah in Lebanon. For Syria’s enemies, keeping the nation in a perpetual state of war also serves several important goals, including: preventing President Assad from declaring total victory in the proxy war against him by the US and its allies, stopping Syria from fully normalising ties with neighbours, depriving Syria’s allies – Iran and Russia, of a stable, prosperous partner in a key region.
RESPONSE
Conspiracy theory not backed by any evidence. The offensive against Bashar Al Assad’s regime in Syria in November-December 2024 is led by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham and the so-called Syrian National Army. While the first appears to be a local organisation and was added to the US terrorist organisations list in 2018, the second is openly backed and armed by Turkey, which almost certainly greenlighted the operation and aims to exploit it to send Syrian refugees back.
There is nothing indicating any US or Israeli role in the current rebel offensive in Syria, while there are some circumstantial elements pointing to Israeli concerns about the possibility of chaos if Assad’s regime collapses. The US has officially denied any role in the situation and called Turkey’s foreign minister to urge de-escalation.
Through this unsubstantiated allegation, this disinformation story aims to promote a recurring pro-Kremlin narrative about the West’s alleged support for terrorists. Given that the US and other Western countries have backed other opposition armed groups in Syria, all of which are labelled as “terrorists” by both the Syrian regime of Bashar Al Assad and Russia, this disinformation message aims to blur any distinction among all those groups in order frame these countries as “terrorism backers”.
See other examples of similar disinformation narratives in our database, such as claims that the US and Israel created ISIS and now moved this pawn against Russia in Crocus City attack, that ISIS never attacks Israel, nor the other way round, that the West encouraged the creation of the Islamic State, who are its mercenaries, or that the EU is supporting terrorism against the Syrian state.