Few expect that Moscow’s main target— the moderate rebels backed by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the U.S.— would now be forced to settle the conflict on the Kremlin’s and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s, terms.
“Their victory in Aleppo is not the end of the war. It’s the beginning of a new war,” said Moncef Marzouki, who served in 2011-14 as the president of Tunisia, the nation that kicked off the Arab Spring, and who recently visited the Turkish-Syrian border. “Now, everybody would intervene.”
To be sure, Turkey and Saudi Arabia have few easy options to counter Russian military might in Syria. But because of national pride—and internal politics—neither can really afford to have the rebel cause in which they have invested so much wiped out by Moscow and its Iranian allies.
If only for that reason, the tone in Moscow is muted.
“It’s too early to speak about success,” said Dmitri Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center and a former Russian army officer. “The risk of escalation after Aleppo has grown. We are getting pulled into an increasingly dangerous game—all of us, not just Russia, but also Turkey, and Saudi Arabia, and the U.S.”
This month’s offensive also relieved a three-year siege of Shiite, pro-government areas nearby—and prompted tens of thousands of residents to flee to the Turkish frontier. A much bigger humanitarian crisis is looming should Russia-backed forces succeed in completely encircling Aleppo.
While the Obama administration has long been determined to minimize U.S. involvement there, for Turkey and Saudi Arabia the prospect of Syria falling under the sway of Russia and Iran would be a national-security catastrophe.
“The whole situation, not just for Turkey but for the entire Middle East, would be reshaped. The Western influence will fade away. The question is: Can we accept Russia, and the Iranians, calling the tune in the region?” said Umit Pamir, a former Turkish ambassador to NATO and the United Nations.
“The key thing is whether an air-defense capability is injected, that is the only truly meaningful escalation. This will be the only thing that would make any difference,” said Frederic Hof, the Obama administration’s former envoy to the Syrian opposition, now at the Atlantic Council in Washington. The Saudis or their allies would be unlikely to give antiaircraft missiles to the rebels without a U.S. green light, he added.
That leaves open the option of a direct military intervention, something that countries such as Turkey could justify on humanitarian grounds should the situation in Aleppo deteriorate dramatically.
Saudi Arabia has already spoken, vaguely, about its readiness for a ground deployment in Syria. While the Saudis say their aim is to participate in the campaign against Islamic State under a U.S. umbrella, if Saudi troops are deployed to areas controlled by Sunni Arab rebels, they would also in effect protect them from the Syrian regime.
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan also raised the prospect of a ground-troop deployment in Syria this week, saying that he regretted not participating in the 2003 U.S.led invasion of Iraq. “We don’t want to make the same mistake in Syria as we made in Iraq,” Mr. Erdogan said.
While Turkey has already deployed long-range artillery along the border, any military incursion without U.S. involvement would carry the risk of a direct military confrontation with Moscow.
“What is feared in Russia is that Turkey would launch a ground-war adventure,” said Nikolay Kozhanov, a former Russian diplomat in Iran and a fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs.
The Turkish military is fully aware of the risks and is reluctant to embark on it without international cover. Yet, for Mr. Erdogan—and the Saudis—watching the Syrian rebellion get pulverized isn’t an option, either.
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