14/16.

I thought if I really need to even address the whole situation with Israeli Air Force attacking Syria on Christmas, but since things are slightly slower these days here are some thoughts. Omitting here a complete cowardice of Israeli military force using commercial air traffic as cover (September IL-20 tragedy becomes much clearer now) in Lebanon's air space, let's get to a man who has good clue on both what Israel's plans are and who is BiBi. Here is Yasha Kedmi stating explicitly  (in Russian) why Israel is so worried.

Уход США из Сирии разрушил планы руководства Израиля, и единственной страной, которая сохранит присутствие в САР, останется Россия. Говоря о том, как решение США о выводе войск из Сирии меняет ситуацию на Ближнем Востоке, Кедми отметил, что реальность для Израиля не меняется. Он подчеркнул: новая реальность в САР была создана в сентябре 2015 года, когда российские войска появились на двух базах в Сирии. С тех пор ВКС и ВМФ России в Хмеймиме и Тартусе – основной и постоянно присутствующий в регионе элемент. Руководители Израиля, в частности премьер Биньямин Нетаньяху, говорят неправду, когда утверждают, что знали об уходе США из Сирии. "Он не знал. Все в Израиле продолжали кричать, что американцы остаются в Сирии, что Сирия расчленится на несколько государств – и на этом строили свою стратегию. Когда ему президент США сказал "мы уходим", тогда до него дошло. Им хотелось, чтобы американцы остались – им удобно с ними. Но у американцев свои интересы"

Translation: United states leaving Syria destroyed plans of Israeli leadership, and the only country which will stay in Syria is Russia. Speaking about how US leaving Syria changes the situation in the Middle East, Kedmi noted that reality for Israel doesn't change. He underscored that the new reality in Syria was created in September 2015, when Russian troops appeared on two bases in Syria. Since then, Russia's VKS and Navy at Khmeimim and Tartus bases are the main and constantly present element in the region. Leaders of Israel, including Prime Minister Netanyahu, lie when state that they knew about US withdrawal. He didn't know. Everyone in Israel continues to scream that Americans will remain in Syria, that Syria will break up into several statelets--that is what they built their strategy upon. Only when POTUS stated "we are leaving" then it sunk in for Netanyahu. They wanted Americans to stay--for Israel it is comfortable with them. But Americans have their own interests.

Read the whole thing using Google translate--it is worth reading. So, the latest Israeli provocation against alleged Iranian "assets" in Syria on Christmas day didn't work out that well for Israel. Sure, BiBi, as he always does, tried to put a lipstick on the pig:

While singing the praises to the “special capabilities” of his country’s airborne forces and arsenals that can destroy any target, Netanyahu did not directly comment on the latest strikes in Syria. He also failed to respond to the criticism of the Russian military which earlier had accused the Israeli air force of directly endangering two civilian flights over Damascus and the Lebanese capital Beirut during Tuesday night’s raid.  

He forgot, of course, to mention this teeny-weeny fact that there are no "special capabilities" in either F-16 fighters nor in munitions they carry and that: 

On the evening of Christmas Day, six Israeli F-16 fighter jets used two civilian flights as cover to strike a logistics compound on the outskirts of Damascus from Lebanese airspace, the Russian Defense Ministry said Wednesday. Thus, during the assault, the Syrian military was forced to restrict the use of air defense systems and radio jamming capabilities to avert a possible tragedy. Despite that advantage, only two of the sixteen Israeli-launched laser-guided bombs reached their targets, wounding three people, while the rest were intercepted.

Here we have to elaborate a bit more. This is especially important for Hasbara trolls and other uber-Israeli "patriots" who long ago lost any distinction between cowardice and courage, honor and disgrace. Judging by the stream of, well corroborated, reports on Syria's S1s shooting down 14 out of 16 GBU-39 Small Diameter Bombs, and minuscule damage the other two inflicted (3 wounded SAA soldiers, fast localized fire in the building which was hit), one can easily calculate that 14/16 x 100 = 87.5% of the munitions have been successfully intercepted. For people who watched recent Putin's performance during December 18 expanded Board of Russian MOD, he specifically pointed out low effectiveness of the modern (American) land attack weapons. He used the number of 30%, most likely based on April 2017 snafu with TLAMs.  Against modern multi-layered networked air defense the effectiveness, highly likely, will be even less.

It has to be understood that modern air-defense complexes when integrated into a network do see all and can develop solution on any type of the target which is not very high supersonic or hyper-sonic. Presently, S-300PMU2s which have been transferred to Syria's Air Defense are like a prod (or Damocles' sword, if one wishes) in Israel's side. What Israel really needs to do now is to abandon her regional supremacist plans and resign herself to the idea that either she negotiates in good faith or there will be ways to influence her more-or-less normal behavior. Unless, of course, Israel tries to do the unthinkable--but that is a whole other story. Israel supported ISIS and other terrorists in the region long enough. Time to stop pretending to be a great power (Israel is a regional military power totally dependent on the US and others) and face the reality, both military and geopolitical. In the end, Israel disgraced herself long enough, the last event this Christmas tops it off.            

ISIS Was Defeated, Alrighty Then.

People much more experienced in ground warfare than me wrote it not for once, albeit I wrote this too, that US position (Al-Tanf and around) is not tenable for a number of major reasons. Plus, R+6 victory over not just ISIS but whole Jihad Internationale became clear some time ago. Now, Trump promises US withdrawal from Syria. 

President Donald Trump will announce that the U.S. will withdraw troops from Syria on Wednesday, two U.S. officials confirm. There is no timeline yet for the pace of the withdrawal, the officials said. There are about 2,000 U.S. troops in eastern Syria advising and assisting the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the fight against ISIS. The first U.S. troops arrived in Syria under the Obama administration in October 2015. The original force of 50 U.S. advisers grew to an official level of more than 500, though it had actually grown beyond that figure to approximately 2,000 over the following year.

If true, these are really good news for Syria and really-really bad news for Kurds who may face Erdo-dude's wrath, plus, as usual, experience the sense of betrayal by so many "allies". 

As Bernhard of MoA writes:

With the U.S. moving out there will be a race to take those parts of Syria that the U.S. leaves. Turkey is likely to stick to its invasion plan. The Syrian government must now race to take back the Raqqa dam, the rich agricultural land north of the Euphrates and, most important, the oil and gas field near the Iraqi border which are needed to finance the country. It must also move parts of its army to the northeast Euphrates area to isolate and finally defeat the rest of ISIS that the U.S. seemingly leaves behind.

The deal between Erdogan and Trump is obvious, as is obvious a withdrawal of many Russian troops, with the exception of the contingent in both Khmeimim and Tartus, and a dramatic reduction of sorties by Russian VKS from 100 per day down to 2-4 a week now. The game for post-war "configuration" of Syria starts. There was another event which went almost unnoticed but was highly significant:

“Following the conversation between the Israeli PM & Minister of Defense and Vladimir Putin, senior IDF officers led by the Head of the Operations Directorate, Maj. Gen. Aharon Haliva, will go to Moscow tomorrow.”Advertisement“During the day-long visit, the delegation will brief their Russian counterparts on Operation Northern Shield and other operational issues,” the tweet concluded.

As great Ray Charles sang: everybody doin' the mess around. But inevitable question arises: who won? Syria defended her independence and that is what matters the most now. Russia, who contributed mightily to Syrian victory certainly benefits greatly too, both geopolitics and reputation-wise, Iran, however, will have to limit its freedom of actions in Syria which will be contingent on Russian-Israeli arrangements and this is the work in progress, granted greatly augmented by S-300 and S-400 complexes at a disposal of a greatly improved Syrian Air Defense. I am sure Syrian Arab AD professionals such as Akhmed Petrov, Mustafa Sidorov and Hafez Ivanov approve. But what was projected in 2015 by many, once Russia got involved in the fight against terrorist armies in Syria, she brought with her, inevitably, once the outcome became obvious, a massive geopolitical influence and earned a position of a primary broker in the Middle East. A significance of this is difficult to overstate--it has massive global ramifications. Behind that is Russia's military and economic power. 

What's next? The remnants of ISIS (and other unicorns) will move and join earlier arrivals of Jihadists from Syria to Afghanistan where the US will try to play another act of a Big Game against Russia. Maybe, China.  But we will see how the US will stick to its (now it was articulated) 60 to 100 days timeline, with US State Department "operatives" to be withdrawn within 24 hours. As I said, we'll see. Now, will Kurds, in a face of Turkey's military action against them, turn their sights to Damascus and Moscow for help? If they are not stupid, they will. You can not bargain with Erdogan, you can only move him into desirable position and then squeeze things from him. Meanwhile, Trump declared US victory over ISIS:

"We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency,"

And that too was expected. Of course, who else but the US. Russians got used to this by now. After all, the US also defeated Hitler, if you know what I mean;) meanwhile, in a fine tradition of The Family Guy expressing the state of the affairs with someone else' art, enjoy: