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Jihadist forces dominating the rebel landscape in Syria are in a quandary about impending U.S. airstrikes in Syria. While they cannot be seen as supporting Washington military intervention in an Arab-Muslim country, the jihadists have an interest in Washington becoming deeply involved in the Syrian conflict. This is the point at which jihadist interests converge with those of Saudi Arabia because Saudi Arabia wants the United States to topple the Syrian regime. Meanwhile, the United States does not wish to topple the regime, which puts Washington's interests in line with those of Iran.
The United States will soon be carrying out airstrikes in Syria in response to reports that Damascus allegedly used chemical weapons in the country's two-and-a-half year-old civil war. Having drawn a red line that the regime of President Bashar al Assad has seemingly crossed, the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama now cannot afford to look the other way. Not only does it have to ensure U.S. credibility in the international arena, it needs to ensure that no state or non-state actor feels that it can get away with the use of weapons of mass destruction.
So it must engage in punitive military action. However, Washington does not wish to upset the delicate balance of power between the regime and its rebels and thus is hoping to engage in limited military action in the form of airstrikes. The problem it faces is how to calibrate the military operation. It should be a fitting response to the regime's actions allegedly involving chemical weapons without weakening Damascus to the point that jihadist forces are able to exploit the vacuum and create an Afghanistan in the center of the Middle East.
The United States is engaged in a difficult balancing act, but so are the jihadists. In theory they want the United States to engage in military action against the regime and weaken it, but they can't appear to support American intervention. This ambivalence is bound to create internal divisions within the Islamist militant landscape and will weaken the mainstream rebels openly working with Washington.
In many ways the United States is about to complicate the rebellion. The more sophisticated and transnational jihadists such as the Iraq-based Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant will want to use the chaos to their advantage and try to draw in the United States even deeper. All will depend on how much damage the airstrikes do to the regime.
If Washington manages to limit its military involvement then the jihadists are unlikely to have a whole lot of room to exploit. Unlike mainstream rebel forces they don't just want the United States to topple the al Assad regime and establish a new government dominated by the rebels. The jihadists want Washington to be drawn into a quagmire in Syria. They also want the military action to result in anarchy spilling well beyond Syria's border.
The Saudis don't share the jihadists' goals, but they do wish to see the United States topple the Syrian regime. It is a critical way to roll back the influence of Riyadh's main regional adversary, Tehran. For this reason, it too wants to see a spillover of the Syrian conflict into Lebanon and Iraq, the two states where Iran's Arab Shia allies enjoy a dominant position.
What this means is that there is a divergence in American and Saudi interests regarding Syria. While the Saudis are willing to roll back Iranian influence at any cost, the Americans want to undermine Iran's regional position without empowering jihadists in the process. In other words, U.S. and Iranian interests in Syria seem to converge rather awkwardly.
But for now, the United States is heading toward military action that could very well aid Saudi Arabia and worse, the jihadists.
Courtesy : Stratfor (www.stratfor.com)