"Rebels" Seize Aleppo

Yesterday a surprise offensive led to the fall of Aleppo, Syria's largest city. The most important question to ask yourself when trying to understand the various wars in the Middle East is, "Whose proxies are these?" The struggle for dominance and control in the region is led by different factions, and if a surprise offensive happens it means that one of them has provided clandestine support at sufficient scale to enable a breakout.  

Let's see how the NY Times covers this to help its readers understand what is going on in Syria.

Headline: "Rebels Seize Control over most of Syria's Largest City."

Subhead: "The rapid advance on Aleppo came just four days into a surprise opposition offensive that is the most intense escalation in years in the civil war."

First paragraph: "Rebels had seized..."

Second paragraph: "...antigovernment rebels..."

Third paragraph: "...some rebels..."

Fourth paragraph: "...surprise rebel offensive..."

By the fifth paragraph, we finally get a hint of whose side these 'antigovernment rebels' might be on, at least in the negative: 

"The timing of the assault suggested that the rebels could be exploiting weaknesses across an alliance linking Iran to the militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon as well as the Assad regime in Syria and others."

So, they're not Iranian proxies. But who are they? 

Sixth paragraph: "...well-armed rebel fighters... opposition forces..."

Seventh & Eighth paragraphs: "...rebels..."

Finally, in the ninth paragraph we learn that the Times knew all along who it was, and just didn't want to tell us: 

"Within hours from Friday into Saturday, Syrian government soldiers, security forces and police officers fled the city, according to the war monitoring group. They were replaced by the Islamist and Turkish-backed rebels sweeping through on foot, motorbikes or on trucks mounted with machine guns."

Oh. They're Turkish and Muslim Brotherhood forces. Erdogan, who has been aligned with and backed the Muslim Brotherhood across the region, is making a play to take advantage of the recent crippling of Hezbollah by Israel to strengthen his power versus Iran. This is part of the long-running Sunni-Shia competition to dominate the Middle East, and Erdogan's personal quest to restore Turkey to the leadership position of the Islamic world. The Ottoman Turks held that position (and the title of 'caliph' of the 'caliphate,' which the Brotherhood exists to try and restore) for centuries; and while the oil and gas wealth of the Gulf states gives them power and independence from the traditional Sunni leadership in Egypt and Turkey, it's a goal of Erdogan's to reclaim that place.

Iran is the leading challenger to that traditional Sunni leadership, and it has had a good run for decades now following our deposing of Saddam and their consequent establishment of a 'Shia crescent' stretching from the gulf across Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon to the Levant and the Mediterranean. They use this to supply Hezbollah, and then Hamas and the Houthis. Their Houthi proxies at the mouth of the Red Sea have given them an ability to threaten shipping throughout the Middle East. 

So what you're really seeing is an unintended consequence of Hamas' attack on Israel, which has led to the savaging of one Iranian proxy (Hamas) and the at-least-temporary crippling of another (Hezbollah). Assad is now under a push from the Turks -- these 'rebels' are actually the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army and their paramilitaries -- and Aleppo is closer to Turkey's border than it is to Damascus. 

Turkey is a nominal American NATO ally, but in fact is no friend of ours; they frequently shell our own proxies, the Kurds, with whom we have SOF embedded. However, the enemy of your enemy is at least an opportunity; Turkey here is fighting another Iranian ally/proxy, and drawing off some Russian attention as well. 

Recall that the Russians have also been supporting the Houthi with targeting data, without which they would far less effective as Iranian proxies. This is to punish us for supplying similar targeting support to the Ukrainian forces, who are functionally NATO proxies to bleed Russia; so too here the Turkish proxies are functionally NATO proxies in the world war we are in, even if they're really pursuing Erdogan's and the Brotherhood's agenda rather than NATO's. 

Most likely Erdogan started moving the clandestine support for this play about the time Israel and Hezbollah started their clash, realizing he'd be able to expand and consolidate his zone of control in Syria in the wake of that. He has several times threatened Israel over the war in Gaza as part of asserting that claim for leadership of the Islamic world, but as you can see, he's functionally on Israel's side -- even if he's actually only on his own. His actions damage the Iran/Russia/Assad axis, and therefore are bad for Israel's enemies. Whatever he may say out loud, what he's doing advances their interests:  accidentally, but actually.

UPDATE: Sure enough, Syrian “rebel” leader Abu Tow gave a statement to Israeli public broadcasting station Kann assuring that Israeli interests won’t be targeted by his forces “due to shared enemies.”