"๐๐ก๐ ๐๐จ๐ซ๐๐๐ซ๐ฅ๐๐ง๐ ๐๐๐ฆ๐๐ข๐ญ: ๐๐ก๐ฒ ๐๐๐ฌ๐ก๐ข๐ง๐ ๐ญ๐จ๐ง ๐๐ซ๐๐๐๐ ๐ญ๐ก๐ ๐๐ฎ๐ซ๐๐ฌ ๐๐จ๐ซ ๐ ๐๐ก๐จ๐ญ ๐๐ญ ๐๐๐ก๐ซ๐๐ง
What unfolded along the SyrianโIraqiโTurkish borderlands was neither a โsecurity incidentโ nor a diplomatic failure. It was a deliberate realignment, cold, transactional, and long in preparation.
To understand the shift, one must look beyond airstrikes and the language of โbetrayal.โ
What occurred was a calculated redistribution of territory, influence, and residual militant force, all subordinated to a single overriding objective: the strategic isolation of Iran.
๐๐ก๐ ๐๐๐๐ญ๐ก ๐จ๐ ๐๐๐๐จ๐ฅ๐จ๐ ๐ฒ: ๐๐ก๐๐ง ๐๐ญ๐ข๐ฅ๐ข๐ญ๐ฒ ๐๐๐ฉ๐ฅ๐๐๐๐ ๐๐จ๐ฒ๐๐ฅ๐ญ๐ฒ
In American political rhetoric, the Kurdish partnership was framed as a moral commitment.
On the ground, however, alliances operate by a different logic.
In the realm of power politics, loyalty is not a currency, utility is.
By the late Trump era, the Kurdish project had shifted from asset to liability. Aspirations for autonomy, quietly encouraged for years and viewed by Israeli planners as a potential second front against regional adversaries, collided directly with a far more consequential imperative: preserving the NATOโTurkey axis.
Here, realism prevailed. Ankaraโs message was unambiguous: an Israeli-aligned Kurdish corridor on its southern flank constituted a red line.
Washington understood the arithmetic.
A non-state proxy, however effective, could not outweigh the strategic value of Turkey, a sovereign state with the second-largest army in NATO and control over critical maritime and land chokepoints.
Ahmad al-Sharaaโs rise was therefore not ideological, nor moral. It was functional.
He offered what the Kurdish administration could not: a centralized authority capable of stabilizing eastern Syria without triggering a regional war.
In classical realist terms, legitimacy was conferred not by elections but by the monopolization of force and the capacity to secure American interests.
The Kurds did not fail Washington.
They simply became too expensive to defend.
๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐ฆ๐ง๐๐ง๐ญ๐ฌ ๐๐ง๐ ๐ญ๐ก๐ ๐๐จ๐ ๐ข๐ ๐จ๐ โ๐๐จ๐๐ข๐ฅ๐ ๐๐ฌ๐ฌ๐๐ญ๐ฌโ
One of the most uncomfortable realities in modern warfare is that defeated actors are rarely eliminated, they are repurposed.
Following the territorial collapse of ISIS, intelligence assessments increasingly distinguished between locally rooted fighters and foreign, socially detached cadres.
The latter, stateless, mobile, and expendable, were no longer viewed solely as a threat, but as a variable.
Some were quietly redirected toward Afghanistan, opening a new theater beyond Levantine tribal constraints. Others remained in detention facilities, not merely as prisoners, but as latent leverage.
In the chaotic aftermath of Assadโs collapse, exploratory discussions reportedly took place between Kurdish authorities and external intelligence actors regarding the controlled release and instrumentalization of select ISIS elements.
The logic was brutal but coherent: impose a coercive religious authority over Arab-majority regions that could dominate through fear, yet remain fully dependent on Kurdish, and by extension Israeli, oversight.
This was not a plan for peace, but for managed disorder, stability through calibrated extremism. Crucially, such a system was viable only under the umbrella of an internationally protected Kurdish state.
Without that protection, it collapsed under its own toxicity.
๐๐ก๐ ๐๐จ๐ฏ๐๐ซ๐๐ข๐ ๐ง ๐๐จ๐ฎ๐ง๐ญ๐๐ซ๐ฌ๐ญ๐ซ๐ข๐ค๐: ๐๐๐๐ฅ๐ข๐ง๐ ๐ญ๐ก๐ โ๐๐ซ๐จ๐ง ๐๐ฎ๐ซ๐ญ๐๐ข๐งโ
Regional states did not interpret these developments as a Kurdish matter.
They saw them as a structural threat to sovereignty itself.
An Israeli foothold embedded within eastern Syria, masked by proxies and militant intermediaries, would have irreversibly altered the regional balance of power.
The response was swift, coordinated, and state-centric.
On land, military operations were executed under the banner of the new Syrian authority, explicitly backed by Turkish kinetic power.
In the air and logistics domain, Iraq imposed a near-total border shutdown, severing intelligence corridors and supply lines feeding the Kurdish project.
This was not improvisation.
It was preemption, a collective move by Turkey, Iraq, and Iran to extinguish the Israeli variable before it could harden into a permanent geopolitical reality.
What was defended was not a regime, but a principle: sovereign equality over proxy fragmentation.
๐๐ก๐ ๐๐ซ๐๐ง๐ ๐๐๐ฅ๐๐ฎ๐ฅ๐๐ญ๐ข๐จ๐ง: ๐๐ฒ๐ซ๐ข๐ ๐จ๐ซ ๐๐ซ๐๐ง?
At this juncture, Washington made the only choice available to an empire under constraint: reprioritization.
Preserving the Kurdish state project risked a multi-front convergence, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria aligned against continued American presence.
That outcome would have rendered any Iran strategy untenable.
By quietly pressuring Israel to disengage from the Kurdish eastern flank, Washington narrowed the battlefield.
The message was implicit but unmistakable: the Iran file supersedes all others.
Whether the coming phase produces a comprehensive grand bargain with Tehran or escalates toward open confrontation, one reality is now fixed. The United States could not afford to remain entangled in a peripheral proxy war while the central strategic contest remained unresolved.
๐๐ก๐ ๐๐๐ฎ๐๐๐ญ๐ข๐จ๐ง ๐จ๐ ๐๐ซ๐จ๐ฑ๐ข๐๐ฌ
The SyrianโIraqiโTurkish border crisis offers a stark lesson in great-power politics: no proxy is permanent, and no alliance is sacred.
The Kurds were not โabandoned.โ They were amortized, their value fully extracted, their protection withdrawn once the cost exceeded the return.
Israel, for its part, misjudged the tolerance of sovereign regional actors for indirect expansion.
The headlines have moved on, but the implications endure.
The era of disguising geopolitical reengineering behind ISIS remnants and Syrian chaos is closing.
The board has been cleared.
https://x.com/ibrahimtmajed/status/2014352357279121571