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Interviews with faction leaders reveal anger with Hamas over starting a unilateral conflict, but also a determination to get involved if Hezbollah greenlights such a move and Israel invades Gaza.

Iranian-backed Iraqi armed factions are unlikely to participate directly in the Israel-Hamas war as long as it is solely led by the Palestinian militant group, amid a split in the decision to target US military bases in Iraq and Syria among these same factions, commanders of Iranian-backed armed groups told Al-Monitor.

Key points

After 12 years of civil war, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government has consolidated its power and defeated credible threats to its rule. The anti-Assad armed opposition, which once controlled half of Syria, is relegated to the northwestern province of Idlib.

While the Biden administration recognizes that Assad will likely remain in office, U.S. policy remains punitive, maintaining comprehensive sanctions on Syria until Assad negotiates political reforms with his opponents and agrees to free and fair elections.

This policy will not produce the desired results. Assad is firmly entrenched, benefits from the help of security partners in Iran and Russia, who prefer that he stays in power, and remains highly unlikely to comply with U.S. demands. The status quo amounts to collective punishment of the Syrian population.

Approximately 900 U.S. troops remain in eastern Syria, allegedly to train and advise the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces against ISIS. But ISIS lost its territorial caliphate more than four years ago. The risk of keeping U.S. forces there in perpetuity which includes sporadic attacks on U.S. positions and escalation risks with various actors, outweighs any rewards.

Neither the sanctions nor the occupation of eastern Syria serves U.S. security interests. The former does no good, and the latter risks embroiling the United States in a mission without an end date.

The United States should withdraw its remaining forces and offload what is left of the counter-ISIS mission to local actors. The United States should also reduce if not end its failing sanctions regime.

The UN relief agency has warned of devastation in the Gaza Strip as Israel has conducted several ground operations over the past few weeks.

As the death toll in the Gaza Strip mounts, Gaza ”is becoming the graveyard of a population trapped between war, siege and deprivation,” UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini wrote Thursday in an opinion piece published in the Guardian.

The leader of Lebanon’s Hezbollah group held talks on Wednesday in Beirut with senior Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad figures in a key meeting of three top anti-Israel militant groups amid the war raging in Gaza.

In neighboring Syria, meanwhile, state media said an Israeli airstrike hit the international airport in the northern city of Aleppo on Wednesday, damaging its runway and putting it out of service.

Israel accuses Iran of directly aiding terror group; Hamas claims 80 killed overnight; rockets target Ashkelon, Gaza border towns; IDF strikes terror cell in West Bank’s Jenin

Israeli fighter jets continued to pound the Gaza Strip in the early hours of Wednesday, targeting Hamas command centers and other assets and killing a senior commander in the Palestinian terror group, as the terror group fired long-range rockets toward both Haifa and Eilat later in the day.

In recent years, northeast Syria has appeared in news reports only as a new arena of battles between the Axis of Resistance alliance and the Americans. After the assassination of the legendary Soleimani, American bases from Qamishli to the border with Jordan became targets for the Islamic Resistance forces of Syria and Iraq. However, now the Syrian part of the Euphrates region has attracted attention with a new crisis of the local self-proclaimed government. Among the “canton of Jazira,” the political struggle within the largest confederation of the Shammar tribe has intensified.

Since the June 30 revolution in Egypt, Turkey has become the regional hub for the Muslim Brotherhood’s international organization. Istanbul has played host to many meetings planning what steps are to be taken against the military-backed Egyptian government after the July 3 ouster of President Mohammad Mursi.