We are writing in the heat of the moment; we will have more details in the coming days. We shall see. For now, the Iranian and Russian governments have used harsh words against the Syrian president, Assad, seeking to justify their about-face in some way.
Without fighting
Few things are clear, the first being that rebel troops have taken Syria in just a few days, practically without fighting.
Why the abandonment of Damascus was decided in advance, and in exchange for what, we still need to determine. But it is obvious, even to the blind, that it was a coordinated betrayal.
There have been no reactions; it looked like a replay of the Taliban’s march into Kabul after the United States agreed to a regime change in Afghanistan.
What state is Syria in?
It is divided between the Kurds, who control the oil wells on behalf of the Americans, and the militias defined as jihadists, which control most of the territory under a neo-Ottoman projection pushed by Ankara. Then the Israelis secured the Golan Heights and allowed the “cleansing” of areas that should fit into the “Greater Israel” design. As for the Russians, for now, they retain the Tartus base. Will they lose it? Given the role Russia is playing in Libya, in collusion with Turkey—and under American influence—it is fair to assume the situation is anything but certain.
I recall that at the beginning of the conflict, we predicted this scenario. It was countered that Syria, an ancient nation, would not be fragmented because Syrians feel Syrian. However, even when the Russian intervention, but especially the Iranian and Lebanese one, allowed Damascus to overturn the insurgent situation, it failed to prevent a de facto partition, with foreign troops on its territory, sometimes allied, sometimes opposed. And while everything formally appeared to be in Syria, the main energy resources had already been separated from the capital and belonged to the invaders.
I also remember that Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, revealed in 2018 that Russian and American military commands were communicating daily to coordinate actions on the ground.
I have never forgotten that in the fall of 2022, to explain why Tel Aviv refused to arm Kyiv, provide it with strategic programs, and impose sanctions on Russia, the Israeli deputy defense minister said: “Russia is Israel’s main strategic ally in Syria and protects its troops from Hezbollah.”
The collapse of the last national-socialist and secular regime in the Middle East is, nonetheless, a tragedy
It is so for many reasons, including the jihadist threat of the throat-cutters, who, at least at the beginning of the conflict, were predominant among the insurgents. Even though the situation is more complex today, with a new “destabilized” area, i.e., one controlled by various criminal and trafficking gangs with differing behaviors.
The impression that this is slipping out of the hands of global strategic leadership is understandable but wrong. The mental and psychological breakdown of the masses and institutional chaos are not signs of systemic weakness but of its strength, especially now, in the middle of a reset, where institutional constraints are seen as a burden.
The reset in the region
involves the destruction of what remains secular, along with any positive ties to Europe, which must be contained and blackmailed. The facts and the operational proposals of the Americans and their doctrines confirm this. The Russians, too, with strictly identical intentions, do not hide it.
However the predators divide Syria among themselves, it will conform to this logic, as it happened in Iraq and Libya. Every local player seeks to harm us, if not outright hates us: from neo-Ottoman imperialism to Russian, from Iranian fundamentalism to Wahhabism, from American interests to Israeli ones.
We will see. However, an important question remains to be answered: why was the overthrow of Syria possible now, and why did it happen so quickly?
There is a common temptation to link it to the war in Ukraine. While everything is interconnected, my assessment is different.
We are talking about a reset
Since 2019, Israel has become a gas exporter and transformed into an energy power. In 2020, agreements were made with various petro-monarchies, leading to military alliances in the MEAD, the air defense system that protects the Jewish state with the participation of several Arab nations. The war between Saudis and Iranians has subsided, and negotiations have been initiated, all while Egypt was dismantling its portion of Gaza.
Israeli military actions over the past fourteen months have thus enjoyed almost unanimous support from all Arab governments. Meanwhile, since this summer, we have witnessed coup-flavored maneuvers aimed at orchestrating changes (via “incidents” and assassinations) within the Iranian leadership.
There is a strong impression that Tehran has struck a deal with an eye to the future and has abandoned Syria. This impression is reinforced by Tehran’s official statement, which essentially confirms it under the pretext that Assad had done nothing to respond to the Israeli attack on Lebanon!
Their brazenness is no surprise.
We are used to the antics
of those who insult each other but massacre those caught in between. In forty-five years, the only decent thing the Iranians have done is safeguard Syria and Lebanon alongside their own interests. Beyond that, they have only undermined national causes, starting with the Palestinian one. They attacked nations like Iraq, which had a perfect relationship with us, armed by the Americans and Israelis, as evidenced during the infamous “Irangate” trial (1). They have incited sectarian civil wars to exploit the Shiites for their own interests, contributing to the equal and opposite rise of Salafism.
We harbored no ethical illusions about them: their continued presence in Syria was due to primary interests which, evidently—perhaps wrongly—they no longer consider vital.
The Russian withdrawal is not surprising. Not only because they have always abandoned peoples in that region, with the sole exception of the Israelis, who owe their victory in the war that established their state to Russian military equipment, but also because it was in Iran’s interest to maintain the Alawites. Moscow, on the other hand, only cares about Tartus.
I know there is little attention and memory, but Assad remained in power due to Tehran’s political will because Lavrov and Putin had, at different times, expressed their readiness to facilitate a government change in Damascus. Tehran’s sudden withdrawal was the decisive factor.
What they gained in return, we will find out.
(1) Irangate was a scandal in the US in 1985-86, revealing the covert military support provided by Americans and Israelis to Tehran to fight Iraq.
