Assad’s fall has delivered both hope and risk in a new-look Middle East
Global and regional players scramble as the political and strategic landscape shifts, and a new-look Syria emerges.
The fall of the Assad regime in Syria has catapulted the Middle East into a new era and accelerated the fundamental transformation of the region since the horrific Hamas attack on Israelis on October 7, 2023.
The vanquished Bashar al-Assad is the latest in the line of terrorists, tyrants and enemies of Israel who have been dealt a historic blow by their own hand in provoking conflict with the Jewish state.
Unlike Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran, which were all foolish enough to tackle Israel directly, Assad’s downfall was an indirect result of his allies Hezbollah and Iran abandoning him because they were consumed by their own self-provoked confrontation with Israel. Throw in Assad’s third key ally, Russia, which was too consumed by the Ukraine war to come to his aid, and a vulnerable Assad was doomed to any serious assault on his power, which came via opportunistic Islamist rebels from the north headed by Ahmed al-Sharaa’s Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.
That was barely a week ago but already the contours of this new Middle East are taking shape as Syria’s neighbours and the US frantically try to work out what a sudden power vacuum in post-Assad Syria means for them and for the region.
These nations sense both opportunity and danger in the new-look Syria, which will be ruled by a loose coalition of Islamist groups whose allegiances, philosophy and intent appear to be a work in progress.
Not surprisingly, it is Israel that has moved fastest to take advantage of this moment in history and ensure that whatever emerges in the new Syria can never pose a serious military threat to it.
To the chagrin of Arab nations and the UN, Israel has launched more than 350 airstrikes against military targets in Syria while also sending troops to enter Syrian territory for the first time in 50 years by taking control of a demilitarised buffer zone in the Golan Heights that has been patrolled by UN troops since 1973.
That buffer zone was created after Israel captured the Golan Heights in 1967 when it was attacked by Syria and neighbouring states.
Israel argues the collapse of Assad means the buffer-zone agreement is no longer functional and states it intends to exercise “complete control over the buffer zone” and “establish a security zone free of heavy strategic weapons and terrorist infrastructure in the southern area – beyond the buffer zone – to eliminate potential threats to the State of Israel”.
While critics have labelled it a land grab, Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu describes it as “a temporary defensive position until a suitable arrangement is found”.
“We have no intention to meddle in Syria’s internal affairs, but we certainly intend to do whatever is needed to guarantee our security,” he says.
Israel has further guaranteed its own future security by launching more than 350 airstrikes on Syrian defence assets across the country, destroying missile stockpiles, weapons plants, fighter jets, drones, tanks, air defence systems as well as what remains of the chemical weapons Assad once used against his own people.
Israel’s unilateral actions against Syria’s military assets may be controversial but they make sense given Syria’s history and the uncertainty about the groups that will form the new Syrian regime.
Syrian rebel leader Sharaa, formerly known by his nom de guerre, Mohammed al-Jolani, has not commented on Israel’s strikes or on his attitude towards the Jewish state.
He claims his group, HTS, is far more moderate than its initial al-Qa’ida roots would suggest. But it seems unlikely that any militant Sunni organisation will be inclined towards friendship with Israel, even though Netanyahu has stated that he “would like to form relations” with the new regime.
Netanyahu’s pre-emptive strikes and troop deployment are an understandable insurance policy for Israel if the new regime turns out to be hostile.
The worst-case scenario for Israel would be that the new Syrian regime morphs into a modern version of Islamic State, which also grew from previous power vacuums in Syria and Iraq a decade ago. Netanyahu’s bombing campaign seeks to ensure that whatever comes after Assad will be a poorly equipped force unable to use the modern military assets of the Assad regime against its enemies.
Israel is seeking to use this moment to cut off the supply routes through Syria that Iran used to smuggle weapons to Hezbollah in Lebanon. But Israel also needs to be careful not to overplay its hand. There are limits to this military campaign. It cannot continue to bomb sites in Syria for much longer and then expect to have normalised relations with the new regime.
The US has chosen not to criticise Israel’s military strikes, most likely because Washington is also anxious that Assad’s heavy weaponry not fall into the wrong hands.
The US has welcomed the fall of the murderous Assad regime, but it is concerned about what replaces it. Sharaa’s HTS is still listed as a terrorist organisation in the US because of its origins in Jabhat al-Nusra, also known as al-Nusra Front, an offshoot of al-Qa’ida. As such, the US can negotiate with the group only through intermediaries. HTS broke away from al-Qa’ida in 2016 and also has rejected Islamic State.
To the surprise of many, so far Sharaa has done all the right things since his takeover of Damascus. He has promised an inclusionary and relatively moderate Islamic regime that does not persecute minorities or force women into Islamic dress.
He has appointed a caretaker prime minister, Mohammed al-Bashir, who previously had been in charge of administering the small chunk of rebel-held territory in northwestern Syria.
As things stand, HTS seems unlikely to morph into a barbarous Islamic State-style regime but its survival as the ruling body in Syria is far from guaranteed.
HTS has a sometimes fractious relationship with the coalition of Turkish-backed militia collectively known as the Syrian National Army, which has fought side-by-side with HTS during its victorious march to Damascus. If that power-sharing arrangement collapses, then the new regime itself could splinter. In this circumstance, Washington’s main fear would be a re-emergence of Islamic State. The US responded to the fall of Damascus by striking around 75 ISIS targets in the Syrian desert to weaken the group’s ability to fill any power vacuum that might emerge in Syria.
“ISIS will try to use this period to re-establish its capabilities, to create safe havens,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said. “As our precision strikes over the weekend demonstrate, we are determined not to let that happen.”
The US has about 900 troops in Syria, mostly in the northeast to prevent any resurgence by ISIS. But to keep ISIS at bay, the US relies heavily on the Syrian Kurds, the Syrian Democratic Forces, which control northeast Syria. There are more than 9000 ISIS fighters housed in more than 20 prison facilities in this Kurdish-controlled region.
Although the US backs the Kurdish SDF, the group is the enemy of neighbouring Turkey, which sees it as a terrorist outfit that indirectly bolsters Kurdish separatists within Turkey.
Since the fall of Damascus we have already seen the SDF clash with the Turkish-backed SNA in the city of Manbij in Syria’s north. The SDF has warned the US that it cannot guarantee help in repressing ISIS if it is attacked by Turkish-backed forces. This has left the US in a precarious position in which it is backing the Kurdish forces in the region while also trying to avoid confrontations with its fellow NATO ally, Turkey. White House national security spokesman John Kirby has conceded that it is a delicate balancing act for the US because he says that fighting ISIS in Syria “means partnering with the Syrian Democratic Forces”. But he also says “the Turks have a legitimate counter-terrorism threat” for which they “have a right to defend their citizens in their territory against terrorist attacks”.
A key to the future of Syria will be Turkey’s ambitions. Ankara has tacit approval for the rebel-led takeover of Damascus and in return it is likely to want influence in the new regime.
The US will be hoping, above all, that Turkey does nothing to trigger broader conflict with the Kurdish SDF or create the conditions for a revival of ISIS. For the US, the best outcome from the fall of Assad would be a benign Syrian regime that cut ties with Assad’s former allies in Iran, Russia and Hezbollah.
US policy towards the new Syrian government will be one of Donald Trump’s first foreign policy challenges when he takes office on January 20. But Trump’s inclination is not to get involved unless there is no other choice. As he posted on social media last week about Syria: “THIS IS NOT OUR FIGHT. LET IT PLAY OUT. DO NOT GET INVOLVED.”
It is already clear that the biggest losers from the fall of Assad, apart from Assad himself, who can now look forward to a life of exile in Russia, are Assad’s allies Iran and Russia.
For Iran, the loss of Syria is a disaster of historic proportions, coming on the heels of the smashing by Israel of its terror-proxy Hezbollah in Lebanon and the destruction of Hamas in Gaza.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei claims the toppling of Assad was a result of a “joint US-Israeli plot”.
More accurately, it was the indirect result of the most disastrous series of foreign policy miscalculations since the religious regime took power in Tehran in 1979.
In the wake of Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, Iran made the fatal error of ordering Hezbollah in Lebanon to begin a low-level war against northern Israel, lobbing missiles and drones into it almost daily. What Tehran did not calculate was that once Israel had largely destroyed Hamas, it would turn its guns on to Hezbollah with stunning force.
In just more than two months Hezbollah was crippled by the remote control pager and walkie-talkie attacks followed by the killing of long-time leader Hassan Nasrallah and a sustained bombing attack on Hezbollah military sites.
Hezbollah was forced into a ceasefire deal with Israel to secure its long-term survival. The terror group will take many years to recover, robbing Iran of critical influence in the region. But the indirect effect of this miscalculation was that neither Hezbollah nor Iran was in a position to help Assad repel the rebels when they launched their assault.
Iran has now lost its regional ally Syria, on top of Hezbollah and Hamas, leaving it unusually isolated in the region when its ageing clerical leadership is increasingly unpopular with its own people.
Iran has signalled it wants to maintain influence in the new Syria, calling for a continuation of the relationship “based on common interests”.
But it will be a challenge for Shi’ite Iran to make inroads with what is likely to be a Sunni Arab government when many Syrians hold Iran responsible, along with Hezbollah, for aiding Assad’s repression of his people.
To cap off the worst year in Iran’s modern history, the regime soon will have to confront a new US president who has promised to be significantly tougher on Iran than the current Biden administration has been.
Assad’s other key ally, Russia, also has difficult strategic issues to confront. The fall of Assad’s regime was a substantial blow to Vladimir Putin’s aspirations to be a significant powerbroker in the Middle East. Russia used the Tartus naval base in Syria to berth submarines and guided missile frigates that gave it the ability to project power into the Mediterranean.
Russia also used the Khmeimim airbase in Syria to not only strike Syrian rebels but also to support Russian mercenaries in Libya, the Central African Republic and Sudan.
The future of both of these bases is now uncertain, but Russia, similar to Iran, is likely to struggle to forge any workable relationship with the new Syrian regime when its warplanes, as early as last week, were bombing the same rebels who have now taken Damascus.
The fall of the Assad regime has strengthened Israel, the US and Turkey at the expense of Russia, Iran and Hezbollah. That is an equation that the Western world, including Australia, should celebrate. But what comes next in Syria is far from certain. The US and the West will need to remain fully engaged in Syria’s transition to ensure that this new-look Middle East is less dangerous than the old one.