It was not a coincidence that the Syrian group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) began its push for the city of Aleppo on the same day that Israel and Hezbollah agreed a ceasefire to end the fighting in Lebanon. The domino effect set in motion by Hamas on 7 October 2023 is still rippling through the Middle East, this weekend resulting in the spectacular downfall of Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad.
A country that suffered under a Ba’athist regime for 60 years, as well as 14 years of civil war, is celebrating hard-won freedoms as thousands of disappeared people pour out of Assad’s infamous prisons. What comes next in Syria, which still has to grapple with deep internal and sectarian problems, is uncertain. In Iran, though, the picture is clearer: Ayatollah Ali Khamenei can no longer deny that Tehran’s political and military “axis of resistance” has collapsed.
Hezbollah, the Shia Lebanese movement long backed by Iran in their shared fight against Israel, miscalculated in coming to Hamas’s aid in the war in Gaza by opening a front on the UN-demarcated blue line that separates the Lebanese from their Israeli neighbours.
After almost a year of tit-for-tat cross-border attacks that displaced hundreds of thousands of people from their homes, Israel stepped up its campaign in September. It managed to wipe out much of Hezbollah’s command structure in airstrikes, including its longtime secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah, and drove the group’s fighters away from the demarcation zone in a ground offensive.
Two months later, Tehran told Hezbollah it could not afford to take more losses and the group came limping to the negotiation table, agreeing to a ceasefire on terms favourable to Israel.
Iran has long needed Hezbollah in neighbouring Syria, too, where the Lebanese group, together with Russian forces, were instrumental in the Assad regime’s survival when it was on the brink of falling to assorted rebel forces in 2015. But bled dry by the wars with Israel and Ukraine, neither side was willing or able to come to Damascus’s aid this time.
The Islamist HTS, along with an umbrella of Turkish-backed militias known as the Syrian National Army, sensed a moment of opportunity, gambling that Assad’s allies were weakened and disorganised. They moved on Aleppo, reportedly to stymie a planned regime offensive on their strongholds in north-west Syria, and found that Damascus’s corrupt and demoralised army was caught unawares and offered little resistance.
After 14 years of bloodshed that triggered the worst refugee crisis since the second world war, created Islamic State and stoked the flames of populist politics around the world, scenes from around Syria this weekend once again resemble the hopeful early days of the Arab spring protests.
There are major geopolitical repercussions for the region and the rest of the world. The crimes committed in the regime’s prisons, now exposed to the light of day, will require robust and internationally coordinated efforts to bring Assad and his lackeys to justice.
Assad’s fall effectively severs the weapons, materiel and personnel route from Tehran to Hezbollah, particularly if Syrian Kurdish forces, which have expanded their control of the desert border between Syria and Iraq, remain in position with US backing. Hezbollah, already isolated, will be further weakened, making it more vulnerable to Israeli attack or infiltration.
Iran will be forced to double down on its network of proxies in Iraq and its links to the Houthi militia in Yemen, but crucially it no longer has a direct presence or influence on Israel’s borders. It may instead focus on its nuclear programme, but the re-election of Donald Trump – who orchestrated a “maximum pressure” policy towards Tehran during his first term – means Khamenei will have to proceed with caution.
In the short term, Israel should be delighted with events in Syria, coming as they do on the back of victories over other elements of the axis of resistance – the decimation of Hezbollah and the near eradication of Hamas in the Gaza Strip – although they are accompanied by new challenges.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) entered the Syrian-controlled part of the Golan Heights on Saturday for the first time since 1974 to help repel an assault by rebel forces on a UN outpost near the Druze village of Khader, a few hundred metres from Israeli-occupied territory. On Sunday the IDF said two extra brigades had been deployed and troops sent into the buffer zone to keep Islamist rebel groups and potential refugee flows away.
Israel is also worried about where the Syrian regime’s heavy weaponry and likely reserves of chemical weapons will end up, as well as potential renewed Iranian efforts to smuggle arms and materiel into the occupied West Bank through Jordan.
At this point it is hard to imagine the HTS leader, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, sitting down to sign a peace deal between Syria and Israel that finally settles the fate of the Golan Heights. But as the past 14 months have proven, nothing in the Middle East is off the table any more.
