by James M Dorsey
A week into a rebel offensive, Syria is the potential fulcrum of a tectonic reordering of Middle Eastern geopolitics with President Bashar al-Assad as a key player.
That is if Mr. Al-Assad is willing to play ball this time around.
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An earlier Gulf attempt to drive a wedge between the Syrian leader and Iran by returning Syria to the Arab and Muslim fold failed because sweeping US sanctions prevented wealthy Arab states from investing in the reconstruction of Syria’s war-ravaged economy.
The move restored Syrian membership in the 22-nation Arab League. The League suspended Syria in 2012 in response to Mr. Al-Assad’s brutal conduct in a civil war in which 600,000 people have been killed, and 6.8 million others have fled the country.
A possible renewed effort to seduce Mr. Al-Assad has, if tabled, a greater chance of success because it would involve the lifting of the sanctions that thwarted the Gulf attempt.
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Credit: The Syrian Observer
US and United Arab Emirates officials have been discussing for several months lifting the sanctions if Mr. Al-Assad breaks with Iran and stops the transit via Syria of Iranian arms shipments to Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Lebanese Shiite Muslim militia.
The US sanctioned Syria in 2011 after Mr. Al-Assad cracked down on protesters during the popular revolts that swept the Middle East and toppled the leaders of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen. The crackdown sparked a civil war.
The US Congress adopted the toughest sanctions in 2019 when it passed the Caesar Act that targeted all economic sectors as well as anyone doing business with Syria or Russian and Iranian entities in Syria.
The UAE was the main driver of the Arab world’s rehabilitation of Mr. Al-Assad, who was shunned as a pariah for much of the last decade because of his war conduct and alliance with Iran.
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“The Gulf states have a clear opportunity in trying to bring Syria into the Arab fold… Syria is an Arab state. Syria is for Syrians, and we need to have a Syrian voice on the table, aided by Arab ones. That is the road to de-escalation and resolution,” said Middle East scholar Bader al-Saif.
Mr. Al-Saif noted that Russia, Iran, and Turkey led past efforts to resolve the Syrian conflict. “None of these are Arabs,” he said.
As the rebels advance towards Hama from Aleppo, the major city they captured last week, they could threaten Russian bases on Syria’s Mediterranean coast. Russian forces have backed the Assad regime since 2015 and bombed rebel positions in recent days.
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Analysts Hassan Hassan and Michael Weiss suggested that Russia’s limited kinetic support for Syrian efforts to stymie the rebel offensive may have been driven as much by an effort to pressure Mr. Al-Assad to compromise and introduce reforms needed to potentially get US sanctions lifted as by the fact that Russia is preoccupied with the war in Ukraine.
Russia’s strategy prompted Mr. Al-Assad to agree in recent days to a meeting of Syrian and Turkish security officials in Turkey, the first time the Syrian president agreed to talks on Turkish soil rather than in Russia or another third country.
The talks focused on Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s insistence on moving predominantly Syrian Kurdish forces further away from the Turkish-Syrian border and the maintenance of a 30-kilometre buffer zone on the Syrian side of the border.
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Syrian Vice President Faisal Mekdad
Mr. Erdogan also wants guarantees that Syrian authorities will not harass refugees returning from Turkey, home to some three million Syrians who fled the civil war.
For Mr. Al-Assad, this is make-or-break time. Unless extended by Congress, the US sanctions expire on December 20.
Middle East analyst Ali Bakir suggested Mr. Al-Assad may have put out feelers in his contacts with Iraqi and Emirati leaders.
“I suggest this is a possibility, especially since he has already contacted #Iraq and the #UAE. The 1st has ties with the #US & #Iran, and the 2nd has ties to #Israel,” Mr. Bakir tweeted.
US President-elect Donald J. Trump would likely welcome a deal that would potentially allow him to withdraw the 900 US soldiers based in northern Syria and further weaken Iran.
This week, the United States struck at Iranian-backed groups that fired rockets at US positions.
Mr. Trump has nominated for key positions in his new administration a slew of Iran hawks who are determined to revive his maximum pressure campaign intended to force Iran to change its nuclear and regional policies.
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As director of national intelligence, Mr. Trump nominated Tulsi Gabbard, a zig-zag politician who has repeatedly expressed empathy for Mr. Al-Assad.
Vice-President Kamala Harris asserted in 2019 that Ms. Gabbard had “been an apologist for an individual, Assad, who has murdered the people of his country like cockroaches.”
Ms. Gabbard, who met with Mr. Al-Assad in 2017 and served twice in the Middle East as a reservist in the US Army National Guard, has downplayed the Syrian military’s atrocities in the civil war, opposed US support of Syrian rebel groups and efforts to topple the Syrian leader, and regurgitated Syrian propaganda alleging the United States was wreaking havoc on the Assad regime.
A rupture in Syrian-Iranian relations would break the backbone of Iran’s forward defence strategy centered on Syria and Hezbollah, posing as deterrents on Israel’s border and an array of non-state militias in Iraq and Yemen.
It would also seriously weaken Iran’s regional clout and potentially force Iran to rethink some of its policies.
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Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi rushed to Damascus on Sunday to reaffirm “Tehran’s principled position of providing comprehensive support to the Syrian government, people, and armed forces in their fight against terrorism and in safeguarding regional security and stability.”
Even so, Iran has so far refrained from sending troops to Syria, opting instead to send advisors and facilitate the influx of hundreds of Iranian-backed Iraqi fighters.
Iranian media reports said the advisors included Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Brigadier General Javad Ghaffari, a one-time commander of Iranian forces in Syria, who earned the nickname ‘the Butcher of Aleppo’ for his role in the Syrian military’s 4.5-year-long siege of the country’s second-largest city and economic hub in the mid-2010s.
In 2021, Mr. Ghaffari was reportedly relieved of his Syrian command because of a “‘major breach of Syrian sovereignty’ after attacking US forces and deploying Iranian weapons in unapproved places.”
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A Saudi television network reported Mr. Ghaffari had led “a number of activities against the United States and Israel that almost involved Syria in an unwanted regional war.” The ‘activities’ included a drone attack on a remote US military base.
The US-Emirati discussions may be one reason why Mr. Al-Assad has sought to keep Syria on the sidelines of the war in Lebanon even though Hezbollah fighters played a crucial role in the Syrian president’s initial defeat of the rebels in the civil war and ability to hold on to power.
In October, Israeli media reported that Maher al-Assad, the president’s brother and commander of the Syrian army’s core 4th Armoured Division, instructed his troops to stop transferring arms to Hezbollah and sheltering associates of the group.
Earlier, Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader assassinated by Israel in late September, refused to meet with Mr. Al-Assad’s visiting intelligence chief, General Hussam Louka. Mr. Louka had to make do with Mr. Nasrallah’s deputies.
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At the time, Mr. Al-Assad feared that supporting Hezbollah could jeopardise his efforts to improve relations with Gulf states.
Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar supported anti-government rebels during the civil war to counter Iranian backing for Mr. Al-Assad’s regime.
Mr. Al-Assad’s recent caution may already be paying dividends. Middle Eastern countries, including the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Jordan, and Israel, are warning the Biden administration and Mr. Trump that Mr. Al-Assad’s fall would further destabilise the region.
Israel, Jordan, and Iraq fear that a rebel victory would turn Syria into an Islamist state even if Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the rebel group leading the latest offensive, has sought to shed its jihadist antecedents in favour of winning hearts and minds while retaining its ultra-conservative religious precepts.
Israel has in past years repeatedly attacked Iranian and Hezbollah facilities in Syria. Israel has stepped up its attacks in the past year, prompting Iran twice to fire missile barrages at Israel.
Last week, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu added a stick to the dangled carrot before Mr. Al-Assad.
“In Syria, we are systematically blocking attempts by Iran, Hezbollah, and the Syrian army to transfer weapons to Lebanon. Assad must understand that he is playing with fire,” Mr Netanyahu said as he announced the Lebanon ceasefire.
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Credit: taqqiyashots
Echoing the concerns of various Arab states, Israeli journalist Yossi Melman noted that “just as in the Syrian civil war…Israel once again faces the dilemma of which outcome is worse: a weakened Assad regime, fortified by a massive Iranian presence, or extremist jihadi groups that may again reach the Golan border and attack Israel from there.”
Israel and the other Middle Eastern states also fear that Turkey would emerge a winner if the rebels it supports push further south from Aleppo toward the capital, Damascus, successfully.
Few analysts take at face value Turkey’s insistence that it had no advance knowledge of the latest rebel offensive, let alone that it approved.
“This offensive was planned and ready to be executed seven weeks ago. It should have occurred seven weeks ago. But at the time, the Turkish role prevented the rebels from launching this military operation,” said Syria scholar Omer Ozkizilcik.
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Turkish-backed Syrian fighters. Credit: Enab Baladi
Turkey, which for much of the civil war agitated for Mr. Al-Assad’s downfall and the withdrawal of US forces from Syria, acquiesced in the offensive after two-year-long efforts to reconcile Ankara and Damascus failed in mid-November.
Subsequently, Russia’s special envoy for Syria, Alexander Lavrentiev, backed Syrian demands for a withdrawal of Turkish troops from northern Syria, calling Turkey an “occupying force.”
With the rebel successes on the battlefield, Mr. Erdogan, the Turkish president, hopes that the advances will increase his bargaining power with the incoming Trump administration by demonstrating that he can curb Iranian influence.
According to Mr. Ozkizilcik, the facts on the ground in northern Syria after Turkey greenlighted the rebel offensive speak for themselves.
“The region (of Tell Rifaat) to be cleaned from the YPG terror group has now been cleaned from the YPG terror group. There’s no more threat from this region towards Turkey,” Mr. Ozkizilcik said, referring to the US-backed Kurdish People’s Defense Units by its initials, YPG, designated by Turkey as a terrorist organisation.
“Now, with the changing situation on the ground, I hope that…Moscow and Tehran will use their influence in Damascus to convince the Assad regime to engage in a meaningful process for a political solution in Syria. This is the only way forward for peace,” Mr. Ozkizilcik added.
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Credit: Middle East Eye
Echoing Mr. Ozkizilcik, Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahceli, Mr. Erdogan’s ultra-nationalist ally, insisted that “Assad must recognise that unconditional dialogue with Turkey is in his and his nation’s best interest.”
A scion of a Turkmen family with roots in Syria, Mr. Bahceli wasted no time framing the dialogue in ways that would ensure that Mr. Al-Assad would not engage.
“Aleppo is Turkish and Muslim to its core. We are not the only ones saying this: history says it, geography says it, truth says it, our ancestors say it, and the Turkish flag raised at Aleppo Castle says it,” Mr. Bahceli told a gathering of his followers.
“Abandoning (Aleppo) to foreign hands is unthinkable. Should such a moment arrive, history will rewrite itself, and the region will revert to its true essence.” Mr. Bahceli added.
Dr. James M. Dorsey is an Adjunct Senior Fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, and the author of the syndicated column and podcast, The Turbulent World with James M. Dorsey.