It is no coincidence that the Syrian group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) began to attack the city of Aleppo, on the very day that Israel and Hezbollah are to end the ceasefire in Lebanon. The effects of the Hamas October 7, 2023 movement are still reverberating throughout the Middle East this weekend spectacular fall the president of Syria, Bashar al-Assad.
The country, which has suffered under Ba’athist rule for 60 years and 14 years of civil war, is celebrating harsh freedoms as thousands of people flee Assad’s infamous prisons. What happened next? of SyriaIt is uncertain, however, whether it will be deeply disturbed by internal and sectarian questions. 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 Lebanese Shia movement long aided by Iran in its joint fight against Israel, erred in coming to the aid of Hamas in the Gaza war by opening a front on the UN-demarcated blue line that separates the Lebanese from their Israeli neighbors.
After almost a year, such a cross of the border was attacked that hundreds of thousands of people mourned from their seats; Israel He went on his campaign in September. He managed to eliminate much of Hezbollah’s command structure in the airstrike, when its long-time secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah, and a group of fighters from the sealed zone drove him to the ground.
Two months later, Tehran told Hezbollah that it could not take any more damage and the group limped to the negotiating table, agreeing to a cease-fire. in terms of appeasing Israel.
Iran has long needed Hezbollah also in neighboring Syria, where the Lebanese group, along with Russian forces, were instrumental in the survival of the Assad regime when it fell in a clash with rebel forces in 2015. But the wars have dried up. Neither Israel nor Ukraine can come willingly or with the help of Damascus at this time.
Islamist HTS, together with an umbrella The Turks backed the militias which is known as the Syrian National Army, has sensed the importance of opportunity, has weakened and disorganized Assad’s allies. Having marched to Aleppo, in order to attack the fortifications of the regime in Syria to the north-west, he found the corrupt and corrupt army of Damascus caught unawares and making little resistance.
After 14 years of bloodshed that fueled the worst refugee crisis since World War II, created the Islamic State and fanned the flames of populism around the world, the arguments surrounding Syria this weekend once again resembled the hope of the 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 regime prisons, now exposed, will require strong international connections to bring Assad and his henchmen to justice.
Assad’s fall would effectively cut off the weapons, material and personnel route from Tehran to Hezbollah, especially if the Syrian Kurdish forces, which have expanded control of the desert border between Syria and Iraq, remain in a position with US support. Hezbollah, already isolated, will be further weakened, making it even more vulnerable to an Israeli attack or infiltration.
Iran will be forced to double down on its network of proxies in Iraq and its links with the Houthi militia in Yemen, but crucially it no longer has a direct presence or influence on Israel’s borders. He may focus more on his nuclear program, but the re-election of Donald Trump – who orchestrated “maximum pressure” on Tehran in his first term – means Khamenei will have to proceed with caution.
In the short term, Israel should be pleased with the results in Syria, coming 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 – though they may be. accompanied by new challenges.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) entered Syria’s mainland part of the Golan Heights on Saturday for the first time since 1974 to help repel an attack by rebel forces on a UN post near the Druze village of Khader, a few hundred meters from Israel. – busy On Sunday, the IDF said that two brigades had been released outside of it and that troops had been sent into a buffer zone to guard Islamist rebel groups and potential refugees.
Israel is also concerned about where the Syrian regime’s heavy weapons and likely chemical weapons supplies will end up, as well as renewed Iranian power efforts to get weapons and material into the occupied West Bank through Jordan.
At this point, it is difficult to imagine the leader of HTS, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, sitting down to sign a peace between Syria and Israel, which will finally end the fate of the Golan Heights. But as the last 14 months have proven, nothing in the Middle East is off the table.