The Fall of Assad

On Nov. 27, forces affiliated with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), an Islamist rebel group based in Idlib province in northern Syria, launched a military operation that appeared to have as its objective the capture of the strategic M4 highway connecting the city of Aleppo with Hama. Eleven days later, on Dec. 8, HTS and other opposition forces occupied the capital of Damascus, forcing President Bashar al-Assad into exile in Russia. The collapse of the al-Assad government has left a power vacuum that has upended the strategic balance of power in the region.

In late November, Hezbollah and Iran, the backbone of the so-called “Axis of Resistance,” were fighting an Israeli military they believed to be overextended and an Israeli government under siege at home. Russia was securely ensconced in its Syrian bases, working with Iran in support of the Al-Assad government. Turkey was the chastised junior partner of a diplomatic process, the Astana Accords — named after the tripartite talks that led to the termination of the Syrian conflict in 2020 — which placed greater priority on Syrian sovereignty than Turkish regional ambition. And the US was very much on the outside looking in.

An offensive by the Turkish-backed Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) broke a tentative cease-fire that had been in place since March 2020. Most observers assessed this to be a limited-scope attack designed to wrest control of the strategic M4 highway back from Syrian government control. When Syrian Army positions collapsed, however, HTS forces continued their attack. Within days they were in control of Aleppo. With no significant resistance emerging from the Syrian Army, HTS forces pressed forward, and the strategic cities of Hama and Homs fell in short order. By Dec. 8, the Syrian government had disintegrated and HTS occupied Damascus, claiming control over all of Syria.

The Russian air force was in action against HTS forces during the early stages of the offensive, and Iran moved to deploy forces from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and Iraqi proxies to Syria to bolster Syrian defenses. But both the Russians and the Iranians soon halted their respective efforts in the face of the disintegration of the Syrian military. The victory of HTS prompted Iran to withdraw its forces from Syria, and for Russia to withdraw to its bases in Latakia, where preparations are under way to return most if not all of Russia’s military forces back to Russia.

Searching for Answers

In retrospect, the collapse of the Syrian military, and with it the government of Bashar al-Assad, appeared to be an inevitability — something that dissolved this quickly had to have exhibited some sign of fatal decay. As it turns out, years of endless conflict combined with neglect and poor pay, coupled with corruption and a lack of training, resulted in a military that had stopped existing to defend the regime, and instead served as a source of resources for officers and politicians. The Syrian Army that fought to save the Al-Assad regime from 2015-20 no longer existed.

Both Russia and Iran had recognized this reality. In 2018, Russia proposed extensive reforms of the Syrian military that would have fixed most if not all the systemic problems identified during the periods of intense fighting in 2015-17. Bashar al-Assad, however, was resistant to such changes, as they would have required a shake-up among the military and political leadership that had stood by him during the moments of greatest threat to his rule. Likewise, Iranian efforts to take a stronger leadership role in Syrian military affairs were likewise rebuffed by al-Assad, who feared that close relations with Iran would harm his efforts to get Syria back into the fold of the Arab League.

In the end, al-Assad’s insistence on sustaining a system that was defined by corruption proved to be his undoing; when called upon to defend Syria, the forces tasked with that responsibility opted to engage in self-preservation rather than self-sacrifice, and the regime was consigned to the pages of history.

This collapse seemed to take all parties involved by surprise, including the HTS forces and their Turkish sponsors. HTS is an Islamist group with a pedigree that traces its lineage back to Al-Qaeda and Islamic State. While there has been some effort to rebrand HTS as a more moderate organization, its track record of oppression in Idlib, combined with the fact that some of its ranks are drawn from non-Syrian fighters, including of Turkic origin, made HTS and its leader, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani (who has a $10 million bounty on his head from the US State Department) less than ideal candidates for the task of forming a post-Assad government of unity.

And yet, because HTS pushed forward to Damascus, this is the reality that has come to pass. Russia, Turkey and Iran tried to engage the Astana Process to manage the collapse of Syria, but in the end, events outran the ability of diplomacy to catch up. Turkey, as the sponsor of HTS, stepped forward to take the lead on managing the post-Assad transition in Syria, while Russia and Iran retreated to their respective corners.

Greater Israel and an Ottoman Revival

The fall of Al-Assad has turned the Middle East upside down. Israel is resurgent, occupying territory inside Syria while carrying out air strikes to eliminate Syrian military infrastructure and stop it falling into the hands of the anti-Assad forces.

The Axis of Resistance has been rendered effectively null and void in terms of sustaining the Hamas struggle against Israel in Gaza; Hezbollah has been cut off from its Iranian sponsors by the collapse of the Syrian land bridge; and Iran has withdrawn into itself, dealing with increasing pushback from its president to calls for escalation from the Revolutionary Guard. Hamas is now looking for a cease-fire arrangement with Israel that throws the future of the Gaza Strip and West Bank into question and with it the hopes for a creation of an independent Palestine. The dream of a Greater Israel, once viewed as the fantasy of the Israeli far right, has now become reality.

The other big winner in this affair is Turkey, which will be called upon to oversee affairs in territories its political leadership has said are historically Turkish to begin with. Whether Turkey annexes territory outright or seeks a longer path through assimilation culminating in referendum calling for Turkey to absorb some or all the territory of present-day Syria, one thing seems certain: The pan-Ottoman aspirations of Turkish President Recep Erdogan have manifested themselves in spades.

Left in the background is the US, caught up in a political transition between presidential administrations that have fundamentally different visions of the role the US will play in the Middle East going forward. There is little the outgoing Joe Biden administration can do to influence what comes next in Syria. As for President-elect Donald Trump, his job will be to manage the ambitions of Israel and Turkey while avoiding conflict with Russia and Iran. This may be easier said than done, especially when dealing with Iran’s nuclear program. But one thing is for sure: The Middle East situation that Trump thought he inherited when winning the election on Nov. 5 has been forever changed. And managing this new reality will be one of the greatest foreign policy challenges the new US president will face.

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