The departure of Bashar al-Assad from Damascus and the apparent termination of his regime are major setbacks for the Islamic Republic of Iran. Combined with the removal of Iranian air defences by Israel, the defeat of Hezbollah in Lebanon, the longstanding dissatisfaction of Iranians with the competence of those purporting to lead them, and the pending return of Donald Trump to the White House, it would be more than reasonable for leaders in Tehran to fear a fate like that visited upon their Syrian client.
Slightly more than 13 years ago, this writer engaged Bashar al-Assad in a conversation centring on what would be required of Syria to regain territory lost to Israel in June 1967, mainly the Golan Heights. In a peace mediation that had gathered strength beginning in the fall of 2010, Israel had indicated its willingness to part with occupied Syrian territory provided Syria terminated its military relationships with Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas.
Al-Assad told me then—on 28 February 2011—that he would do what was expected of him. He assured me that Iran and Hezbollah would yield their interests to those of Syria by agreeing to end military relations with Syria if a Syria-Israel peace treaty were arrived at. I had my doubts, but al-Assad was insistent: Iran would yield on the military relationship, and Hezbollah, once Lebanon joined with Syria in making peace with Israel, would become a Lebanese political party. Indeed, al-Assad also assured me that the “Shebaa Farms” were Syrian, undermining the rationale for the “Lebanese Resistance.”
When I reported the essence of the conversation to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu two days later, he gave the green light to move with full speed toward a treaty.
In mid-March, however, al-Assad slammed on the brakes by authorising deadly force against peaceful Syrian demonstrators protesting police violence and illegal detentions. Al-Assad’s violence would ultimately produce conditions that would all but ruin Syria, leaving it a smoking wreck to be looted by the ruling family and its entourage. By choosing violence over domestic diplomacy and conciliation, al-Assad also ceded the Golan to Israel and subordinated Syria to Iran and Hezbollah.
Iran's instrumental role
Iran was instrumental in saving al-Assad from a revolution that began peacefully but became armed due to regime violence and al-Assad’s release of Islamist criminals from his prisons. In 2013, Iran ordered Hezbollah to intervene decisively on behalf of regime forces at Qusayr. In 2015, Iran persuaded Russia to intervene on al-Assad’s behalf with its air force. And over time, Iran has created predominantly Shiite foreign fighter militias under the command of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to supplement al-Assad’s army in Syria.
But Iran, along with Russia, proved powerless to save al-Assad when Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) launched its offensive beginning on 27 November of this year. My sense is that HTS—reacting to Hezbollah’s defeat in Lebanon and Iran’s loss of its (ineffective) Russian air defence system to Israel—decided to expand its local rule of northwestern Syria to Aleppo. It did so almost effortlessly, and it noticed something surprising as it took Aleppo: al-Assad regime forces were simply melting away—a phenomenon that repeated itself in Hama and Homs. The gate to Damascus was wide open, and no one was obstructing the road ahead.
Naturally, Tehran and Moscow wanted to save their client. For Iran, Syria was the vital land link to the jewel in the crown of its hegemonic pretensions: Hezbollah. Tehran knew that no one other than al-Assad would subordinate Syria to it and its Lebanese proxy. And it hoped to rebuild that proxy in the wake of its devastating defeat.
As for Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Syria was much more than a Mediterranean military base. It was his “evidence” to the Russian people of Russia’s supposed return to great power status. Moscow had, after all, “saved” al-Assad from the alleged regime change machinations of President Barack Obama.
A hollow Syrian army
But when they attempted to prop up the Syrian military, Iran and Russia found their hands gripping empty uniforms. Years of combat inactivity, filled with crime, corruption, theft, and amphetamine production, had hollowed out the Syrian military and its morale, rendering it unfit to fight.
