Politics

Geopolitical faultlines begin to show in a post-Assad region

Key regional powers—Türkiye, Egypt, Iran—do not see eye to eye over what transpired in Syria. One emerges as a winner, the other a loser, and Syria's new Islamist-leaning leaders unsettle the third.

AFP

Egypt's President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi (C-R) gestures to Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian (5th-R) and Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan (C-L) after a group picture during the D-8 summit in Cairo on December 19, 2024.

Geopolitical faultlines begin to show in a post-Assad region

Amr Emam

last update on 25 Dec 2024

The different political positions held by three of the Middle East’s main powers were on display at a summit for developing nations held in Cairo earlier this month amid the latest regional friction over Syria. Egypt, Iran and Türkiye were present in Cairo at the meeting of the group of developing nations known as the D-8, alongside five other Islamic nations.

Ahead of the 20 December meeting in Cairo, international and regional attention was firmly focused on the shocking 11-day downfall of Bashar al-Assad's regime. He had fled Damascus just days before the group convened.

Events in Syria have already exposed fissures between Egypt, Iran and Türkiye, highlighting their points of contention. When the three D-8 heavyweights huddled together, top-level pleasantries were exchanged. But the flowery words did little to mask the emerging faultlines and concerns over the dramatic regime change in Damascus.

Winners and losers

Iran is seen as the biggest loser after al-Assad’s overthrow, which has seen its influence in the region significantly curtailed. It compounds a series of losses over just a few months for Tehran’s proxies, from the defeat of Hezbollah in Lebanon to the weakening of the Houthi militia in Yemen. The slew of defeats has left Iran much more limited in its scope and pushed back within its own borders.

Read more: Syria and the future of Iran

For its part, Türkiye has emerged as the big winner in a post-Assad region. The links it built with the coalition of Islamist groups that deposed the Syrian leader—especially Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS)—will pave the way for many gains to come, including the possible total eradication of the threat posed to it by Syrian Kurds.

By helping drive Hezbollah and Iran out of Syria, Türkiye is becoming the regional player with the closest relations with the US and Israel. And if Ankara gets Syria's new rulers to push Russia out, it will win even more favour.

AFP — Members of Russian and Syrian forces at the Abu Al-Duhur crossing on the eastern edge of Idlib province on August 20, 2018.

Türkiye is is also well-positioned to have a dominant share in the reconstruction of Syria. As well as being among its closest neighbours, it is also one of the most prepared for the projects which will be required.

Shifting calculations

As new political realities unfold across the region and diplomatic calculations shift, there is speculation that both Türkiye and Iran will be turning to Egypt for support.

For the first time in several decades, Iran and Egypt—regional arch-rivals since the 1979 Islamic Revolution swept Iran—find themselves on the same side of events in Syria. With a new political order taking shape in the Middle East as the D-8 convened, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi met Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and Turkish President Recept Tayyip Erdoğan—both together and separately—on the same day.

Egypt has long viewed Iran as a destabilising actor in the region, including in Syria itself. But with the fall of al-Assad bringing Egyptian-Turkish tensions to the fore, Cairo now sees Ankara as the bigger threat. It is especially unsettled after Israel systematically destroyed Syria's military infrastructure in a massive wave of strikes in the days following the Assad regime's collapse.

Egyptian fears

Cairo views the rise of the Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham group to prominence in Syria with much scepticism, wary of its brand of political Islam. And while Egypt is the birthplace of the Muslim Brotherhood, its contemporary society has largely rejected this ideology. After a brief stint in power in 2012, el-Sisi took over and waged an all-out war against the group, banning it, freezing its assets, and encouraging regional allies to do the same.

Türkiye is becoming the regional player with the closest relations with the US and Israel. And if Ankara gets Syria's new rulers to push Russia out, it will win even more favour.

It has also battled the group on a cultural and social level by launching sophisticated media campaigns that shed light on the danger of the ideology and group. The downfall of the Islamist project in Egypt had a ripple effect on other Arab Spring countries like Tunisia, Libya and Morocco.

Despite the growing unpopularity of the MB in the region, the ideology of its founder, Hassan al-Banna and theorist Sayyid Qutb continues to resonate with Islamists and jihadists around the world, particularly extremist groups like Al-Qaeda. And here, it is important to note that HTS was birthed out of Al-Qaeda.

Egypt's decade-long campaign against the MB, starting in 2012, put Cairo at loggerheads with Ankara. For his part, Erdoğan is a key backer of the group and has welcomed Egyptian members and leaders seeking refuge in Türkiye.

The fall of al-Assad has brought the same brand of political Islam to the forefront in Syria, helping boost Türkiye's influence there, just at a time when Egypt believed it had consigned the ideology to the past. It now fears its popularity could be resurrected again, dealing a strong blow to its efforts to combat it.

There are also credible fears that the Syrian revival of political Islam – alongside any renewed chaos or deeper uncertainty in the country – may pave the way for the return of violent terrorist groups, especially the Islamic State (IS). Egypt has quelled such groups in the Sinai, its territory bordering Israel and the Palestinian Gaza Strip, which is in close proximity to the Suez Canal.

The Egyptian army and police fought for almost a decade against efforts to establish an Islamic emirate in the Sinai before they totally defeated it in 2021. Any resurgence of the group there would be a disaster, especially given credible Israeli plans to empty Gaza of its Palestinian population and push them into the Sinai.

Reuters — A displaced Palestinian boy, who fled his house due to Israeli strikes, stands by a fence at a tent camp at the border with Egypt, amid fears of an Israeli ground assault in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, February 18, 2024.

In the past decade, Egypt has taken a pragmatic approach to regional politics and how it has navigated them, including the threat of extremism. It has proved able to protect its own interests while navigating the wider geo-strategic currents.

That is expected to continue as the challenges posed by regime change in Syria unfold. El-Sisi told a group of journalists earlier this month that his country was ready to participate in Syria's reconstruction.

Whatever else, Egypt will have few regrets over the demise of what it saw as Iran's wider destabilising influence in one Arab country after another. But, at the same time, Erdoğan's resurgent support of political Islam and affiliated groups will be a sore point in relations between Cairo and Ankara into the future.

For its part, Türkiye will likely continue to push back on Russia's presence in Syria and its wider regional influence at the behest of the West. The next arena could very well be Egypt's neighbour, Libya, which will likely further irk Cairo.

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