Since the fall of the Assad regime in December 2024, Syria’s new military, security, and intelligence institutions have worked tirelessly to secure the country’s porous borders with Iraq and Lebanon. Reinforcements have been sent in waves, joint border control frameworks have been established with Baghdad and Beirut, and senior smugglers have been arrested, all while Syria faces a complex array of domestic threats.
There is much still to do, however. Some cells remain active, notably those affiliated with pro-Iran militias and Islamic State (IS). Some regions of Syria still lie beyond the authority of the central government in Damascus, including areas populated by the Druze community in the south. In addition, the country is awash with weapons abandoned by Assad’s retreating forces, which has contributed to bouts of violence, such as on the coast in March 2025 and in Sweida in July 2025.
If that were not enough, Syria’s economy had been run into the ground by the time Bashar al-Assad fled. Essential services, infrastructure, and housing all need attention, as do Syria’s borders with Iraq and Lebanon. Damascus needs to impose security across Syrian territory and cannot do so if the borders are leaky. Halting the cross‑border narcotics trade is another urgent priority. Drugs corrode Syria’s social fabric and unsettle regional security, but under al-Assad, Syria became a major producer of drugs, particularly Captagon.
Battle for influence
Strategically, Syria's new leadership is trying to ‘cut the cord’ with Iran and its militias. This means disrupting Iranian supply routes through Syria to Hezbollah in Lebanon. But Iran will not give up its land corridor without a fight. Militias aligned with Iran in Iraq and Lebanon likewise understand that the new government in Damascus threatens their lucrative smuggling operations, from drugs to fighters and weapons. Syria's leadership has arrested members of several Syria-based cells linked to Iranian militias in Iraq and Lebanon. This success, alongside Israeli military action, has been crucial to the degradation of Hezbollah in Lebanon.
For its part, Iran has taken note and has announced that it is prepared for an escalation of tensions, and could even be more proactive in its military approach going forward, especially towards entities it deems as collaborating with Washington. Media outlets with sympathies towards Tehran now portray the new Syrian government as an “enemy” and an American puppet.
Porous border
For decades, the Assad regime and Hezbollah built intricate smuggling networks through the mountains, including the construction and use of tunnels. Smuggling between Syria and Lebanon became easier than crossing an official border. Cars and military vehicles travelled along mountain roads and through tunnels as if moving between two neighbouring cities. Across the 375km Syrian‑Lebanese border are dozens of unofficial smuggling routes, both overland and underground. For Hezbollah, this is easy money.
Louay, a civilian from near Damascus who fled Syria to avoid conscription into Assad’s army, told Al Majalla that a Hezbollah vehicle took him from Qusayr to Beirut in 2023. “The journey was trouble‑free,” he said. “Within about two hours, we were on the outskirts of Beirut, all for just $600.” Moving weapons and fighters between Syria and Lebanon posed little difficulty, taking place “under the light of the sun and the moon”.
A resident of the southern Syrian town of Assal al‑Ward, near the Lebanese border, recalled seeing vehicles carrying rockets and weapons pass through the area towards Lebanon without even attempting to conceal their cargo. “We no longer felt that there was a border,” he said. “It began to feel as though the other side was simply a military barracks or an arms depot, with weapons being transported from Syria into Lebanon.”
The rapid collapse of the Assad regime, followed by the new Syrian authorities’ campaign against smuggling, narcotics, and militias, has dealt Hezbollah a setback. Its forces had to abandon numerous weapons depots as they fled Syria, and its most important Iranian supply route had been severed. But in the 20 months since al-Assad fell, Hezbollah has kept contact with its cells inside Syria, recruited new networks, and devised new methods, including using donkeys, balloons, and drones. This allowed them to preserve several smuggling routes.
Al Majalla has been told by well-placed sources in Syria that Hezbollah is preparing attacks in Syrian regions with diverse populations with the intent to "ignite ethnic and sectarian tensions and to provoke civil war". This is in coordination with remnants of the Assad regime, some of whom found refuge in Lebanon. Another aim is to obstruct security, political, and economic coordination between Syria and Lebanon, the sources assert.
In preparation for what it believes to be a looming attack from Syrian forces, Hezbollah has sent fighters to the Syrian border. It believes that Syrian authorities want to make peace with Israel. But Damascus rejects the claim and says it is part of an Iranian ruse to demonise the new authorities and recruit supporters in both Lebanon and Syria. Sympathetic media outlets portray Iran as “the protector of the resistance” and “the force preventing the Syrian army from entering Lebanon”.
Difficult task
Damascus is still in the process of institution‑building, setting priorities, and strengthening its military capabilities, but has had to devote time and effort to Hezbollah to curb its operations inside Syria and along the border. For a government still in its infancy, with limited military and logistical means, that has proved difficult. Syria has not yet laid the intelligence groundwork required to map and understand the network of tunnels and routes that Hezbollah had spent decades building.
Syrian authorities have intercepted around one smuggling attempt across the Lebanese border every week since December 2024 and arrested dozens of members of Hezbollah‑affiliated cells, Al Majalla's sources say.
In July, 48 security force operations targeted those involved in the drugs trade, seizing more than seven million Captagon pills, 1,190kg of hashish, 124,000 pharmaceutical tablets, 15,000 pregabalin pills, 8.3kg of crystal meth, 151g of cocaine, 22g of heroin, and 1.8 kg of precursor substances used in drug production.
