A few weeks after the Arab Spring uprisings began, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said in an interview that the protests in Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen were going to bring “a new era” in the Middle East and that Arab leaders They would have to do more to accommodate the economic and political aspirations of their people. He didn’t apply the story. He was convinced that his power, a textbook dictatorship, was secure due to his leadership in the resistance against the Israeli occupation of Arab territories (including the Syrian Golan Heights). Until today.
Assad was right on both counts. The alliance that his father, Hafez al Assad, forged with the Islamic Republic that emerged from the Iranian revolution of 1979 (due to the rivalry of both with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq), was going to be crucial to protect him from the popular revolts that would soon ensue. They spread throughout Syria.
In November 2011, I witnessed the enormous deployment of security that aborted attempts at peaceful demonstrations in Damascus. The arrests had already begun and the regime had devastated Deraa. I visited a Hama reduced by fear. From the road, I saw Homs under siege. “They are terrorists,” the official spokespersons claimed. Immediately, to justify it, the dictator let the detained jihadists out of prison upon returning from Iraq where he had previously sent them to fight against the United States.
He already had the civil war that he denounced. Three years later, there was talk of his exile. And so it would have been if his allies of the resistance shaft They would not have come to his aid. (other countries in the area supported the opposite side: each one a different group, balkanizing the opposition and the country). The Lebanese Hezbollah militiamen and the advisors of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard were key to Assad’s survival, although he did not win the game. Also Russian aviation and Wagner’s mercenaries. It has now been seen that both Tehran and Moscow protected their own interests more than the Syrian regime. Busy with their own difficulties, they have dropped it with nothing more than some hollow statements.
The script twist links with the “new era” that Assad foresaw. What the revolts in Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen did not achieve, is paving the way for the end of his family’s 54-year dictatorship in Syria. For now, the balance of power in the Middle East is changing. The most obvious blow is taken by Iran. The driving force of resistance shaft (and for its rivals, the Arab absolute monarchies, the main destabilizing element in the area) has lost its main regional vassal and its direct access route to Hezbollah (very degraded after the last confrontation with Israel). Significantly, despite rebel calls for a peaceful transition, the Iranian Embassy in Damascus was quickly stormed.
The success of Turkey also seems clear, which, after supporting the 2011 revolts, had failed to negotiate an agreement with Assad that would allow it to establish a security strip on the common border to combat the Kurdish militias and return the millions of Syrian refugees it hosts. Although Ankara has denied any support for Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS), the Sunni Islamist group that led the final uprising against Assad, it is unlikely that it did not at least have its approval. In fact, Turkey-allied Syrian militias, grouped under the umbrella organization Syrian National Army, have contributed to the spectacular advance.
It is more complicated to evaluate the effect on Israel and Iraq. Although the Netanyahu Government will celebrate any development that weakens its archenemy Iran, the reality is that it has had a very convenient rival in the Assads. For five decades its border has been the safest of all. It was in his favor to have a weak Syria as a neighbor. Will it be under the new regime? Will Israel be willing to coexist with a system that is clearly going to have a strong Islamist component? Or will he resort to his usual tricks to prevent the grass from growing under the Syrians’ feet?
A difficult situation also arises in Iraq, a fragile government struggling to maintain a voice between the oppressive Iranian influence and the increasingly tenuous influence of the United States. Both his prime minister, Mohamed al Sudani, and the influential leader of the parliamentary majority, Muqtada al Sadr, opposed intervening in favor of Assad, but some pro-Iranian militia groups (Shiite Islamists) had begun recruitment and are not clear how they are going to fit an eventual Sunni Islamist Government on the northwest border.
A similar challenge is posed to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which, after having supported the initial insurrection against the Syrian president, had agreed in recent years to reintegrate him into the Arab League. Both are suspicious of Islamists, both the Shiites of Iran and the Sunnis with whom they share a creed but not a vision of power and politics. HTS, with roots in Al Qaeda, has spent recent years reinventing itself as a nationalist force and shifting its rhetoric toward a more conciliatory style. We will have to see how this transformation takes shape in practice. Their first steps are contradictory: they call for respect for ethnic and religious minorities, but in Aleppo they have already established a morality police to ensure that women cover their hair.
