Self Assessment

THE FALL OF SYRIA AND THE FUTURE OF THE IRAN THREAT

Published On : 2025-01-15
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THE FALL OF SYRIA AND THE FUTURE OF THE IRAN THREAT

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The swift and unforeseen fall of the Syrian regime has caught major players off guard, including Russia and Iran, who heavily invested in propping up the state. This creates a dangerous power vacuum, with various rebel groups, Islamist extremists, and other foreign actors (such as Turkey) for influence. While Israel initially benefited from Assad’s downfall, it faces uncertainties.

INTRODUCTION

Last month, a coalition of rebel groups brought a swift end to 50 years of brutal and repressive rule by the Assad family, following 13 years of brutal civil war.

The fall of the regime provoked joy on Syrian streets, but also great uncertainty about the future. The rapid advance of the rebels has arguably taken Russia and Iran by surprise and has caused them to vicariously suffer an embarrassing defeat. The rebels’ main sponsors, the governments of Turkey and Qatar, may now be feeling as if they have bitten off more than they can chew.

Using a wider lens, the fall of the Assad government has caught the diplomatic community off guard, with nations scrambling to respond to a sudden power vacuum in a region where various armed groups, Islamist extremists, and foreign players have been jockeying for influence for years.

The immediate priority was to secure Syria’s chemical weapons, which prompted the Israeli Air Force to launch a series of airstrikes. The second immediate challenge is to prevent the Islamic State from re-establishing a base in Syria.

To that end, US President Biden authorized airstrikes against Islamic State targets inside Syria, providing close support to the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, reportedly hitting 75 ISIS targets. It is also claimed that the US bombed units of Iranian-led Shiite Iraqi militias trying to cross the border to join the fighting on the Syrian regime’s side.

RECALIBRATION OF EXTERNAL POWERS

The Syrian civil war was marked by the involvement of a number of other nations and non-state actors who supported different factions, competed for influence, and sought to advance their interests and ideology. Currently, external actors are once again choosing sides and proxy forces to support in Syria:

Turkey

Although the extent of Turkish involvement in the successful coup is as yet unknown, many argue that the attacks were only designed to provoke Assad into negotiations, and not to oust him. With influence over the most powerful rebel factions, Turkey will play a much bigger role in the days ahead.

The Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said: “The new administration [of Syria] must be established in an orderly manner. The principle of inclusiveness must never be compromised. There must be no desire for revenge.” In the second breath, however, he added that he saw no place in the government for the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, which control about a third of the country, including most of its oil and farmland.

Turkey arguably views the US-backed group as an extension of its opponent, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), with whom it is fighting a low-intensity civil war. The Kurds in Syria – like the country in general – thus face an unpredictable future, and this is especially true given the potential disinterest in the incoming US administration: indeed, Donald Trump has already voiced that America “should remain on the sidelines”.

Russia

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov declared a day before the regime fell that Moscow was doing everything possible to prevent “terrorists” from winning in Syria. Russian soldiers and mercenaries were quietly but intensely packing up shop, however, apparently aware of their own weakness in the face of impending regime collapse and the devastation of their Iranian allies.

Russia appears to have written off its investment, and Assad has fled for Moscow, which will inevitably put a strain on the relations with the incoming Syrian government. Meanwhile, parlance in Kremlin statements has evolved from “the terrorists“ to “Syrian opposition groups with whom contacts have already been established.” Russia has also purportedly begun to claim that Russia enabled Assad’s downfall and in return wants the rebels to allow them to keep their bases in the country as a reward.

The collapse of the Assad regime means a limitation on Russia’s ability to project its power in the region, and Putin’s status will be subsequently affected. Russia may lose its only naval base in warm waters, as well as a key air base, which would severely damage Moscow’s maneuvering capabilities in Africa and the Mediterranean (and therefore have a strategic impact on Russia’s influence on a more global scale). As a consequence, Russia may have to start relying even more on its capabilities in cyberspace as a tool of statecraft.

In short, Russia and Iran were forced to “unplug“ the regime they have kept on life support since 2015: Russia in the form of airstrikes, including bombing of civilians in rebel-held areas (including Palestinian refugee camps), while Iran’s most powerful proxy force, Hezbollah, fought alongside pro-government forces under the supervision of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards using Iranian weapons. The Iranians, however, apparently realising that the regime – their biggest imperial investment – was finished, began withdrawing their military commanders and personnel from Syria on Friday, leaving their long-time ally to its fate. Russia could not have held the regime on its own without the Iranian-organized Shia infantry (mostly consisting of Lebanese, Iraqi, and Afghan fighters) and thus began outreach to the Syrian opposition.

US and Israel

The United States intervened in the conflict in 2014 with airstrikes against the Islamic State and retained a small contingent of approximately 900 troops in the northeast to support the Kurds, a role in which they currently remain, but whose influence in toppling the regime has been minimal.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not hesitate to take credit for Assad’s stunning fall, which he claimed was “a direct result of the blows we have dealt to Iran and Hezbollah, the main supporters of the Assad regime”. While this is certainly true for the most part, Israel arguably preferred Assad to remain in power (as the “devil it knew“) and which it could quite comfortably pressure – which presumably brought considerable intelligence success.

Iran

The Iranians apparently understood that Assad planned to gradually trade them for creeping legitimacy with other Arab countries and the West, yet his fall is a huge strategic blow to them and makes them the biggest “losers“ of the whole war – except of course, for ordinary Syrians themselves.

In a matter of weeks, Iran has lost pillars in its so-called Axis of Resistance. After the heavy blow suffered by Hezbollah at the hands of Israel, the fall of Assad is a fatal strike to Iran’s imperial aspirations for dominance in the Middle East. There is, of course, a link, since it is clear that the weakening of Hezbollah (and, in particular, the removal of its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, who personally campaigned to keep Assad in power) precipitated the overthrow of the Syrian regime.

The fall of Assad is another nail in the coffin of Iran’s ‘forward defence’, which will force Iran to rethink its security strategy. Its huge investments in Syria and Lebanon have gone to waste, and the significance of the fall of the regime can hardly be overstated: without Assad and the Sunnis in Damascus, Iran’s ability to restore Hezbollah’s power and its ability to threaten Israel from Lebanon has been dramatically weakened.

Moreover, Syria also allowed for territorial continuity from Iran into Lebanon, forming the so-called “Shiite Crescent” and providing Iran with unprecedented strategic depth. To restore it, Iran is likely to rely more heavily in the future on its ballistic missiles and hacking capabilities, seeking not only an increase in their range but a greater “yield”.

The fall of Assad may weaken Iran enough to force a decision that will lead to an Israeli attack on Iran‘s nuclear program. Donald Trump will have an important role to play here and, unlike Biden, he is unlikely to defend Israel in such an eventuality. A large-scale cyber-war to damage Iran’s nuclear programme – or by Iran against its rivals to deter them from attacking its nuclear facilities – cannot be ruled out.

Arab nations

Other Arab countries have displayed pragmatic working relationships with Assad in recent years: the Emiratis, Saudis, Jordanians, and Egyptians certainly did not “like“ Assad, but as they are deeply opposed to the accumulation of political power by Islamists, it is not expected that these governments will stand idly by while HTS smoothly takes over in Damascus.

Qatar and Turkey, on the other hand, appear poised to benefit from the situation. Indeed, it could be said that Turkey is the only neighbor of Syria that can benefit strongly from Assad’s fall: President Erdoğan has made a number of U-turns on Syria, but now they have the opportunity to shape a successor regime in Damascus – a goal of theirs since it turned away from Bashar in 2011.

Erdoğan’s problem is that the HTS may not cooperate; Jawlani has kicked out both ISIS and al-Qaeda in the past, and would likely also turn against Turkey in the the face of a better offer.

Moreover, the Syrian opposition has suddenly lost a common enemy and is now grappling with whether to unite and form a pluralistic, federal civilian government, or descend into fighting that will degenerate into a new civil war.

THE CYBER PERSPECTIVE

Iran is a world leader in using cyber warfare as a tool of statecraft, with Iranian hackers gaining access to emails from an array of targets, including government staff in the Middle East, the US, militaries, telecommunications companies, and critical infrastructure operators. The malware used to infiltrate the computers is increasingly more sophisticated and is often able to map out the networks the hackers have broken into, providing Iran with a blueprint of the underlying cyber infrastructure that could prove helpful for planning and executing future attacks.

Out of the last 12 largest publicly-known cyber-attacks on Saudi Arabia in the past five years, Iran was responsible for eight. Iranian APTs like MuddyWater, Cotton Sandstorm, or Static Kitten focussed on traditional espionage targets like governmental organizations (such as the Saudi Arabia Ministry of Defense), telecommunication, or aviation, but have also targeted the oil industry, transportation, and critical infrastructure.

Iran’s minister of defense gave a speech last year stating that given the current complex security situation in the Middle East, Iran “had to redefine its national defenses beyond its geographic borders”, utilizing new warfare strategies – including the use of cyberspace. Iran is narrowing the gap with other powers opposing the West like Russia and China, with Iranian hackers focussing their energy on regional targets like Saudi Arabia.

ETLM

Over the past months, Iran has faced significant setbacks as Hezbollah suffered substantial damage from Israeli strikes in Lebanon, and its most long-standing state ally collapsed swiftly and entirely. These events mark major blows to Iran’s regional strategy, which relied heavily on Syria as a conduit for arming Hezbollah and creating an armed and ideologically prepared “Shia crescent”, giving Iran significant strategic depth in the region. The fall of the Syrian government further complicates efforts to rebuild Hezbollah’s strength.

Despite these challenges, the Iranian leader Ali Khamenei dismissed any notion of weakness, declaring on December 11, “Iran is strong and powerful, and will become more powerful”. While Iran is undoubtedly weakened by recent events, it remains a resilient and formidable force in the region, albeit one currently facing considerable constraints internationally with an economy on the brink of collapse.

The fall of the Assad regime in Syria is another nail in the coffin of Iran’s “forward defence”, forcing Tehran to rethink its security strategy. Its huge investments in Lebanon and now Syria have come to naught, and the significance of the fall of the Assad regime for Iran can hardly be overstated: without Assad and with the Sunni regime in Damascus, Shiite Iran’s ability to restore Hezbollah’s power and its ability to threaten Israel from Lebanon has been dramatically weakened. To restore its strategic depth, Iran is likely to rely more heavily on its ballistic missiles and cyber attacks, and we should expect a heavier reliance on its cyber programme in the upcoming months and years.