In 1965, the British journalist Patrick Seale published his classic book “The Struggle for Syria.” Seale argued that the weak, fragmented Syrian state served as the arena in which regional and international actors fought directly and by proxy for regional hegemony. In 1949 alone three coups d’etat took place in Syria. The country found temporary refuge by merging with Egypt into the United Arab Republic, breaking away in 1961 to resume its precarious independent existence. It was only in 1971 that Hafez al-Assad established a coherent powerful state. Assad offered his people a Faustian deal of stability and an important regional position in return for a tyrannical and corrupt regime dominated by members of the heretical Alawite minority.
Assad died in 2000 and was succeeded by his son Bashar. Bashar had a mixed record during his first 11 years in power, but he failed abysmally in dealing with the Syrian version of the Arab Spring which developed into a brutal civil war. Assad was saved by Russian and Iranian military intervention in 2015, but his regime and Syria did not recover from the war. The full fledged civil war ended in December 2016 with a conquest by the regime and its allies of Aleppo, but a unified Syrian state had yet to be reestablished. Assad and his regime controlled only 60 percent of Syria. The other 40 percent were controlled by Turkey, the Kurds, and HTS, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (The Authority for the Liberation of the Levant), an organization replacing the original Al-Nusra Front, the Jihadi organization established and led by Abu Mohammad al-Joulani, the nom de guerre of Ahamd a-Shara who was sent by al-Qaeda from Iraq to establish a branch in Syria during the Syrian civil war. A-Shara’s fighters and 50 thousand other rebels were concentrated in the Province of Idlib in north-western Syria where the Assad regime and Russia allowed rebels from all over Syria to settle at the end of the civil war. Joulani and his organization have administered Idlib since early 2017. As for the rest of Syria controlled by Asad, it became a full-fledged Iranian proxy, an important link in Teheran’s axis of resistance against Israel. In addition to the hostile presence of Turkish troops and a small US military force, several other presumably friendly military and para-military forces were stationed in Syria at the end of the civil war: Three Russian military bases (two naval and one aerial), a small Iranian military force, and a number of Shiite militias.
The Assad regime and HTS
After the restoration of his regime, as it were, Assad and his Russian patrons regretted the reality they created in Idlib and sought to eliminate it by invading the province. They were prevented from doing so by Turkey who was worried that such an invasion would send another million refugees into its territory. Assad and Moscow did try to curtail the power of the HTS and its administration, and in late 2024, stepped up their attacks on HTS. The HTS backed by Turkey responded by pushing in the direction of Aleppo and was surprised by the mild resistance they met. What began as a limited military offensive developed into an all-out attack on the regime that exposed a surprising degree of its deterioration and weakness. In very short order, the HTS captured Aleppo and then moved south to Hama and Homs and ended up capturing the capital Damascus where it was joined by rebel forces from southern Syria. By December 8, the regime fell; Bashar al-Assad himself fled to Moscow and other members of the regime’s elite escaped to Lebanon and Iraq or went into hiding. Al-Joulani became Syria’s new ruler and eventually took the title of president to himself.
Domestic, Regional and International Implications
The fall of the Assad dynasty after more than 50 years marks a dramatic change in Syrian politics. The dominance of the Alawite community was terminated and members of the community retreated to their mountainous region in north-western Syria and on the Syrian coast. A new regime made up of unfamiliar people came into being, raising a series of questions regarding its orientation and resilience.
The first question regards Joulani or al-Sharaa himself. Shortly after founding his Nusra Front, Joulani announced in 2016 that he had severed his ties to Al-Qaeda and turned into an anti-Assad rebel. In other words, this meant that he was no longer a Jihadi but an Islamist. This transformation was not universally accepted. The US administration kept the Nusra Front and its successor, the HTS, on the terrorism list. Since becoming Syria’s ruler, al-Joulani, who turned out to be a very adroit politician and a skillful spokesperson, has invested a great deal of effort in trying to persuade the international community that he is not a jihadi, but he has failed to present a roadmap for Syrian politics in the coming years. Syria is obviously not going to become a parliamentary democracy, and the best that can be hoped for is that it will have a stable, orderly government and that it will not try to impose a radical Islamist ideology on the country.
The Shara regime faces significant domestic, regional, and international challenges. Domestically, he needs to reestablish a unified Syrian state and to find a modus vivendi with the Kurds in north-eastern Syria, with the Alawites, and with the Druze community in the south. Will it try to crush these forces, or will he seek an accommodation, possibly predicated on a quasi-federal structure?
Regionally and internationally, the fall of the Assads and the emergence of the HTS-dominated regime have been a major development. First and foremost, it was a blow to Iran and its system of proxies. Syria was an important Iranian proxy, a crucial link to its most important proxy, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and a crucial piece of territory in its quest to establish a land bridge to the Mediterranean. In fact, the toppling of the Assad regime was made possible by the blow inflicted on Iran and Hezbollah by Israel in the current war triggered by the Hamas terrorist attack on October 7, 2023, and by the weakening of the Russian position due to the war in Ukraine. Both Russia and Iran are trying to salvage part of their position and influence in Syria.
A major beneficiary of these developments in Syria is Turkey. Turkey has a close relationship with Joulani and his group and is clearly hoping to become the new regime’s regional patron, replacing Iran. The tension between Turkey and Iran has been evident for several years now, but Erdogan decided not to posture himself as the Sunni rival to Shiite Iran’s quest for regional hegemony. He now seems to have changed his preference. It is quite possible that Turkey will try to add the new Syria to its regional camp consisting of itself, Qatar, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Hamas. An Islamist Syria under Turkish patronage would be an important addition to this camp.
Other regional actors, such as Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, are investing their own efforts in building a positive relationship with the new Syrian regime, attracting it to their pro-Western pragmatic camp.
Israel is another player in the Syrian arena. Worried by the prospect of radical and Jihadi groups taking over the advanced weaponry of the Syrian army, its stocks of chemical weapons, and significant terrain in the Syrian Golan, Israel took control of this terrain and destroyed much of the equipment of the Syrian army. Significantly, Joulani chose not to respond to what could be easily seen as Israeli provocations. He clarified to several interlocutors that at this point, he prefers not to deal with the Israeli issue. Several years down the road, he might be ready to return to a peace process with Israel insisting on a return of the Golan, but at this point, this is a remote prospect.
Dilemmas of US policy
In the current fluid state of affairs, policy decisions to be made by the Trump Administration would be crucial for the direction taken by Syrian and regional politics. The Biden Administration dispatched a State Department delegation to Damascus to engage with the new regime, but the Trump Administration has yet to make up its mind. The small American force in Syria was kept in earlier years primarily in order to support the Syrian Kurds who played a crucial role in defeating the Islamic State Caliphate. The Syrian Kurds are still seen as a key element in preventing a recovery of the Islamic State in northern and eastern Syria and in keeping a large number of Islamic State prisoners and their families. During the first Trump Administration, the president displayed lack of interest in Syria and wanted to pull out the US troops. His conduct at the time led to the resignation of the Secretary of Defense. More recently, Trump’s tweets indicated the same hostile attitude to the notion of US involvement in Syria. If this attitude is translated into a policy, the prospect of pulling the al-Sharaa regime into a moderate mainstream orientation in the Middle East would be severely affected.
Since we are back to “a struggle for Syria”, US participation in this struggle would have massive consequences for the future direction of the region’s politics and the Western position in the Middle East. It is strongly recommended that the Trump Administration seek the advice of its own Middle East and Syria experts and take a leading role in stabilizing Syria and fitting it into a Middle Eastern order shaped by Washington.
Itamar Rabinovich is professor emeritus at Tel Aviv University, vice chair of the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, chair of the Dan David Foundation, and distinguished foreign policy fellow at Brookings. He was Yitzhak Rabin’s ambassador to Washington, DC, and chief negotiator with Syria.
