Israeli Defence Forces map of the region of southern Lebanon it is occupying since the onset of the current war, and the region of southern Syria, beyond the occupied Golan Heights, it has newly occupied since December 2024. Both part of the new borders of Greater Israel.
By Michael Karadjis
Asked about Syria’s view of the current war against Iran at the recent Antalya Diplomacy Forum, president Ahmed al-Sharaa began that for Syria this is a somewhat complex question, because
“Syria has had a negative experience with Iranian aggression over the past 14 years and its involvement in supporting the former regime in its confrontation with the Syrian people. However, despite all these past circumstances, we were not a party to any conflict against Iran during the current war … we were pushing for this war not to break out in the first place, because Iran is a country with a population of 85 million people, and any harm that befalls Iran from within could affect the whole region. We are pushing for a stable region and for its problems to be resolved with dialogue and diplomacy.”
Syria’s extremely negative experience with Iran is a simple empirical fact, but what the current government does with this fact is the issue. The feelings of many ordinary Syrians – much more than the current government – leave Syria open to pressure by the US to take part in some kind of action, whether against Iran or Hezbollah in Lebanon, with the reward of being granted more legitimacy, diplomatic support or funding and investment by the US.
Sharaa’s clear statement here against the war, despite past experience, plus Syria’s clear condemnation of Israel’s attack on Lebanon despite its negative experience with Hezbollah, Sharaa’s statement in London during his recent visit that “we do not have a problem with Iran in Tehran, we had a problem with Iran in Damascus,” but now we aim for reconstruction and economic development and “we have been patient in regard to the relationship with Iran,” whereas as soon as Assad was overthrown, “Israel dealt with Syria negatively by bombing locations, making incursions into Syrian territories, and violating the 1974 agreement,” all point to the fact that the Syrian government resolutely rejects the kind of role some US and Israeli circles might like Syria to play.
This Syrian stance is only partly motivated by the fact that Syria, and Syrians, also have an extremely negative experience of Israel, widely view it as an enemy that occupies their land, and are very strongly supportive of Palestine, as the recent massive pro-Palestine protest wave demonstrated. Just as importantly, having just emerged from the 14-year Assadist apocalypse, during which, again according to Sharaa in London, “Syria suffered from the same thing that the Gazan people have suffered from,” Syria now can only focus on reconstruction, on the recovery of the Syrian people. “The Syrian people empathize with the people of Gaza and are affected by the bombing there,” said Sharaa, but Syria is too exhausted to enter into any new conflicts – hence it has refused to allow 17 months of Israeli aggression in southern Syria provoke it into a major fightback which would lead to Israel flattening Damascus; and for exactly the same reason, it refuses to be drawn into US or Zionist schemes to go to war with Hezbollah – an invitation that they know well is aimed at encouraging fratricide among Israel’s enemies to exhaust them both and leave them open to Greater Israel’s aim of establishing new borders in both countries.
Did US or Israeli circles encourage Syria to attack Hezbollah in Lebanon?
Shortly after the onset of the current US-Israel aggression against Iran, the war spread to Lebanon, with Hezbollah firing rockets into Israel to avenge the killing of Khamenei and Israel launching its massive attack which has uprooted over a million people and looks like resulting in Israel’s effective annexation of the region south of the Litani. One of Israel’s key aims in launching this war on Iran was to create a regional conflagration under the cover of which the borders of Greater Israel could be expanded, while the strangulation of Gaza and the West Bank could be intensified.
Soon after, rumours began to circulate that the US (or in some versions, “the US and Israel”) were pressuring the new Syrian government led by Ahmed al-Sharaa to send troops into Lebanon to “help disarm Hezbollah.” A Reuters report on March 17 launched the speculation, citing alleged “anonymous sources.” These rumours are far from confirmed, but from the outset the Syrian government completely rejected any such action.
First, did it even happen? Tom Barrack, the US ambassador to Turkey who doubles as envoy to Syria and has played an outsized role in US political interventions in the region, claimed “reporting regarding the United States encouraging Syria to send forces into Lebanon is false and inaccurate.” Close Syria watcher Gregory Waters notes that “Reuters [which spread the story] has struggled with framing a lot of things they hear from peripheral sources when it comes to Syria which has resulted in not outright lies but misrepresentation.” Similarly, Syria watcher Charles Lister claims to have been “told by multiple sources that this story is false & no such messages have been conveyed to Syria. It makes no sense anyway, and runs against everything else the USG has invested in stabilizing Syria over the past year+.” The excellent Verify Syria platform also showed that “reports” of such a statement attributed to the US president were false.
Indeed, given Barrack’s large role in US moves in the Turkey-Syria-Lebanon region, the rumour seems unlikely given his known views, which have enraged Israeli leaders. According to Barrack, “We need a path with Hezbollah, and the path has to be not killing Hezbollah.” While the US and Israel have pressured the Lebanese government to disarm Hezbollah by force and have criticised it for not doing so, Barrack by contrast said the troops in the Lebanese Armed Forces “are not going to go shoot their cousins.” He also claimed that he always gets in trouble “because Hezbollah, in American parlance, and most of the West, is a Foreign Terrorist Organization,” but “Hezbollah, in Lebanon, is also a political organization.” He also questioned the current ceasefire, because he claimed “both sides” (ie, Israel and Hezbollah) were “equally untrustworthy,” stating “It says we have a cease-fire except if we, Israel, in our own determination, think we’re being attacked. Is that a cease-fire?” This did not make him popular with a lot of US Republicans. “Everybody is in atrophy over this idiotic war,” he said. That is, the idiotic war launched by his government and Israel.
That said, as Barrack is a loose cannon, it is not out of the question that some other US government agency may have attempted to use the Syrian government against Hezbollah, to try to force the Syrian government to show its “anti-terrorist” value to the US, beyond fighting ISIS and al-Qaeda remnants in Syria; though given the US has tended to reject Israel’s preference for Syria exploding and being partitioned along sectarian lines, and instead has been closer to the Saudi-Turkish position of wanting to unify and stabilise Syria for investment, it seems unlikely that it would encourage such a destabilising move. As for Israel, no doubt it would be happy for the Syrian government and Hezbollah to plunge into sectarian conflict while it seizes territory from both, but as it has no relations with Syria and treats the government with extreme hostility it also seems unlikely it would have done any formal “encouragement.”
Syria: Categorical rejection
Whatever the case, however, the main issue is that Syria rejected the ideas floating around from the outset; even the loosest anonymous “reports” at least conceded that Syria was “cautious” or “reluctant” about the alleged suggestion. For example, Reuters – which has been good at getting basic stuff wrong on Syria – “reported” that “Damascus is reluctant to embark on such a mission for fear of being sucked into the war in the Middle East and inflaming sectarian tensions.” Another report on Syria TV stated that Damascus was reacting with “caution,” being “unwilling to be drawn into a neighbouring conflict, prioritising internal stabilisation over regional entanglement,” a posture of “defensive restraint.” This report noted that while Sharaa had given “rhetorical support” to the Lebanese government’s aim eventually disarming Hezbollah, “Syrian officials recognise that Hezbollah’s deep entrenchment within Lebanon makes any forced disarmament a perilous undertaking.”
Rumours began when, following the onset of the war, Syria moved troops to its borders with Lebanon and Iraq and south close to the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. On March 6, Syrian president Ahmed al-Sharaa called Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam to express “his support for the Lebanese people in these difficult times” and to assure him that Syria’s military deployments were purely defensive and “only intended to ensure control of the borders and to preserve Syria’s internal security”. In fact, Israel condemned the movement of Syrian troops in the direction of the Israeli occupation; amidst “intensified flights of Israeli warplanes and helicopters over southern Syria, the ‘Ultra Syria’ site reported that “officials in the occupation army’s Northern Command claimed the movements violate what they describe as long-standing ‘security understandings’ governing force levels and permitted weaponry in the buffer zone adjacent to the occupied Golan.” Israel has unilaterally declared a “buffer zone,” demanding Syrian troops keep out of the south, and as such is only referring to its own “understandings,” not common ones with Syria.
In his remarks to the UN session on the war on March 11, Syria’s UN representative, Ibrahim Olabi, condemned Israel’s aggression against Lebanon, condemned the policy of “displacing people under the threat of bombing and destruction,” and linked Israel’s actions to its ongoing attacks on Syria. Far from suggesting that Syria would intervene to disarm Hezbollah, he said that Israel’s attack “hinders” the Lebanese government’s aim of disarming Hezbollah – ie, it cannot be done precisely because Israel is attacking the country.
Another report in L’Orient-Le Jour also noted that “Syrian authorities rejected these demands, with backing from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt and Turkey, all of which encouraged Damascus to hold its ground. These countries also intervened with Washington to ease the pressure on Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa, who made it clear he does not want to get involved in Lebanon or repeat past experiences,” referring to the long-term military involvement in Lebanon by the two Assad regimes, beginning in 1976 when Hafez al-Assad, backed by the US and Israel, invaded Lebanon in support of the right-wing Christian Phalange and played a key role in the large-scale massacre of Palestinians at Tel al-Zataar.
According to a March 16 report in Al-Modon, Sharaa’s message to Lebanon’s president Aoun “was unequivocal: Syria is committed to Lebanon’s security and stability.” The report says that coordination with Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia is ongoing, aimed at “reassuring the Lebanese public” and strengthening “security cooperation” between Syria and Lebanon. The central objective is that “Syria remains in Syria and Lebanon remains in Lebanon, each sovereign and non-interfering. This is especially vital amid ongoing Israeli attempts to provoke internal strife, whether between the Lebanese state and Hezbollah or among Lebanon’s communities. The aim is to remain vigilant against any Israeli maneuver designed to ignite a localised, destructive conflict between Lebanon and Syria.” This report further claims Sharaa has been pushing a kind of renewed ‘pan-Arab’ position, as “regardless of whether Iran endures or Israel imposes its terms, only a unified Arab position can prevent states form being isolated and targeted one by one.”
All of this could not be further from any Syrian intention to intervene in Lebanon against Hezbollah, let alone when under attack by Israel. Obviously, the Syrian government’s position should be open to criticism like that of any government. The Syrian position of standing against both the Israeli and Iranian regional hegemonic projects is completely justified, but in the concrete circumstances of it being the US and Israel launching this gigantic criminal aggression against Iran, one might prefer a more forthright defence of Iran in the circumstances. However, if we are to judge Syria on the basis of its own experience – where the Iranian regime participated on the ground on a massive scale in the Assad regime’s genocidal violence against Syrians for a decade that left some 700,000 people dead, entire cities and chunks of the country destroyed, and more than half the country’s population uprooted – then the fact that it sees Israel as an equal enemy is a rather strong sign of its anti-Zionist position to say the least!
Of course, Israel occupies Syrian territory and launched a massive bombing campaign against Syria from December 8, 2024, from the moment when its preferred leader was deposed (it is a curious geopolitical fact that Israel and Iran converged in support of the Assad regime). On the ground, popular hatred of both Israel and Iran is ubiquitous in Syria, and the Syrian population is considerably more anti-Iranian than the government as a result of their horrific experiences. When discussing Israel-Iran conflict, a common Syrian reaction is to cite a popular Islamic expression, “destroy the oppressors with the oppressors,” referring to both sides. Indeed, Syria researcher Aymenn al-Tamimi cites a Syrian X account which at one moment celebrates the killing of Khamenei and the next celebrates the Iranian missiles hitting Tel Aviv, “Praise be to God, Tel Aviv is burning.” Regardless of how privileged western leftists from thousands of miles away who have not suffered under Syria’s genocidal apocalypse may view this, it is clearly a rejection by definition of any aid to Israel’s campaign in Lebanon.
Embittered Assadists
Returning to the point, despite all these clear and unequivocal reports of Syria’s rejection to of any such suggestion, the hyper-world of embittered tankies and antidelluvian Assadists filled the comments section of any article or social media post of the alleged US push with 787,657,479,325 “comments” along the lines of “see, Mossad government,” “al-Qaeda to the rescue of Israel” and similar pieces of sheer brilliance, brilliant, that is, if you happen to have the brain of a jellyfish.
The point is not that the Syrian government of al-Sharaa should not be criticised for any range of issues. It most definitely can and should be. The point is that the tendency to condemn the government for things that it hasn’t done, is not doing or completely rejects doing at the drop of a hat has nothing to do with rightfully subjecting all governments to the fiercest of criticism when necessary – rather these are embittered nostalgists of the genocidal tyranny of Bashar al-Assad, embittered that the Syrian people rose up and destroyed his regime of mass murder and torture on an epic scale, as well as mechanistic western “anti-imperialists” who imagine a regime that tortured Islamist suspects for US president George Bush’s “war on terror” had some “anti-imperialist” credentials, and that the regime that Israel preferred in power and which had solid anti-Palestinian credentials for decades was a “resistance” regime, despite Netanyahu and countless Israeli leaders praising it precisely for decades of non-resistance on the Golan; these tankies for their own reasons attached themselves to it like flies to shit, and continue to do so in their pathetic “comments.”
Ongoing Israeli aggression on Syria amidst wider war
Meanwhile, even though engaged in two gigantic wars against Iran and Lebanon, Israel has still managed time for its smaller scale bombing and other attacks on Syria! On March 20, Israel attacked Syrian army sites, weapons depots and military infrastructure in Daraa, including a building associated with the 40th Division in Izraa; according to the IDF, the strikes targeted a command center and weapons located in military compounds belonging to the Syrian government; local sources reported air raids hitting the Syrian army’s 12th Brigade near Izraa and explosions in the vicinity of the 89th Regiment headquarters near Jabab.
Israel claimed to be “protecting Druze citizens in Suweida.” This referred to a military clash on the Suweida-Daraa border the previous day where the government claims to have foiled an attempt to smuggle weapons by members of the pro-Israel Suweida National Guard. The National Guard, by contrast, claim Syrian forces had carried out attacks against civilians. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz stated “we will not allow the Syrian regime to exploit our war against Iran and Hezbollah to harm the Druze. If necessary, we will attack with greater force.” Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the Arab League condemned the attacks as a “blatant violation” of Syria’s sovereignty aimed at dragging the region into broader confrontation.
Apart from this major attack, Israel has kept up a series of smaller-scale attacks throughout this period. The well-documented Syria Weekly report lists the IDF attacks in southern Syria just in the March 17-24 period when this attack occurred alone:
Israeli military forces fired at least two artillery shells into agricultural areas outside Tel Ahmar al-Sharqi in southern Quneitra on March 20, causing no casualties.
Israeli military forces launched a ground incursion towards the al-Mantara Dam in Quneitra on March 20.
Israeli military forces launched a ground incursion into the Wadi al-Raqad in western rural Daraa on March 20.
Israeli military forces launched ground two simultaneous incursions into the Tel Kroum and into an area located between the villages of al-Samdaniya al-Sharqiya and Khan Arnabeh in Quneitra on March 21.
Israeli military forces launched a ground incursion towards the al-Ruwayhina Dam in Quneitra on March 23. Later that day, 3 young men were detained by Israeli forces during an incursion near the al-Mantara Dam in Quneitra; while another incursion was launched into the Wadi al-Ruqad area in western Daraa. Late that night, Israeli forces launched a ground incursion towards Beit Jinn in Rif Dimashq, establishing a pop-up checkpoint near the Druze village of Harfah.
Israeli military forces launched a ground incursion into the Jubata al-Khashab area of northern Quneitra on March 24.
This week is chosen randomly; each subsequent weekly report has a similar catalogue, and this has also been the case every week since December 2024, except in some weeks much worse, involving large scale air strikes. The Syrian government has no interest in helping the occupation regime to its south in any way whatsoever.
Meanwhile, on April 17, Israel announced plans to fund 3000 new settler families to colonise the occupied Golan to create the region’s “first city,” which Human Rights Watch has described as a “war crime;” while al-Sharaa at the Antalya conference yet again reiterates what he, the Syrian foreign ministry, Syria’s UN ambassador Ibrahim al-Olabi have continually stressed since overthrowing Assad, that the Golan is Syrian and must be returned: “any state’s recognition of Israel’s claim over the occupied Syrian Golan – as happened when president Trump recognised the occupied Golan as Israeli – is invalid, because this is a right belonging to the Syrian people,” also noting that just last November, 134 countries “affirmed that the Golan is Syrian land and is occupied by Israel.”
Below is perhaps one of the clearest enunciations of what appears to be both the Syrian government view and the majority Syrian popular view, by a Syrian member of parliament in Homs and former rebel fighter in the Ahrar al-Sham movement:
I fought Hezbollah in Homs. Seeking revenge in Lebanon is wrong
By Kinan al-Nahhas, Member of Parliament for the city of Homs
Scarred by the siege of Homs and mindful of the regional war, Syria faces a dangerous temptation: to settle old scores in Lebanon. But intervention now risks entangling a fragile state in Israel’s war.
The fiercest battles I witnessed came in late 2013, when we – rebels besieged in Homs – faced the advancing forces of Lebanon’s Hezbollah. By then, the militia had already seized al-Qusayr and its surroundings, emptying the southwestern countryside of Homs of its Sunni inhabitants. The fighting intensified in the Qusour district of the city, where we, under siege, clashed with regime forces spearheaded by Hezbollah’s elite units.
The defining confrontation unfolded in a residential complex we came to call the “Nahhas block”. There, our fighters killed dozens from Hezbollah’s Radwan Force, even as many of Homs’ own sons fell as martyrs. Despite the ferocity and duration of the battle, neither Hezbollah nor the Syrian army managed to advance.
This was not the Lebanese group’s first intervention in Syria, but it was among the most brutal. It would be followed by the deployment to Syria of more than 70,000 Shia militiamen from across the region – forces tied to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps and coordinated with Hezbollah’s leadership.
Deep scars
To grasp the scale of Hezbollah’s betrayal of Syrians, one need only compare the Syrian response to Hezbollah in 2006 with Hezbollah’s conduct during the revolution. Syrians opened their homes to displaced Lebanese. In return, after 2011 Hezbollah’s fighters turned their guns on Syrian civilians. Among the first were snipers sent to dominate roads and shoot demonstrators in Homs and other rebellious cities.
This, then, is the neat version of events: Syrian hospitality repaid with violence and complicity in tyranny, ending – at least in theory – with victory unmarred by sectarian revenge.
The truth is more complicated. The wounds run deep, and while many Syrians have taken grim solace in seeing Hezbollah’s leadership fall and its supporters displaced, justice has been neither clean nor complete. Innocents, as ever, have paid the price.
Among the most harrowing episodes that I witnessed was the massacre in the orchards of Haswiya in early 2013. More than a hundred civilians – women, children and men – were slaughtered, many with knives, some of their bodies burned. It was violence steeped in sectarian revenge.
History does not write the future
Now, reports circulate that the Syrian army may enter Lebanon. The justification? To hold Hezbollah accountable for its crimes and eliminate the threat it poses to Syria. Some go further, suggesting such a move would defend Lebanon’s Sunnis.
Despite everything recounted above, this must be firmly rejected.
No Syrian should endorse military intervention in Lebanon under the banner of retribution or moral duty – whether framed as “justice for crimes” or “protection of Sunnis”. Lofty slogans often conceal darker motives, and decisions that seem righteous in one moment can prove catastrophic in another.
Lebanon’s own memory of Syrian intervention in the 1970s and 1980s is instructive. It was not a noble endeavour but a functional one: to serve regional and international interests. It helped neutralise Palestinian armed groups seen as a threat to Israel, while simultaneously entrenching Hafez al-Assad’s rule at home and projecting his power abroad.
Nor does the argument for justice withstand scrutiny. Syria has yet to hold its own perpetrators accountable, let alone foreign militias or occupying powers. How, then, can it plausibly pursue justice beyond its borders when it has not begun to deliver it within them?
Betrayal of the Palestinians
Timing, too, is critical. Syria, still fragile and only beginning to recover, cannot afford entanglement in a wider regional confrontation – particularly one intertwined with the Palestinian question.
As this crisis unfolds, Al-Aqsa Mosque has been closed to worshippers during the holiest month, under the guise of “temporary security measures”. Many see this as part of a broader, more troubling trajectory within Netanyahu’s government, influenced by religious extremists who view the present moment as an opportunity to reshape Jerusalem irrevocably. Meanwhile, fringe Jewish groups affiliated with the so-called Temple movement openly speak of rebuilding Solomon’s Temple and ending the Palestinian cause.
In this context, weakening Hezbollah today may inadvertently serve Israeli ambitions to dominate the region, which is a prospect openly entertained by some Israeli and American politicians. The old maxim rings true: the most effective weapon against an enemy is another enemy. Netanyahu himself has suggested as much: when adversaries fight, one should weaken both.
Syria has no stake in choosing sides in such a struggle. It would be folly to intervene at a moment when two adversaries are already engaged, particularly when one continues to oppress Palestinians and destabilise the region.
Between fate and caution
Hezbollah has not escaped what many Syrians see as the curse of Homs. Its leaders have been killed, its ranks shattered. Some see this as divine justice for its role in Syria.
But caution must guide what comes next. Syrians must ensure they do not, in turn, become the authors of injustice. They must not invite the curse of the oppressed – least of all Palestinians, who, even now, find hope in the setbacks suffered by their own occupiers. Nor should Syria’s revolution, so vast in its promise, be reduced to yet another “functional state”: a pawn serving the interests of regional and global powers
Myth 1: Israel was “behind” the overthrow of Assad – silly conspiracism
Myth 2: OK, it wasn’t, but the fall of Assad serves Israel’s interests – quite the opposite actually
Myth 3: OK, it doesn’t, but Israel’s actions inadvertently facilitated the fall of Assad by weakening Iran and Hezbollah – valid discussion, but in reality makes no sense
Above: The city of Idlib in rebel-held Syria opened Gaza Square in solidarity with Palestine amid Israel’s genocidal war, April 2024; Below: Israeli leader Netanyahu occupying Syria’s Mount Hermon, after his man Assad falls, December 2024.
The massive popular revolution which overthrew the 54-year old Assad dynasty is a momentous event shaking West Asia. As the real scale and depth of the horror of the former regime’s prison-torture gulag is being revealed along with the continual unveiling of mass graves containing some 100-150,000 souls, the enormous significance of the Syrian people’s achievement becomes more undeniable.
Meanwhile, leading up to the Gaza truce, Israel’s holocaust in Gaza became more unspeakably barbaric by the day, if that is even possible. The destruction of the last hospital in northern Gaza, the mass killing of civilians taking refuge there and mass arrest of doctors, the freezing to death of Palestinian infants, were greeted with a collective yawn by the world’s rulers.
While Israel’s aim of annexing northern Gaza appears to have no succeeded as hundreds of thousands of Palestinians return – albeit to rubble – Netanyahu is expecting support from the incoming Trump administration for the annexation of the West Bank as a quid pro quo to consecrate Palestine’s worst catastrophe since 1948.
While the solidarity shown with Palestine by southern Lebanon under Hezbollah’s leadership and by the AnsarAllah authorities in north Yemen was undoubtedly appreciated by Palestinians, the realistic conclusion is that it made no difference to Israel’s ability to commit genocide; and when Israel decided to turn around and “show deterrence” by destroying Hezbollah’s communication network, military capacity and most of its leadership in some ten days, this not only did not detract from its war of extermination in Gaza, but rather Israel accelerated it under the cover of Lebanon, implementing the General’s Plan for the complete ethnic cleansing and demolition of northern Gaza.
This demonstrated two things. Firstly, that any illusions that Israel – an entrenched colonial-settler-state acting as a virtual extension of the world’s most powerful imperialist state – can be defeated purely by military pressure, or that any ‘fronts’ other than Palestine itself could be more than symbolic, ought to have been destroyed; such illusions were particularly high in late 2023-early 2024 before reality set in. This is not an infantile criticism that Hezbollah or the Houthis “should have” done more when no-one else did anything, rather it is simply a statement of reality. Secondly, related illusions that these two outside fronts were driven and empowered by some “axis of resistance” led by the reactionary Iranian theocracy – rather than being more situational – should also have been smashed.
Indeed, the fact that the Iranian regime was unwilling or unable to do anything of note to prevent the defeat of its own close Lebanese ally Hezbollah essentially means the death-knell of “axis of resistance” discourse, if such an “axis” means illusions that repressive capitalist states like Iran are willing or able to aid Palestinian liberation (the fact that Syria’s Assad regime not only did less, but arguably even sabotaged Hezbollah and even minimal Iranian efforts, is much less surprising). In reality, as Palestinian author Rashid Khalidi argues, that was never the purpose of Iran’s “axis” in the first place.
The key date here is November 27. This was both the day of the Israel-Hezbollah-Lebanon ceasefire agreement, and the day that Syrian rebels launched their long-planned ‘Operation Deter Aggression’, which, unbeknown to themselves, landed them in Damascus ten days later. The coincidence of the date, and the fact that both Hezbollah’s defeat and the fall of the Assad regime can be considered defeats to the Iran-led “axis” – even if one was a victory for a genocidal regime and the other a victory against one – has led to much debate about the ‘geopolitical’ relationship between the two events, and their outcome.
There are three main assertions arising from this, which will be disputed here.
The first assertion, made by many so-called “anti-imperialists” who only see the world through the struggle against Israel and the US, and see everyone else’s struggle for freedom as secondary (including the more vile sub-set of shills for the genocidal Assad regime), is that that Israel and the US were “behind” the toppling of Assad. This conspiracism is easy to dispute, but nevertheless will be dealt with seriously.
The second assertion, made not only by this same group but also by many people who welcome the overthrow of Assad and wish the Syrian people well, is that while the fall of Assad may be good for the Syrian people, it also happens to be in Israel’s geopolitical interests, since Assad’s Syria, though it did nothing for Palestine itself, was the territorial ‘link’ across which Iran sent arms to Hezbollah. While more serious than the first assertion, at the outset Israel’s immediate massive attack on free Syria from the moment Assad was gone, to destroy all the weaponry that it never had any problem with the Assad regime possessing, to establish a “safe zone” on the Syrian side, free of weapons and “terrorist” infrastructure” (Israeli defense minister Yisrael Katz), and to ensure that no hostile force embeds itself right next to the border of Israel” (Netanyahu), and Israeli leaders descriptions of the new Syrian government as “a gang of terrorists” (Israeli foreign minister Gideon Saar) and “wolves in sheep’s clothing” (deputy foreign minister Sharren Haskel), and claims that “the events in Syria are far from being a cause for celebration” (diaspora affairs minister Amachai Chikli), do not offer much support to this assertion.
The third assertion is more serious; even among many who reject the first and even the second above, who welcome the Syrian revolution, stress that Syrian freedom should not be hostage to anyone else’s struggle and so on and so forth, nevertheless believe that Israel’s defeat of Hezbollah and Iran and the destruction of many of their assets played a key role – even if inadvertently – in enabling the rebels’ rapid victory and Assad’s collapse. Although the law of unintended consequences is a real thing, I will argue below that when we look at this argument in detail, in reality it played little if any role and makes little sense.
Each of these assertions will be dealt with in depth, but here at the outset, I will note that the explanation regarding the two events coinciding on November 27, 2024 is more simple than many imagine, yet belies precisely the kinds of ‘connections’ many want to make: despite being under constant bombardment by the Assad regime ever since October 7, 2023, the Syrian rebels in Idlib, led by HTS, did not activate their Operation Deter Aggression, to deter this aggression, before the Lebanon ceasefire precisely so as to not help Israel. Once Hezbollah had signed the agreement to implement UN Resolution 1701, requiring it to withdraw north of the Litani River and be replaced there by the Lebanese army, we need to understand that the “axis” – if interpreted in the narrow sense of Iranian arms crossing Syrian territory to reach Hezbollah – had become irrelevant, not only for any symbolic solidarity with Palestine, but for defence of Lebanon itself. At that point, the Syrian rebels made the decision to no longer delay their own struggle against genocide to avoid harming another struggle, as that other struggle had come to a close.
Was Israel ‘behind’ the ousting of Assad? Sure didn’t look like it!
It is difficult to “refute” an argument based on nothing. Just because conspiracists and sad, bitter Assadists on social media proclaim that Israel was “behind” the Syrian rebel offensive, without offering a grain of evidence, does not make it a fact. “On the streets they are saying it is Mossad,” I was reliably informed after December 8. Just exactly how is anyone’s guess, these memers never explain the alleged mechanism – did Mossad secretly pay off every soldier in the Syrian army to not fight? There was no connection between HTS in Idlib, which spent the whole year since October 7 campaigning for Gaza, and Israel, which calls the rebels ‘jihadists’, ‘terrorists’, ‘hostile entity’, ‘al-Qaeda’, you name it – but who knows, maybe this is all just a front, and they “secretly conspired.” Or maybe some people need more appropriate hobbies.
Nonsense aside, there are some points we can make that demonstrate the distance from reality of these assertions, because they show not only that Israel wanted the regime to remain in power, but also that it was as taken aback as everyone else was by its rapid collapse.
The first point concerns the revelations about the long-term intelligence links between Israel and the Assad regime which have been exposed since the overthrow. Classified intelligence documents of the regime came to light after its fall showing the messages exchanged between an Israeli agent code-named Mousa (or Moses) and then Syrian Defense Minister Lt. Gen. Ali Mahmoud Abbas, who then passed the messages onto Assad’s intelligence chief Ali Mamlouk. These documents concerned the long-term well-known ‘mechanism’ by which Israel and Russia collaborated in the Syrian skies, as Russia’s world-class S-400 anti-aircraft missile system gave a decade-long pass to Israel’s attacks on Iranian and Hezbollah assets in Syria, as long as Israel spared the Assad regime itself.
But while it was previously assumed that Israel only coordinated with Russia, acting on Assad’s behalf, these exposures demonstrate Israel’s direct line to the regime itself. While some messages are warnings to Assad to reduce collaboration with Iran, others are Israeli explanations for certain anti-Iranian actions, sounding almost apologetic in some cases, while still others thank the regime for “positive” moves against Iran and show Israel’s respect for the regime meeting its own “security” needs.
For example, Hassan Hassan and Michael Weiss write up a message from ‘Moses’ to Abbas on June 16, 2023, where it was noted that Syrian Airforce planes, which Israel had previously accused of helping transport Iranian weapons to the Hmeimim airport for transfer to Hezbollah, were no longer landing there, and also that the Syrian regime had halted Iranian cargo flights which had been landing at Nayrab Airport. Moses comments that these steps “are regarded (by us) as positive steps that will safeguard your interests. We do not wish to take action against the Syrian Arab Army. Therefore, using the organized mechanism under Russian supervision will allow you to meet the army’s needs without risking infrastructure or sites exploited by the Iranians for weapons transfers, which ultimately cause harm to you. Since you are the party responsible for halting these flights, know that you have successfully prevented an unnecessary confrontation, one that neither side desires.”
The exposed messages only cover the brief period May-July 2023, and as will be shown below, the regime went much further than these “positive” steps away from the “axis” in the year after October 7, with, as we will see below, Iranian suspicions that the direct Israel-Assad communication line may have revealed Iranian assets that Israel subsequently bombed. The idea that Israel would move (somehow) to remove the regime with which it maintained this long-term useful intelligence connection with, through which it was apparently making gains, to replace it with a former Sunni jihadist group with which it has zero links, makes little sense. Israel’s expressed wish to “not take action against the Syrian Arab Army” only turned into its opposite once the regime collapsed.
The second point relates to the visit by Ron Dermer, Netanyahu’s Strategic Affairs Minister, to Russia in early November 2024 (following a visit to Israel by Russian officials on Oct. 27) to discuss Russia pressuring the Assad regime to fully block Iranian arms from reaching Lebanon (which Russian officials affirmed they were prepared to assist with). Writing in the Washington Post, David Ignatius cites Israeli officials being “hopeful that we can get Assad to, at a minimum, stop the flow of arms to Hezbollah through Syria. Maybe more.” More significantly, Dermer told his Russian hosts that Israel would propose to the US to lift or freeze sanctions on the Assad regime in exchange for such efforts; Ignatius also cited Israeli sources claiming that “the U.S. is willing to give the Syrians some benefit if they go down that road.” [Notably, the close ally of both Israel and the Assad regime – the United Arab Emirates (UAE) – also met US officials around this time to request such sanctions relief for Assad in exchange for positive moves]. This demonstrates that Israel still saw working through the regime as the way to go and believed the regime would still be around for some time – why would you request US sanctions relief for a regime you are about to overthrow?
Thirdly, Israeli government and media statements leading up to the overthrow of Assad show either that Israeli leaders were opposed to the rebels (“the collapse of the Assad regime would likely create chaos in which military threats against Israel would develop”, according to Netanyahus’s November 29 security consultation with defence chiefs), and that Israel may be “required to act” to prevent Syria’s strategic weaponry falling into the hands of the rebels, or at best, viewed both regime and rebels as enemies (eg, Israeli foreign minister Gideon Saar’s December 3 claim that “Israel doesn’t take sides” as “there is no good side there”), or in some cases open support for Assad was expressed because “the Islamic opposition that aims to turn Syria into a center of global jihad is a much more dangerous enemy” so “The option of Syria under the rule of Assad under the auspices of Russia is still the least bad from Israel’s point of view,” or because Assad “is a weak enemy and a weak enemy serves our interests” so “we must support Assad’s existence.”
None of this looks like a government or military-security apparatus “behind” the overthrow of Assad; but also, if Israel was carrying out this nefarious plot, it is strange that many of these statements indicate a belief the regime would survive at some level; indeed, the idea of Israel establishing a ‘buffer zone’ in southern Syria between the Golan occupation and the HTS-led forces “guarded by forces of Assad’s regime” was put forward by former senior Israeli intelligence officer Lt.-Col. Amit Yagur!
While the last idea may sound outlandish, it corresponds to the claim made by David Hearst in Middle East Eye that “Israel wanted to keep Assad in power under Emirati tutelage” in southern Syria (while also pushing for Druze and Kurdish states) as a buffer zone against HTS and Turkish influence. Hearst reports that “In the early hours of Sunday 8 December, Mohammad Ghazi al-Jalali, the Syrian prime minister, appeared on video saying he was willing to hand over power peacefully.” As HTS forces approached Damascus to receive this handover, “the Emirati and Jordanian ambassadors in Syria were making desperate attempts to stop HTS from gaining control of Damascus,” and they “encouraged the Free Syrian Army and allied groups from the south to get to Damascus before HTS,” arranging for the prime minister to hand over the state institutions to these southern fighters rather than HTS. “Jalali was filmed being escorted to the (Four Seasons) hotel by soldiers from the Hauran region in southern Syria belonging to the Fifth Corps, a military force made up of former rebels who had previously reconciled with the Syrian government.” This was thwarted when HTS leader, al-Sharaa, told Jalali by phone not to do it.
It is hard to confirm the precise details of Hearst’s story. One problem is that it tends to cast the southern FSA as a treacherous body; in fact the Southern Front of the FSA in Daraa and Quneitra has a very proud history, and their revolt, alongside that of the Druze fighters in neighbouring Suweida, in the final days was every bit as valid as the revolution approaching from the north. However, as noted, much of the FSA Southern Front had been pressured to “reconcile” with the regime and join the Russian-led 5th Corp in 2018, as the regime swept the south, as an alternative to slaughter. While for the majority, overthrowing this forced “reconciliation” in December was a genuine act of revolution, it cannot be ruled out that some elements – those most under Emirati-Jordanian influence – had actually reconciled, and now only came out in order to thwart HTS and to be used by the regional counterrevolution. The recent rise of suspicions among Syrians about the commander Ahmad al-Awda of the Eighth Brigade of the 5th Corp and his Emirati connections, could suggest a future UAE-backed ‘Haftar’ possibility, though at this stage that is rather speculative.
[Incidentally, this Southern Front of the FSA, whatever its divisions, should not be confused with yet another group that western media sometimes calls the ‘FSA’, based in the US al-Tanf base in the southeast desert region. The US-backed ‘Tanf boys’ actual name was the ‘Syrian Free Army’ (SFA), not FSA; they were an ex-FSA brigade which many years ago accepted the US diktat to fight only ISIS and drop its fight against the Assad regime; as such they cannot be called “rebels.” Since around 2016 they have been the minor Arab component of the US war on ISIS, alongside the Kurdish-led SDF. All FSA and rebel brigades fought ISIS, but rejected the US demand they drop the fight against the regime. The ‘FSA’ confusion has been exploited by some tankies on social media claiming the “US-backed FSA entered Damascus from the south;” in fact the US-backed SFA manifestly did not. They did begin moving in the final hours as the regime was collapsing by seizing Palmyra in the central desert to prevent its fall to ISIS after the regime had fled.]
And of course, more generally, the Arab regimes still most cautious about the new Syrian government – Egypt, UAE – are precisely those closest to Israel and its concerns in the region. Israel “behind” the overthrow of Assad? Nothing even remotely there.
Was the overthrow of Assad in Israel’s interests?
Clearly Israel had nothing to do with the rebel advance that overthrow Assad, and was deeply anxious about it. But despite that, was this result in Israel’s interests anyway?
However, the argument is that, since Israel had just emerged from a war against elements of the “axis of resistance,” these traditional Israeli calculations may have changed. The key point is not that the Assad regime offered “resistance” to Israel itself – it had not fired a shot across the Golan in 51 years – but that it played a passive role in the “axis” by allowing Iran to cross its territory to deliver weapons to Hezbollah in Lebanon (in exchange for Iran and Hezbollah sending troops to bolster the genocidal regime against its people).
The regime was an odd geopolitical mix: the existence of the Assad regime was seen as crucial both by Israel for the protection of its Golan occupation, which included ensuring Palestinian factions were kept away, and by Iran, as the bridge to get weapons to Hezbollah, ostensibly to fight Israel, though no such fight took place for the 17 years between 2006 and late 2023, spanning the entire Iran-Hezbollah intervention in Syria (indeed, at the time, Nasrallah told Russian minister Mikhail Bogdanov to tell Israel that “Lebanon’s southern borders are the safest place in the world because all of our attention is focused on” Syria, as Hezbollah “does not harbor any intention of taking any action against Israel”).
As such, one may say, well, for Israel, it’s six of one, half a dozen of the other, whether or not Assad falls. However, what this ignores is:
Firstly, the significant changes in the Assad regime’s geopolitical orientation both before and during the Gaza conflict, and
Secondly, the fact that the Syrian rebels only launched their offensive after Lebanon and Hezbollah had agreed to ceasefire arrangements with Israel that effectively ended Hezbollah’s ability to lead resistance to Israel anyway, Iranian arms or otherwise.
Below both issues will be elaborated on. Plus, an additional claim now – that Israel’s destruction of Syria’s anti-aircraft weaponry leaves the path open for Israel to launch an attack on Iran to destroy its nuclear industry – will also be dealt with.
Changes in the geopolitical posture of the Assad regime
The fact that in the last half-decade or so, the ‘Abraham Accords’ countries (in its broadest sense, all who had relations with Israel) and the ‘Assad Accords’ countries were the same – Egypt, UAE, Bahrain, Jordan etc, with Saudi Arabia supportive but more reticent on both – can be best understood as both an alliance for counterrevolution generally, and an anti-Muslim-Brotherhood (MB) alliance in particular. These repressive states are hostile to the MB’s populist project of mixing democracy and a moderate form of political Islam. As the MB had strong influence over a part of the Syrian rebellion, and Hamas was the Palestinian branch of the MB, the connections here are clear.
While Saudi Arabia was more reticent for some years, it did come round in 2023, restore relations with Assad, set up an embassy, and play a key role in getting Assad to the Arab League Summit in Riyadh. Moreover, while the Saudis were also hostile to the MB, they were equally hostile to the Iranian influence in Syria due to Saudi-Iranian regional competition (despite common perceptions, Iran was not a key concern of the Egypt-UAE axis); yet the Saudis and Iran also restored relations in 2023 in Beijing, which as I have analysed is a regional phenomenon more substantial than many realise. Ironically for much of the excitable western left and mass media alike, it is only Israel that Saudi Arabia still refuses to establish relations with.
What all this meant was that, alongside Russia and Iran, the Assad regime was now gaining a third leg to stand on, that of the Arab reaction, with which the regime felt ideologically most at home. Russia, despite its own relations with Iran, also saw Iran as a competitor for the domination of the Assadist corpse, and had collaborated for a decade with Israel, allowing it to bomb Iranian and Hezbollah forces in Syria; and Russia also has strong and growing relations with Egypt, UAE, Saudis and so on (indeed, the first two are BRICS members and the third a prospective one).
So from the beginning of the Gaza genocide, the Assad regime felt in a stronger position to resist pressure from Iran to do anything even symbolically to support the “axis of resistance.” It refused to open a front on the Golan like Hezbollah did in southern Lebanon, as has been widelynoted in many reports; the Syrian regime, according to the Lebanese al-Modon, instructed its forces in the Golan “not to engage in any hostilities, including firing bullets or shells toward Israel.” Palestinians were arrested for attempting to hold rallies in solidarity with Gaza. In fact, when recently revealed that the regime had killed 94 Hamas members in prison without trial, while this is not surprising in itself, it is notable that “even after Hamas reconciled with the Assad regime in 2022, the targeted executions continued unabated. Prominent figures like Mamoun Al-Jaloudi, a senior commander in Hamas’ Al-Qassam Brigades, were among those executed.”
Several days after the October 7 2023 attacks, the Assad regime expelled the Houthi representatives from the Yemeni embassy in Syria, and restored representatives of Yemen’s internationally-recognised, Saudi-backed government. This was a serious blow to the Houthis, as no other government on Earth, except Iran, recognises them as Yemen’s government. The Assad regime also voted in the Arab League to support its closest Arab ally, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) against its other ally, Iran, on the question of Iran’s occupation of three islands which the former Shah of Iran seized from the UAE back in 1971 (bothRussia and China have done likewise).
Moreover, from September, Israel was already engaged in a small-scale invasion of the Syrian-held part of the Golan. The Syrian opposition news site Enab Baladi reported on September 21 that Israeli forces “penetrated into Syrian territories in Quneitra province, accompanied by tanks, bulldozers, and trench-digging equipment,” to a depth of 200 metres and “began bulldozing agricultural land, digging trenches, and building earthen berms as part of the ‘Sufa 53’ road project,” establishing observation points five meters high. According to the Syrian media organization Levant24, in October “six Israeli Merkava tanks, accompanied by military bulldozers, crossed the border near the town of Kodna, seizing agricultural lands, bulldozing fields and olive groves, constructing “a barbed wire fence” along the ‘Sufa 53’ road, and digging trenches “as deep as seven meters.” Israeli forces established a “security fence” inside Syrian territory along a 70-kilometre stretch, according to the Syrian Observer. The width of the area varies between 100 meters in some sections to 1 kilometre from the border with occupied Golan, or even up to 2 kilometres in some areas.
An Israeli Merkava tank secures protection for a military bulldozer during the clearing of agricultural land in southern Quneitra near the occupied Syrian Golan – September 9, 2024 (Enab Baladi/Zain al-Joulani)
The Assad regime not only did nothing to confront the invasion, but denied it was happening. The pro-regime Al-Watan newspaper claimed “there is no truth to an Israeli incursion … in the countryside of Quneitra, and no Israeli movements in the area.” The Baathist governor of Quneitra, Moataz Abu al-Nasr Jomran claimed “the residents of the villages live their normal life safely.” Regime commanders “ordered paramilitary units to withdraw from areas close to Israeli forces.” As for Russian forces which have been on the Golan line protecting both the Assad regime and the Israeli occupation since 2018, according to Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, the Israeli incursions followed “the withdrawal of a Russian monitoring force in the area,” who stepped aside and made way for Israel.
In fact, this Israeli advance into the non-occupied part of Golan had been going on under the Assad regime’s nose since 2022, as widely reported by various Syrian oppositional news sites such as Enab Baladi, which reported that “in mid-2022, Israel penetrated into Syrian territories eastward,” surpassing the the 1974 armistice line, “and constructed a road called ‘Sufa 53’, which cuts through Syrian territories to a depth of up to two kilometers.” In November 2022, construction of the ‘Sufa 53’ road involved “bulldoz[ing] some agricultural lands of the border villages” and preventing farmers from approaching the area, even opening fire “on a daily basis to drive the farmers and shepherds away from the area.”
Military expert Rashid Hourani believes Israel intended to use this extra Syrian territory “to open up corridors for the entry of more forces, and to secure their route from Syrian territory into Lebanese territory east of the Litani River,” whereas former Free Syrian Army (FSA) commander and military analyst Colonel Abdul Jabbar Akidi, who calls Israel’s incursion “a continuation of the war of extermination in Gaza,” claims Israel aims “to keep the Iranian militias away and besiege them, and so cut off supply lines to Hezbollah.”
Whatever Israel’s purpose, it is clear the Assad regime, and Russia, were in cahoots with it; most people are only aware of Israel’s further incursion into non-occupied Golan after Assad’s overthrow (which the new government has condemned in the United Nations and demands withdrawal of). It was this regime that was brought down in early December. It was not in Israel’s interests to bring down a regime that had been moving so fast in “the right direction” from an Israeli viewpoint and had even been collaborating on renewed occupation of Syrian territory.
Why the Syrian rebels waited until November 27 to begin ‘deterring’ regime aggression
Of course, Israel could still demand more, that Assad completely cut off Iranian access across its territory to Hezbollah, as it was doing in its negotiations with Russia noted above offering US sanctions relief to Assad. But arguably this became irrelevant to any “axis of resistance” when the Israel-Lebanon ceasefire agreement was made.
The fact that the rebel advance began on November 27, the same day as the Lebanon-Israel ceasefire, is precisely the point: despite being under constant attack by the Assad regime since October 7, the Idlib-based Syrian rebels did not activate their Operation Deter Aggression before the Lebanon ceasefire precisely so as to not help Israel against Hezbollah (despite their low opinion of Hezbollah). But this became irrelevant due to the substance of the ceasefire agreement. Let’s look at these two assertions in detail.
First, the offensive did not come “out of nowhere” as we hear widely; in May 2023, Jolani can be seen here promising an offensive on Aleppo, so we can probably assume planning had begun by then (likely soon after Russia got itself distracted in Ukraine). However, it was postponed after October 7 with the onset of the Gaza genocide.
From October 7 onward, the Assad regime, while maintaining complete quiet on its southern frontier with the Israeli-occupied Golan, used the cover of Gaza to step up the slaughter of opposition-controlled Idlib. In October 2023 alone, 366 were killed or wounded by regime and Russian bombing. Attacks on schools sharply increased over the last year, with 43 attacks between September 2023 and November 2024.
Therefore, the rebels now had even more reason to launch an operation to “deter” this “aggression,” but instead, all this time, people in towns throughout opposition-controlled Idlib and Aleppo continually demonstrated in support of Gaza, with ongoing rallies, seminars, donation drives and the like. The campaign ‘Gaza and Idlib: One Wound’, was launched by the HTS-led Syrian Salvation Government soon after October 2023 with an international tele-conference broadcast out if Idlib. In November 2023, this campaign raised $350,000 for Gaza in eight days, a remarkable achievement for a poor rural province under constant Assadist siege. April 2024 saw the opening of ‘Gaza Square’ in the middle of Idlib. One year of genocide in Gaza was marked with actions throughout the region declaring ‘Our hearts are with Gaza.’ Meanwhile, the Assadist “resistance” regime apparently carried out its “resistance” against this extremely pro-Palestine population of the northwest.
Above: Syrian Salvation Government (SSG) Ministry of Religious Trusts and Endowments hands over $350,000 to the Palestinian Scholars Association, November 2023; Below: ; Idlib in solidarity with Gaza, anniversary of Syrian revolution, March 2024.
The question thus should not be why the two events occurred at the same time, but rather why the rebels waited so long to deter regime aggression. While the regime’s ongoing offensive made the necessity of their operation more acute, they refused to wage it as long as Israel’s war on Lebanon continued. As Aaron Y. Zelin, senior fellow at The Washington Institute, explained, HTS waited for a ceasefire “because they did not want anything to do with Israel.” Hadi al-Bahra, head of the exile-based opposition leadership, the Syrian National Coalition (SNC), also claimed plans for the offensive were a year old, but “the war on Gaza … then the war in Lebanon delayed it” because “it wouldn’t look good having the war in Lebanon at the same time they were fighting in Syria,” and therefore waited till the ceasefire.
However, there was no expectation their offensive to deter regime aggression would be so successful; surprised by the rapidity of regime collapse first in Aleppo, their aims then widened, to liberating the whole country from the regime.
The ‘coincidence’ of November 27 is the point: The ‘axis of resistance’ ceased being relevant before the rebels advanced
Now let’s look at the other event on November 27: the Israel-Lebanon ceasefire agreement, based on UN Resolution 1701, means Hezbollah must move its military forces north of the Litani River, while the Lebanese army must move into this region and replace Hezbollah near the Israeli border. What should be clear is that this means the end of any “axis of resistance” even in the most positive sense of the hyped term: Hezbollah no longer controls the Israeli border, so what would be the point of Iran sending more advanced weapons there? Unless Iran plans to arm the Lebanese army. So if the rebel advance “cut off” the Iranian route to Hezbollah, that was no longer relevant even to Lebanon, and certainly not to Palestine [a longer-term point is that the only reason the Syrian rebels would have for cutting this supply line was the actions of Iran and Hezbollah in support of Assad in Syria in the first place].
Besides, Israel is estimated to have destroyed between 50 percent and 80 percent of Hezbollah’s missile arsenal, so what happened to the rest? We were constantly told that Hezbollah possessed “150,000 missiles aimed at Israel,” which we saw little of at any point. These Iranian-supplied rockets were not used, and Hezbollah in any case had no say in the matter: their purpose was not to defend Lebanon or even Hezbollah it turns out (and still less, to aid Palestine during a genocide), rather, they were there for Iran’s own forward defence. Iran didn’t want to waste them. If they were not used, how would it help Palestine or even Lebanon for Iran to send more advanced weapons to Hezbollah?
This is simply a statement of fact, not a childish jibe that Hezbollah “should have” unleashed full force on Israel. Doing so probably would have brought on Israel’s escalation even faster (though not doing so obviously did not prevent it). The point is simply: if the Iranian supply of advanced missiles to Hezbollah was aimed at aiding Palestine, or even defending Lebanon, but they were not used to anything close to full effect when, firstly, Palestine is suffering a holocaust, and, secondly, Hezbollah itself is engaged in an existential battle, then when would they ever be used? What is their purpose?
Of course, Hezbollah still possesses thousands of shorter-range missiles which would be useful if they were still on the ground in the south in the case of a future Israeli invasion, but the ceasefire agreement means they will not be.
Therefore, once the agreement was signed, the Syrian rebels could no longer see any reason to continue deferring their own struggle against their genocide-regime.
Israel’s ‘clear path’ to attacking Iran … err, remember October 26?
One more point: we have heard that Israel’s post-Assad destruction of Syria’s heavy weaponry, including anti-aircraft systems, means it now has a “clear path” to launching an attack on Iran to destroy its nuclear program. Of course, it destroyed these weapons now because does not trust the post-revolution authorities like it trusted Assad, so that is hardly an argument that the fall of Assad is in Israel’s interests, but the issue is simply the fact that Israel has been able to do this.
But this makes no sense at all. The S-300 anti-aircraft system that Russia had provided the Assad regime was of no use against Israel; as we know, Israel launched hundreds of attacks on Iranian and Hezbollah targets in Syria completely unimpeded. Even if this was less due to the uselessness of the S-300 and more due to Assad’s agreements with Israel, the fact remains the same: Assad’s missiles were no obstacle either way. However, what the regime did have was a Russian occupation, which possessed the world-class S-400 air-defence system; which, as we know, Russia never used against Israel when it bombed Iranian and Hezbollah targets, based on explicit Putin-Netanyahu agreements.
People making this argument perhaps forget that on October 26, Israel launched its attack on Iran; with both Jordan and Saudi Arabia banning their airspace to Israel, its F-35 warplanes flew over Syria, whose airspace was under Russian control, and Iraq, whose airspace is under US control. As in every other case, Russia’s air defence system once again gave Israeli warplanes a pass.
So, to conclude this section: Israel had long declared the survival of the Assad regime to be in its interests and certainly preferable to any of the alternatives, and far from this having changed, it was arguably now even less in Israel’s interests for Assad to fall than previously given the Assad regime’s trajectory; and in any case, the Israel-Lebanon ceasefire agreement, moving Hezbollah north of the Litani, had essentially made Iran’s traversing of Syrian territory to supply Hezbollah irrelevant to any regional “resistance” project and the rebels waited until that day, against their own interests, precisely so as not to help Israel; and Israel already had a ‘clear path’ to an attack on Iran if it had chosen, as it did on October 26.
However, did Israel’s damage to Iran and Hezbollah inadvertently aid the overthrow of Assad?
The final argument is even held by many who not only reject the idea that Israel was “behind” the Syrian revolution, but also the idea that the outcome is beneficial to Israel. They argue that even though it was not Israel’s intention, the fact that it did so much damage to Hezbollah and Iranian assets in the region inadvertently facilitated Assad’s fall. Due to their weakness, they were no longer able to defend the Assad regime against the rebellion. After all, since Israel had no more idea than anyone else in the region that the Assad regime was as hollow as it turned out, it is quite possible that their actions facilitated Assad’s overthrow without having that intention.
The law of unintended consequences is a thing; for example, when Japanese imperialism first weakened British, French and Dutch colonialism in Asia, and then US imperialism in turn defeated Japan, this arguably facilitated the Chinese and Vietnamese revolutions, certainly not the aim of either Japan or the US! However, looking at the argument piece by piece in this case, it actually makes little sense.
This argument goes together with the claim that Russia’s decision to plunge itself into the Ukraine quagmire likewise meant that most of its airforce was bogged down in Europe and thus also not in a position to provide the necessary support to the Assad regime.
The Russia argument has slightly more validity, as Russia’s role in saving Assad last decade was overwhelmingly with its airforce, most of which is indeed needed in Ukraine. The main contribution of the Iran-led forces, by contrast, was manpower (and money), not weaponry; they fought with the regime’s heavy weaponry arsenal, under regime and Russian air cover. They were not down on manpower as a result of the defeats imposed on them by Israel.
Either way, the argument remains weak for both, because once they could see the complete hollowness of the regime, that no soldier in Assad’s military was willing to raise a gun, that there was not even any popular resistance from frightened minorities, both Russia and Iran could see the complete futility of fighting on behalf of the empty Assadist shell, regardless of how ‘strong’ or ‘weak’ they were. As Iran began withdrawing its forces from Syria on December 6, Mehdi Rahmati, an advisor to the Iranian regime, told The New York Times that the decision was made “because we cannot fight as an advisory and support force if Syria’s army itself does not want to fight.” On December 8, Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi stressed that Iran was “never supposed to replace the Syrian army in fighting the opposition. Syria’s internal affairs and countering the opposition is an issue for the government and army of Syria, not us. The Syrian army did not carry out its duty properly.”
Moreover, given the scale of the actual or potential geopolitical loss for both – Russia of its Mediterranean bases, Iran of its land link to Lebanon – the best way to attempt to gain some future leverage in Syria with the new regime would be to not shed any blood in vain in the final hour.
Now let’s look in more detail at the common assertions. The most common is that Hezbollah’s smashing defeat by Israel meant it was too weakened to be able to come to Assad’s defence (the interesting thing about this argument is that often the very people making it promote Hezbollah’s “victory” over Israel when it suits a different argument).
The connection, however, is different: at the time most Hezbollah cadre were in southern Lebanon, where it exists, after all, doing what is supposed to be its raison d’etre, resisting Israel, ie, standing on the side of the region’s peoples resisting oppression; therefore it was not in a position to be engaged as a counterrevolutionary force in Syria at the time, with any more than a handful of troops, thus better allowing conditions for popular resistance in Syria too.
In other words, popular resistance against a genocidal regime in southern Lebanon = popular resistance against a genocidal regime in Syria facilitated.
The discourse that it was Hezbollah’s defeat by Israel, rather than its resistance to Israel, that enabled the victory over Assad, makes no sense; victory or defeat are both besides the point. If anything, the ceasefire (whether interpreted as defeat or victory or a bit of both) freed it to send forces back to Syria, had it chosen to. As noted, the Hezbollah/Iranian contribution to the Assadist counterrevolution was essentially manpower. While Hezbollah was certainly defeated by massive Israeli airpower, it was not in any sense “destroyed,” in fact the one aspect where Hezbollah could plausibly claim victory was that its cadres on the ground successfully kept Israel’s land invasion at bay, its fighting prowess was if anything enhanced.
Indeed, during Netanyahu’s November 29 security consultation with “defence” chiefs after the fall of Aleppo, it was assessed (wrongly as it turns out) that Hezbollah’s forces would now shift back to Syria, “to defend the Assad regime,” which would “bolster the likelihood of the Israel-Lebanon ceasefire holding” (ie, keeps Hezbollah away from Israel’s own violations of the ceasefire), making these developments “appear to be positive” in the short-term; similarly, the blows suffered by the Assad regime in Aleppo now “forces all members of the axis to focus on another theater that is not Israel,” likewise considered “a net positive for Israel” by former Israeli intelligence official Nadav Pollak.
Hezbollah, however, had no intention of sending its bloodied troops back to aid Assad. On December 2 it stated, diplomatically enough, that it has no plans to do so “at this stage,” while a Hezbollah spokesperson told Newsweek that “The Syrian Army does not need fighters. It can defend its land,” which given what was happening to the Syrian army sounds almost mocking. Hezbollah had shed blood and honour playing a significant role as Iranian proxy in Assad’s genocidal counterrevolution. Yet when it was in its existential struggle in Lebanon against Israel, the Assad regime did not lift a finger to help or even offer much in the way of verbal solidarity, as outlined above. Why would they now rush troops back to Assad? More likely, those still in Syria would have been the first to withdraw.
In fact, there is some evidence that Hezbollah had told Assad over a year earlier that they would not be coming to his defence again. According to Amwaj.media, “shortly before the Oct. 7, 2023 attack, Assad, Nasrallah and Mohammad Reza Zahedi—the top Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander in the Levant—met for talks,” at which Assad requested the withdrawal Iranian and Hezbollah forces from several regions, including Hama and Homs, no doubt in line with his dealings with Israel described above. In response, Nasrallah allegedly warned Assad that any evacuated forces “will not return [to Syria], no matter how critical the threats become.”
Yes, Israel destroyed a lot of Hezbollah’s missile capacity in Lebanon, but these were rockets aimed at Israel; they had never been used in Syria to defend Assad in the past, why would they be now? This was no more their purpose than liberating Palestine or defending Lebanon was. And as we understand, significant missile capacity still remains in any case. This really is entirely besides the point.
Even Israel’s destruction of a lot of Iranian capacity in Syria means largely the infrastructure (missile sites, storage facilities, missile manufacturing plants etc) involved in delivering weapons across Syrian territory for Hezbollah. Take for example Israel’s September commando raid in the town of Maysaf in western Syria, killing 14 people, which the state recently took responsibility for. According to the Times of Israel, “members of the Israeli Air Force’s elite Shaldag unit raided the Scientific Studies and Research Center, known as CERS or SSRC, in the Masyaf area on September 8, and demolished an underground facility used by Iranian forces to manufacture precision missiles for Hezbollah.” Why would the destruction of this centre affect the ability of Iran-led forces in Syria to defend the regime?
In fact, there were thousands of Iranian fighters in Syria at the time, and thousands more Iran-backed Shia fighters from Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Al-Dalati, deputy commander-in-chief of Ahrar al-Sham, confirmed that “Iranian-backed militias were present on every frontline, and the party’s (Hezbollah’s) fighters were at certain points,” adding: “Other Iran-backed militias—whether Syrian, Afghan, or otherwise—were there as well. But they lost their motivation to fight when they saw how the regime was behaving. The regime’s troops are ethically deplorable. They are criminals.”
Iran simply ordered them all to withdraw; they did not fight at all. In addition there were the Syrian fighters in the National Defence Forces (NDF) that Iranian officers had armed, trained and led (distinct from the actual Syrian Arab Army, SAA); the NDF was estimated to have 100-150,000 fighters, more than the SAA. The NDF was simply disbanded on December 6 once Hama was lost.
Putin, blaming Iran for Assad’s collapse, claims that while in 2015 Iran had requested Russian intervention, “now they have asked us to help withdraw them. We facilitated the relocation of 4,000 Iranian fighters to Tehran from the Khmeimim air base. Some [other] pro-Iranian units withdrew to Lebanon, others to Iraq, without engaging in combat.” Iran began full withdrawal of its forces on December 6. Members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, along with diplomats and families, fled towards Iraq “in large numbers over the past several days” it was reported on December 9.
Direct contact was made between Iran and HTS before Iranian forces began their withdrawal from the country. Citing Iranian officials, The New York Times claimed that HTS “promised that it would protect Shiite religious sites and Shiite minorities and asked Iran not to fight its forces,” while Iran asked HTS to allow safe passage of its troops out of Syria and to protect the Shia shrines.” Speaking on December 29, al-Sharaa, while noting that “Syria cannot continue without relations with an important regional country like Iran,” pointed to this protection of “Iranian positions” by the rebels during their offensive to oust Assad.
So, despite Israeli blows to its command and control system in Syria, Iran did not lack forces on the ground as the regime began to fall, but did not use them. Apart from seeing no point fighting for a regime that wouldn’t fight for itself, Iran, like Hezbollah, had deeper issues with the regime which made wasting troops on it no longer of interest to Tehran.
The Financial Times cites Saeed Laylaz, an analyst close to Iran’s Pezeshkian government, that “Assad had become more of a liability than an ally … Defending him was no longer justifiable … Continuing to support him simply didn’t make sense.” Claiming the frustrations with Assad had been growing “for more than a year,” Laylaz said “it was clear his time had passed.” He was not only a liability, “some even called him a betrayer,” referring to his complete inaction over the year of the Gaza crisis, which “cost us dearly,” his growing alignment with other “regional actors” (eg, UAE, Egypt and finally Saudi Arabia), but even more pointedly, the Iranian perception that “people within his regime were leaking information [to Israel] about the whereabouts of Iranian commanders. Assad turned his back on us when we needed him most.”
Iran’s suspicions had already surfaced earlier in 2024. According to Syria analyst Ibrahim Hamidi writing last January, “relations between the Syrian and Iranian militaries have been strained after Israel’s targeted assassination of Iranian Revolutionary Guard leaders in Damascus. Iranian “experts” and former officials [claim] that these assassinations could only have succeeded if Israel had infiltrated Syria’s security apparatus.” A February 1 Reuters report claims Guard leaders “had raised concerns with Syrian authorities that information leaks from within the Syrian security forces played a part in the recent lethal strikes,” suggesting an “intelligence breach.”
Iran’s top-ranking general in Syria, Brig. Gen. Behrouz Esbati, likewise accused Assad of rejecting multiple requests for Iran-led militias to open a front against Israel from Syria after October 7, despite having presented Assad with “comprehensive military plans.” Esbati also claimed that Russia facilitated Israel’s attacks on Iranian targets in Syria over the past year, by “turning off radars.” While also blaming Russia for Assad’s fall, he nevertheless said it was inevitable given that the regime consisted of nothing but “a bunch of corrupt and decadent individuals disconnected from their society.”
Nicole Grajewski, writing for Diwan, also claimed that the movements of the Revolutionary Guards Quds Force were “increasingly restricted by the Syrian authorities” throughout the Gaza conflict, especially in the Golan region, and that the regime had even “begun limiting Shiite religious activities throughout Syria.” We saw above that Assad was already making important concessions to Israel in obstructing Iranian arms deliveries to Lebanon even before October 7, in the direct intelligence cooperation Israel and the regime were engaged in.
Finally, both Russia and Iran were increasingly frustrated by the regime’s intransigence in relation to the long-term Astana agreements between Russia, Iran and Turkiye, which required some degree of compromise by the regime with the needs of both Turkiye and the opposition to reduce the risk of precisely the kind of destabilising outcome that eventuated. Both were rational enough to understand that if Assad did not salvage something through a political process, they were going to end up with nothing.
In conclusion, the assertion that Israel’s battering of Hezbollah and Iranian assets meant they were unable to save Assad, while a more rational assertion than the first above, and more likely than the second, turns out makes little sense when the specifics are examined. Hezbollah’s large-scale presence in its own country, Lebanon, carrying out resistance to Israel, rather than its defeat, was the reason it could not be in Syria in any numbers to aid Assad; the smashing of Hezbollah’s missile arsenal was completely irrelevant to Syria which they were never designed to be used for; the destruction of many Iranian assets in Syria was largely systems and facilities related to the transfer of weapons to Hezbollah in Lebanon, not for defence of the Assad regime; in terms of manpower, the main asset contributed by the Iran-led forces over the years, there were thousands of Iranian and Iran-led troops from other countries, but they chose to withdraw rather than fight; and given Assad’s inaction and perceived betrayal over the year since October 7, neither Hezbollah nor Iran had much appetite to waste lives defending the regime, and even less so once they realised that if they tried, they would be defending a hollow corpse, which would be useless to them going forward.
Conclusion
The Intercept’s Murtaza Hussain argues: “The liberation of Syria from the Assad family is the most positive development for Palestinian nationalism in decades. The reason that Palestinians bargaining position has been so weak vis a vis Israel and the U.S. is that the surrounding states – where the populations are broadly sympathetic to them – have been caged under absurdly dysfunctional and morally bankrupt regimes who have been unable to offer any effective material, economic, or diplomatic support for their position.”
While this may be optimistic, the basis of the Hussain’s argument is sound: the relationship between Israel and Arab dictatorships is symbiotic; a hyper-repressive Israeli occupation regime hates and fears democracy in the Arab world, as Palestinian academic and activist Amir Fakhory argues, and indeed the prospect of Syria’s revolution spreading to states like Egypt and Jordan is even more frightening to it. With the purely military option for the defeat of Zionism having just been shown to be an incomprehensibly fatal illusion, it raises again the need for better political options, by which I do not mean the moribund, non-existent “peace process,” but rather steps towards the political unveiling of the apartheid state.
At this stage, the impact of Syria is unclear. Within Syria, the struggle to maintain a democratic and non-sectarian course will be a hard one, with the ruling HTS showing both positive and negative aspects in that regard, but the key will be the ongoing mobilisation of the Syrian masses to maintain the course. Israel’s ongoing attacks on free Syria, including now proposals to divide Syria into “cantons,” demonstrate that it is determined to not let the revolution succeed, because even any half-successful democratic project in the Arab world is a threat to Zionism. It is also unclear whether the example of the Syrian revolution will spread to Jordan, Egypt and the Gulf, and pose a more direct threat to Israel, or whether the crushing of the Arab Spring has been more decisive elsewhere – in which case the new bourgeois regime in Syria will come more and more under the conservatising influence of the regional repressive regimes which it must now deal with for investment and indeed survival purposes.
But either way, to argue that the liberation of Syria from a genocidal regime is a bad thing for the struggle of Palestinians against genocide is to hold a deeply reactionary view on what liberation means. As Palestinian-American Ahmad Ibsais writes:
“The Palestinian cause has never depended on dictators who oppress their own people. Our resistance has never needed those who murdered Palestinian refugees, who imprisoned our fighters, and who maintained decades of cold peace with our occupiers. Those of us truly guided by the Palestinian cause cannot separate our struggle for justice from the wider liberation of all peoples. The love that emanates from an unwavering commitment to a just cause has sustained our resistance through eight decades of displacement and betrayal – not alliances with oppressors, not the support of dictators, but the unbreakable will of a people who refuse to accept subjugation.”
You’ve got to admit it, Putin’s got talent. After terror-bombing Syria for a decade – specialising on hospitals, even underground hospitals with ‘bunker-busters – on behalf of the ousted Assad tyranny, he now explains this was not a defeat for Russia at all. He says that Russia’s goal when it intervened in 2015 was to prevent a “terrorist” takeover of Syria. But since the rebels who were “terrorists” back then are no longer “terrorists,” because they have made “internal changes” (and Russia has also announced it is studying removing HTS from its “terrorist” listing), therefore this shows that Russia succeeded in its goals! Presumably all this aerial mass murder is what led to Jolani and the HTS leadership, as well as the Free Syrian Army and various Islamist brigades not associated with HTS (who were the vast majority of rebels that Putin bombed), changing their minds about their alleged “terrorism.”
This is very interesting spin, guided partly by wanting to save face given the defeat of decades of Russian investment in the Assad dictatorship which simply crumbled. But it is also because Russia wants to cozy up to the new authorities in Syria in order to maintain at least its naval base in Tartous, established in 1971, which is crucial to Russian imperialism’s Mediterranean presence, and from there into its African imperial ventures. Russia also has its massive Hmeimim airbase in neighbouring Latakia, which was established in 2015 when Russia intervened to save Assad. For the time being, it seems that Russia and HTS authorities have entered some kind of agreement to allow both bases to remain for now, under a pragmatic policy whereby HTS is even protecting the bases from possible revenge attack. With nuclear-armed Israel bombing and invading free Syria due to it missing its man Assad, Syrian authorities don’t want a military confrontation with another nuclear-armed superpower just at the moment. HTS had already made outreach to Russia during its offensive (claiming Russia is potentially a “potential partner” for the new Syria), which would seem counterintuitive, but the aim was presumably to try to neutralise Russia as victory approached.
However, the Latakia airbase (and a number of other airbases) was where Russia based its warplanes which savagely bombed and killed Syrians for a decade; clearly, Russia must know that they have no future in Syria and their presence would face massive popular opposition. Indeed, Russia has been moving its aerial assets, including its S-400 anti-aircraft system, as well as a lot of other military assets, from some 100 bases and military points in Syria, to its airbases in Libya, in the east of the country controlled by reactionary warlord Khalifa Haftar. But Russia clearly sees its Tartous naval base as having much greater strategic value, being its only real naval base in the Mediterranean. Although there is talk of moving its naval assets to Libyan ports under Haftar’s control as well, Russia is determined to try to maintain Tartous.
In this piece where Putin is cited making these claims, he also says that the fall of Assad was not Russia’s fault, but the fault of Iran. After all, while Russia did not massively intervene to save Assad, especially on the frontlines, it did engage in a certain amount of terror bombing of hospitals (five in Idlib), churches, refugee camps and so on during those ten days as the rebels advanced from Idlib to Damascus, presumably as pure revenge. While much has been made of Russia being unable to save Assad due to its airforce being bogged down in Putin’s Ukraine quagmire, it is likely that Russia could see that the situation was hopeless anyway with the complete collapse of Assad’s forces, so no amount of extra terror bombing would have done much good.
Nevertheless, even Russia’s savage revenge bombing was a lot more than the Iranian and Iranian-backed forces on the ground in Syria did – they did nothing at all. Of course, the main “fault” for the Assad regime’s collapse was the Assad regime – its own army refused to fight, the regime was completely hollow, no soldier in Syria thought they should lay down their life for their brutal oppressor. However, Putin is correct that there were thousands of Iranian or Iran-backed troops in Syria, who simply fled or withdrew; he says that while in 2015 Iran had requested Russian intervention, “now they have asked us to help withdraw them. We facilitated the relocation of 4,000 Iranian fighters to Tehran from the Khmeimim air base. Some pro-Iranian units withdrew to Lebanon, others to Iraq, without engaging in combat.”
This is a bigger issue deserving a separate post – but basically Iran itself has explained that it was angry that Assad had done nothing, even symbolically to aid the so-called “axis of resistance” since Israel’s Gaza war began, but even more, was aware that Assad was collaborating with Israel in its attacks on Iranian forces and likely even giving intelligence on its ‘Revolutionary’ Guard leaders that Israel killed. Declaring him a “liability” Iran made clear it would not fight for the regime. It is not surprising that Assad and family are in Moscow and others from the regime and the extended family in the United Arab Emirates rather than Iran.
But what does Putin mean it was the “fault” of Iran, or of the regime itself, if Putin now claims the rebels are no longer “terrorists” and thus Russia’s goals were achieved? Why did Russia not also try to be more “at fault” for Assad’s fall if therefore there was no reason to back him against the non-terrorists? What was the point of the last minute bombing and revenge-killing on Assad’s behalf, no matter how half-hearted? Did the rebels only cease being terrorists on December 8 due to these “internal changes”?
Syrian Revolution Commentary and Analysis 
