Assad is caught between Iraq and a hard place as Israel ratchets up its attacks on Syria
The Syrian leader is trying his hardest to keep a low profile. While Iran and Hezbollah gave him vital support during his nation's civil war, he is desperate to avoid a ground war with Israel.
While the world watched with trepidation as Israeli jets rained down munitions on targets in Tehran late last month, another Middle Eastern capital was facing a barrage of Israeli strikes as well: Damascus, the citadel of Bashar al-Assad’s Syria and a key, but forgotten axis of the region’s spiralling conflict.
The weekend's strikes – purportedly targeting air defence and radar systems – add to the over 200 Israeli bombardments that have rattled locales across Syria since the October 7 attacks, and killed an estimated 365 people. While many of these deaths are reportedly “non-Syrian” nationals, likely Iranian and Hezbollah operatives, many others have been identified as Syrian citizens.
Damascus has been hit with precision strikes by Israeli forces several times throughout the last decade but the scope and magnitude of attacks has increased exponentially in recent months. Cities such as Homs and Aleppo, once subject to the brutal air campaign of Assad, are now in the crosshairs of the Israeli air force. Strikes in the Homs countryside last week are said to have targeted clandestine military sites and one notable attack on an Aleppo-adjacent weapons depot allegedly used to bolster Hezbollah killed 36 Syrians and 6 Lebanese in March.
Israel’s attacks on Syria have been unanswered thus far. No Syrian troops have been transferred to resist Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, no strong calls to action have been issued, and Assad has actually withdrawn forces from the contested Golan Heights border, requesting Russian personnel to replace his own. Meanwhile, numerous critical cross-border routes have been turned into enormous craters by the IAF to prevent possible weapons shipments to Hezbollah.
Assad’s silence is deafening given the regime-saving support Hezbollah and Iran provided him with in the most dire hours of his nation’s civil war. Beginning in 2013, thousands of yellow-clad cadres from Lebanon crossed into Syria to wage a ruthless war of attrition against the Free Syrian rebels and later against the Islamic State. Their engagement was so vital, their violence so uninhibited, and their presence so pervasive that many Syrians believed themselves to be under Hezbollah occupation. The alliance also brought Syria closer to Iran as the triad coordinated its combined might to repel the onslaught of rebellious factions.
Fast forward to 2024 and the architects of the Syrian survival plan, Nasrallah along with much of Hezbollah’s top brass, are dead and gone. The Lebanese militants once leading the fight against Assad’s adversaries have retreated to their war-torn homeland, and Iran now faces an unprecedented threat to its own capital from Israeli planes crossing through Syrian airspace.
Assad is no fool. Despite his key allies' direct involvement against Israel, an open conflict with Israel will quickly elevate him to the top spot on Mossad’s hit list. More importantly, such an escalation would unravel the delicate web of rapprochement and alliances he has forged in the last few years which have permitted him to claw his way back from the diplomatic abyss.
Last year, the Arab League readmitted Syria after over a decade of suspension, paving the way for the normalisation process to kick off across the region. While Qatar - a main funder of the anti-Assad terrorist group Al-Nusra - has resisted the move, others such as the UAE have embraced Syria’s dictator, welcoming him on several state visits and even extending an invitation to the COP28 climate conference to him last fall. Direct escalation with Israel would put Assad at odds with the rest of the influential Gulf countries and Jordan, who have insisted on a diplomatic resolution to the crisis rather than military confrontation. A war could cripple Assad’s regional hopes and potential economic rebound, condemning Syria to further instability.
Assad’s rapprochement with the Arab nations has come as a surprise given the bad blood between them in the not-so-distant past. However, the most surprising reengagement is the one Assad has sought with his bitter rival, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Turkey has been a thorn in Assad’s throat for over a decade as Erdogan has funnelled billions in arms, ammunition, and aid to the Syrian regime’s most ardent internal opponents. Turkish forces even invaded Syria and still occupy portions of the nation’s far north.
After years of anti-Assad efforts, however, Erdogan has relented. This summer, he invited Assad to begin talks aimed at restoring relations and ending the deadly feud. While still on shaky ground, both leaders have expressed a desire to resolve their differences and Assad has even removed the precondition of Turkish military retreat from Syrian territory from his list of demands.
Despite Erdogan’s coarse rhetoric and vague threats of invading Israel, the Turkish leader is certainly keen to prevent a major Israeli-Syrian ground war from driving millions more refugees into his nation. Such a conflict would spell disaster for the Levant and could also empower the region’s Kurds, a group who Israeli leaders have an affinity for and whom Turkey has been waging war against for years.
Just last week, Turkey ferociously bombed said Syrian Kurds following a terror attack in Ankara. Assad, on the other hand, could prove a key partner in stifling the Kurdish ambitions, and therefore Erdogan is likely lobbying for restraint with Israel behind the scenes.
An overlooked proponent of Syria’s detente with Israel, however, as well as Turkish-Syrian reconciliation, is none other than Vladimir Putin.
Serving as an even greater ally to Syria than Hezbollah or Iran, Putin has provided Assad with special forces, mercenary platoons, tens of thousands of airstrikes and crucial financial assistance over the last ten years. Russia alone is estimated to have killed over 45,000 combatants and civilians in its Syria campaign, and has carried out deadly strikes as recently as two weeks ago. In exchange for the momentous support, Assad has granted Russia a deep water naval base on the Mediterranean and a massive airbase in Hmeimim.
Google imagery reveals the presence of long-range SU-27 aircraft as well as various Russian cargo planes, helicopters, and vehicles on the base’s expansive runways. In an adjacent shopping mall, wandering travellers can even purchase orthodox crosses, commemorative Syria-Russia chess sets adorned with “Thanks Russia” – strangely in English – and shot glasses featuring both nations' flags intertwining.
Israel appears to have sent a cautionary message to Putin by apparently bombing the prized Hmeimim base in early October. The implication is clear: if Assad intervenes on behalf of Hezbollah and Iranian allies, Russian bases are on the chopping block. Putin is thus keen to keep Syria out of the conflict as these facilities are integral to Russian power projection across the region, and their destruction could be devastating for his entire Middle East strategy. So far, Assad seems to be heeding to the dovish demands of Russia, rather than the hawkish ire of Iran.
Additional constraints for retaliation are placed on Syria’s Assad by yet another occupation force, the American military. The United States has set up numerous bases across Syria in the Kurdish and rebel-administered sectors since late 2015 and has been syphoning millions of barrels of crude from the nation’s deep reservoirs. Ostensibly there to eliminate ISIS, the US mission also clearly aims to prevent the reunification of Syria under Assad’s rule and prevent Iranian-aligned militias from dominating the region and its invaluable oil fields.
In late 2018, Trump enraged his foreign policy staff and triggered the resignation of his Defence Secretary James Matthis by ordering the retreat of all American forces from their fighting positions across Syria. Ultimately, he was dissuaded from fully doing so by the sweet smell of liquid gold. At the time, Trump said, “We're keeping the oil, we have the oil, the oil is secure, we left troops behind only for the oil.” Two hundred troops were assigned for this purpose, the rest were supposed to be sent home.
A Republican donor with a security company and a brand new energy firm inked the exclusive deal and went to work under US military protection, harvesting millions from the oil-rich desert. The funds were then allegedly used to finance the US mission against ISIS and the allied Syrian Democratic Forces – but it's hard to imagine that certain Americans didn’t make a fortune through this opaque process. The firm in question, Delta Energy corp, has since had its licence pulled by the Biden administration, but the oil fields remain in US custody.
A re-elected Trump appears poised to issue a full withdrawal of US troops once and for all, paving the way for Syrian reunification under Assad. Along with aligning himself with Assad-sympathetic voices like Tulsi Gabbard and Tucker Carlson, Trump has vowed that he will never trust the “neocons” again. The former President's past envoy to Syria revealed that he and others lied to the President after the retreat order, hiding the true number of US troops there which was much higher than 200. Such blatant deception was not appreciated by the loyalty-loving Donald Trump, who is unlikely to trust any “foreign policy experts” on Syria ever again. It is therefore far more likely that Trump will adhere to his newfound restraint-focused associates, pulling US troops out of harm's way – three of which were killed near the Syrian border in January – to score an early foreign policy victory with his war-weary base.
If a larger, open war between Syria and Israel breaks out, however, Trump will have a hard time justifying ceding territory to an enemy of his “best friend”. Assad is aware of this dynamic and appears to value the potential American departure over a costly ground war with Israel for the time being.
Such an American exit is also desirable as it would likely force the hand of the Kurdish SDF, who would be caught between two stronger military opponents, Turkey and Syria, and would thus likely seek reconciliation with Assad over any further concessions to Erdogan. Thus a power-sharing agreement between both parties would be sought, where the Kurds retain some level of autonomy as is the case in Iraq.
Assad is facing a crisis. Tens of thousands of refugees are now fleeing into Syria for the first time in decades, the crucial economic lifeline of the Syria-Hezbollah drug smuggling alliance is certain to have taken a hit, and Israeli airstrikes are growing harder to ignore.
Try as he may to keep a low profile, the Syrian leader is treading a thin line. So far, he has been able to funnel enough weapons and resources to support and pacify his Iranian and Hezbollah allies, while avoiding the wrath of an Israeli ground invasion or Lebanon-level aerial onslaught. But as the conflict escalates, so do the stakes of avoidance.
Assad was almost out of the woods, or nearing safe shores as they say in the region. He had survived crossing Obama’s red line, weathered the wrath of ISIS, nearly eliminated the country’s remaining rebels, and prevailed over Erdogan’s campaign of destabilisation.
On the horizon stands American withdrawal, full normalisation with the Islamic world, a reunited Syria and prolonged regime stability. However, faced with intensifying attacks from Israel and the belligerent influence of Iran and Hezbollah, Assad may soon find that the greatest test to his rule has just begun.