Enab Baladi – Ali Darwish

Political initiatives, attempts, and maneuvers, accompanied by financial grants and incentives offered to the Syrian regime by Arab countries, have failed to diminish its relationship with Iran.

Since the success of the Islamic Revolution in Iran against the Shah’s regime in 1979, relations between Iran and the Syrian regime have developed at various levels, despite the ideological differences between the leaders of the Iranian Revolution and the Baath Party in Syria.

A series of steps by both parties and regional events, including the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988), the civil war in Lebanon (1975-1990), and the Palestinian issue, have brought the two sides together and even led both Assads (the father and the son) to turn away from the Arabs and oppose them on many issues.

What changed after al-Aqsa Flood?

In May 2023, during his speech at the Arab Summit in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and after years of being denied a seat in the Arab League, Syrian regime president Bashar al-Assad confirmed his continued relationship with Iran.

He stated, “As for Syria, its past, present, and future belong to Arabism, but Arabism of belonging, not Arabism of embraces. Embraces are temporary, while belonging is eternal. Perhaps a person may move from one embrace to another for some reason, but it does not change their belonging; those who change it are essentially without belonging.”

However, following the al-Aqsa Flood operation on October 7, 2023, and the subsequent distancing of the Syrian regime from participating or supporting Gaza in what Iran calls “The Unity of Fronts,” alongside the steps taken by Arab countries before and after the flood, questions arose about the possibility of distancing from or abandoning Iran.

Samir al-Abdullah, director of policy analysis at the Harmoon Center for Contemporary Studies, believes that the regime’s relationship with Iran is deeply rooted and has extended over the years, making it “not easy for him to abandon it,” especially since Iran has played a role in rescuing him after the outbreak of the Syrian revolution in March 2011, and has generously supported him.

Since 2011, Iran’s substantial support has developed relations with the regime and expanded Iran’s military, social, and economic influence in Syria.

Between 2011 and 2024, the two sides signed no less than 126 agreements in various sectors, such as energy, trade, health, education, agriculture, industry, communications, and finance, according to an analytical report by the Jusour Center for Studies last June.

The agreements were categorized into fully executed (48 agreements), not executed (4 agreements), ongoing execution (47 agreements), partially or intermittently executed (25 agreements), and unknown execution status (7 agreements).

Al-Abdullah clarified to Enab Baladi that if the regime were to abandon Iran, it might face revenge, especially since Iran has sacrificed a lot for it, and it cannot maintain its presence within the Iranian axis in the region, prompting it to begin showing that it is outside this axis.

This was evident after the al-Aqsa Flood, when the regime maintained neutrality toward the conflict, even after it spread to Lebanon, and Israel killed many Iranian and Lebanese elements within Syrian territory, according to al-Abdullah.

The Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper reported in May that “sources in Damascus” indicated that the Iranians reject the Syrian position of remaining neutral in the Gaza war, not engaging in “The Unity of Fronts,” and refusing to open a front in the Golan.

The Iranians believe that their country has paid “a heavy price in defense of the Syrian regime, while the regime is luring Western dialogue offers as a reward for its neutral stance and refusal to open a front in the Golan region, which the Iranians cannot accept,” according to the newspaper.

On the other hand, some Syrian officials believe that any regional gain for Iran will automatically be at Damascus’s expense, and “at the beginning of the Gaza war, the regime was terrified of an Iranian-American deal.”

Israel intensified its strikes on targets in civilian and military areas within Syrian territory, especially after the al-Aqsa Flood, and has focused its bombardments since September 21 on Damascus and Homs.

Among the prominent names that Iran announced as killed in the last three weeks or that have been reported by observatories and media as a result of Israeli bombardments were military advisor Majid Diwani and Hassan Jafar Qusair, the son-in-law of Hassan Nasrallah, in an attack on the Mezze area of Damascus.

This was preceded by the killing of the Lebanon and Syria official in the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Mohammad Reza Zahidi, along with other leaders, in an Israeli strike targeting a building adjacent to the Iranian embassy in the Mezze area of Damascus on April 1.

In January, five advisors in the IRGC were killed in an Israeli strike on a building in the Mezze area of Damascus: Hojjatollah Amidvaar, Ali Aqazadeh, Hossein Mohammadi, Saeed Karimi, and Mohammad Amin Samadi.

According to Iranian official television, one of the dead was Sadegh Omid Zadeh, head of Quds Force intelligence in Syria.

On December 25, 2023, Israel assassinated the advisor in the IRGC, Razi Mousavi, through an attack on his residence in the Sayyida Zainab area of Damascus. Tehran considers Mousavi one of the largest and oldest advisers of the IRGC in the support unit of the “Axis of Resistance.”

An available option for the regime

The option currently available to the regime, according to Samir al-Abdullah, is to distance itself from Iran, in coordination with it, and even to appear to escalate against it, even if only superficially, in an attempt to break the stalemate in Arab and Western relations, push for normalization, and lift sanctions against it.

As for relations with Turkey and other Arab states, they may develop if relations with Iran are severed, “but the problem lies in the lack of trust between the two parties,” despite all the Arab and Turkish attempts to normalize relations with him, according to al-Abdullah.

The regime does not trust Arab states and Turkey, believing they aim to deceive him and distance him from Iran so that he weakens and they can abandon him. Conversely, the other side believes that he will merely suggest to them he has cut ties with Iran while such relations continue on the ground.

The Syrian regime has succeeded in recent times in playing on alliances and continues this game, especially after its commitment to neutrality following the Gaza war, and is currently awaiting a reward for that.

Therefore, the regime will not entangle itself in escalation, even if there is a rise in hostilities with Iran on its territory, and will maneuver within the margins available to it, “not abandoning Iran or distancing himself from rapprochement with Arab and Turkish nations and the West.”

International relations specialist Dr. Faisal Abbas Muhammad expressed skepticism, in an article last April, that al-Assad would yield to Western pressures or significantly limit his relationship with Iran unless “a major conflict erupts between Iran and Israel in Syria that could threaten al-Assad’s already weak grip on power.” He added that Iranian calculations make significant escalation with Israel improbable.

Dr. Muhammad, in his article published on the Carnegie Center for Peace Research website, indicated that there is a risk that Israeli attacks on border areas in southern Lebanon could lead to a conflict between Lebanese Hezbollah and Tel Aviv.

This conflict occurred following the bombing of the communication devices carried by Hezbollah members and Israel’s expansion of its bombardment and assassination of senior leaders in the Hezbollah party, including its Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, and the beginning of ground incursions into southern border villages since September 17.

Muhammad predicted that a rise in military tensions between Israel and Iran could ultimately lead Bashar al-Assad to consider distancing himself “from Iran’s regional adventures.”

Turkish and Arab steps

At the end of 2022, a path towards rapprochement between the Syrian regime and Turkey began under Russian auspices. Although Moscow has continually tried to elevate the level of this path, important points of contention remain between the two parties, the primary one being the Turkish military presence in Syria.

As for the Arab states, a gateway for normalization and the resumption of relations was opened with both the UAE and Bahrain through diplomatic visits and the reopening of embassies in 2018, followed by a Jordanian initiative in 2023 aimed at approaching the regime to resolve important issues, including refugees and drug smuggling.

The year 2023 has been notable for political movement from Arab countries toward the regime, the most significant of which was Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan’s visit to Damascus, where he met Bashar al-Assad in April, and al-Assad’s participation in the Arab summit in Jeddah after an absence of nearly 13 years.