KEY TAKEAWAYS
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Amid the Middle East’s 14 month-long crisis, Syria’s dormant civil war has been largely overlooked. Then in the middle of last week, a mélange of rebel groups led by the al-Qaida offshoot Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) went on an offensive, quickly capturing the city of Aleppo and making other advances across the country’s northwest.
The regime of Bashar al-Assad weathered the Syrian civil war that started during the Arab uprisings in 2011, thanks to backing from Russia, Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah. While the country’s conflict lines have largely been stuck in place since 2020, Syria’s economic crises and humanitarian plight have only worsened. With Assad’s chief patrons increasingly distracted by the wars in Ukraine, Gaza and Lebanon, Syrian rebels — made up of disparate, often-competing factions — likely made the calculation that now was an opportune moment to strike.
USIP’s Mona Yacoubian looks at what’s behind the Syrian rebels’ advance, how recent geopolitical developments factor in and what it could mean for Syria’s conflict.
Yacoubian: The lightening offensive by Syrian rebel groups, led by HTS which controls Idlib governorate in northwest Syria, comes in the wake of shifting power dynamics inside Syria that have rendered key allies of the Assad regime weakened and distracted. Geopolitical dynamics emanating from the war in Ukraine alongside regional reverberations from the Gaza conflict are in part responsible for the dramatic shifts witnessed in Syria today.
Over the past several months, Russia, Iran and Hezbollah — collectively responsible for rescuing the Assad regime from potential collapse in 2015 and bolstering the Assad regime’s survival in the intervening years — have each experienced significant hits to their power and influence in Syria. Russia, which intervened in Syria in 2015, turned its attention to its illegal invasion and the ensuing war in Ukraine in February 2022. With its bandwidth stretched thin, Moscow has been less capable of managing the complex dynamics that define Syria’s conflict arena — where no fewer than six foreign militaries are engaged.
For its part, Iran has suffered major hits to its position in Syria, following a series of significant Israeli strikes on Iran and Iran-backed targets. Soon after Hamas’s October 7, 2023 terrorist attack on Israel, Israel intensified its strikes in Syria against Iranian and Iranian proxy sites in retaliation for their attacks on Israel. The past several months have marked some of the most intense Israeli strikes on Syria in decades, targeting Iranian and Hezbollah senior commanders as well as military infrastructure. In a recent speech, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asserted Israel’s goal of “cutting Hezbollah’s oxygen line from Iran via Syria,” looking to prevent Iran’s transfer of weapons to Hezbollah from Syria. The net result has been a deterioration of Iran’s posture in Syria.
Notably, the late November Syrian rebel offensive came just after Lebanon — and by extension Hezbollah — agreed to a November 26 cease-fire with Israel that in many ways exposed Hezbollah’s weakened stature. The agreement delinks the Lebanon cease-fire from Gaza — a previous Hezbollah condition — demands Hezbollah’s withdrawal from south Lebanon and ultimately calls for Hezbollah’s disarmament.
While it is far too soon to determine whether Hezbollah can fully reconstitute itself, it is clear that the Lebanese militant group has suffered a significant setback. Against the backdrop of Hezbollah’s diminished position in Lebanon, along with the significant hits it has taken to its positions and arms supply in Syria, Syria’s rebels seized the opportunity to launch their assault on Aleppo.
Beyond these geopolitical and regional dynamics, Assad’s Syria has been hollowed out over the past several years, with humanitarian needs at an all-time high and the Syrian economy on the verge of total collapse. In 2024, the United Nations assessed that 16.7 million Syrians needed humanitarian assistance, the highest level since the outbreak of conflict in 2011. Syria’s dire economic situation has persisted, marked by a deepening economic contraction. The government has struggled to provide the most basic essential services — like electricity, health care, and clean water — across a broad swath of the portion of the country it controls, leading to concerns about the potential collapse of the Syrian state.
There is an important distinction between the Syrian state — the key elements of government that provide basic services — and the Assad regime, made up of the corrupt, clan-based locus of Assad’s power. Yet the two are linked and years of conflict, corruption and mismanagement have badly weakened the technical underpinnings of governance.
Yacoubian: Syria’s conflict, which had been largely frozen since March 2020, has been slowly and now rapidly emerging from its stalemate. The rebel assault underscores the precarious nature of regime control in Syria. It’s sudden eruption and the speed with which rebel groups managed to overtake Aleppo — Syria’s largest city — expose the complex dynamics that reside just below the surface in Syria and can transform superficial calm into major conflict. Even prior to the current phase of conflict between the regime and the various Syrian rebel groups, Syria was marked by restiveness in various regions. Most notably, Sweida in Syria’s southwest, has witnessed significant anti-government protests over the past several months. The Islamic State has also had a resurgence in activity across Syria amid growing concerns that the terrorist group could successfully regroup.
The coming days and weeks will be critical in determining whether the rebel offensive poses an existential threat to the Assad regime.
The coming days and weeks will be critical in determining whether the rebel offensive poses an existential threat to the Assad regime or whether the regime manages to regain its footing and push back on recent rebel gains. While weakened and distracted, Assad’s allies are unlikely to simply cave to the rebels’ offensive. The presidents of Iran and Russia both pledged their “unconditional support” and have vowed to coordinate with Turkey — a key supporter of some of the Syrian rebel groups engaged in the current offensive — in what is likely an effort to de-escalate tensions and seek Turkey’s cooperation in reining in groups over which it has influence.
Both Russia and Iran have invested significantly in propping up the Assad regime and have a lot to lose if the regime should collapse. As such, they will undoubtedly double down on military support to the regime to the extent they are able. Already, Russia has responded to the rebel offensive with airstrikes on Aleppo. Will Iran and its proxies on the ground in Syria be able to regroup and push back on the offensive on the ground? What about Syrian army, security and intelligence forces? Are they as hollowed out as other elements of the state? The answers to these questions will go a long way toward determining the significance of the rebel offensive.
At the same time, the rebels have clearly established some type of momentum against the regime. Whether they will be able to continue it without falling prey to the divisions and rivalries that have long plagued Syrian rebel groups will be important to watch. So will the role of other actors in this unfolding drama: the Kurds and ISIS in particular. Syria’s frozen conflict has reawakened, its trajectory, winners and losers, have yet to become clear.