The Assad regime in Syria is over. In the next few days, the Syrian government is expected to turn over control of the country to the rebel-led Salvation Government.
After 50 years of the regime’s brutality, the lightning-fast offensive to push Bashar Assad out of power lasted just 12 days, but the ripple effects could last decades.
“This whole offensive, in the end of the day, definitely could not take place without the Turkish green light,” Avi Melamed said.
Melamed is a former Israeli intelligence officer, now an author and head of an organization called Inside the Middle East.
Melamed said Turkey may see the most immediate ripple effect of Assad’s fall. Turkey backed at least two of the rebel groups that overthrew the dictator: the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).
Turkey made proxies out of these groups to stop the flow of refugees into southern Turkey and out of concern about the establishment of a semi-autonomous zone in northeast Syria controlled by a group known as the Kurds.
“From a Turkish perspective, the situation in northern Syria is significant in the context of Turkish interests, and therefore the ability to maintain sort of like proxies on the ground, particularly the FSA, the Free Syrian Army, and also the HTS, even though the relationships between Turkey and the HTS are kind of like, you know, convoluted so to speak,” Melamed said. “On the one hand, tensions; on the other hand, cooperation.”
One thing that is not convoluted: all the rebel groups in Syria battling Assad hate Iran, which brings us to our second ripple effect.
“The common denominator of all the Syrian rebel groups, actually, is that they vow non-compromising animosity to Iran and its interference in Syria,” Melamed said.
“Their demand is very clear,” Melamed continued. “They want to kick Iran out of Syria and its militias—either the Iraqis or the Hezbollah and Afghan or Pakistani militias that are also present in Syria, backed by the Iranians. So as far as the Iranians are concerned, they are looking at a rivalry that has no intention to compromise with the Iranian presence in Syria.”
Losing Syria as a proxy is another serious blow to Iran’s Axis of Resistance. It’s an axis which includes Hamas and Hezbollah, two groups that were also recently decimated. But their destruction came at the hands of the Israel Defense Forces.
So, a further weakening of Iran and its proxies is a good thing for Israel and the United States’ interests in the region.
“The Iranians are now crying to high heaven saying that the Americans and the Israelis were the ones behind all this,” Matt Shoemaker, another former intelligence officer, said.
He worked on the Russia desk for the United States.
“As if we are able to control all of these outside events. Which, you know, if it’s true that we had a hand in it, I mean, wow! That’s impressive, you know, that we’re able to affect these sorts of things so quickly and so strategically. More power to them,” Shoemaker said. “But I’d be hard pressed without more evidence to say, ‘yeah, the United States is totally involved with that.’”
He said the fall of Assad’s government is going to have drastic consequences for Moscow too.
“Prior to last week, we thought for the most part Syria was a done deal and that Assad was sitting pretty essentially,” Shoemaker said. “I think that it took a lot of people off guard, and put everyone on the back foot, just how quickly the rebel forces were able to just sweep in there and take over.”
The fall of Assad’s regime, after helping prop it up for so long, will be an obvious blow to the Kremlin’s reputation and its claims of having one of the world’s strongest militaries. But it will also have a very real-world impact too.
Syria was the site of Russia’s only Mediterranean port, which the Kremlin abandoned as the rebels were encircling Aleppo.
“It’s not a terribly large port. It only has about four or five medium-sized ships,” Shoemaker said. “It’s mostly used for resupplying and power projection by the Russians in the region. As I said, it’s their only warm-water port in the Mediterranean. It gives them reach not only into the Middle East but also into Africa, where they’re very active in Libya, for example.”
Degrading hostile Russian activities around the world is a stalwart of American diplomacy and has been for decades. So, even though the U.S. may not have had a hand in the current situation in Syria, that doesn’t mean the U.S. can’t reap some of the benefits of the ripple effects.
“This is a situation where the timing of it is certainly interesting,” Shoemaker said. “It is not good for the Russians at all. They’re busy in Ukraine. The Iranians are distracted with what’s going on with Israel and Lebanon. So, on the one hand, does this benefit American interests that this happened at this particular time? Yeah, to a certain extent, there’s some benefit to this.”
“That doesn’t necessarily mean that we were the cause of it. Correlation is not causation,” Shoemaker continued. “More than anything, it is a data point where you’re like, ‘It worked out for us this time, great! We benefited from something that happened.’ Did we have a hand in it? No idea. But the timing of it is a ‘great! Something came out in our favor for once’ type thing. But yeah, it’s not a good day for Assad. It’s not a good day for the Iranians or the Russians. Sorry, too bad. That’s how things work.”
Reuters contributed to this report.
