Syria: The Fall of the Damascus Regime Marks a Qualitative Leap in the Global Imperialist Dispute Over the Middle East

The crisis in the global political balance, coupled with the increasingly shifting power dynamics among imperialist forces, has become ever more apparent in the latest military developments unfolding in the Middle East and Ukraine. After a long stalemate, these past two months—at least in the Middle East—have seen pivotal events occur. These developments have significantly turned the tide of war in favor of one side, making the re-establishment of a relative balance of forces unlikely.

Until recently, the prolonged stagnation of the conflicts and the difficulty of any contenders to assert a decisive and quick victory underscored the distance we are away from a general war—a war that, with the persistence of the international regime of capital, us Marxists view as inevitable. Nevertheless, the recent spiraling of the Middle East conflict, alongside the involvement of new actors and a rise of warlike developments, including Israel’s military successes in Lebanon, has profoundly altered the broader picture. Yet, despite these conspicuous battlefield achievements, the prospect of translating them into lasting political outcomes remains uncertain.

In the space of a few weeks, the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah suddenly upended, concluding in a tenuous ceasefire that ultimately favors Israel. This ceasefire confirmed the considerable reduction of Hezbollah’s military capacity, the primary political and military organisation of the Lebanese Shiites.

The consequences of this phase of the war, alongside the fragile truce that is frequently violated by Israel air raids, laid the foundations for a renewed escalation in the never-ending Syrian war. This escalation indirectly resulted from the substantial weakening of the Lebanese allies of the Damascus regime.

The Assad government has concluded its inglorious trajectory after 54 years. Born from the “Corrective Movement,” the Assad regime supported the Jordanian monarchy in its fight against the Palestinian fedayeen, all in the name of pan-Arab “progressivism.” Hafiz al-Assad’s support for King Hussein during the massacre of Palestinian refugees was a Ba’athist blessing upon the decrepit bourgeoisie of Jordan, thus consecrating the monarchical and dynastic republic on the throne of blood.

It is not always easy to trace the complex tangle of causal links that determined the lightning advance of the jihadist forces. In just 11 days, they succeeded—almost without a fight—in seizing control of Syria’s second-largest city. From here, they made their advance on the road to the capital, Damascus. In the wake of the regime’s overthrow, jihadist forces ascended to take control of the state. In the space of a few days, we saw what couldn’t be done in the last 13 years. 

This happened, if we may say so, through a blitzkrieg—or at least a parody of one. Exploiting the incompetence of the ruling military powers, the resulting power vacuum gave rise to an unexpected and, in many respects, surreal reality.

For the Salafist rebels of Ha’yat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and its jihadist satellites, conquering Aleppo, then Hama (Syria’s fourth largest city), and finally Homs (the third largest) was all a triumphal march.  

Now, the new masters of Syria—officially listed as a terrorist organisation by the US, the EU, the UK, and Canada—have become a force that all the powers in the Great Game of the Middle-East must negotiate with and, in some cases, even officially recognize.

This epilogue of civil war comes at the start of a new phase beginning in late September. The international positions of Israel, the US, and Turkey, have all substantially strengthened beyond Syria’s borders.

From Lebanese Prologue to Shi’ite Defeat

Until last summer, the game primarily centered on the direct confrontation between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, leading to the massacre of Palestinian civilians. Meanwhile, the exchange of missiles and airstrikes between Hezbollah and Israel near the Lebanese border remained relatively limited in a low-intensity conflict. 

Certainly, one couldn’t overlook how Hezbolla’s attacks on Galilee prevented tens of thousands of Israelis from returning home, even more than a year after the war in Gaza began.

Meanwhile, the Houthis’ efforts to disrupt Red Sea shipping triggered wide-ranging repercussions for global trade. They forced a reconfiguration of existing trade routes, caused a drastic decrease in shipping through the Suez Canal, and prompted a reassessment for the circumnavigation of Africa in order to avoid the Bab el-Mandeb Strait—the critical gateway to the Red Sea. 

Meanwhile, the incursions of the Israeli Air Force into Syria had never ceased. They sought to weaken the presence of Hezbollah and the pro-Iranian militias, which constituted the support of the dying Damascus government. Thus, the reciprocal missile attacks between Israel and Iran, however spectacular, did not seem to have had any substantial repercussions on the balance of forces between the two regional powers. 

The name of the game changed when Israeli intelligence carried out its attack on September 18th. Israel destroyed the paging devices used by Hezbollah’s militia. The next day, a similar attack targeted the two-way radios vital for internal communications within the Lebanese Shiite organization.

This was an extremely effective and carefully prepared move. But it was a mere prelude to the full-scale attack against Hezbollah’s presence in Lebanon: large-scale bombings across all regions of Lebanon. This new phase of the war on the Lebanese front has led to a sharp downsizing of Hezbollah’s military strength. It has also resulted in the repeated decapitations of new political and military leaders, who had just succeeded those killed, in a series of attacks that were as ruthless and precise as they were unconcerned with avoiding “collateral damage.”

Meanwhile, the war in Lebanon was conspicuously underreported in various countries’ media outlets, chiefly because it constituted a humanitarian disaster in which the militarily preeminent faction was a steadfast ally of the US and NATO. As a result, so-called “public opinion” in Europe remained largely oblivious to the deaths of some 4,000 people in Lebanon. These casualties came from bombings and ground skirmishes between the Israeli armed forces and Shiite militias. Moreover, approximately 1.4 million Lebanese civilians have been displaced, and only a fraction have returned. 

Israel has also paid a bloody tribute, with several dozen civilians killed by Hezbollah rockets targeting Galilee and other areas. Scores of soldiers have died in close-quarters combat on Lebanese soil. Even if the official figures of Israeli losses were manipulated—thus obscuring the true extent of the death toll—it is hard to dispute that the Israeli armed forces have achieved considerable successes at a relatively low human cost, given the intensity of the military clash.

Further evidence for this asymmetry is the November 26th agreement for ceasefire. This forced Hezbollah to abandon huge swathes of territory near Israel’s border, and to withdraw north of the Litani River. Although bearing Israeli and Lebanese signatures, it, in practice, mainly applies to Hezbollah.

Moreover, the truce has been violated several times by the Israeli forces and only symbolically by Hezbollah. More proof that Israel is in such a clear advantageous situation is how it has announced that it will not hesitate to kill Lebanese soldiers should they exhibit any complicity with the Shiite militias.

Meanwhile in Gaza, the war shows no signs of abating: hardly a day passes when Israeli forces don’t inflict dozens more civilian casualties, adding to the over 44,000 individuals already killed since October 2023. Even in the West Bank, Israeli forces have killed around 800 Palestinians in the same period. These are all signs that whatever goals Israel sets for itself, Israel wields the specter of ethnic cleansing and the threat of massacring civilians as powerful weapons of propaganda. This is designed to weaken and eradicate its enemies, and to induce the Palestinians to emigrate elsewhere.

Russia’s Overall Weakness

The latest phase of the great Middle East conflict, emerging after the Lebanese ceasefire, has pivoted toward the Syrian scene. Here the assemblage of interests and military might—from global powers like the US and Russia, to regional actors such as Iran and Turkey—has proved decisive.

The precarious balance of military and political power in Syria was destabilized in the wake of Hezbollah’s defeat, and the resultant erosion of the broader Shia axis. This deterion also owed much to the numerous airstrikes by Israel against the pro-Iran Shia militias in Syria for the better part of the past ten years.

This sustained attrition, which has been in effect for several years, has substantially undermined Iran’s regional influence and sapped its military capabilities. As a consequence of the Shiite axis weakening grip in Syria, the Assad government found itself having to reposition after years of tentatively, but not entirely fruitlessly, searching for new partners in the Sunni Arab world. 

The first significant result of this new direction was the tenuous rapprochement with the UAE. In 2018, this had resulted in the re-establishment of diplomatic relations and the reopening of the Emirati embassy in Damascus.

Regarding embassies, it should be noted that last summer, Italy—virtually alone among major European nations—also reopened its diplomatic office in the Syrian capital. The official reason was to “prevent Russia from monopolizing the Middle Eastern country’s diplomatic efforts.” This was complemented by the fact  that the Assad regime was supposedly stable and claimed to control 70% of Syrian territory. It was almost hilarious when, immediately after the fall of the regime, Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani announced that armed men had broken into the Italian ambassador’s Damascus residence.

“No one has hurt the ambassador or the carabinieri there,” said the minister, who then added “they took three cars.” 

Syria’s rapprochement with some of the Gulf Arab countries was also pushed by pressure Moscow placed on Damascus. Russia wanted Syria to loosen its strong ties with Iran and to start negotiating with Turkey–which is now the greatest sponsor of jihadist militias in Syria. This subtly reveals Russia’s weakness: it can’t feel the void created by America’s partial disengagement, but is reduced to a mere “arbitrator of the poor.”

This also explains why Russia was indifferent to Israel’s constant attacks against its allies in Syria, especially when one considers Russia’ strong military presence in the country. Even under the protection of great powers such as the US and Russia, the entire contradiction of the crisis of imperialist balance of forces is concentrated in the fragmentation of Syria.

The Kremlin’s acquiescent stance toward Israeli air raids in Syria—targeting Hezbollah, Iraqi pro-Iranian Shiite militias, and even units of the Syrian army—had already demonstrated Moscow’s tacit tolerance of a shared presence in Syria with Iran. This relationship, however, was deliberately kept from growing too close, allowing Russia to maintain open channels with several rival nations. Meanwhile, the creeping Turkish presence in Syria during the civil war—whether through its directly controlled militias of the Syrian National Army (SNA) or those of HTS itself—also posed a significant challenge for Russia.

The Syrian question continues to be part of the complex negotiations between Moscow and Ankara, but with a different weight since it has to take into account the changed balance of power to Russia’s disadvantage.

The question thus arises as to whether Turkish support for the victorious jihadist advance might blow up all the work that Ankara and Moscow have woven after over two and a half years since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Perhaps not, to the extent that Moscow would be forced, due to its weakness, to negotiate down.

Moscow’s game of pandering their ally Assad’s reconciliation attempts with the Arab world has already born fruit. In fact Lebanon, Egypt, the UAE, Bahrain, and Oman had already developed an interlocutory—at least, non-hostile—attitude towards the Assad regime. Until the beginning of the jihadist invasion, they all seemed to converge towards a full normalization of relations with Syria—so long as it distanced itself from Iran. Furthermore, Russia and the Emirates also agree on the Libyan question since both—albeit for different reasons—have good relations with Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, the chief of staff of the Cyrenaic government in Tobruk.

Yet, Russia develops bilateral relations with unlikely interlocutors, heedless of the real or apparent contradiction that arise from talks to its allies’ sworn enemies. This was evident even during the harshest years of the Syrian civil war. 

At the same time that the Kremlin provided Assad strong military support—enabling him to survive against the virulent offensives of the Syrian armed opposition—it was simultaneously strengthening its relationship with Israel. 

Netanyahu flew to Moscow four times in 2016 alone, while in 2018 he even appeared on the Red Square alongside Putin for Russia’s World War II Victory Day parade. All of this would have been followed up on in subsequent years if the Israeli government had refused to adopt the economic sanctions imposed on Russia.

The Biggest Losers: Russia and Iran

At this point, one wonders what Moscow’s attitude will be in the face of these developments. First of all, Russia will have to resign itself to playing a much reduced role in Syria after the fall of its strategic ally. The Tartus naval base is the only stable foothold for the Russian fleet in the Mediterranean. Only some fifty kilometers further along the Syrian coast lies the Hmeimim air base—another essential element of Russia’s military presence in the Middle East. Moscow cannot accept the loss of these military outposts, without which it would risk losing all influence in the Middle East, as well as in the eastern Mediterranean and Africa.

Perhaps Russia could try to foster the emergence of a quasi-Alawite republic encompassing the entire Syrian coastal strip. This hypothesis was aired during the Syrian civil war when the Assad regime seemed weaker. At the time, it seemed to guarantee some form of survival for the Alawite religious minority, which has had a prominent position in Syrian politics since the second half of the 1960s.

But even if such an accommodation were possible, it would be very precarious. It would deprive the rest of Syria, as well as the Salafists of HTS, of an outlet to the Sea. Moreover, despite the reassuring statements of HTS’s leader, al-Jolani, the future does not bode well for the treatment of the Alawites in a ‘new’ Syria dominated by Sunni jihadists.

Even before Damascus fell, the jihadist rebel penetration into  the Homs district managed to strike an important strategic junction—the last thread stitching together the government’s remaining territorial corridor between the Syrian capital and the coastal region. As the fall of Homs approached, elite Hezbollah units from Lebanon were dispatched in a final attempt to bolster Assad’s faltering defenses. The jihadist pressure in this region was bound to undermine arms supplies to Hezbollah. These supplies, primarily delivered by Iranian and pro-Russian forces, mostly crossed through Syria’s border with Lebanon.

There is no benefit for Moscow in the fall of the Damascus regime. Assad’s overthrow is a political earthquake of immense proportions, one that not only reconfigures the power dynamics of the Middle East but also stands to affect the global balance of power. In this sense, Syria has become the link between the Middle East conflict and the Ukrainian conflict. 

As far as the Islamic Republic of Iran is concerned, the Assad regime was crucial—one could even say “existential,” were it not for the way that term has been misappropriated by capital’s propagandists in the context of Israel’s war in Gaza. Now that Assad has been toppled, Iran finds itself significantly weaker, and has lost the main channel by which it projected influence westward.

Since the beginning of the blitzkrieg against Assad, pro-Iranian Shia Iraqi militias had rushed into Aleppo to try to stem the advance of the HTS jihadists.In the process, they also suffered airstrikes from the US. This demonstrated that Washington’s Syria policy sought the destabilization of Damascus and its eventual collapse.

Further confirming that this is more than a hypothesis were the attacks by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) on the Syrian army. The SDF, a predominantly Kurdish group backed by the US, is evidently attempting to expand its control over the large area it occupies in the northeast of the country.

On December 6th, government troops withdrew from the key city of Deir ez-Zor in eastern Syria, which was subsequently captured by the SDF. This development further complicated Iran’s ability to retain political-military influence in Salafist-controlled Syria and to enable the transit of its militias with aid from Iraq.

This aspect, together with the fall of the Homs junction into the hands of the Syrian jihadists, put a tombstone on the so-called “Shiite corridor” that connected the Islamic Republic of Iran to the Mediterranean.

Now Syria is no longer an ally of either Iran or Russia. Moscow finds itself having to plead to the good offices of Turkey to protect its bases in Syria. In return, Ankara holds sway over the new Damascus government. When Ankara leverages this influence, it would be in view of the big business of post-war reconstruction.

The broader picture, beyond the short-term progress of the war, anticipates new clashes between powers. The repercussions will inevitably echo in the Ukrainian conflict. A wounded Russia will search for any way to finish its game as quickly as possible, if only to limit the damage it has already take