Who wins and who loses with the fall of Bashar al-Assad?

The sudden and unexpected fall of the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad is a severe blow for Iran and its regional allies, while Israel breathes a sigh of relief and joy at the change.

by Ricardo Angoso

After thirteen years of bloody war, almost a million dead, eleven million displaced and material and economic destruction that is still not quantifiable, the Syrian rebels, made up of a series of Islamist, Salafist, democratic, Kurdish and secular groups, have achieved what just a few weeks ago seemed impossible: to overthrow the regime of Bashar al-Assad. Damascus, with the dictator now out of the country, has been declared a “free” city, although things from now on, given the rivalry between the different groups fighting for power within the Syrian opposition, are not going to be as easy as they seem. 

There is no doubt that the fall of al-Assad has geostrategic consequences for the entire region. Firstly, as re-elected President Donald Trump has assured, Russia has finally abandoned its former Syrian ally, to which it provided weapons, men and political and economic support for years, in a gesture that has great significance and many interpretations. Moscow loses one of its few allies in the Mediterranean and its only military base where it operated in this sea was on Syrian soil, Tartus, and now it runs serious risks.

But the big blow, although it will never admit it, is for Iran. After having knocked Hezbollah out of the game in Lebanon, first with the famous beeper attack that left 3.500 of its fighters wounded and eliminated at least 35 others and the decapitation of its leadership with selective executions, Tehran continues to suffer setbacks, both political and military. Hamas, although it can still cause harm and in its desperation will surely end up killing many of the Israeli hostages still in its power, is cornered, its top leaders have been eliminated and Israel, more specifically its Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is preparing for a long war that will end when the group is totally exterminated. The leaders of this organization and Tehran never knew how to measure the consequences that the attack on October 7, 2023 against the Hebrew State could have.

WHO WINS AND WHO LOSES WITH THE FALL OF AL-ASSAD?

Iran also has very little time left, and if the regime wants to survive it will have to be pragmatic and end its escalation against Israel. On January 20, Trump will arrive at the White House, surely the most pro-Israeli president in the history of the United States, and he has already assured that if the Israeli hostages remain in the hands of Hamas when he takes office, the Middle East will become a “Hell” with capital letters, in a clear warning to the Iranian theocratic regime and its allies in the region. Iran’s weakness is now more noticeable than ever, as the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Lebanon has shown the weakness of Hezbollah, which many want to remove from the political scene in the land of the cedars.

Israel, for its part, is delighted at the fall of one of its greatest enemies in the Middle East, but it is also aware that among the new Syrian rebels it has many enemies and radical Islamists who share Bashar al-Assad's point of view regarding the Jews. Anti-Semitism is something congenital, I would even say, inherent to the Arab world. Since 1948, the year in which the State of Israel was founded, more than a million Jews have been killed, expelled from their homes, exiled and deprived of all their rights in the Arab world, a great pogrom that is little known and almost forgotten. 

But these are not good times for Turkey, another of Israel's greatest enemies in the region, whose interference in Syrian affairs has been a factor in instability in the country. The Kurds who have taken up arms against Damascus, who now see their territorial base consolidated after the rebel victory, already control almost a third of Syrian territory and will have a fundamental role in the future government of this country. Ankara's attempts to annihilate the resistant Kurds in Syria and Iraq have failed and now, after this new military setback, they are stronger than ever.

Moreover, it is more than certain that Trump will not tolerate the anti-Semite Tayyip Erdogan's pretensions to intervene in Gaza, his flirtations with Vladimir Putin, turning a blind eye to sanctions against Russia and even supporting it financially, and the attacks against pro-Western Kurdish militias on the Syrian chessboard. There is no doubt that with the fall of Damascus, Netanyahu wins and Erdogan loses. The recomposition of the Middle East, which began on October 7 after the Hamas attack on Israel, has had a boomerang effect for those who started the war and cheered on the terrorists, like Erdogan himself, who only a few months ago received the now assassinated top leader of this terrorist organization, Ismail Haniyeh.

The Palestinian leaders, who have never hidden their sympathy for all regional tyrannies, including the Syrian one, are also the big losers in this new recomposition that is taking place in the Middle East. Having played their cards badly and having become Tehran's puppets in the region - Hamas and Hezbollah, acting in Gaza and Lebanon, respectively - they now see how the house of cards built by the Iranian clerics is irremediably collapsing before their eyes, with no one able to stop it. Their brief moments of "glory", when they killed hundreds of Israelis on October 7, have clearly shown that this act of barbarism has discredited them in the eyes of the world, has made the necessary dialogue between Palestinians and Israelis impossible for a long time and leaves them, with their Iranian ally increasingly out of the game despite their bravado, more alone than ever in the face of a lost war, although they may not know this. I believe, like former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, that “peace will come when Arabs love their children more than they hate us.” 

A SERIOUS SETBACK FOR PUTIN

As for Russia, which in just a few weeks has suffered serious setbacks in Moldova, Romania and now Syria, there is no doubt that Putin has abandoned al-Assad at a time of intense military activity in Ukraine that did not allow for a more decisive intervention in defense of his Syrian ally. Putin could be going through one of his worst moments and experiencing his lowest hours, like when Hitler in his bunker moved troops on his maps that did not exist so that they could maneuver on land that was in enemy hands. 

Moreover, it is not clear that his “friend” Trump, known for his unpredictability and fits of rage, will support Putin in his crusade against Ukraine now that Russia’s resilience, both militarily and economically, is in doubt. Why not let the war last a few more years and leave Russia weakened, sunk and crippled after years of expense, sacrifice and human loss? The point is to defeat it to the point of humiliation without putting a single man on the ground. 

One of the big questions about regime change in Syria will be the future role that one of the most radical Islamist groups will play in the new government, namely Hayat-Tahrir-Al Sham (translatable as the Levant Liberation Organisation), which in the last days of the war has conquered several important cities and a large territory. Although formally supported by Turkey, because politics makes strange bedfellows, its radicalism worries the West and also its allies, such as Israel. We will see what happens in the coming days.