Assad’s exit shatters iran’s influence in west asia risks islamists’ rise in syria

Assad’s exit shatters iran’s influence in west asia risks islamists’ rise in syria

The Syrian President’s departure lands a huge blow on a pivotal axis of influence, eroding Tehran’s ability to sustain its network of militia groups across the region; there are also fears that the militants may seek to replace the regime with one less able to prevent resurgence of radical forces.

The ouster of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, after militants swept into Damascus this weekend, shattered Iran’s network of influence in West Asia but Israel, the United States, and Arab powers must now deal with the risk of instability and extremism from the mosaic of forces that replaces Mr. Assad.

Chief among the militant forces that ended 50 years of brutal dynastic rule by Mr. Assad and his father was Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a Sunni Muslim group previously affiliated with al-Qaeda that is designated as a terrorist organisation by the U.S. and the UN.

Western and Arab nations fear that the HTS-led coalition may seek to replace Mr. Assad’s regime with a hardline Islamist government, or one less able or inclined to prevent the resurgence of radical forces, diplomats and analysts said.

“There is strong fear inside and outside the region of the power vacuum that Assad’s sudden collapse may cause,” said Abdelaziz al-Sager, director of the Gulf Research Center. He cited the civil wars that followed the toppling of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in 2003 and Libyan dictator Muammar Qadhafi in 2011.

One senior Western diplomat in the region, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that with the militant forces fragmented, there was no plan for how to rule Syria — a complex nation divided into various sects and ethnic groups, each with its own regional power base.

The senior diplomat expressed fears that lawlessness in Syria could allow the flourishing of extremist groups like Islamic State (IS), which in 2014 swept through large swathes of Syria and Iraq and established an Islamic Caliphate before it was driven out by a U.S.-led coalition by 2019.

U.S. President Joe Biden on Sunday welcomed Mr. Assad’s toppling and said he should be “held accountable” for his despotic rule but he warned that his departure was a moment of “risk and uncertainty”. U.S. forces on Sunday conducted dozens of strikes within Syria against IS to prevent it reasserting itself.

The speed of Mr. Assad’s ouster, just two weeks since the offensive began, took many in the White House by surprise.

A senior U.S. official said Washington was now seeking ways to communicate with all the militant groups, not just HTS.

So far, Washington had mostly thrown its support behind Syrian Kurdish groups, such as the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), whose areas of control are in northeast Syria. These groups, however, are in conflict with one of the main victorious militant factions, the Syrian National Army (SNA), backed by regional power broker, Turkiye, which opposes Kurdish influence.

Wider implications

Mr. Assad’s allies, Tehran and Moscow, who propped up his rule for 13 years with military support, personnel, and airpower, also face far-reaching implications from his precipitous downfall.

Moscow — which has given Mr. Assad and his family asylum — has two major military bases in Syria, its main footprint in West Asia. Its naval base in Tartous on the Mediterranean has been a staging post to fly military contractors in and out of Africa.

For Tehran, its alliance with Mr. Assad — a member of the minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shia Islam — was a cornerstone of its powerbase in a predominantly Sunni region wary of Shia Iran. Mr. Assad’s departure shattered a pivotal axis of influence, eroding Tehran’s ability to project power and sustain its network of militia groups across West Asia, particularly to its ally Hezbollah in Lebanon.

A senior Iranian official said on Monday that it had opened a direct line of communication with the militants in an attempt to “prevent a hostile trajectory”.

Israel’s year-long military campaign has already severely weakened the military power of Hezbollah and Palestinian group Hamas in Gaza.

Mr. Assad had offered Iran a vital conduit for arms shipments to rebuild Hezbollah. Jonathan Panikoff, a former U.S. deputy national intelligence officer for West Asia, said Mr. Assad’s ouster could make it more difficult for Hezbollah to rearm, increasing the prospects that a ceasefire with Israel agreed last month would hold.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed the ousting of Mr. Assad as an “historic day” that followed the blows delivered by Israel against Iran and Hezbollah. He said he had ordered Israeli forces to seize areas along the bordering buffer zone to ensure Israel’s security. Israeli forces carried out air strikes against suspected chemical weapons and missile sites on Monday to prevent them from falling into the hands of hostile actors, the Foreign Minister said.

Carmit Valensi, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), a think tank for Israeli security policy based in Tel Aviv, said that — despite the risk of a prolonged period of chaos and violence in Syria — Mr. Assad’s fall could benefit Israel.

“Despite concerns over the rise of extremist elements near the border and the lack of a clear authority in charge, the military capabilities of the rebels, in their various forms, are not comparable to those of Iran and its proxies,” she said.

The analysts and diplomats who spoke to Reuters warned of the risk of a free-for-all conflict — akin to the wake of the toppling of Gaddafi in Libya or Saddam in Iraq — in which armed groups from different Islamist, ethnic, and ideological shades fight for supremacy over territory. Such a failed state in Syria would have a major impact on neighbors Lebanon, Turkiye, Iraq, and Jordan, they said.