By Michael Karadjis

You’ve got to admit it, Putin’s got talent. After terror-bombing Syria for a decade – specialising on hospitals, even underground hospitals with ‘bunker-busters – on behalf of the ousted Assad tyranny, he now explains this was not a defeat for Russia at all. He says that Russia’s goal when it intervened in 2015 was to prevent a “terrorist” takeover of Syria. But since the rebels who were “terrorists” back then are no longer “terrorists,” because they have made “internal changes” (and Russia has also announced it is studying removing HTS from its “terrorist” listing), therefore this shows that Russia succeeded in its goals! Presumably all this aerial mass murder is what led to Jolani and the HTS leadership, as well as the Free Syrian Army and various Islamist brigades not associated with HTS (who were the vast majority of rebels that Putin bombed), changing their minds about their alleged “terrorism.”

This is very interesting spin, guided partly by wanting to save face given the defeat of decades of Russian investment in the Assad dictatorship which simply crumbled. But it is also because Russia wants to cozy up to the new authorities in Syria in order to maintain at least its naval base in Tartous, established in 1971, which is crucial to Russian imperialism’s Mediterranean presence, and from there into its African imperial ventures. Russia also has its massive Hmeimim airbase in neighbouring Latakia, which was established in 2015 when Russia intervened to save Assad. For the time being, it seems that Russia and HTS authorities have entered some kind of agreement to allow both bases to remain for now, under a pragmatic policy whereby HTS is even protecting the bases from possible revenge attack. With nuclear-armed Israel bombing and invading free Syria due to it missing its man Assad, Syrian authorities don’t want a military confrontation with another nuclear-armed superpower just at the moment. HTS had already made outreach to Russia during its offensive (claiming Russia is potentially a “potential partner” for the new Syria), which would seem counterintuitive, but the aim was presumably to try to neutralise Russia as victory approached.

However, the Latakia airbase (and a number of other airbases) was where Russia based its warplanes which savagely bombed and killed Syrians for a decade; clearly, Russia must know that they have no future in Syria and their presence would face massive popular opposition. Indeed, Russia has been moving its aerial assets, including its S-400 anti-aircraft system, as well as a lot of other military assets, from some 100 bases and military points in Syria, to its airbases in Libya, in the east of the country controlled by reactionary warlord Khalifa Haftar. But Russia clearly sees its Tartous naval base as having much greater strategic value, being its only real naval base in the Mediterranean. Although there is talk of moving its naval assets to Libyan ports under Haftar’s control as well, Russia is determined to try to maintain Tartous.

In this piece where Putin is cited making these claims, he also says that the fall of Assad was not Russia’s fault, but the fault of Iran. After all, while Russia did not massively intervene to save Assad, especially on the frontlines, it did engage in a certain amount of terror bombing of hospitals (five in Idlib), churches, refugee camps and so on during those ten days as the rebels advanced from Idlib to Damascus, presumably as pure revenge. While much has been made of Russia being unable to save Assad due to its airforce being bogged down in Putin’s Ukraine quagmire, it is likely that Russia could see that the situation was hopeless anyway with the complete collapse of Assad’s forces, so no amount of extra terror bombing would have done much good.

Nevertheless, even Russia’s savage revenge bombing was a lot more than the Iranian and Iranian-backed forces on the ground in Syria did – they did nothing at all. Of course, the main “fault” for the Assad regime’s collapse was the Assad regime – its own army refused to fight, the regime was completely hollow, no soldier in Syria thought they should lay down their life for their brutal oppressor. However, Putin is correct that there were thousands of Iranian or Iran-backed troops in Syria, who simply fled or withdrew; he says that while in 2015 Iran had requested Russian intervention, “now they have asked us to help withdraw them. We facilitated the relocation of 4,000 Iranian fighters to Tehran from the Khmeimim air base. Some pro-Iranian units withdrew to Lebanon, others to Iraq, without engaging in combat.”

This is a bigger issue deserving a separate post – but basically Iran itself has explained that it was angry that Assad had done nothing, even symbolically to aid the so-called “axis of resistance” since Israel’s Gaza war began, but even more, was aware that Assad was collaborating with Israel in its attacks on Iranian forces and likely even giving intelligence on its ‘Revolutionary’ Guard leaders that Israel killed. Declaring him a “liability” Iran made clear it would not fight for the regime. It is not surprising that Assad and family are in Moscow and others from the regime and the extended family in the United Arab Emirates rather than Iran.

But what does Putin mean it was the “fault” of Iran, or of the regime itself, if Putin now claims the rebels are no longer “terrorists” and thus Russia’s goals were achieved? Why did Russia not also try to be more “at fault” for Assad’s fall if therefore there was no reason to back him against the non-terrorists? What was the point of the last minute bombing and revenge-killing on Assad’s behalf, no matter how half-hearted? Did the rebels only cease being terrorists on December 8 due to these “internal changes”?