By Michael Karadjis

• Myth 1: Israel was “behind” the overthrow of Assad – silly conspiracism
• Myth 2: OK, it wasn’t, but the fall of Assad serves Israel’s interests – quite the opposite actually
• Myth 3: OK, it doesn’t, but Israel’s actions inadvertently facilitated the fall of Assad by weakening Iran and Hezbollah – valid discussion, but in reality makes no sense

The massive popular revolution which overthrew the 54-year old Assad dynasty is a momentous event shaking West Asia. As the real scale and depth of the horror of the former regime’s prison-torture gulag is being revealed along with the continual unveiling of mass graves containing some 100-150,000 souls, the enormous significance of the Syrian people’s achievement becomes more undeniable.

Meanwhile, leading up to the Gaza truce, Israel’s holocaust in Gaza became more unspeakably barbaric by the day, if that is even possible. The destruction of the last hospital in northern Gaza, the mass killing of civilians taking refuge there and mass arrest of doctors, the freezing to death of Palestinian infants, were greeted with a collective yawn by the world’s rulers.

While Israel’s aim of annexing northern Gaza appears to have no succeeded as hundreds of thousands of Palestinians return – albeit to rubble – Netanyahu is expecting support from the incoming Trump administration for the annexation of the West Bank as a quid pro quo to consecrate Palestine’s worst catastrophe since 1948.

While the solidarity shown with Palestine by southern Lebanon under Hezbollah’s leadership and by the AnsarAllah authorities in north Yemen was undoubtedly appreciated by Palestinians, the realistic conclusion is that it made no difference to Israel’s ability to commit genocide; and when Israel decided to turn around and “show deterrence” by destroying Hezbollah’s communication network, military capacity and most of its leadership in some ten days, this not only did not detract from its war of extermination in Gaza, but rather Israel accelerated it under the cover of Lebanon, implementing the General’s Plan for the complete ethnic cleansing and demolition of northern Gaza.

This demonstrated two things. Firstly, that any illusions that Israel – an entrenched colonial-settler-state acting as a virtual extension of the world’s most powerful imperialist state – can be defeated purely by military pressure, or that any ‘fronts’ other than Palestine itself could be more than symbolic, ought to have been destroyed; such illusions were particularly high in late 2023-early 2024 before reality set in. This is not an infantile criticism that Hezbollah or the Houthis “should have” done more when no-one else did anything, rather it is simply a statement of reality. Secondly, related illusions that these two outside fronts were driven and empowered by some “axis of resistance” led by the reactionary Iranian theocracy – rather than being more situational – should also have been smashed.

Indeed, the fact that the Iranian regime was unwilling or unable to do anything of note to prevent the defeat of its own close Lebanese ally Hezbollah essentially means the death-knell of “axis of resistance” discourse, if such an “axis” means illusions that repressive capitalist states like Iran are willing or able to aid Palestinian liberation (the fact that Syria’s Assad regime not only did less, but arguably even sabotaged Hezbollah and even minimal Iranian efforts, is much less surprising). In reality, as Palestinian author Rashid Khalidi argues, that was never the purpose of Iran’s “axis” in the first place.

The key date here is November 27. This was both the day of the Israel-Hezbollah-Lebanon ceasefire agreement, and the day that Syrian rebels launched their long-planned ‘Operation Deter Aggression’, which, unbeknown to themselves, landed them in Damascus ten days later.  The coincidence of the date, and the fact that both Hezbollah’s defeat and the fall of the Assad regime can be considered defeats to the Iran-led “axis” – even if one was a victory for a genocidal regime and the other a victory against one – has led to much debate about the ‘geopolitical’ relationship between the two events, and their outcome.

There are three main assertions arising from this, which will be disputed here.

• The first assertion, made by many so-called “anti-imperialists” who only see the world through the struggle against Israel and the US, and see everyone else’s struggle for freedom as secondary (including the more vile sub-set of shills for the genocidal Assad regime), is that that Israel and the US were “behind” the toppling of Assad. This conspiracism is easy to dispute, but nevertheless will be dealt with seriously.

• The second assertion, made not only by this same group but also by many people who welcome the overthrow of Assad and wish the Syrian people well, is that while the fall of Assad may be good for the Syrian people, it also happens to be in Israel’s geopolitical interests, since Assad’s Syria, though it did nothing for Palestine itself, was the territorial ‘link’ across which Iran sent arms to Hezbollah. While more serious than the first assertion, at the outset Israel’s immediate massive attack on free Syria from the moment Assad was gone, to destroy all the weaponry that it never had any problem with the Assad regime possessing, to establish a “safe zone” on the Syrian side, free of weapons and “terrorist” infrastructure” (Israeli defense minister Yisrael Katz), and to ensure that no hostile force embeds itself right next to the border of Israel” (Netanyahu), and Israeli leaders descriptions of the new Syrian government as “a gang of terrorists” (Israeli foreign minister Gideon Saar) and “wolves in sheep’s clothing” (deputy foreign minister Sharren Haskel), and claims that “the events in Syria are far from being a cause for celebration” (diaspora affairs minister Amachai Chikli), do not offer much support to this assertion.

• The third assertion is more serious; even among many who reject the first and even the second above, who welcome the Syrian revolution, stress that Syrian freedom should not be hostage to anyone else’s struggle and so on and so forth, nevertheless believe that Israel’s defeat of Hezbollah and Iran and the destruction of many of their assets played a key role – even if inadvertently – in enabling the rebels’ rapid victory and Assad’s collapse. Although the law of unintended consequences is a real thing, I will argue below that when we look at this argument in detail, in reality it played little if any role and makes little sense.

Each of these assertions will be dealt with in depth, but here at the outset, I will note that the explanation regarding the two events coinciding on November 27, 2024 is more simple than many imagine, yet belies precisely the kinds of ‘connections’ many want to make: despite being under constant bombardment by the Assad regime ever since October 7, 2023, the Syrian rebels in Idlib, led by HTS, did not activate their Operation Deter Aggression, to deter this aggression, before the Lebanon ceasefire precisely so as to not help Israel. Once Hezbollah had signed the agreement to implement UN Resolution 1701, requiring it to withdraw north of the Litani River and be replaced there by the Lebanese army, we need to understand that the “axis” – if interpreted in the narrow sense of Iranian arms crossing Syrian territory to reach Hezbollah – had become irrelevant, not only for any symbolic solidarity with Palestine, but for defence of Lebanon itself. At that point, the Syrian rebels made the decision to no longer delay their own struggle against genocide to avoid harming another struggle, as that other struggle had come to a close.  

Was Israel ‘behind’ the ousting of Assad? Sure didn’t look like it!

It is difficult to “refute” an argument based on nothing. Just because conspiracists and sad, bitter Assadists on social media proclaim that Israel was “behind” the Syrian rebel offensive, without offering a grain of evidence, does not make it a fact. “On the streets they are saying it is Mossad,” I was reliably informed after December 8. Just exactly how is anyone’s guess, these memers never explain the alleged mechanism – did Mossad secretly pay off every soldier in the Syrian army to not fight? There was no connection between HTS in Idlib, which spent the whole year since October 7 campaigning for Gaza, and Israel, which calls the rebels ‘jihadists’, ‘terrorists’, ‘hostile entity’, ‘al-Qaeda’, you name it – but who knows, maybe this is all just a front, and they “secretly conspired.” Or maybe some people need more appropriate hobbies.

Nonsense aside, there are some points we can make that demonstrate the distance from reality of these assertions, because they show not only that Israel wanted the regime to remain in power, but also that it was as taken aback as everyone else was by its rapid collapse.

The first point concerns the revelations about the long-term intelligence links between Israel and the Assad regime which have been exposed since the overthrow. Classified intelligence documents of the regime came to light after its fall showing the messages exchanged between an Israeli agent code-named Mousa (or Moses) and then Syrian Defense Minister Lt. Gen. Ali Mahmoud Abbas, who then passed the messages onto Assad’s intelligence chief Ali Mamlouk. These documents concerned the long-term well-known ‘mechanism’ by which Israel and Russia collaborated in the Syrian skies, as Russia’s world-class S-400 anti-aircraft missile system gave a decade-long pass to Israel’s attacks on Iranian and Hezbollah assets in Syria, as long as Israel spared the Assad regime itself.

But while it was previously assumed that Israel only coordinated with Russia, acting on Assad’s behalf, these exposures demonstrate Israel’s direct line to the regime itself. While some messages are warnings to Assad to reduce collaboration with Iran, others are Israeli explanations for certain anti-Iranian actions, sounding almost apologetic in some cases, while still others thank the regime for “positive” moves against Iran and show Israel’s respect for the regime meeting its own “security” needs.

For example, Hassan Hassan and Michael Weiss write up a message from ‘Moses’ to Abbas on June 16, 2023, where it was noted that Syrian Airforce planes, which Israel had previously accused of helping transport Iranian weapons to the Hmeimim airport for transfer to Hezbollah, were no longer landing there, and also that the Syrian regime had halted Iranian cargo flights which had been landing at Nayrab Airport. Moses comments that these steps “are regarded (by us) as positive steps that will safeguard your interests. We do not wish to take action against the Syrian Arab Army. Therefore, using the organized mechanism under Russian supervision will allow you to meet the army’s needs without risking infrastructure or sites exploited by the Iranians for weapons transfers, which ultimately cause harm to you. Since you are the party responsible for halting these flights, know that you have successfully prevented an unnecessary confrontation, one that neither side desires.”

The exposed messages only cover the brief period May-July 2023, and as will be shown below, the regime went much further than these “positive” steps away from the “axis” in the year after October 7, with, as we will see below, Iranian suspicions that the direct Israel-Assad communication line may have revealed Iranian assets that Israel subsequently bombed. The idea that Israel would move (somehow) to remove the regime with which it maintained this long-term useful intelligence connection with, through which it was apparently making gains, to replace it with a former Sunni jihadist group with which it has zero links, makes little sense. Israel’s expressed wish to “not take action against the Syrian Arab Army” only turned into its opposite once the regime collapsed.  

The second point relates to the visit by Ron Dermer, Netanyahu’s Strategic Affairs Minister, to Russia in early November 2024  (following a visit to Israel by Russian officials on Oct. 27) to discuss Russia pressuring the Assad regime to fully block Iranian arms from reaching Lebanon (which Russian officials affirmed they were prepared to assist with). Writing in the Washington Post, David Ignatius cites Israeli officials being “hopeful that we can get Assad to, at a minimum, stop the flow of arms to Hezbollah through Syria. Maybe more.” More significantly, Dermer told his Russian hosts that Israel would propose to the US to lift or freeze sanctions on the Assad regime in exchange for such efforts; Ignatius also cited Israeli sources claiming that “the U.S. is willing to give the Syrians some benefit if they go down that road.” [Notably, the close ally of both Israel and the Assad regime – the United Arab Emirates (UAE) – also met US officials around this time to request such sanctions relief for Assad in exchange for positive moves]. This demonstrates that Israel still saw working through the regime as the way to go and believed the regime would still be around for some time – why would you request US sanctions relief for a regime you are about to overthrow?

Thirdly, Israeli government and media statements leading up to the overthrow of Assad show either that Israeli leaders were opposed to the rebels (“the collapse of the Assad regime would likely create chaos in which military threats against Israel would develop”, according to Netanyahus’s November 29 security consultation with defence chiefs), and that Israel may be “required to act” to prevent Syria’s strategic weaponry falling into the hands of the rebels, or at best, viewed both regime and rebels as enemies (eg, Israeli foreign minister Gideon Saar’s December 3 claim that “Israel doesn’t take sides” as “there is no good side there”), or in some cases open support for Assad was expressed because “the Islamic opposition that aims to turn Syria into a center of global jihad is a much more dangerous enemy” so “The option of Syria under the rule of Assad under the auspices of Russia is still the least bad from Israel’s point of view,” or because Assad “is a weak enemy and a weak enemy serves our interests” so  “we must support Assad’s existence.”

None of this looks like a government or military-security apparatus “behind” the overthrow of Assad; but also, if Israel was carrying out this nefarious plot, it is strange that many of these statements indicate a belief the regime would survive at some level; indeed, the idea of Israel establishing a ‘buffer zone’ in southern Syria between the Golan occupation and the HTS-led forces “guarded by forces of Assad’s regime” was put forward by former senior Israeli intelligence officer Lt.-Col. Amit Yagur!

While the last idea may sound outlandish, it corresponds to the claim made by David Hearst in Middle East Eye that “Israel wanted to keep Assad in power under Emirati tutelage” in southern Syria (while also pushing for Druze and Kurdish states) as a buffer zone against HTS and Turkish influence. Hearst reports that “In the early hours of Sunday 8 December, Mohammad Ghazi al-Jalali, the Syrian prime minister, appeared on video saying he was willing to hand over power peacefully.” As HTS forces approached Damascus to receive this handover, “the Emirati and Jordanian ambassadors in Syria were making desperate attempts to stop HTS from gaining control of Damascus,” and they “encouraged the Free Syrian Army and allied groups from the south to get to Damascus before HTS,” arranging for the prime minister to hand over the state institutions to these southern fighters rather than HTS. “Jalali was filmed being escorted to the (Four Seasons) hotel by soldiers from the Hauran region in southern Syria belonging to the Fifth Corps, a military force made up of former rebels who had previously reconciled with the Syrian government.” This was thwarted when HTS leader, al-Sharaa, told Jalali by phone not to do it.

It is hard to confirm the precise details of Hearst’s story. One problem is that it tends to cast the southern FSA as a treacherous body; in fact the Southern Front of the FSA in Daraa and Quneitra has a very proud history, and their revolt, alongside that of the Druze fighters in neighbouring Suweida, in the final days was every bit as valid as the revolution approaching from the north. However, as noted, much of the FSA Southern Front had been pressured to “reconcile” with the regime and join the Russian-led 5^th Corp in 2018, as the regime swept the south, as an alternative to slaughter. While for the majority, overthrowing this forced “reconciliation” in December was a genuine act of revolution, it cannot be ruled out that some elements – those most under Emirati-Jordanian influence – had actually reconciled, and now only came out in order to thwart HTS and to be used by the regional counterrevolution. The recent rise of suspicions among Syrians about the commander Ahmad al-Awda of the Eighth Brigade of the 5th Corp and his Emirati connections, could suggest a future UAE-backed ‘Haftar’ possibility, though at this stage that is rather speculative.

[Incidentally, this Southern Front of the FSA, whatever its divisions, should not be confused with yet another group that western media sometimes calls the ‘FSA’, based in the US al-Tanf base in the southeast desert region. The US-backed ‘Tanf boys’ actual name was the ‘Syrian Free Army’ (SFA), not FSA; they were an ex-FSA brigade which many years ago accepted the US diktat to fight only ISIS and drop its fight against the Assad regime; as such they cannot be called “rebels.” Since around 2016 they have been the minor Arab component of the US war on ISIS, alongside the Kurdish-led SDF. All FSA and rebel brigades fought ISIS, but rejected the US demand they drop the fight against the regime. The ‘FSA’ confusion has been exploited by some tankies on social media claiming the “US-backed FSA entered Damascus from the south;” in fact the US-backed SFA manifestly did not. They did begin moving in the final hours as the regime was collapsing by seizing Palmyra in the central desert to prevent its fall to ISIS after the regime had fled.]

And of course, more generally, the Arab regimes still most cautious about the new Syrian government – Egypt, UAE – are precisely those closest to Israel and its concerns in the region. Israel “behind” the overthrow of Assad? Nothing even remotely there.

Was the overthrow of Assad in Israel’s interests?

Clearly Israel had nothing to do with the rebel advance that overthrow Assad, and was deeply anxious about it. But despite that, was this result in Israel’s interests anyway?

As I explain in great detail here, throughout the Syrian conflict, Israeli leaders (political, military and intelligence) and think tanks continually expressed their preference for the Assad regime prevailing against its opponents, and were especially appreciative of Assad’s decades of non-resistance on the occupied Golan frontier. They never considered the fall of Assad to be in their interests.

However, the argument is that, since Israel had just emerged from a war against elements of the “axis of resistance,” these traditional Israeli calculations may have changed. The key point is not that the Assad regime offered “resistance” to Israel itself – it had not fired a shot across the Golan in 51 years – but that it played a passive role in the “axis” by allowing Iran to cross its territory to deliver weapons to Hezbollah in Lebanon (in exchange for Iran and Hezbollah sending troops to bolster the genocidal regime against its people).

The regime was an odd geopolitical mix: the existence of the Assad regime was seen as crucial both by Israel for the protection of its Golan occupation, which included ensuring Palestinian factions were kept away, and by Iran, as the bridge to get weapons to Hezbollah, ostensibly to fight Israel, though no such fight took place for the 17 years between 2006 and late 2023, spanning the entire Iran-Hezbollah intervention in Syria (indeed, at the time, Nasrallah told Russian minister Mikhail Bogdanov to tell Israel that “Lebanon’s southern borders are the safest place in the world because all of our attention is focused on” Syria, as Hezbollah “does not harbor any intention of taking any action against Israel”).

As such, one may say, well, for Israel, it’s six of one, half a dozen of the other, whether or not Assad falls. However, what this ignores is:

• Firstly, the significant changes in the Assad regime’s geopolitical orientation both before and during the Gaza conflict, and

• Secondly, the fact that the Syrian rebels only launched their offensive after Lebanon and Hezbollah had agreed to ceasefire arrangements with Israel that effectively ended Hezbollah’s ability to lead resistance to Israel anyway, Iranian arms or otherwise.

Below both issues will be elaborated on. Plus, an additional claim now – that Israel’s destruction of Syria’s anti-aircraft weaponry leaves the path open for Israel to launch an attack on Iran to destroy its nuclear industry – will also be dealt with.

Changes in the geopolitical posture of the Assad regime

The fact that in the last half-decade or so, the ‘Abraham Accords’ countries (in its broadest sense, all who had relations with Israel) and the ‘Assad Accords’ countries were the same – Egypt, UAE, Bahrain, Jordan etc, with Saudi Arabia supportive but more reticent on both – can be best understood as both an alliance for counterrevolution generally, and an anti-Muslim-Brotherhood (MB) alliance in particular. These repressive states are hostile to the MB’s populist project of mixing democracy and a moderate form of political Islam. As the MB had strong influence over a part of the Syrian rebellion, and Hamas was the Palestinian branch of the MB, the connections here are clear.

While Saudi Arabia was more reticent for some years, it did come round in 2023, restore relations with Assad, set up an embassy, and play a key role in getting Assad to the Arab League Summit in Riyadh. Moreover, while the Saudis were also hostile to the MB, they were equally hostile to the Iranian influence in Syria due to Saudi-Iranian regional competition (despite common perceptions, Iran was not a key concern of the Egypt-UAE axis); yet the Saudis and Iran also restored relations in 2023 in Beijing, which as I have analysed is a regional phenomenon more substantial than many realise. Ironically for much of the excitable western left and mass media alike, it is only Israel that Saudi Arabia still refuses to establish relations with.

What all this meant was that, alongside Russia and Iran, the Assad regime was now gaining a third leg to stand on, that of the Arab reaction, with which the regime felt ideologically most at home. Russia, despite its own relations with Iran, also saw Iran as a competitor for the domination of the Assadist corpse, and had collaborated for a decade with Israel, allowing it to bomb Iranian and Hezbollah forces in Syria; and Russia also has strong and growing relations with Egypt, UAE, Saudis and so on (indeed, the first two are BRICS members and the third a prospective one).

So from the beginning of the Gaza genocide, the Assad regime felt in a stronger position to resist pressure from Iran to do anything even symbolically to support the “axis of resistance.” It refused to open a front on the Golan like Hezbollah did in southern Lebanon, as has been widely noted in many reports; the Syrian regime, according to the Lebanese al-Modon, instructed its forces in the Golan “not to engage in any hostilities, including firing bullets or shells toward Israel.” Palestinians were arrested for attempting to hold rallies in solidarity with Gaza. In fact, when recently revealed that the regime had killed 94 Hamas members in prison without trial, while this is not surprising in itself, it is notable that “even after Hamas reconciled with the Assad regime in 2022, the targeted executions continued unabated. Prominent figures like Mamoun Al-Jaloudi, a senior commander in Hamas’ Al-Qassam Brigades, were among those executed.”

During Israel’s devastating war against Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Assad regime did nothing to come to the aid of its ally at its moment of existential need (despite Hezbollah’s dishonorable role in saving Assad), it closed Hezbollah recruitment offices, banned Syrian citizens from fighting abroad, prohibited the Iran-connected Fourth Division from transferring weapons or providing accommodation to Hezbollah or Iranian forces, confiscated Hezbollah ammunition depots in rural Damascus, even set up temporary checkpoints to force car owners to remove images of Nasrallah from their vehicles. The regime took 48 hours to comment on Israel’s killing of Nasrallah. Emile Hokayem summarises the message as “Thanks for your service. It was nice knowing you. Bye.”

Several days after the October 7 2023 attacks, the Assad regime expelled the Houthi representatives from the Yemeni embassy in Syria, and restored representatives of Yemen’s internationally-recognised, Saudi-backed government. This was a serious blow to the Houthis, as no other government on Earth, except Iran, recognises them as Yemen’s government. The Assad regime also voted in the Arab League to support its closest Arab ally, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) against its other ally, Iran, on the question of Iran’s occupation of three islands which the former Shah of Iran seized from the UAE back in 1971 (both Russia and China have done likewise).

Moreover, from September, Israel was already engaged in a small-scale invasion of the Syrian-held part of the Golan. The Syrian opposition news site Enab Baladi reported on September 21 that Israeli forces “penetrated into Syrian territories in Quneitra province, accompanied by tanks, bulldozers, and trench-digging equipment,” to a depth of 200 metres and “began bulldozing agricultural land, digging trenches, and building earthen berms as part of the ‘Sufa 53’ road project,” establishing observation points five meters high. According to the Syrian media organization Levant24, in October “six Israeli Merkava tanks, accompanied by military bulldozers, crossed the border near the town of Kodna, seizing agricultural lands, bulldozing fields and olive groves, constructing “a barbed wire fence” along the ‘Sufa 53’ road, and digging trenches “as deep as seven meters.” Israeli forces established a “security fence” inside Syrian territory along a 70-kilometre stretch, according to the Syrian Observer. The width of the area varies between 100 meters in some sections to 1 kilometre from the border with occupied Golan, or even up to 2 kilometres in some areas.

The Assad regime not only did nothing to confront the invasion, but denied it was happening. The pro-regime Al-Watan newspaper claimed “there is no truth to an Israeli incursion … in the countryside of Quneitra, and no Israeli movements in the area.” The Baathist governor of Quneitra, Moataz Abu al-Nasr Jomran claimed “the residents of the villages live their normal life safely.” Regime commanders “ordered paramilitary units to withdraw from areas close to Israeli forces.” As for Russian forces which have been on the Golan line protecting both the Assad regime and the Israeli occupation since 2018, according to Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, the Israeli incursions followed “the withdrawal of a Russian monitoring force in the area,” who stepped aside and made way for Israel.

In fact, this Israeli advance into the non-occupied part of Golan had been going on under the Assad regime’s nose since 2022, as widely reported by various Syrian oppositional news sites such as Enab Baladi, which reported that “in mid-2022, Israel penetrated into Syrian territories eastward,” surpassing the the 1974 armistice line, “and constructed a road called ‘Sufa 53’, which cuts through Syrian territories to a depth of up to two kilometers.” In November 2022, construction of the ‘Sufa 53’ road involved “bulldoz[ing] some agricultural lands of the border villages” and preventing farmers from approaching the area, even opening fire “on a daily basis to drive the farmers and shepherds away from the area.”

Military expert Rashid Hourani believes Israel intended to use this extra Syrian territory “to open up corridors for the entry of more forces, and to secure their route from Syrian territory into Lebanese territory east of the Litani River,” whereas former Free Syrian Army (FSA) commander and military analyst Colonel Abdul Jabbar Akidi, who calls Israel’s incursion “a continuation of the war of extermination in Gaza,” claims Israel aims “to keep the Iranian militias away and besiege them, and so cut off supply lines to Hezbollah.”

Whatever Israel’s purpose, it is clear the Assad regime, and Russia, were in cahoots with it; most people are only aware of Israel’s further incursion into non-occupied Golan after Assad’s overthrow (which the new government has condemned in the United Nations and demands withdrawal of). It was this regime that was brought down in early December. It was not in Israel’s interests to bring down a regime that had been moving so fast in “the right direction” from an Israeli viewpoint and had even been collaborating on renewed occupation of Syrian territory.

Why the Syrian rebels waited until November 27 to begin ‘deterring’ regime aggression

Of course, Israel could still demand more, that Assad completely cut off Iranian access across its territory to Hezbollah, as it was doing in its negotiations with Russia noted above offering US sanctions relief to Assad. But arguably this became irrelevant to any “axis of resistance” when the Israel-Lebanon ceasefire agreement was made.

The fact that the rebel advance began on November 27, the same day as the Lebanon-Israel ceasefire, is precisely the point: despite being under constant attack by the Assad regime since October 7, the Idlib-based Syrian rebels did not activate their Operation Deter Aggression before the Lebanon ceasefire precisely so as to not help Israel against Hezbollah (despite their low opinion of Hezbollah). But this became irrelevant due to the substance of the ceasefire agreement. Let’s look at these two assertions in detail.

First, the offensive did not come “out of nowhere” as we hear widely; in May 2023, Jolani can be seen here promising an offensive on Aleppo, so we can probably assume planning had begun by then (likely soon after Russia got itself distracted in Ukraine). However, it was postponed after October 7 with the onset of the Gaza genocide.

From October 7 onward, the Assad regime, while maintaining complete quiet on its southern frontier with the Israeli-occupied Golan, used the cover of Gaza to step up the slaughter of opposition-controlled Idlib. In October 2023 alone, 366 were killed or wounded by regime and Russian bombing. Attacks on schools sharply increased over the last year, with 43 attacks between September 2023 and November 2024.

Therefore, the rebels now had even more reason to launch an operation to “deter” this “aggression,” but instead, all this time, people in towns throughout opposition-controlled Idlib and Aleppo continually demonstrated in support of Gaza, with ongoing rallies, seminars, donation drives and the like. The campaign ‘Gaza and Idlib: One Wound’, was launched by the HTS-led Syrian Salvation Government soon after October 2023 with an international tele-conference broadcast out if Idlib. In November 2023, this campaign raised $350,000 for Gaza in eight days, a remarkable achievement for a poor rural province under constant Assadist siege. April 2024 saw the opening of ‘Gaza Square’ in the middle of Idlib. One year of genocide in Gaza was marked with actions throughout the region declaring ‘Our hearts are with Gaza.’ Meanwhile, the Assadist “resistance” regime apparently carried out its “resistance” against this extremely pro-Palestine population of the northwest.

This Assad-Putin war escalated as Israel turned northwards and began smashing up Hezbollah and Lebanon. The 122 attacks recorded only between October 14 and October 17, including with the use of vacuum missiles, was the most intense military escalation in over three months. Daily attacks targeted villages, civilian infrastructure and agricultural zones, impacting some 55,000 families. In late October, the Syrian Response Coordinators “recorded the forced displacement of over 1,843 people from 37 towns and villages in just 48 hours.” According to Ibrahim Al-Sayed speaking to the New Arab, about three-quarters of the residents of Sarmin had fled the town, “the largest displacement the city has experienced since the ceasefire agreement was signed in March 2020.”

The question thus should not be why the two events occurred at the same time, but rather why the rebels waited so long to deter regime aggression. While the regime’s ongoing offensive made the necessity of their operation more acute, they refused to wage it as long as Israel’s war on Lebanon continued. As Aaron Y. Zelin, senior fellow at The Washington Institute, explained, HTS waited for a ceasefire “because they did not want anything to do with Israel.” Hadi al-Bahra, head of the exile-based opposition leadership, the Syrian National Coalition (SNC), also claimed plans for the offensive were a year old, but “the war on Gaza … then the war in Lebanon delayed it” because “it wouldn’t look good having the war in Lebanon at the same time they were fighting in Syria,” and therefore waited till the ceasefire.

However, there was no expectation their offensive to deter regime aggression would be so successful; surprised by the rapidity of regime collapse first in Aleppo, their aims then widened, to liberating the whole country from the regime.

The ‘coincidence’ of November 27 is the point: The ‘axis of resistance’ ceased being relevant before the rebels advanced

Now let’s look at the other event on November 27: the Israel-Lebanon ceasefire agreement, based on UN Resolution 1701, means Hezbollah must move its military forces north of the Litani River, while the Lebanese army must move into this region and replace Hezbollah near the Israeli border. What should be clear is that this means the end of any “axis of resistance” even in the most positive sense of the hyped term: Hezbollah no longer controls the Israeli border, so what would be the point of Iran sending more advanced weapons there? Unless Iran plans to arm the Lebanese army. So if the rebel advance “cut off” the Iranian route to Hezbollah, that was no longer relevant even to Lebanon, and certainly not to Palestine [a longer-term point is that the only reason the Syrian rebels would have for cutting this supply line was the actions of Iran and Hezbollah in support of Assad in Syria in the first place].

Besides, Israel is estimated to have destroyed between 50 percent and 80 percent of Hezbollah’s missile arsenal, so what happened to the rest? We were constantly told that Hezbollah possessed “150,000 missiles aimed at Israel,” which we saw little of at any point. These Iranian-supplied rockets were not used, and Hezbollah in any case had no say in the matter: their purpose was not to defend Lebanon or even Hezbollah it turns out (and still less, to aid Palestine during a genocide), rather, they were there for Iran’s own forward defence. Iran didn’t want to waste them. If they were not used, how would it help Palestine or even Lebanon for Iran to send more advanced weapons to Hezbollah?

This is simply a statement of fact, not a childish jibe that Hezbollah “should have” unleashed full force on Israel. Doing so probably would have brought on Israel’s escalation even faster (though not doing so obviously did not prevent it). The point is simply: if the Iranian supply of advanced missiles to Hezbollah was aimed at aiding Palestine, or even defending Lebanon, but they were not used to anything close to full effect when, firstly, Palestine is suffering a holocaust, and, secondly, Hezbollah itself is engaged in an existential battle, then when would they ever be used? What is their purpose?

Of course, Hezbollah still possesses thousands of shorter-range missiles which would be useful if they were still on the ground in the south in the case of a future Israeli invasion, but the ceasefire agreement means they will not be.

Therefore, once the agreement was signed, the Syrian rebels could no longer see any reason to continue  deferring their own struggle against their genocide-regime. 

Israel’s ‘clear path’ to attacking Iran … err, remember October 26?

One more point: we have heard that Israel’s post-Assad destruction of Syria’s heavy weaponry, including anti-aircraft systems, means it now has a “clear path” to launching an attack on Iran to destroy its nuclear program. Of course, it destroyed these weapons now because does not trust the post-revolution authorities like it trusted Assad, so that is hardly an argument that the fall of Assad is in Israel’s interests, but the issue is simply the fact that Israel has been able to do this.

But this makes no sense at all. The S-300 anti-aircraft system that Russia had provided the Assad regime was of no use against Israel; as we know, Israel launched hundreds of attacks on Iranian and Hezbollah targets in Syria completely unimpeded. Even if this was less due to the uselessness of the S-300 and more due to Assad’s agreements with Israel, the fact remains the same: Assad’s missiles were no obstacle either way. However, what the regime did have was a Russian occupation, which possessed the world-class S-400 air-defence system; which, as we know, Russia never used against Israel when it bombed Iranian and Hezbollah targets, based on explicit Putin-Netanyahu agreements.

People making this argument perhaps forget that on October 26, Israel launched its attack on Iran; with both Jordan and Saudi Arabia banning their airspace to Israel, its F-35 warplanes flew over Syria, whose airspace was under Russian control, and Iraq, whose airspace is under US control. As in every other case, Russia’s air defence system once again gave Israeli warplanes a pass.

So, to conclude this section: Israel had long declared the survival of the Assad regime to be in its interests and certainly preferable to any of the alternatives, and far from this having changed, it was arguably now even less in Israel’s interests for Assad to fall than previously given the Assad regime’s trajectory; and in any case, the Israel-Lebanon ceasefire agreement, moving Hezbollah north of the Litani, had essentially made Iran’s traversing of Syrian territory to supply Hezbollah irrelevant to any regional “resistance” project and the rebels waited until that day, against their own interests, precisely so as not to help Israel; and Israel already had a ‘clear path’ to an attack on Iran if it had chosen, as it did on October 26.

However, did Israel’s damage to Iran and Hezbollah inadvertently aid the overthrow of Assad?

The final argument is even held by many who not only reject the idea that Israel was “behind” the Syrian revolution, but also the idea that the outcome is beneficial to Israel. They argue that even though it was not Israel’s intention, the fact that it did so much damage to Hezbollah and Iranian assets in the region inadvertently facilitated Assad’s fall. Due to their weakness, they were no longer able to defend the Assad regime against the rebellion. After all, since Israel had no more idea than anyone else in the region that the Assad regime was as hollow as it turned out, it is quite possible that their actions facilitated Assad’s overthrow without having that intention.

The law of unintended consequences is a thing; for example, when Japanese imperialism first weakened British, French and Dutch colonialism in Asia, and then US imperialism in turn defeated Japan, this arguably facilitated the Chinese and Vietnamese revolutions, certainly not the aim of either Japan or the US! However, looking at the argument piece by piece in this case, it actually makes little sense.

This argument goes together with the claim that Russia’s decision to plunge itself into the Ukraine quagmire likewise meant that most of its airforce was bogged down in Europe and thus also not in a position to provide the necessary support to the Assad regime.

The Russia argument has slightly more validity, as Russia’s role in saving Assad last decade was overwhelmingly with its airforce, most of which is indeed needed in Ukraine. The main contribution of the Iran-led forces, by contrast, was manpower (and money), not weaponry; they fought with the regime’s heavy weaponry arsenal, under regime and Russian air cover. They were not down on manpower as a result of the defeats imposed on them by Israel.

Either way, the argument remains weak for both, because once they could see the complete hollowness of the regime, that no soldier in Assad’s military was willing to raise a gun, that there was not even any popular resistance from frightened minorities, both Russia and Iran could see the complete futility of fighting on behalf of the empty Assadist shell, regardless of how ‘strong’ or ‘weak’ they were. As Iran began withdrawing its forces from Syria on December 6, Mehdi Rahmati, an advisor to the Iranian regime, told The New York Times that the decision was made “because we cannot fight as an advisory and support force if Syria’s army itself does not want to fight.” On December 8, Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi stressed that Iran was “never supposed to replace the Syrian army in fighting the opposition. Syria’s internal affairs and countering the opposition is an issue for the government and army of Syria, not us. The Syrian army did not carry out its duty properly.”

Moreover, given the scale of the actual or potential geopolitical loss for both – Russia of its Mediterranean bases, Iran of its land link to Lebanon – the best way to attempt to gain some future leverage in Syria with the new regime would be to not shed any blood in vain in the final hour.

Now let’s look in more detail at the common assertions. The most common is that Hezbollah’s smashing defeat by Israel meant it was too weakened to be able to come to Assad’s defence (the interesting thing about this argument is that often the very people making it promote Hezbollah’s “victory” over Israel when it suits a different argument).

The connection, however, is different: at the time most Hezbollah cadre were in southern Lebanon, where it exists, after all, doing what is supposed to be its raison d’etre, resisting Israel, ie, standing on the side of the region’s peoples resisting oppression; therefore it was not in a position to be engaged as a counterrevolutionary force in Syria at the time, with any more than a handful of troops, thus better allowing conditions for popular resistance in Syria too.  

In other words, popular resistance against a genocidal regime in southern Lebanon = popular resistance against a genocidal regime in Syria facilitated.

The discourse that it was Hezbollah’s defeat by Israel, rather than its resistance to Israel, that enabled the victory over Assad, makes no sense; victory or defeat are both besides the point. If anything, the ceasefire (whether interpreted as defeat or victory or a bit of both) freed it to send forces back to Syria, had it chosen to. As noted, the Hezbollah/Iranian contribution to the Assadist counterrevolution was essentially manpower. While Hezbollah was certainly defeated by massive Israeli airpower, it was not in any sense “destroyed,” in fact the one aspect where Hezbollah could plausibly claim victory was that its cadres on the ground successfully kept Israel’s land invasion at bay, its fighting prowess was if anything enhanced.

Indeed, during Netanyahu’s November 29 security consultation with “defence” chiefs after the fall of Aleppo, it was assessed (wrongly as it turns out) that Hezbollah’s forces would now shift back to Syria, “to defend the Assad regime,” which would “bolster the likelihood of the Israel-Lebanon ceasefire holding” (ie, keeps Hezbollah away from Israel’s own violations of the ceasefire), making these developments “appear to be positive” in the short-term; similarly, the blows suffered by the Assad regime in Aleppo now “forces all members of the axis to focus on another theater that is not Israel,” likewise considered “a net positive for Israel” by former Israeli intelligence official Nadav Pollak.

Hezbollah, however, had no intention of sending its bloodied troops back to aid Assad. On December 2 it stated, diplomatically enough, that it has no plans to do so “at this stage,” while a Hezbollah spokesperson told Newsweek that “The Syrian Army does not need fighters. It can defend its land,” which given what was happening to the Syrian army sounds almost mocking. Hezbollah had shed blood and honour playing a significant role as Iranian proxy in Assad’s genocidal counterrevolution. Yet when it was in its existential struggle in Lebanon against Israel, the Assad regime did not lift a finger to help or even offer much in the way of verbal solidarity, as outlined above. Why would they now rush troops back to Assad? More likely, those still in Syria would have been the first to withdraw.

In fact, there is some evidence that Hezbollah had told Assad over a year earlier that they would not be coming to his defence again. According to Amwaj.media, “shortly before the Oct. 7, 2023 attack, Assad, Nasrallah and Mohammad Reza Zahedi—the top Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander in the Levant—met for talks,” at which Assad requested the withdrawal Iranian and Hezbollah forces from several regions, including Hama and Homs, no doubt in line with his dealings with Israel described above. In response, Nasrallah allegedly warned Assad that any evacuated forces “will not return [to Syria], no matter how critical the threats become.”

Yes, Israel destroyed a lot of Hezbollah’s missile capacity in Lebanon, but these were rockets aimed at Israel; they had never been used in Syria to defend Assad in the past, why would they be now? This was no more their purpose than liberating Palestine or defending Lebanon was. And as we understand, significant missile capacity still remains in any case. This really is entirely besides the point.

Even Israel’s destruction of a lot of Iranian capacity in Syria means largely the infrastructure (missile sites, storage facilities, missile manufacturing plants etc) involved in delivering weapons across Syrian territory for Hezbollah. Take for example Israel’s September commando raid in the town of Maysaf in western Syria, killing 14 people, which the state recently took responsibility for. According to the Times of Israel, “members of the Israeli Air Force’s elite Shaldag unit raided the Scientific Studies and Research Center, known as CERS or SSRC, in the Masyaf area on September 8, and demolished an underground facility used by Iranian forces to manufacture precision missiles for Hezbollah.” Why would the destruction of this centre affect the ability of Iran-led forces in Syria to defend the regime?

In fact, there were thousands of Iranian fighters in Syria at the time, and thousands more Iran-backed Shia fighters from Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Al-Dalati, deputy commander-in-chief of Ahrar al-Sham, confirmed that “Iranian-backed militias were present on every frontline, and the party’s (Hezbollah’s) fighters were at certain points,” adding: “Other Iran-backed militias—whether Syrian, Afghan, or otherwise—were there as well. But they lost their motivation to fight when they saw how the regime was behaving. The regime’s troops are ethically deplorable. They are criminals.”

Iran simply ordered them all to withdraw; they did not fight at all. In addition there were the Syrian fighters in the National Defence Forces (NDF) that Iranian officers had armed, trained and led (distinct from the actual Syrian Arab Army, SAA); the NDF was estimated to have 100-150,000 fighters, more than the SAA. The NDF was simply disbanded on December 6 once Hama was lost.

Putin, blaming Iran for Assad’s collapse, claims 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 [other] pro-Iranian units withdrew to Lebanon, others to Iraq, without engaging in combat.” Iran began full withdrawal of its forces on December 6. Members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, along with diplomats and families, fled towards Iraq “in large numbers over the past several days” it was reported on December 9.

Direct contact was made between Iran and HTS before Iranian forces began their withdrawal from the country. Citing Iranian officials, The New York Times claimed that HTS “promised that it would protect Shiite religious sites and Shiite minorities and asked Iran not to fight its forces,” while Iran asked HTS to allow safe passage of its troops out of Syria and to protect the Shia shrines.” Speaking on December 29, al-Sharaa, while noting that “Syria cannot continue without relations with an important regional country like Iran,” pointed to this protection of “Iranian positions” by the rebels during their offensive to oust Assad.

So, despite Israeli blows to its command and control system in Syria, Iran did not lack forces on the ground as the regime began to fall, but did not use them. Apart from seeing no point fighting for a regime that wouldn’t fight for itself, Iran, like Hezbollah, had deeper issues with the regime which made wasting troops on it no longer of interest to Tehran.

The Financial Times cites Saeed Laylaz, an analyst close to Iran’s Pezeshkian government, that “Assad had become more of a liability than an ally … Defending him was no longer justifiable … Continuing to support him simply didn’t make sense.” Claiming the frustrations with Assad had been growing “for more than a year,” Laylaz said “it was clear his time had passed.” He was not only a liability, “some even called him a betrayer,” referring to his complete inaction over the year of the Gaza crisis, which “cost us dearly,” his growing alignment with other “regional actors” (eg, UAE, Egypt and finally Saudi Arabia), but even more pointedly, the Iranian perception that “people within his regime were leaking information [to Israel] about the whereabouts of Iranian commanders. Assad turned his back on us when we needed him most.”

Iran’s suspicions had already surfaced earlier in 2024. According to Syria analyst Ibrahim Hamidi writing last January, “relations between the Syrian and Iranian militaries have been strained after Israel’s targeted assassination of Iranian Revolutionary Guard leaders in Damascus. Iranian “experts” and former officials [claim] that these assassinations could only have succeeded if Israel had infiltrated Syria’s security apparatus.” A February 1 Reuters report claims Guard leaders “had raised concerns with Syrian authorities that information leaks from within the Syrian security forces played a part in the recent lethal strikes,” suggesting an “intelligence breach.”

Iran’s top-ranking general in Syria, Brig. Gen. Behrouz Esbati, likewise accused Assad of rejecting multiple requests for Iran-led militias to open a front against Israel from Syria after October 7, despite having presented Assad with “comprehensive military plans.” Esbati also claimed that Russia facilitated Israel’s attacks on Iranian targets in Syria over the past year, by “turning off radars.” While also blaming Russia for Assad’s fall, he nevertheless said it was inevitable given that the regime consisted of nothing but “a bunch of corrupt and decadent individuals disconnected from their society.”

Nicole Grajewski, writing for Diwan, also claimed that the movements of the Revolutionary Guards Quds Force were “increasingly restricted by the Syrian authorities” throughout the Gaza conflict, especially in the Golan region, and that the regime had even “begun limiting Shiite religious activities throughout Syria.” We saw above that Assad was already making important concessions to Israel in obstructing Iranian arms deliveries to Lebanon even before October 7, in the direct intelligence cooperation Israel and the regime were engaged in.

Finally, both Russia and Iran were increasingly frustrated by the regime’s intransigence in relation to the long-term Astana agreements between Russia, Iran and Turkiye, which required some degree of compromise by the regime with the needs of both Turkiye and the opposition to reduce the risk of precisely the kind of destabilising outcome that eventuated. Both were rational enough to understand that if Assad did not salvage something through a political process, they were going to end up with nothing.

In conclusion, the assertion that Israel’s battering of Hezbollah and Iranian assets meant they were unable to save Assad, while a more rational assertion than the first above, and more likely than the second, turns out makes little sense when the specifics are examined. Hezbollah’s large-scale presence in its own country, Lebanon, carrying out resistance to Israel, rather than its defeat, was the reason it could not be in Syria in any numbers to aid Assad; the smashing of Hezbollah’s missile arsenal was completely irrelevant to Syria which they were never designed to be used for; the destruction of many Iranian assets in Syria was largely systems and facilities related to the transfer of weapons to Hezbollah in Lebanon, not for defence of the Assad regime; in terms of manpower, the main asset contributed by the Iran-led forces over the years, there were thousands of Iranian and Iran-led troops from other countries, but they chose to withdraw rather than fight; and given Assad’s inaction and perceived betrayal over the year since October 7, neither Hezbollah nor Iran had much appetite to waste lives defending the regime, and even less so once they realised that if they tried, they would be defending a hollow corpse, which would be useless to them going forward.

Conclusion

The Intercept’s Murtaza Hussain argues: “The liberation of Syria from the Assad family is the most positive development for Palestinian nationalism in decades. The reason that Palestinians bargaining position has been so weak vis a vis Israel and the U.S. is that the surrounding states – where the populations are broadly sympathetic to them – have been caged under absurdly dysfunctional and morally bankrupt regimes who have been unable to offer any effective material, economic, or diplomatic support for their position.”

While this may be optimistic, the basis of the Hussain’s argument is sound: the relationship between Israel and Arab dictatorships is symbiotic; a hyper-repressive Israeli occupation regime hates and fears democracy in the Arab world, as Palestinian academic and activist Amir Fakhory argues, and indeed the prospect of Syria’s revolution spreading to states like Egypt and Jordan is even more frightening to it. With the purely military option for the defeat of Zionism having just been shown to be an incomprehensibly fatal illusion, it raises again the need for better political options, by which I do not mean the moribund, non-existent “peace process,” but rather steps towards the political unveiling of the apartheid state.

At this stage, the impact of Syria is unclear. Within Syria, the struggle to maintain a democratic and non-sectarian course will be a hard one, with the ruling HTS showing both positive and negative aspects in that regard, but the key will be the ongoing mobilisation of the Syrian masses to maintain the course. Israel’s ongoing attacks on free Syria, including now proposals to divide Syria into “cantons,” demonstrate that it is determined to not let the revolution succeed, because even any half-successful democratic project in the Arab world is a threat to Zionism. It is also unclear whether the example of the Syrian revolution will spread to Jordan, Egypt and the Gulf, and pose a more direct threat to Israel, or whether the crushing of the Arab Spring has been more decisive elsewhere – in which case the new bourgeois regime in Syria will come more and more under the conservatising influence of the regional repressive regimes which it must now deal with for investment and indeed survival purposes.

But either way, to argue that the liberation of Syria from a genocidal regime is a bad thing for the struggle of Palestinians against genocide is to hold a deeply reactionary view on what liberation means. As Palestinian-American Ahmad Ibsais writes:

“The Palestinian cause has never depended on dictators who oppress their own people. Our resistance has never needed those who murdered Palestinian refugees, who imprisoned our fighters, and who maintained decades of cold peace with our occupiers. Those of us truly guided by the Palestinian cause cannot separate our struggle for justice from the wider liberation of all peoples. The love that emanates from an unwavering commitment to a just cause has sustained our resistance through eight decades of displacement and betrayal – not alliances with oppressors, not the support of dictators, but the unbreakable will of a people who refuse to accept subjugation.”

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”?

by Michael Karadjis

It didn’t take long: from the moment the Assad regime collapsed and the rebels entered Damascus, Israel’s massive land and air attack began. As long as all these arms depots, military airports, intelligence centres, scientific research centres, air bases, air defence systems, ammunition manufacturing facilities, “small stockpiles of chemical weapons,” and Syria’s entire naval force were safely in the hands of the Assad regime, Israel never touched them. As Syrian revolutionary commentator Rami puts it, Israel has “known their location the whole time but felt safe knowing that they were in Assad’s hands, who uses them exclusively on Syrians,” and certainly never against Israel. “Now that Free Syrians are in control Israel panics and starts bombing them all,” in order to prevent, as countless Israeli leaders have declared, these weapons falling into the hands of the former rebels, who Israeli leaders have described as a “hostile entity.”

According to Ben Caspit writing for al-Monitor, since the rebels took control of Syria, “Israel says it has attacked some 500 regime targets, dropped 1,800 precision bombs, destroyed about half of Assad’s air force, much of the regime’s tanks and missile launch capabilities, 80% of its air defense systems, all its explosive UAVs and 90% of its radar systems as well as the chemical weapons still held in Syria.” The open source intelligence monitor OSINTdefender claims the IDF has eliminated some 70-80 percent of Syria’s military capacity, the locations including “anti-aircraft batteries, Syrian Air Force airfields, naval bases, and dozens of weapons production sites in Damascus, Homs, Tartus, Latakia, and Palmyra,” resulting in the destruction of “Scud Tactical-Ballistic Missiles, Cruise Missiles, Surface-to-Sea, Sea-to-Sea, Surface-to-Air and Surface-to-Surface Missiles, UAVs, Fighter Jets, Attack Helicopters, Ships, Radars, Tanks, Hangars, and more.”

“Israeli warplanes bombed the intelligence and customs buildings in the Syrian capital, Damascus.” The intelligence buildings? Wonder what deals between Israel and the Assad regime they did not want anyone to find there? The Golan sale, perhaps? The dealings between Israel and the Assad regime over Israel’s bombing of Iranian and Hezbollah targets? Indeed, it is feared that Israel may be destroying evidence against Assad that could be used by the new authorities to place charges against him in the International Criminal Court.

Israel then went right on to completely destroy Syria’s naval fleet, under the nose of Russia’s still present air and naval bases in Tartous and Latakia. The massive strikes Israel launched on Tartous on December 15 were described by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights the “most violent strikes” in the region since 2012. A gigantic mushroom cloud fireball blew up over the region, “the explosion was so powerful that it was measured as a 3.1 magnitude earthquake on the seismic sensor.”

Israel expands into the Golan

Israel has also invaded further into the Syrian-controlled side of the Golan to create a “buffer zone” (for its already Golan “buffer zone” 57-year occupation) against the Syrian rebel forces. While it is unclear exactly how much territory has been seized, this map from The New York Times shows the territory held by the IDF as of December 13.

It is clear Israel intends to keep much of the new territory it has conquered. Defense Minister Israel Katz said the IDF would stay on “the Syrian side” of Mount Hermon “during the coming winter months as Israel aims to prevent the border region from falling into the wrong hands.” For Israel, a “temporary” stay has traditionally meant forever, as with the main part of Syria’s Golan Heights which Israel conquered in 1967 and illegally annexed in 1981. According to Ben Caspit writing for al-Monitor, a senior Israeli military source said that Israeli troops “will not retreat until the threat to Israel’s border is removed, which could take “between four days and four years.”

According to Al Jazeera’s Muntasir Abou Nabout, Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) have also destroyed roads, power lines, and water networks in Quneitra province (the Syrian-controlled side of the Golan) when people refused to evacuate. “Israeli tanks are now stationed in towns and villages in Syria’s southwest as the Israeli military expanded its occupation of the Syrian Golan Heights.”

In the villages of the al-Rafid region of Quneitra, Israel cut water and electricity to pressure the people to leave, but they refused, and demanded all weapons be handed over. According to one local interviewed by Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi, “no one knows what their aim is, but for sure they have created a new enemy in the future for themselves.” The local also claimed “they [the IDF] removed the people of the village of Rasm al-Rawadhi under threats, and they prevented those who left the village of al-Hamidiya from returning.”

The IDF also invaded Daraa province, troops deploying in Ma’aryah village in Al-Yarmouk Basin, “patrolling and searching some residents.” They also attempted to enter Abdeen village, “but the residents confronted them and prevented them from entering the village.”

Meanwhile, the Israeli government “unanimously approved” a plan to double the 31,000 Israeli settler population in the Golan Heights itself. When Israel seized the territory in 1967, some 130,000 Syrians were expelled, but some 20,000 Syrian Druze still remain amidst the settlers and steadfastly refuse Israeli citizenship. Yet now Israel is attempting to stir up separatism among the Syrian Druze in the Hader region of the Golan, claiming they want to join Israel out of fear of the new Syrian authorities, despite the strong participation of the Druze in their main region of Suweida and their leaderships in the revolution.

Arab League condemns, US supports Israel; Russia hands over posts to Israel

On December 13, the Arab League strongly condemned this Israeli aggression, and separately Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia Egypt and the UAE have issued strong statements.

Not surprisingly, the US has supported Israel’s aggression, National Security Adviser Sullivan claiming “what Israel is doing is trying to identify potential threats, both conventional and weapons of mass destruction, that could threaten Israel and, frankly, threaten others as well, and neutralize those threats,” as Israel destroys virtually the entire Syrian arsenal with its US-supplied weaponry. The US also supported Israel’s expansion into the Syrian Golan, US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller explaining the collapse of the Assad regime “created a potential vacuum that could’ve been filled by terror organizations that threaten Israel.” Sure, he stressed that Israel’s stay should be “temporary,” but the world knows that US words mean nothing in relation to Israel’s actions – indeed Israel’s occupation of the rest of the Golan in 1967 was also supposed to be temporary.

Meanwhile, it was reported on December 9, just as the Israeli attack was mounting, that Russia, as it withdrew from the south, handed over to Israel two facilities in Daraa, and an observatory on Mount Tel Al-Hara. As Russian forces have been based in the Golan region since 2018 under a Putin-Trump-Netanyahu-Assad agreement to keep both Syrian rebels and Iran-backed forces away – to protect both the Assad regime and the Israeli occupation concurrently – this story rings likely.

Israeli leaders explain their aggression

As the revolution took Damascus and Assad fled early on December 8, IDF Chief Herzi Halevi announced that “combat operations” in Syria were to begin, stating that Israel was now fighting on a “fourth front” in Syria in addition to Gaza, West Bank and Lebanon. Israel’s massive attack on Syria had begun. On December 9, Israeli Defense Minister Yisrael Katz “announced that he had directed the army to establish a “safe zone” on the Syrian side, free of weapons and “terrorist” infrastructure, as he put it,.

Most memes did not go past Israeli propaganda such as Netanyahu’s claim that these events are a “direct result” of Israel’s military campaign against Iran and Hezbollah and his assertion that “this is a historic day in the history of the Middle East.” Sure, who wouldn’t want to feign happiness and try to take credit for the collapse of such a monstrous regime. More important however was what Netanyahu also said: “We gave the Israeli army the order to take over these positions to ensure that no hostile force embeds itself right next to the border of Israel.” On December 15, Netanyahu followed this up claiming that Israel’s actions in Syria were intended to “thwart the potential threats from Syria and to prevent the takeover of terrorist elements near our border”.

Katz also doubled down, declaring on December 15 that “The immediate risks to the country have not disappeared and the recent developments in Syria are increasing the intensity of the threat, despite the rebel leaders seeking to present a semblance of moderation.” On December 18, Israel’s deputy foreign minister Sharren Haskel described HTS as “wolves in sheep’s clothing” and stated “we are not going to be fooled by nice talk,” claiming “these rebel groups are in fact terrorist groups” and went on to remind about Jolani’s past al-Qaeda links.

Likudist Diaspora Affairs Minister Amachai Chikli made the case more openly, stating that “the events in Syria are far from being a cause for celebration. Despite the rebranding of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and its leader Ahmed al-Shara, the bottom line is that most of Syria is now under the control of affiliates of al-Qaeda and Daesh. The good news is the strengthening of the Kurds and the expansion of their control in the north-east of the country (Deir ez-Zor area). Operatively, Israel must renew its control at the height of the Hermon …  we must not allow jihadists to establish themselves near our settlements.”

The Israeli calculus in the days before the fall

All of this was already discussed in the uncertain days between the first offensive that took Aleppo and the collapse of the regime ten days later. As we will see, Israeli leaders were not exactly “delighted,” as a somewhat unfortunate piece by Juan Cole claimed.  

Israel has always supported the Assad regime against the opposition (see next section); this put it on the same side as its Iranian enemy, with the difference that it preferred the regime without Iran – hence Israel’s strong decade-long partnership with Russia starting with its 2015 intervention to save Assad; since then, the Israel-Russia agreement has allowed Israel to bomb Iranian and Hezbollah targets anywhere in Syria at will, and the world-class Russian S-400 air defence system will not touch them. But Israel always left the Assadist war machine intact.

During Israel’s devastating war against Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Assad regime did nothing to come to the aid of its ally at its moment of existential need, indeed it closed Hezbollah recruitment offices, banned Syrian citizens from fighting abroad, prohibited the traditionally Iran-connected Fourth Division from transferring weapons or providing accommodation to Hezbollah or Iranian forces, confiscated Hezbollah ammunition depots in rural Damascus. The regime even took 48 hours to comment on Israel’s murder of Nasrallah. From the beginning of the Gaza genocide, the Assad regime refused to open a front on the Golan like Hezbollah did in southern Lebanon, as has been widely noted in many reports; the Syrian regime, according to the Lebanese al-Modon, instructed its forces in the Golan “not to engage in any hostilities, including firing bullets or shells toward Israel.” Palestinians were arrested for attempting to hold rallies in solidarity with Gaza.

Since Israel had just come through a war with Hezbollah, it could see the opportunity presented by Assad’s treachery to pressure Assad for more, ie, to completely cut the Iranian weapons transfers to Lebanon. During his November visit to Moscow, Netanyahu’s Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer told his Russian hosts that Israel would propose to the US to lift or freeze sanctions on the Assad regime in exchange for any such efforts to prevent the flow of weapons to Hezbollah (indeed this demonstrates how outside of reality are the conspiracy theories that claim, with zero evidence, that Israel was somehow “behind” the HTS offensive that led to fall of Assad, whatever that even means).

As such, taken by surprise, like everyone else, by the rapid successes of the Syrian revolution, Israel tended to adopt a plague on both your houses view, ie, withholding support for Assad in order to pressure his regime for more in its moment of weakness, while warning of the dangers from the other side. Israeli foreign minister Gideon Saar’s view expressed on December 3 that “Israel doesn’t take sides” as “there is no good side there” was probably closest to the mainstream Israeli view. Saar also said that Israel should “explore ways to increase cooperation” with the Kurds, “we need to focus on their interests.”

On November 29, Netanyahu held a security consultation with “defence” chiefs. He was told that Hezbollah’s forces will now likely shift to Syria, “in order to defend the Assad regime,” which they assessed would “bolster the likelihood of the Israel-Lebanon ceasefire holding,” making these developments “appear to be positive” in the short-term, but “the collapse of the Assad regime would likely create chaos in which military threats against Israel would develop.” The first point, that the blows suffered by the Assad regime “forces all members of the axis to focus on another theater that is not Israel,” is likewise considered “a net positive for Israel” by Nadav Pollak, a former Israeli intelligence official at Reichman University in Israel. In other words, both sources suggest that Israel saw Iran and Hezbollah being in Syria, fighting for Assad, as a “positive” because they are thereby not focused on Israel.

Regarding the second point, the “military threats” which may arise, Channel 12, reporting that the meeting also raised concerns that “strategic capabilities” of the Assad regime, including “the remnants of [its] chemical weapons,” could fall into the jihadists’ hands, so the IDF “is said to be preparing for a scenario where Israel would be required to act,” ie to destroy this weaponry before it falls into rebel hands, which of course is exactly what has come to pass.

A number of prominent right-wing Israeli spokespeople or security spooks made the case for supporting Assad more forcefully. For example, on November 29, Dr. Yaron Friedman at the University of Haifa penned an article in Maariv claiming that HTS “controls internal terrorism over the entire province of Idlib” and “like Hamas,” receives the support of Turkey and Qatar. He notes that “the opposition consists mostly of Sunni fanatics from the Salafi Jihadi stream” who “look like Hamas terrorists.” He stressed that while “Assad is far from being Israel’s friend … he is the old and familiar enemy” under whom “Syria has not waged a war against Israel for more than fifty years,” while “Bashar al-Assad has not lifted a finger in favor of Hamas or Hezbollah since the beginning of the war in Gaza.” Therefore, “the Islamic opposition that aims to turn Syria into a center of global jihad is a much more dangerous enemy. The option of Syria under the rule of Assad under the auspices of Russia is still the least bad from Israel’s point of view.”

Eliyahu Yosian, former intelligence officer from Israel’s notorious Unit 8200 – suspected of being behind Israel’s massive cyber-terrorist attack on Hezbollah members pagers which blew off people’s faces and hands – explained on December 5, “Personally, I support Assad’s rule, because he is a weak enemy and a weak enemy serves our interests. No-ne can guarantee who will come after Assad’s fall.” He noted that Israel can attack in Syria “every so often in coordination with Russia and without any threat.” Therefore “We must support Assad’s existence.”

One possibility discussed was for Israel to invade and establish a “buffer zone” in southern Syria if the regime collapsed or was close to collapsing.

This view was put forcefully by Lt.-Col. Amit Yagur, another former senior intelligence officer (who had earlier called for Israel to “drive Iran out of Syria”). On December 6, he claimed that what the rebels had achieved constituted “a tectonic collapse of the Sykes-Pilot agreement, a major collapse of the foundations of the old order,” and therefore “we need to ensure there is a buffer zone between us and the Sunnis.” This buffer zone “could be fully secured by IDF officers,” which however was “less realistic,” or “guarded by forces of Assad’s regime,” which presumably he thought was more realistic, “so that we don’t end up with a shared border with these guys,” making reference to October 7.

Not all Zionist commentators held these views. Eyal Zisser of Tel Aviv University, explained that there are voices now challenging the “the traditional Israeli approach of preferring Assad — the devil we know,” with a view of delivering a blow to Iran by getting rid of the Assad regime. In fact, one of the problems for Israel was the same problem for Russia and Iran – if the despot you have relied on for decades to service your varied and even opposing interests can no longer maintain that “stability,” but on the contrary, his house collapses like a pack of cards, then continued support would not just be a bad investment, but be utterly pointless.

In this light, what is striking about all these views expressed above – even just days before the regime’s collapse – is how extraordinarily unrealistic they were; they all seemed to imagine that Assad still had a chance! Such blindness at such a late date suggests wilfulness, ie, Israel was so invested in the regime’s survival that it impossible to imagine it not being there, even if only running the buffer zone! Indeed, even Zisser notes of the move among some Zionists towards accepting Assad’s downfall as a defeat for Iran, “for the moment at least, the Israeli leadership is not considering such a possibility.”

Background: Israel and the Syrian revolution 2011-2018

Anyone confused about this should not be. If you have been exposed to either mainstream media or tankie propaganda depicting Israel and the Assad regime to be enemies, this documentation below will demonstrate that throughout the Syrian conflict, Israeli leaders (political, military and intelligence) and think tanks continually expressed their preference for the Assad regime prevailing against its opponents, and were especially appreciative of Assad’s decades of non-resistance on the occupied Golan frontier.

Of course that does make them friends, but the “conflict” between Israel and Syria is quite simple: Israel seized Syria’s Golan in 1967 and has steadfastly refused to ever negotiate it back. That is not an Assad issue; it is a Syrian issue, the opposition has made continual statements on Syria’s right to use all legitimate means to regain the Golan. When asked if he would follow his close Arab allies – Egypt, UAE, Bahrain, Jordan – in establishing relations with Israel, Assad’s response noted only the Golan, avoiding mention of ‘resistance’ or Palestine: “Our position has been very clear since the beginning of the peace talks in the 1990s … We can establish normal relations with Israel only when we regain our land … Therefore, it is possible when Israel is ready, but it is not and it was never ready …  Therefore, theoretically yes, but practically, so far the answer is no.” Assad, in other words, wanted to be Sadat, but Israel didn’t let him.

From 2012:

Israel’s intelligence chief, Major General Aviv Kochavi, “warned that “radical Islam” was gaining ground in Syria, saying the country was undergoing a process of “Iraqisation”, with militant and tribal factions controlling different sectors of the country”, and claiming there was “an ongoing flow of Al-Qaeda and global jihad activists into Syria”. He said that with the Assad regime weakening, “the Golan Heights could become an arena of activity against Israel, similar to the situation in Sinai, as a result of growing jihad movement in Syria.”

From 2013:

“Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said Israel would erect a new security fence along its armistice line with Syria because “We know that on the other side of our border with Syria today, the Syrian army has moved away, and global jihad forces have moved in.” “We must therefore protect this border from infiltrations and terror, as we have successfully been doing along the Sinai border.”

In an interview with BBC TV, Netanyahu called the Syrian rebel groups among “the worst Islamist radicals in the world… So obviously we are concerned that weapons that are ground-breaking, that can change the balance of power in the Middle East, would fall into the hands of these terrorists,” he said.

“Israel’s military chief of staff has warned that some of the rebel forces trying to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad may soon turn their attention southward and attack Israeli settlements in the Golan Heights. We see terror organisations that are increasingly gaining footholds in the territory and they are fighting against Assad,” Lieutenant-General Benny Gantz said at a conference in Herzliya, north of Tel Aviv. “Guess what? We’ll be next in line.”

Israel also “worries that whoever comes out on top in the civil war will be a much more dangerous adversary” than Assad has ever been. “The military predicts all that (the 40-year peaceful border) will soon change as it prepares for the worst.” The region near the occupied Golan has become “a huge ungoverned area and inside an ungoverned area many, many players want to be inside and want to play their own role and to work for their own interests,” said Gal Hirsch, a reserve Israeli brigadier general, claiming Syria has now become “a big threat to Israel” over the last two years.

‘Israel’s Man in Damascus – Why Jerusalem Doesn’t Want the Assad Regime to Fall’ – heading in Foreign Affairs (May 10, 2013), article by Efraim Halevy, who served as chief of the Mossad from 1998 to 2002.

Israeli defence ministry strategist Amos Gilad stressed that while Israel “is prepared to resort to force to prevent advanced Syrian weapons reaching Hezbollah or jihadi rebels”, Israel was not interested in attacking Syria’s chemical weapons at present because “the good news is that this is under full control (of the Syrian government).”

[comment: as we can see, the Israeli view that chemical weapons were no problem in Assad’s hands but must be destroyed if he falls, being enacted now, goes way back]

From early 2015:

Dan Halutz, former Chief of Staff of the IDF, claimed that Assad was the least harmful choice in Syria, so western powers and Israel “should strengthen the Syrian regime’s steadfastness in the face of its opponents.” Allowing Assad to fall would be “the most egregious mistake.”

From 2015 (shortly before the Russian intervention to save Assad which Israel supported):

IDF spokesperson Alon Ben-David stated that “The Israeli military intelligence confirms that the Lebanese Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s ability to protect the Syrian regime has dramatically declined, making the Israeli military command more cautious of a sudden fall of the Syrian regime which will let battle-hardened jihadist groups rule near the Israeli border;” as a result, military intelligence services are “working on the **preparation of a list of targets** that are likely to be struck inside Syria, **after a possible fall of the Assad regime**.”

[two points: first, clearly, that “list of targets” has come in handy now that “the fall of the Assad regime” has come about; second, this also suggests that Israel was not against Iran and Hezbollah being in Syria as long as they were only defending Assad, rather than delivering missiles to Lebanon]

From 2015 (after onset of Russian intervention):

At the time when Israel is getting ready for the first coordination meeting with Russia over their joint intervention in Syria, Israeli military sources have confirmed the existence of consensus within Tel Aviv’s decision making circles over the importance of the continuation of the Assad regime. Military affairs commentator Alon Ben-David quoted a source within the Israeli Joint Chiefs of Staff as saying “the best option for Israel would be for the Assad regime to remain and for the internal fighting to continue for as long as possible.” In an article published in Maariv newspaper, the military source pointed out that the continuation of the Assad regime, which enjoys international recognition, relieves Israel of the burden of direct intervention and of deep involvement in the ongoing war. He noted that Israel agrees with both Russia and Iran on this matter.

Israel will provide Russia with intelligence information about opposition sites in Syria to facilitate Moscow’s military operations, Channel 2TV reported, noting that a delegation of Russian army officials will arrive in Israel to coordinate the military cooperation.

From 2017:

The ‘Begin-Sadat Centre’ think tank published an article claiming that as Israel is “surrounded by enemies,” it “needs those enemies to be led by strong, stable rulers who will control their armies and prevent both the firing on, and infiltrations into, Israeli territory,” noting that both Assads had always performed this role. The fact that “Syria is no longer able to function as a sovereign state … is bad for Israel” and therefore “a strong Syrian president with firm control over the state is a vital interest for Israel. Given the Islamist alternatives to his rule, Syria’s neighbours, including Israel, may well come to miss him as Syria is rapidly Lebanonised.”

From 2018 (as Assad regime re-took the south all the way to the Golan “border” with Israel from the rebels, with the support of Trump, Putin and Netanyahu):

Israel’s National Security Adviser, Meir Ben Shabat, declared in early June that Israel has no problem with Assad remaining in power as long as the Iranians leave; Knesset member Eyal Ben Reuven stressed that the stability of the Assad regime was “pure Israeli interest.” Another Israeli politician told Al-Hurra TV that “There’s no animosity nor disagreement between us and Bashar al-Assad … he protects Israel’s interests … We now will return to the situation as it was before the revolution.”

Not to be outdone, Netanyahu declared “We haven’t had a problem with the Assad regime, for 40 years not a single bullet was fired on the Golan Heights.”

In case this was not yet clear enough, at a July meeting with his US counterpart, Israeli Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot stressed that Israel will allow “only” Assad regime forces to occupy the Golan “border”.

After noting that “the Syrian front will be calmer with the return of the Assad rule,” the fascistic Lieberman stressed  that “Israel prefers to see Syria returning to the situation before the civil war, with the central rule under Assad leadership.” Further, he noted that “we are not ruling anything out” regarding the possibility of Israel and the Assad regime establishing “some kind of relationship.”

It is clear from this summary that Israel’s attack today as soon as Assad was overthrown has been planned for years for precisely such a time precisely because Israel wanted his rule to continue.

Syria’s condemnation of Israel to UN Security Council – and demands that Syria “fight Israel”

In a joint letter to the UN Security Council and the UN General Assembly dated December 9, the new Syrian government stated that it “condemns in the strongest terms this Israeli aggression, which represents a serious violation of the 1974 Disengagement Agreement … It also constitutes a violation of the sovereignty of the Syrian Arab Republic, the unity and integrity of its territories, and contradicts the principles and Charter of the United Nations, the provisions of international law, and Security Council Resolutions 242, 338, and 497.” The letter then “renews its call on the United Nations and the Security Council to assume their responsibilities and take firm measures to compel Israel to immediately cease its ongoing attacks on Syrian territory, ensure that they are not repeated, and withdraw immediately.”

Much has been made of the fact that, while condemning the Israeli aggression in the UN, the new government has not been very vocal otherwise. There are also literal mountains of disinformation around in social media, in mindless memes and photoshop cut-up jobs, claiming the new government wants to “make peace” with Israel and so on (some useful rebuttals here). Many Assad-loving keyboard warriors are condemning the new government for not “fighting” the Israeli attack.

After 50 years of the Assad regime never firing a shot across the Golan demarcation line, these heroes now condemn a government for not “fighting Israel” in 10 days in power.

One might have noticed that the first thing Israel did was to destroy Syria’s entire military arsenal before it could do anything at all, a military arsenal that Assad never once used against the occupation regime. Presumably they expect Syria to fight the neighbouring genocidal military powerhouse, its warplanes and missiles, with sticks and stones.

As Jolani put it, quite logically, “the general exhaustion in Syria after years of war and conflict does not allow us to enter new conflicts.” That is not a call for a “peace” treaty with the occupation, but a statement of fact. The Syrian people have just come through a 14-year war against their own genocidal regime, the regime of Sednaya-Auschwitz, but these western keyboard heroes now believe that the only way the new Syrian government can show its mettle to them (since this is what is important) is by plunging into war with another genocidal regime.

What they might also consider is that while it is Russia that has been bombing the Syrian people for a decade, the new leadership came to an agreement with Russia that it could keep its naval base in Tartous for now, committing itself to not allowing it to be attacked! That’s because they don’t want conflict with that nuclear-armed genocidal power either. This follows HTS’s overtures to Russia earlier in the offensive, when it declared “the Syrian revolution has never been against any state or people, including Russia, calling on Russia “not to tie [its] interests to the Assad regime or the persona of Bashar, but rather with the Syrian people in its history, civilisation and future” as “ we consider [Russia] a potential partner in building a bright future for free Syria.” The government has also made direct contact with Iran, pledging to protect Shiite shrines, but also giving safe passage to exiting Iranian forces, despite their years of crimes in Syria.

If anything, Jolani’s statement that Syria is in no state to enter a new conflict just now due to exhaustion could well be interpreted by Israel as a medium-term threat. The statements by Israeli leaders justifying their aggression suggest that’s how they view it. Right now, the important thing is for Israeli aggression, destruction and occupation to end, and shooting your mouth off with jihadist slogans, where Israeli leaders and many world leaders and media keep reminding everyone of HTS’s distant past “al-Qaeda” links, would be extremely foolish. No doubt Israel would prefer they did, so it could then bomb Damascus and receive congratulations from its uncritical US backer.

For the entire year since October 7, the Assad regime and Russia had bombed the liberated enclave of Idlib where HTS was ruling, under the cover of Gaza. The entire time, people in Idlib and other opposition-controlled regions were out demonstrating their support for Gaza, while being bombed. The charges against HTS in particular make even less sense, given its strong support for Hamas and for October 7, for better or worse. Jolani has also been filmed boasting that “after Damascus comes Jerusalem,” but of course this kind of rhetoric, so reminiscent of similar Iranian rhetoric, should be taken metaphorically. Yes, any new regime can sell out – there are no guarantees about anything – but if it did, it would face a Syrian population overwhelmingly pro-Palestinian, and there is little point in idle speculation now.

Rather, when Jolani says the focus right now is on stabilising the situation in Syria, this is completely logical. A fractured Syria, getting even more destroyed by foolishness, would have no ability to help Palestinians or to revive its place in the Arab world. More importantly, this is a very critical and dangerous time for the Syrian revolution, when putting a step wrong can have devastating consequences.

With Russia cutting off wheat supplies, Syria is looking for food; the search for literally hundreds of thousands missing is still going on, with the most horrific discoveries turning up in slaughterhouses like Sednaya; people are having to face the grim reality that the majority will not be found alive, as enormous mass graves are being discovered; hundreds of the released have lost their memories and their minds; basic services have had to be restored; the rush is on to preserve as much intelligence information as possible, before being stolen by looters or destroyed by Israeli bombs; the mass return of millions of Syrians has begun. This is what is important; this is what Israel is trying to disrupt with its aggression.

The way in which the Sunni-majority led revolution has made overtures to Christians, Shiites, Alawites, Druze and Kurds has to date been exceptional and has been key to the success of the revolution. The main fault line at present is in the northeast, largely controlled by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). Two things are happening. On the one hand, some of the Arab-majority regions within the SDF-run autonomous statelet have revolted against the SDF and joined the main body of Syrian governance, particularly in Deir Ezzor and Raqqa. On the other hand, Turkey, via its proxy SNA, is also attacking Kurdish regions aiming to destroy Kurdish self-rule; while Manbij, which they took from the SDF via a US-negotiated agreement, is a majority Arab city, they are now threatening to move on iconic Kurdish Kobani. To date, HTS has had a much better approach to the Kurdish question and to relations with the SDF than Turkey and the SNA have, but the future is uncertain.

This Turkey-Kurdish question cannot be dealt with in this essay, but how the government deals with it is crucial to the revolution. Israel sees division as a means of entry, Israeli propaganda projecting the Druze and Kurds as Israel’s natural allies. As seen in some of the statements above from Israeli leaders such as Amachai Chikli and Gideon Saar, supporting “the Kurds” is promoted as a key Israeli geopolitical interest; meanwhile, Israel is trying to get the Druze in the Golan to join Israel. There are even fantastic ideas of a ‘Druze state’ in southern Suweida, and a Kurdish state in the east, forming a bridge to Iraqi Kurdistan, with an oil pipeline joining them to Israel; “by leveraging ties with the Syrian Druze and fostering collaboration with Israel’s Kurdish allies, the foundation for this corridor can begin to take shape,” claims the Jerusalem Post. Both the main Druze leadership in Suweida – a key part of the revolution – and the Druze spiritual leadership in Hader itself, along with the Kurdish SDF leadership, completely reject such ideas. But this demonstrates how an increased Turkish-SNA attack on the Kurds, or any step wrong by HTS on religious minorities such as the Druze, could be exploited by Syria’s enemies. 

Israel’s interests

This example suggests one important Israeli interest – using the instability and moment of weakness of a revolution to make a land grab – no need to explain why the permanent ‘Greater Israel’ project would want to do that – and extending its hegemony into a chunk of the Arab region via “minorities.” However, this exploitation of minority issues is not only about fostering its influence, but also a means to undermine the revolution. There is no mystery about Israel wanting to do this: genocidal colonial settler-regimes like Israel – like other imperialist states – hate popular revolutions, especially in the Arab world. Not only did Israel have a good working relationship with the Assad regime as demonstrated above, but more generally the mutual existence of apartheid Israel and Arab dictatorships has always been symbiotic.

Many “left” Assad apologists, who are embarrassed that Israel has only attacked after the downfall of Assad, are trying to save face by saying “see, Assad’s fall makes Syria weak and Israel can do what it wants.” Think of that for a moment: it is an argument that people should not overthrow dictators, even genocidal ones, because when you make a revolution you get attacked by imperialist powers or other powerful reactionary states. Perhaps Russians should not have made a revolution because Russia first temporarily lost a great chunk of territory to the invading German army at Brest-Litovsk, and then had to face another 20 or so western armies of invasion. The argument is ludicrous, and counterrevolutionary.

Let’s look at three aspects that make Israel terrified of the Syrian revolution.

• Concern about ‘jihadists’ and ‘terrorists’

The first, the most superficial, is the one that Israeli leaders promote, and is most useful for mass consumption: as seen in so many of the quotes above, Israel does not want “terrorists” or “jihadists” to get their hands on weapons that were previously safely in the hands of the Assad regime, because they might use them to launch attacks “on Israel” (or more likely, the occupied Golan). This cannot be dismissed out of hand. At an immediate level, Israel would have such a fear, especially in times of “chaos,” when a new government does not have clear control of all armed forces and so on.

But any such attacks would do nothing to help Syria, let alone Palestine, whatever the illusions in certain quarters. On the contrary, it would simply be grist in the mill of Zionist propaganda about being “under attack by terrorists” and allow Israel to destroy the whole of Syria, with full US support. Whatever the past rhetoric of HTS, the fact that it has pledged not to do that is entirely logical, especially in current circumstances, and politically defangs Israel’s arguments.

• Threat of spread of uprising via regional Sunni Islamist populism

The second aspect is the regional Sunni ‘Islamist’ aspect, not meaning fanatical ‘jihadism’ but more the populist Muslim Brotherhood-type connections between these activists in Sunni majority countries Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Palestine and the Gulf. HTS’s marked ‘softening’ puts it more in this camp than anything related to its distant past al-Qaeda connections. The support given by Hamas – the Palestinian MB – to the Syrian revolution both in 2011-2018 and now flows quite organicially from these connections, as does the support given to Gaza by HTS and other Syrian rebel groups and a year of demonstrations in Idlib and northern Aleppo. The MB has been a major opposition force in Jordan, Egypt and elsewhere, and in Jordan in particular it has played a major role in mobilising against the Jordanian regime’s collaboration with Israel.

Put simply, a popular revolution in one Arab country may be just too good an example for people suffering under other Arab dictators whose relationships with Israel are more out in the open than the one it had with Assad, and these religious-political connections may facilitate this. The fact that the ‘Abrahams Accord’ countries (in its broadest sense, all who had relations with Israel) and the ‘Assad Accord’ countries were the same – Egypt, UAE, Bahrain, Jordan etc, with Saudi Arabia supportive but more reticent on both – can be best understood as both an alliance for counterrevolution generally, and an anti-MB alliance in particular. The overthrow of the Jordanian or Egyptian regimes in particular would be a huge boost to the Palestinian struggle.

In this light, we read that Israel’s Security Agency (Shin Bet) Director Ronen Bar and IDF Military Intelligence Directorate chief Maj. Gen. Shlomi Binder visited Jordan on December 13 to meet Maj. Gen. Ahmad Husni, director of Jordan’s General Intelligence Department, “amid concerns the unrest in Syria could spill over to the Hashemite Kingdom.” According to the Jewish News Syndicate, “Jerusalem is worried that the overthrow of the Assad regime by Syrian rebel factions including terrorist elements led by the Sunni Islamist group Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham could destabilize Jordan … The talks come against the backdrop of fears in Jerusalem that extremist groups in Jordan could try to replicate the swift ouster of Bashar Assad by attempting to remove King Abdullah II from power.”

According to the Jerusalem Post, “Arab diplomats have also expressed alarm over a potential “domino effect” in the region. … An Arab diplomat from the region said this week that authorities in Egypt, Jordan, and neighboring states are monitoring Syria closely. There is growing apprehension that the Syrian rebellion could inspire Islamist movements elsewhere.” Meanwhile, Anwar Gargash, an adviser to the UAE president, has stated that “the nature of the new forces, the affiliation with the [Muslim] Brotherhood, the affiliation with Al-Qaeda, I think these are all indicators that are quite worrying.”

In this light, the Biden administration has just asked Israel to approve U.S. military assistance to the Palestinian Authority’s security forces for a major operation they are conducting to regain control of Jenin in the West Bank. According to Axios, the PA “launched the operation out of fear that Islamist militants — emboldened after armed rebels took control of Syria — could try to overthrow the Palestinian Authority.” One Palestinian official said “It was a Syria effect. Abbas and his team were concerned that what happened in Aleppo and Damascus will inspire Palestinian Islamist groups,” also claiming that Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia support the operation in Jenin to prevent “a Muslim-brotherhood style or an Iranian-funded takeover” of the PA.

At this stage it is unclear to what extent such ‘fears’ will eventuate, but these moves, visits, talks and statements suggest there is concern within the local ruling classes.

• More dangerous threat of democratic, non-sectarian revolution to Zionist project

The third and most fundamental aspect is, once again, related to the spread of revolution, but not specifically the Sunni ‘Islamist’ connection. On the contrary, the extent to which the Syrian revolution can maintain its current popular, democratic and non-sectarian potential could have a dramatic impact on the region – including Israel. It was counterintuitive that a former Sunni jihadist organisation like HTS would lead with the outreach to Christians, Shiites, Alawites, Druze and Kurds, yet it happened. And while the complete hollowness of the regime was the main secret to the rapid success of the revolution, the other crucial ingredient was precisely this non-sectarian element; the descent into sectarianism, deliberately fostered by the Assad regime, was a crucial cause of the failure last time.

Israel’s bluster about being “the only democracy in the region,” while an obvious nonsense in relation to its subjected Palestinian population, holds some truth regarding the Israeli population. By being able to point at ugly dictatorships in the Arab and neighbouring Muslim world, Israeli leaders promote the idea that their anti-Israel agendas are the work of evil tyrants who want to drive out Jews. The fact that many are also run on a sectarian basis – including those are democratic such as Lebanon – further mirrors and is used to further justify Israel’s own racist, sectarian system.

The Arab Spring was the first region-wide attempt at democratic revolution, which however was largely destroyed. In 2019 there was a second round, in Iraq, Lebanon, Sudan and Algeria. What was very pronounced in the first three in particular was their specifically anti-sectarian content. In both Iraq and Lebanon, the movements against sectarian rule were put down, in Iraq brutally crushed by the ‘axis of resistance’ Shiite militia at a cost of hundreds of lives, while in Lebanon Hezbollah also used violence against the movement, thereby saving the rule of all the sectarian elites; in Sudan the democratic opening was overthrown by the military; a few years later, we also saw the Iranian regime crush its own ‘Women, Life, Freedom’ movement. All of this made the region safer for Israel’s own racist, sectarian project.

By contrast, the victory of democratic, non-sectarian forces in Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Sudan and elsewhere would have represented a far larger political challenge to Zionism than harsh but hollow words from ugly regimes, which only facilitate Zionist siege ideology.

It may well be a struggle for the Syrian revolution to maintain the course; the mobilised Syrian revolutionary population will need to fight all attempts to restrict democratic space or to stir sectarianism tooth and nail. But if their struggle does succeed, a democratic, non-sectarian Syria could likewise have an electrifying regional impact.

Israel is trying its hardest to make sure it does not succeed. 

by Michael Karadjis

The lightning victories of the Syrian rebel coalition over the Assad regime forces in northwest Syria over a vast area – followed in quick succession by equally rapid victories first in Hama and Homs in central Syria, then the uprisings in southern Daraa and Suweida and the collapse of the regime in Damascus itself – all within ten days – demonstrates the complete hollowness of the regime, based as it is on little more than naked military and police violence. The subsequent revelation to the world of the real level of horror in the Sednaya ‘slaughterhouse’ demonstrates the breathtaking reality of this; one is reminded of Tuol Sleng and Auschwitz. Regime defences simply collapsed everywhere, the rebels facing neither popular nor military resistance.

The Aleppo offensive

Within a day or so of the offensive launched on November 27, the rebels had not only taken vast areas of rural eastern and southern Idlib and western and southern Aleppo, but most of Aleppo city as well; even in the 2012-2016 period, the rebels only ever controlled half the city. By contrast, it had taken large-scale regime, Russian and Iranian offensives, with airpower, missiles and overwhelming military power, several years to conquer the half-city from the rebels. They then advanced south into northern Hama province, where it is now contesting the regime for Hama city.

Syrian social media accounts are full of scenes of joy as political prisoners are released, as people return to their towns and homes they were expelled from. As former mayor of East Aleppo Hagi Hassan writes, stressing the humanitarian aspects of the liberation, “The city’s liberation is allowing tens of thousands of families to return home after years of forced exile. These families, who lived in camps without essential needs, can now find a more stable and dignified life. … Hundreds of thousands of Syrians are still trapped in the regime’s jails, suffering unimaginable atrocities. The release of Aleppo has allowed the release of hundreds of prisoners, including women and children, marking an important step towards justice.” Fadel Abdul Ghany, of the Syrian Network of Human Rights, claimed that among the detainees and forcibly disappeared people who have been released were some who have been detained for 13 years, “and in one case a detainee that had spent 33 years in prison.”

According to Hassan Hassan and Michael Weiss, “events so far suggest HTS [the leading rebel faction] is behaving pragmatically. Its militants were dispatched right away to safeguard banks from looting. On the first night of its occupation, HTS turned off the electricity for factories, thereby affording civilian residences 16 hours of uninterrupted power, something they haven’t enjoyed since 2012. Similarly, Kareem Shaheen writes of “fascinating messages from Christian family/friends in Aleppo about the restoration of electricity and water, garbage collection (apparently the rebels are paying garbage collectors a 1.5 million SYP wage), bread everywhere, active market.”

Hagi Hassan also claims that “for the first time in years, the city knows some security. Infrastructure has been preserved, public institutions are functioning, and no civil rights violations have been reported since liberation,” stressing that “the military forces that have entered Aleppo have not committed any violations against civilians,” but rather, “they ensured their safety.” Another Syrian reporting from Aleppo, Marcelle Shehwaro, claims there have been violations, though “despite extensive networking around this issue, I’ve only been able to document three violations,” one an infamous Christmas tree incident, though she reports more serious violations between another rebel coalition, the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA), and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

More seriously, Shehwaro noted that, apart from fear of regime and Russian airstrikes, the main fear at present is gun-related chaos, caused by the release of criminal prisoners in the rush to open jails to release political prisoners. However, she reports that “a complaints hotline was activated, and it appears the operations management room is taking this seriously so far. But this is far from a utopia.”

Importantly, she stresses regarding the head-scarf, given the radical Islamist ideology of some of the groups involved, “there are incidents happening related to being told, “Put a scarf on your head.” However, the scale is still very limited (compared to what might be expected). Wearing a hijab hasn’t yet become customary (and may God strengthen the women of Aleppo so it doesn’t become the norm). For now, women are still walking in the streets without hijabs—not as isolated acts of courage or rebellion, but simply because that’s how they dress.” However, she also stresses there should be no complacency on this.

She emphasises that both “alarmist narratives” and “reassuring narratives” should be avoided. This is sensible nuance for any such situation. Revolutions are typically depicted as unmitigated bloodbaths, or as heroic, romanticised utopias. No revolution in history has been one or the other. And from all the above, and more below, what I want to stress here is precisely that this is a revolution, a revival of the Syrian revolution which many considered crushed, warts and all, not simply a “military conquest by Islamists” as some have depicted.

Hagi Hassan notes that “Yes, Hayat Tahrir al-Cham [HTS] is present, but the true liberators of the city are its inhabitants, its youth who, exiled children, returned today as adults to liberate their city from the yoke of oppression.” Shehwaro also stresses the role of ordinary people:

“The grassroots Syrian effort is remarkable. Aleppo is boiling, inside and out. From bread to communications, burial initiatives, pressing the military to take responsibility for every issue that impacts civilians, supporting organizations, bolstering the Civil Defense’s presence in Aleppo, and tracking the conditions of children—there is extraordinary grassroots effort.”

On December 1, an example of such a popular initiative was the Initiative “People of Aleppo for the sake of the Homeland,” which congratulated the Syrian people for being freed from the regime, but made a list of people’s requests including advising “the brothers in military factions to fully discipline the instructions” of their leaders “not to engage in any violation,” recommending “the brothers in military factions to adhere to military fronts, cord holes, military barracks, and complete ban of any armed appearance among civilians,” while calling for “forming a civil administration from Aleppo’s competencies as a transition stage in preparation for the elections.”

As if on cue, on December 4 HTS commander Abu Mohammed al-Jolani stated that “the city will be administered by a transitional body. All armed fighters, including HTS members, will be directed to leave civilian areas in the coming weeks, and government employees will be invited to resume their work.” Here is the order:

Jolani even suggested that that HTS may dissolve itself “in order to enable the full consolidation of civilian and military structures in new institutions that reflect the breadth of Syrian society.”

The rebel operations room also announced a total amnesty for Syrian regime troops, police and security forces in Aleppo, calling on them to submit their paperwork to receive their official clemency and identification cards.

And the surprise is that, after years of brutal suppression of the revolution, after the regime’s genocidal bloodbath of hundreds of thousands of people and its destruction of its own country with its airforce, after the degree of cooption of the popular uprising – either by the Turkish regime or by the hard-Islamist HTS now leading this operation – that such repression inevitably led to, we might have expected the results of a new offensive to be more retrograde, with more violations, more bloody, more divisive, than in the past. Yet so far, we can say that there were far, far more violations by rebel groups in Aleppo in the past compared to what is ensuing at present.

An aside: The question of return

Before going on to look at the rebel forces involved, and then the wider geopolitical framework, it is worth looking at the question of “return” of thousands, and perhaps soon hundreds of thousands, to their homes, which was touched on above.

The population in the opposition-controlled northwest consists of 5.1 million people, of whom 3.6 million have been displaced from other parts of Syria, including 2 million living in camps This is in addition to at least 6.5 million Syrian refugees in exile – almost one third of Syria’s pre-war population – of whom 3.7 million are just across the border in Turkey. Without being solved, this massive Syrian refugee population promises to become an ongoing geopolitical issue as surely as its Palestinian refugee counterpart is. 

If we just consider the 7 million plus displaced Syrians in northwest Syria or Turkey (and not even the millions in Lebanon and Jordan), they come from all parts of Syria, including from a string of Sunni-majority towns around Damascus in the south that were ethnically cleansed via starvation sieges in 2015-17, but also from these very regions now being liberated in Idlib and Aleppo provinces, especially after the regime and Russia reconquered about half of these provinces from the opposition in 2018-2020, leading the population to flee. Now, as a result of this current offensive, all the historic revolutionary towns of the region – Saraqib, Maraat Al-Nouman, Khan Sheikun, KafrNabl – which were captured by the regime in this final stage, have been liberated.

Even for those most cynical of the current HTS leadership of the offensive, what we need to recognise is that this has the potential to be a Gigantic March of Return!

Who was involved

The offensive beginning on November 27 is being carried out by a wide coalition of rebel groups under the Military Operations Command, which arose from the Fath al-Mubeen Operations Room in Idlib. The leading force is the hard-line Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), while the other two major components are the National Front for Liberation (NFL) and Jaish al-Izzeh, both of which are independent ‘secular-nationalist’ Free Syrian Army (FSA) brigades, while the Islamist factions Ahrar al-Sham and Jabhat al-Shamiya also joined the offensive.

According to the New Arab, “participation of fighters from the secular nationalist Syrian National Army (SNA) factions, which is closely aligned with Turkey,” has been confirmed, but “while the SNA has supported the operation rhetorically, it has not officially confirmed its participation, which is likely due to the influence of Turkey.” That was written before the SNA did step in on November 30 with its own ‘Dawn of Freedom’ operations room (of which, more below), which at the outset was aimed more at the Kurdish-led SDF forces in northern Aleppo than at the regime.

Very broadly, we may divide the rebel groups in this region into three broad categories: HTS itself, which has become the dominant force in Idlib, and which dominates the Syrian Salvation Government (SSG); the factions of the SNA closest to Turkey, including both secular-nationalist and Islamist factions, which is dominant in parts of northern Aleppo province near the Turkish border, and which dominates the Syrian Interim Government (SIG); and organisations like Jaysh al-Izza which are independent, while the NFL, Ahrar al-Sham and Jabhat al-Shamiya have operated both as allies to the HTS-led command and as loose members or allies of the SNA, while maintaining operational independence.

Overwhelmingly, people join these groups not due to some ideological affiliation, which is more an obsession of western leftists, but to defend their liberated towns and regions from encroachment by the genocidal dictatorship. Who they join depends more on who is dominant in a certain region and thus can better effectively defend that region, who has money to pay wages and for better weaponry and so on. These people are mostly fighting in support of the original aims of the revolution, ie the overthrow of the dictatorship and the institution of a democratic Syria for all. What this means in practice is that, while the politics of the leaderships are not irrelevant, they are also not set in stone; to an extent they reflect the ideals and pressures of their fighting base.

And in a revolutionary situation such as this, many of these divisions break down again, are reconstituted along different lines; leaderships will try to dominate, but their need to keep leadership in a revolutionary struggle also means they will be carried by it. As seen above, popular initiatives play a big role. Even the question of government may end up having little to do with the two ‘governments’ discussed above which have ruled so long in their besieged de-facto statelets.

For example, one resident returning to the northern Aleppo town Tel Rifaat after “a forced absence of around 3205 days” was asked whether the town now will be run by the SSG or the SIG, after being liberated by “many of the Free Army’s factions.” He responded that “the people of the town of Tel Refaat have prior administrative experience, and they elect their council through a general commission composed of all the town’s families. This council administers the town’s affairs, whatever its affiliation.”

On the nature of HTS

Many observers are understandably nervous about both HTS, an authoritarian Islamist group which many years ago was affiliated with al-Qaida, and the SNA, given its control by Turkey and Turkey’s anti-Kurdish policy. There is no question that as a result of being bombed for years, driven into a corner, overwhelmed with displaced from all over Syria, and with virtually no support from anywhere in the world, the civil and military formations of the Syrian revolution have been heavily co-opted for years now, especially since the heavy defeats from 2018 onwards. In fact, all the famous revolution-held towns run by popular councils that continually resisted encroachment by HTS, such as Maraat al-Nuuman, Saraqeb, Karanbel, Atareb and others, were overrun by Assad in the final 2019-2020 offensives, removing important strength from the more independent sectors of the revolution.

People need to survive; and they need protection from the regime. Fighters need wages to feed their families. Western leftists often discuss these issues as if it were a market for different socialist and anarchist ideas on a western campus; it couldn’t be more different. In fact, there is much evidence that many of the fighters in HTS’s ranks today were previously fighters in FSA brigades that its predecessor, Jabhat al-Nusra, crushed at various times – they may not like it, but they still need to fight to regime. Nusra’s forces never constituted any more than 10 percent of the rebels’ armed forces; yet now HTS is overwhelmingly dominant, meaning the bulk of HTS fighters had no past in Nusra or al-Qaida.

HTS’s own rule in Idlib has been mixed to say the least. The leading cadre of HTS are mostly derived from the former Jabhat al-Nusra, which in 2012-2016 was affiliated to al-Qaida, a relationship it severed that year, before moving on to form HTS as a coalition with a number of other Islamist groups. On the whole, its rule is seen as repressive, if effective, but in practice this has gone back and forth. It has adopted a number of pragmatic positions, both in theory and in practice (eg in relation to social restrictions) since leaving the jihadist cloak behind. Part of this is simply due to the needs to running technocratic government effectively. On the whole HTS has tended not to use repression against popular protest, but it has been quite repressive against political opposition, probably more so than any other rebel group.

According to a recent report on Syria by the UN Human Rights Council:

“Starting in February [2024], unprecedentedly large protests, led by civilian activists and supported by military and religious figures, spread across HTS areas. Protestors called for the release of political and security detainees, for governance and socioeconomic reforms and for the removal of HTS leader Abu Mohammad Al-Julani. Demonstrations were triggered by reports of torture and ill-treatment of detainees by the HTS general security service, following months of arrest campaigns by HTS targeting their own members, as well as members of other armed groups and political parties, such as Hizb al-Tahrir.”

It notes that Jolani acknowledged the use of “prohibited and severe means of pressure on the detainees” and “pledged to investigate and to hold those responsible accountable.” It also noted that while demonstrations mostly proceeded without HTS state violence used against them, later HTS did begin using force against them.

Despite repressive rule and co-optation by both governments, the populations have engaged in mass popular demonstrations both against Turkey and against HTS at different times, suggesting that, while militarily defeated, the revolutionary masses still believe they have something to fight for and remain committed to the ideals which they rose up for in 2011. Indeed, while some of the demonstrations against HTS were simply against its attempt to impose its rule over areas it does not control, or against its repressive actions, others were against HTS attempting to open a trade connection with the regime; and similarly, the demonstrations against Turkey were against the growing convergence between Erdogan and Assad as they move to ‘bury the hatchet’. And now, just as repression and siege can lead to such co-optation, new revolutionary advances can again liberate popular energies.

It may well be that one of the secondary reasons for the offensive was indeed for HTS to attempt to break out of this increasing unpopularity. If so, there can be no doubt that the offensive has been massively popular, above all by allowing hundreds of thousands to return to their homes.

HTS overtures to Christians, Druze, Shiites, Alawites and Kurds

With this hardline past, it might therefore come as a surprise that HTS has actually come out with some very positive overtures towards the populations in the regions it is advancing into, and towards minority groups in particular, towards religious minorities – Christians, Druze, Shiites and even Alawites – and the ethnic Kurdish minority, despite previously bad relations with all five.

As the rebels advanced towards Aleppo, Jolani addressed his troops:

“We urge you to show mercy, kindness and gentleness towards the people in the city of Aleppo. Let your top priority be the preservation of their properties and lives, as well as ensuring the security of the city. Do not cut down trees, frighten children, or instil fear in our people of all sects [emphasis added]. Aleppo has always been – and continues to be – a crossroads of civilisations and cultures, with a long history of cultural and religious diversity. It is the heritage and present of all Syrians. Today is a day of compassion; whoever enters their home, closes their door, and refrains from hostility is safe. Whoever declares their defection from the criminal regime, lays down their weapon, and surrenders to the revolutionaries is also safe.”

This sounds nothing like the old Nusra, or like any kind of ‘Sunni jihadist’ organisation. Neither does the following declaration from Bashir Ali, Head of the Directorate of Minority Affairs, Department of Political Affairs, of the Syrian Salvation Government (SSG), made as the rebels advanced:

“As many regions are liberated from the criminal regime, I want to assure all minorities, including Christians, that their lives, property, places of worship and freedoms will be protected. … This is your city too, and you are free to stay and live here in freedom and dignity, knowing that your safety and rights are a priority to us just as all other Syrians.”

The Department issued another statement aimed specifically at two Shiite villages of Nubl and al-Zahara, to the north of Aleppo city:

“Out of faith on our part in the principles of the Syrian revolution that are based on justice and dignity, we affirm the necessity of protecting civilians and guarding their property and lives. In this context, we emphasise that the people of the localities of Nubl and al-Zahara’, like other Syrian civilians, must not be targeted or threatened in any way on the basis of sect or ethnic affiliation. We also call on the people of Nubl and al-Zahara’, and all the Syrian regions, not to stand alongside the criminal regime and aid it in killing the Syrian people and deepening its humanitarian suffering.”

Traditionally, Sunni jihadists like Nusra saw other Muslim sects like Shiites and Alawites as worse than Christians and Jews, as they were considered apostates in Islam; this statement was therefore very significant. Given the extreme divisions from the past (caused by both sides) however, it appears that many of the Shia in these two towns decided to leave,  but those that have stayed are reporting that there has been no looting or revenge attacks by the rebels.

Perhaps even more stunning for a formation arising from a Sunni jihadist background, on December 5 HTS issued a statement proclaiming the Alawites to be an indispensable part of Syrian society, calling on them to abandon the Assad regime which it claims “hijacked” the Alawites to conduct a sectarian battle against the opposition:

An as the rebel offensive was approaching victory, Alawite leaders responded in kind:

“Given that the regime, during its years of rule, has regularly sought to prevent any form of societal representation of the Alawite sect, we, the sons of this sect in the city of Homs, renew our call at this critical stage:

“First, we address our call to the revolutionary forces entering the city of Homs. We call on you to maintain civil peace and protect all societal components in the city with all their different spectra. We also urge you to spare the city of Homs, which has been exhausted by violence, from entering a new round of revenge, and to work to preserve public and private property. We hope that you will show the responsibility that you have shown in many cities that you have previously entered, to be an example to be followed in strengthening the unity of the national fabric.

“Secondly, we address our Alawite sect in the city, calling on them to beware of being drawn into the false propaganda and plots that the regime has been spreading with the aim of sowing fear and terror among you. We stress the need for you to stay in your homes, and not to allow the regime to use you again as fuel for a battle that it has in fact been losing since the first day of this revolution.

“Homs was and will remain a symbol of diversity and civil coexistence, and today, as we are on the verge of its liberation, we aspire for it to become a model to be emulated in affirming the unity of the Syrian people and their ability to overcome the wounds of the painful past.

“Long live a free and proud Syria.’ December 6, 2024 – Homs Media Center”

So far, reports from the ground suggest there have been very few violations, though of course some are inevitable in any war. Aleppo’s churches have continued their services and celebrations as normal this past week. Here is the first Sunday mass in Aleppo under Syrian rebels/HTS rule, for example:

However, as Syrian Christian Fadi Hallisso returning to Aleppo notes regarding the fears of many Christians, the assurances that the Islamic dress code will not be imposed on them and that there is no threat to their churches are “not helping at all,” because he claims, these are not the main concerns of Christians, but rather the fear of becoming second-class citizens in a new “Ottoman millet” system. Interestingly, Hallisso states that “the only way to reassure Christians in these circumstances is for Aleppo to be run by a civilian administration of the city’s notables after all armed groups retreat from the city” – ie, precisely what has just been announced by the rebel leadership.

The Arab-Kurdish issue in the current conflict

Marcelle Shehwaro claims that “the Arab-Kurdish situation is catastrophic” and that “the polarization is costing lives, displacement, and a lack of any civil structure with even a minimal level of mutual trust.” She blames both “sniper fire from the SDF that claims civilian lives daily,” and “displacement, abuse, and violations [of Kurds] by the National Army [SNA].” It is very important here to distinguish the SNA from HTS.

As the HTS-led coalition approached Aleppo, Turkiye initially ordered the SNA not to take part. This is likely because if Turkiye gave any green light to the offensive (see below), the aim was for a limited operation in the Idlib/Aleppo countryside to pressure Assad; by all accounts, Turkiye was as blindsided as everyone by the speed of the fall of the city. But when the city did fall to the rebels, the SDF moved into some eastern and northern parts of Aleppo that the regime had fled from, which then linked up Aleppo to the SDF-controlled Rojava statelet in northeast Syria, obviously not Turkiye’s plan.

Therefore, Turkiye the next day sent in the SNA with its own ‘Dawn of Freedom’ operation, which began seizing territory from the SDF – it is important to underline that this was an SNA, not an HTS, action, and should not be confused with the main rebel operation. This demonstrated Turkiye’s anti-Kurdish priorities (though the SNA has also since taken former Assadist territory).

However, even with the SNA’s anti-Kurdish policy, it is not as simple as “Turkey-SNA attacking the Kurds,” as much media, and the SDF, suggest, although there clearly have been violations. The problem is that the main areas of northern Aleppo province that the SNA first seized from the SDF – around the Tel Rifaat region – were not Kurdish regions at all, but Arab-majority regions which the SDF had dishonourably conquered from the rebels in early 2016 with Russian airforce backing, uprooting 100,000 people who have been living in tents in Azaz to the north ever since! For the tens of thousands of expelled residents, this is now a homecoming. However again, even this reality is altered by the fact that two years later, in 2018, Turkiye conquered Kurdish Afrin, northwest of Aleppo, so much of the Kurdish population there fled to these now empty homes in Tel Rifaat, and it is now these people having to flee again.

It is striking that HTS – a former jihadist group which, when its core was Nusra, tended to engage in conflict with the SDF more than any other rebel group – is now engaged in “back-channel dialogue and negotiations with the SDF” which are “far more constructive and effective than with the SNA itself.”

According to a Syria Weekly special edition, “reports continue to emerge that HTS personnel are intervening against SNA abuses — detaining SNA fighters and taking over local security, at the request of community notables.” Then on December 3, the SNA condemned HTS for their “aggressive behaviour” against SNA members, while HTS has accused SNA fighters of looting.

On December 1, HTS issued a statement telling the SDF that HTS’ fight was against the Syrian regime, not the SDF, promising to ensure the safety of Aleppo’s Kurds, and describing the Kurds as “an integral part of the diverse Syrian identity” who “have full rights to live in dignity and freedom,” calling on them to remain in Aleppo; notably also is HTS’s condemnation of “the barbaric practices committed by ISIS against the Kurds:”

HTS then called on the SDF to withdraw from Aleppo, promising to take care of civilians in the Kurdish-held neighborhoods, and offering safe passage to the SDF fighters, possibly to avert an SNA-SDF clash; and the SDF quietly withdrew from the parts of Aleppo it had taken, while remaining in the actual Kurdish-populated regions it had long controlled in Aleppo city, Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafiyeh, where they have the support of the population. Any attempt to drive them from here would be a massive violation. At the time of writing, the SDF still controls these two neighbourhoods, and much of the population has also remained.

Background: the evolution of HTS on minority issues

I don’t include all these quotes in order to suggest HTS will necessarily live up to all this, the future simply cannot be known; and the concerns that many Syrians have, including many who are ecstatic about the fall of the regime, are absolutely justified [indeed, some point precisely to what happened after the Iranian revolution of 1979]. Rather, the fact that HTS found it necessary to issue these statements is evidence at least of understanding what a revolutionary situation requires of it. The fact that so far it has been living up to this in practice is a very encouraging sign. Rather than declare in advance either that HTS will throw off all this “re-badging” once it has power and return to its dark past, or that it will surely lead a democratic utopia, it is better to cautiously watch and hope that the spread of the revolution continues to dilute HTS power and older HTS ideology; the broader it is, the more difficult it would be for a militia to put popular power back into a box.

However, the discourse stating that HTS is only saying all these things now to “re-badge” for western consumption to be taken off western “terrorism” lists and so on has the problem that very significant changes in relation to minorities have been taking place for a number of years now in Idlib. The oppression of the Druze minority under Nusra rule for example was particularly appalling; they were basically subjected a program of forced Sunnification, one of the ugliest features of Nusra rule.

However, as well-informed Syria-watcher Gregory Waters explains:

“ … the SSG has spent more than six years engaging with both the Christian and Druze communities in Idlib. An independent, region-wide administrative body was created to serve as a focal point for all communities, including those of minorities. Gradually, this body worked to address complaints and return the homes and farmland that had been seized by a variety of opposition groups in past years. This author has met with some of these community leaders, who told him that, while slow, significant progress has been made for their community in relation to security, property rights, economy, and religious discourse.”

This stepped up in 2022, when Jolani visited the Druze centre, Jabal al-Summaq, after which  HTS began returning homes and land earlier seized; and visited Christian residents of Quniya, Yaqoubiya, and Jadida, which was followed by the reopening of the St. Anne Church in Yaqoubiya village, for the first time since the rebels entered Idlib in 2015, attended by dozens of people, and then another large mass at the Armenian Apostolic Church, a decade after it was closed.

Just as surprising has been HTS’s outreach to the Kurdish community. After taking over the Kurdish region of Afrin in 2022 from the SNA, HTS declared that it “confirms that the Arab and Kurdish people… or the displaced are the subject of our attention and appreciation, and we warn them against listening to the factional interests… We specifically mention the Kurdish brothers; they are the people of those areas and it is our duty to protect them and provide services to them.”

While this may sound like rhetoric, in March 2023, HTS confronted the SNA after five Kurdish civilians were killed by members of a Turkish-backed faction during a Nowruz celebration in the town of Jenderes. Jolani met with the residents and HTS forces deployed in the town and seized control of headquarters of the military police and the SNA’s Eastern Army, which was accused of the killings.  

This outreach has even proceeded to discussions with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), HTS hosting several delegations from Hassakeh in 2023. An agreement for the SDF to supply oil to HTS-controlled refineries was reached (the SDF already has a large-scale agreement of this kind with the regime). Intriguingly, HTS also proposed participating in the SDF’s anti-ISIS fight, and for the establishment of a joint civilian administration between HTS and the SDF if HTS could gain control of areas currently held by the SNA!

Apart from the needs of technocratic government getting the better of ideology, the evolution of HTS’s Kurdish policy was also partly driven by its rivalry and clash of perspectives with the Turkish-backed SNA. As Turkey’s priorities turned more to confronting the SDF in Syria, it held back the rebels it controlled from confronting the Assad regime, and continually made overtures to the regime for a joint war against the SDF as a basis for restoring relations. HTS however, whatever its past clashes with the SDF, and also the more independent FSA militia groups, continued to see the conflict with the regime as having priority, and were furious with Turkiye’s attempts to reconcile with the regime. This created a cautious, low-level convergence between HTS and SDF priorities.

Why now? ‘Deterring’ regime’s year-long ‘aggression’ waited for Lebanon ceasefire

This offensive did not come out of the blue; by all accounts, the rebels have been planning this for up to a year. However, there was little expectation their offensive would be so successful; the name of the offensive – Operation Deter the Aggression – instead informs us of the original aim: to push back against over a year of renewed aggression, mostly by regime and Russian bombing, against the opposition-controlled regions of Idlib and Aleppo provinces in the northwest.

However, surprised by the rapidity of regime collapse, the aims then widened, to liberating as much territory from the regime as possible.

From the onset of Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza, the Assad regime, while maintaining complete quiet on its southern frontier with the Israeli-occupied Golan, used the cover of Gaza to step up the slaughter of opposition-controlled Idlib right from the start, a stunning example of this part of the ‘Axis of Resistance’ lacking a compass. According to the Syria Response Coordinators, “266 educational facilities in northwestern Syria have been put out of service over the past three years,” with attacks on schools sharply increasing over the last year, with 43 attacks between September 2023 and November 2024.

All this time, people in opposition-controlled Idlib and Aleppo have continually demonstrated in support of Gaza, with ongoing protests, seminars, donation drives etc Gaza (while the Assad regime bans pro-Palestine demonstrations). Assadist “resistance” to the Zionist onslaught was apparently carried out against this extremely pro-Palestine population of the northwest, demonstrating one of numerous examples of the use of phoney “resistance” language by repressive and reactionary regimes who in reality have no interest whatsoever in “resisting” Israel’s genocidal campaign.

This Assad-Putin war against the northwest actually escalated at precisely the time Israel turned northwards and began smashing up Hezbollah and Lebanon. In early October, Russian airstrikes on Idlib killed ten people. Then on October 11, “regime forces targeted the town of Afes, east of Idlib, with heavy artillery, following a similar barrage on Darat Izzah in the western Aleppo countryside,” with 122 attacks recorded only between October 14 and October 17, including with the use of vacuum missiles, which is the most intense military escalation in over three months.

These attacks continued on a daily basis, systematically targeting villages, civilian infrastructure and agricultural zones, impacting some 55,000 families. This has led to new waves of displacement as people fled their homes to escape the bombardment; in late October, the Syrian Response Coordinators “recorded the forced displacement of over 1,843 people from 37 towns and villages in just 48 hours.” According to Ibrahim Al-Sayed speaking to the New Arab, about three-quarters of the residents of Sarmin have fled the town, which is “the largest displacement the city has experienced since the ceasefire agreement was signed in March 2020,” due to “daily artillery and missile shelling.”

It has been widely pointed out that Assad’s Iranian and Hezbollah backers have been weakened due to defeat in Lebanon by Israel. In reality, this makes little sense, and hardly explains the complete rout that the Assadist armed forces have undergone, the fact that virtually no Syrian soldier in the whole country considered it worth laying down his life to save the genocidal dictatorship. No amount of extra Iranian or Hezbollah reinforcement would have made any difference.

In reality, the connection is somewhat different: it is precisely the fact that Hezbollah had to stop being a counterrevolutionary force in Syria but rather return to its resistance origins in its own country Lebanon – ie, return to standing on the side of the region’s peoples resisting oppression – that allowed for similar developments in Syria, ie, the Syrian peoples’ offensive against the Assad regime. Hezbollah is, after all, a Lebanese organisation, and its raison d’etre is supposedly defence of southern Lebanon. It was not Hezbollah’s defeat in Lebanon, but rather its resistance in Lebanon, that meant it couldn’t protect Assad’s tyranny. If anything, its defeat ad the signing of a ceasefire could have freed it to send forces back to Syria, had it chosen to.  Yes, Israel destroyed a lot of Hezbollah’s capacity in Lebanon, but that was rockets aimed at Israel; they were never used in Syria to defend Assad in the past, why would they be now? Hezbollah’s role in protecting Assad was essentially manpower. Even Israel’s destruction of a lot of Iranian capacity in Syria means largely the infrastructure involved in delivering weapons across Syria to Hezbollah.

Much has also been made of the fact that the rebel offensive began at almost the same time as the Lebanon ceasefire came into effect, as if the defeat of Hezbollah in southern Lebanon was the signal for the rebels to launch the attack, even leading to conspiracy theories that Israel greenlighted the attack. However, as demonstrated above, it is the regime that has been attacking the rebels for the past year rather than using its forces to open a front on the Golan to aid Palestine or even to aid its ally Hezbollah, while the rebels were trying to ‘deter’ this aggression. The question is rather why the rebels waited so long to deter regime aggression.

In fact, the rebels purposefully waited until the Lebanon ceasefire precisely so as not to be seen breaking any transit of arms between Iran and Lebanon across Syria while the war lasted. While the regime’s ongoing offensive made the necessity of their operation more and more acute, they were reluctant to wage it as long as the conflict continued. As Aaron Y. Zelin, senior fellow at The Washington Institute, explained, HTS waited for a ceasefire “because they did not want anything to do with Israel … HTS is against Israel, it has praised the October 7 attacks, it is for the Palestinian cause, Israel has nothing to do with what HTS is doing.”

According to Hadi al-Bahra, head of the exile-based opposition leadership, the Syrian National Coalition (SNC), plans for the offensive were a year old, but “the war on Gaza … then the war in Lebanon delayed it” because “it wouldn’t look good having the war in Lebanon at the same time they were fighting in Syria,” and therefore waited till the ceasefire. While the SNC itself has no control over the fighters (especially HTS, which is not part of the SNC), the article further notes that “Rebel commanders have separately said they feared if they had started their assault earlier, it might have looked like they were helping Israel, who was also battling Hezbollah.”

This also raises an interesting question about Hezbollah and Iranian intentions now. Hezbollah played a significant role in Assad’s counterrevolutionary genocide, acting as a proxy for the Iranian regime. Yet when it was in its existential struggle in Lebanon against Israel, the Assad regime did not lift a finger to help. The regime’s silence was stunning, it took it 48 hours to even issue a statement about the killing of Nasrallah. Meanwhile, the regime has been closing Hezbollah recruitment centres. Even in its statements on Lebanon it mostly didn’t mention Hezbollah.

Assad’s message to Hezbollah was: thanks for the help back then, was nice knowing you.

How likely then is it that Hezbollah or even Iran will send its own battered troops back to save Assad’s arse again? Hezbollah has already stated, diplomatically enough, that it has no plans to do so “at this stage,” while a Hezbollah spokesperson told Newsweek, comically enough, that “The Syrian Army does not need fighters. It can defend its land.” And this was probably an added incentive for any Hezbollah cadre who did happen to still be in Syria, and even other Iran-backed forces, to flee with the rest rather than stand and fight; and on the whole, there has been surprisingly little action by these Iran-led forces over the last week.

The other “why now” question relates to Russia. While Russian warplanes did bomb the advancing rebels, this was not at a very decisive level. Bombing civilians all year while the population remained largely passive was easy enough for a ramshackle bully state like Russia, but is less effective against an advancing revolution when not used in full force. Of course, some of this is due to Putin’s catastrophic invasion of Ukraine, where most of the Russian airforce is needed to bomb Ukraine in order to maintain its illegal conquest of one fifth of that country, while Putin had thought that Syria was pacified. But, as with the Iranians, there has not been much to show for even the Russian air capacity that is present in Syria, apart from stepping up barbaric attacks on the civilian infrastructure in Idlib, such as the bombing of five hospitals, including a maternity hospital and the university hospital.

But the relatively low profile of both Russian and Iranian backers in the defence of the regime also has two other causes: firstly, the collapse of regime defences itself means it is not just difficult but pointless to fight for a regime which will not fight for itself, indeed, as Mehdi Rahmati, a prominent Iranian analyst who advises officials on regional strategy put it, “Iran is starting to evacuate its forces and military personnel because we cannot fight as an advisory and support force if Syria’s army itself does not want to fight;” and secondly, it may also be related to frustration with the Assad regime itself, which in turn relates to their long-term work with Turkey on the Astana process.

The role of Turkiye

While Turkiye was a major backer of the rebels in the early years, by around 2016 it began prioritising its conflict with the SDF in Syria over support for the uprising. Its series of agreements with Russia and Iran under the Astana process between 2017-2020 to freeze the frontlines in the northwest can be seen in this context. While Turkiye guaranteed rebel compliance, Russia supposedly guaranteed regime compliance. With the frontline quiet – well, quite on the rebel side – Turkiye invaded northeast Syria in October 2019 to drive the SDF from the border region, with the acquiescence of Trump and Putin; the reliance of the rebels on Turkish protection of their remaining enclave allowed Turkiye to coopt some in the SNA to take part in this invasion. The invasion in turn forced the SDF to allow the regime to send troops into part of the ‘Rojava’ region they controlled, especially the border region, thus extending regime control in Syria.

But the reason Turkiye could not simply betray the rebels outright and allow full Assadist reconquest of the northwest in exchange for alliance with Assad against the SDF is because Turkiye already has 3.6 million Syrian refugees within its borders, the largest refugee population on Earth; allowing Assad to completely take all of Idlib and Aleppo provinces would lead to another few million refugees pouring in, at a time when Turkiye actually wants to try to send as many as possible back to Syria. Refugees will not return to regime-ruled Syria as long as Assad remains in power. Therefore, Turkiye has to maintain support a certain amount of territory remaining under opposition control, and has to continue to push Assad to open a dialogue with the opposition under the terms of the Astana process and of UN Resolution 2254, which calls for a Syrian-led ‘political solution’ process, because such a political process, based on compromise, could also open avenues for safe refugee return.

However, while Russia and Turkey, together with Iran, had agreed to certain frontlines in 2017 under the Astana dialogue, between 2018 and 2020 the regime launched several gigantic offensives which cut the region controlled by the opposition in half, losing all of western Aleppo province, southern Idlib province and the parts of northern Hama and Latakia it had controlled. This added an extra 1.4 million displaced people to the 2.2 million already under opposition control, now squeezed into half the area. While Turkish action finally put a stop to the Assadist offensive in early 2020, this could not be satisfactory for Turkey: how could it begin sending refugees back into Syria when the liberated region was smaller than before with even more displaced?

Despite this, the Erdogan regime has continued to push for normalisation with Assad for several years now, with proposals for launching a joint offensive against the SDF in the east, despite US forces stationed there who work with the SDF against any re-emergence of ISIS. Both Erdogan’s ultra-rightist ally, the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), and the opposition Kemalist CHP, have been strongly pushing for normalisation with Assad, a joint war with Assad against the SDF, and expulsion of Syrian refugees, on the absurd grounds that peace with Assad would allow refugees to return! [Interestingly, a number of European countries, led by Italy’s far-right Meloni government and Austria’s FPO, have been pushing much the same line, that refugee return requires reconciliation with Assad, with Italy recently sending an envoy back to the Assad regime].

Erdogan better understands the contradiction between those two stands: that refugees cannot be sent back if there is no opposition-held territory, that the only way to send them back to Assad would be violently, causing enormous upheaval, and that either expanding opposition territory, or reaching the compromise ‘political solution’, or both, are essential requirements for sending back refugees. Yet Assad, while open to normalising with Turkiye, demands withdrawal of Turkish forces as a precondition – which would likely mean Assadist reconquest – and resists all pressure to engage with the political process of UN Res 2254.

This is why much speculation has it that Turkiye gave the green-light to the offensive, to pressure Assad on these issues.

However, on November 25, just days before the rebel offensive began, Turkish foreign minister Hakan Fidan stated that the withdrawal of Turkish troops was no longer conditional on either the regime reaching an agreement with the opposition, or the opening of the ‘political process’; seemingly, Turkiye was still making concessions to get the normalisation process happening. The fact that the offensive was led by HTS, rather than the SNA which Turkey initially held back, also suggests that Turkiye had nothing to do with the operation.

Others note however that several days after that statement, Fidan stated that Assad is clearly not interested in peace in Syria, so perhaps exasperation did lead to Turkey giving a green light to a “limited operation.” Either way, once the operation began, Turkiye could see its value in terms of pressuring Assad on the issues dividing them and returning non-regime territory to 2017 lines.

Since then, Turkish statements have been cautious. Erdogan has said nothing, while Fidan said that Turkiye had no involvement, declaring pointedly that “We will not initiate any action that could trigger a new wave of migration [from Syria to Turkiye],” and telling US Secretary of State Antony Blinken that Turkiye was “against any development that would increase instability in the region.” On November 29, the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement saying that “the clashes experienced in recent days have caused an undesirable increase in tension in the region. It is of great importance for Turkey not to cause new and greater instabilities and not to harm the civilian population.”

One might think, OK, this was not Turkiye’s plan, but if the offensive does lead to the overthrow of Assad, then refugees would be able to return, and Turkish influence extended all over Syria. However, Turkiye has no control over HTS, nor will it be able to control a Syria after a successful revolution. With its main goal still to “leverage[e] the situation to push Damascus and its allies toward negotiations” via pressure from Russia and Iran, and to jointly fight the SDF, the Turkish regime would prefer a more controlled situation. On December 2, Erdogan stressed “the Syrian regime must engage in a real political process to prevent the situation from getting worse,” and that unity, stability and territorial integrity of Syria are important for Turkey.

For HTS, on the other hand, the very threat of a Turkish agreement with Assad, Russia and Iran in which it would be sacrificed was probably another reason to launch the offensive, and the independence it has gained by going so well beyond Turkey’s limited plan will be jealously guarded.

Furthermore, there is also the possibility that Assad, with Russian and Iranian support, may launch a furious counteroffensive if the rebel advance does not stop; Russia has vital strategic interests on the Syrian coastal region, and Iran in parts of the centre and south, and it is unlikely they would give them up without a massive fight beyond a certain line. And if that happened, it could lead to a further refugee outflow into Turkey.

Both Russia and Iran appear to be bending towards the Turkish position, and indeed, frustration with Assad’s intransigence, which led to this explosion, could well be a reason for the lack of Russian and Iranian response. On December 1, Russia emphasised the importance of “coordinated efforts within the framework of the Astana Format with the involvement of Turkey.” On the same day Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araqchi “held a joint press conference with his Turkish counterpart Hakan Fidan in Ankara, where both agreed that foreign ministers of Iran, Turkey and Russia should meet soon.” Both are rational enough to see that if they don’t try to salvage something through a political process, they may end up with nothing [update: somewhat comically, as Daraa and Suweida and Homs were falling, and hours before Assad and family fled and Damascus fell, and the whole of Syria was celebrating, that Astana meeting did place, with Russia, Turkiye and Iran demanding “an end to hostile activities” in Syria!].

An interesting side-point here is HTS’s unexpected November 29 appeal to Russia, aiming to neutralise support for the regime. While condemning Russia’s bombing, the Political Affairs Administration of the SSG affirmed that “the Syrian revolution has never been against any state or people, including Russia, and it is likewise not a party to what is happening in the Russia-Ukraine war, but rather it is a revolution that was started to liberate the Syrian people from … the criminal regime,” calling on Russia “not to tie [its] interests to the Assad regime or the persona of Bashar, but rather with the Syrian people in its history, civilisation and future” as “we consider [Russia] a potential partner in building a bright future for free Syria.”

Egypt, UAE, Jordan, Iraq: Go Assad!

As is well-known, three of the ‘Abraham Accords’ states – UAE, Bahrain and Sudan – restored relations with the Assad regime during much the same time period as they established relations with Israel, while Egypt, which has had relations with Israel for decades, also established strong relations with the Assad regime following the bloody military coup of al-Sisi in 2013.

Not surprisingly therefore, Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty reiterated Egypt’s support for “Syrian national institutions” to his Syrian counterpart, stressing “Syria’s vital role in fostering regional stability and combating terrorism.” Similarly, UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed (MBZ) told al-Assad that his country “stands with the Syrian state and supports it in combating terrorism, extending its sovereignty, unifying its territories, and achieving stability.” MBZ also recently put forward the idea to US officials of lifting US sanctions on the Assad regime if it cut off Iran’s weapons routes to Lebanon (an idea also put forward by Netanyahu’s Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer during his early November discussions with Russian leaders in Moscow). Jordanian King Abdullah II similarly said that “Jordan stands by the brothers in Syria and its territorial integrity, sovereignty and stability.” Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani of the US-Iran joint-venture Iraqi regime also stressed that “Syria’s security and stability are closely linked to Iraq’s national security,” while a number of pro-Iranian Iraqi militia groups declared they are sending forces to Syria to bolster the regime – curiously after not having sent forces to aid their Hezbollah co-thinkers in Lebanon when under existential attack by Israel.

Juan Cole runs the often very useful ‘Informed Comment’ site, but like everyone, he has his areas of expertise … and not. One of the problems with Syria is the tendency of people who know little about it to make up for its alleged “complexity” by making sweeping statements and buying to crass stereotypes that they normally wouldn’t. In his first piece on this uprising, while correctly discussing the alliance of states like Egypt and UAE with Assad, he then proceeds, based on nothing at all, to claim “these anti-Iran forces include Israel, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Azerbaijan, and, outside the region, the United States. All are delighted at the news.” He then goes on to warn them that in reality, this may not be good news for them – as if they don’t already know, since they do not hold the view he so groundlessly ascribed to them!

Saudi Arabia was slower than its main allies (Egypt, UAE, Bahrain, Jordan) in restoring relations with Assad, just as it was with Israel. Despite constant media declarations that Saudi Arabia was about to normalise with Israel, it still hasn’t, but in the meantime it fully normalised with the Assad regime, and even with its great rival Iran, and it played the key role in getting Assad back into the Arab League in 2023. On December 2, Saudi leader MBS met with UAE leader MBZ, for the first time in years – their alliance has been replaced by rivalry – to discuss the Syria situation. There is little doubt MBS shares his partner’s concerns. As for Bahrain, it was one of the first Arab states to normalise with the Assad regime, just after UAE in late 2018, and like Egypt, UAE, Jordan and Israel, Bahrain welcomed the Russian intervention in 2015 to save Assad, as did Saudi Arabia secretly. Cole’s confident speculations are clearly baseless.

“In general, GCC states are supportive of the Assad regime and are firmly against it being challenged or indeed replaced by a coalition of Islamist and jihadi factions formerly associated with al-Qaeda,” according to Neil Quilliam, an associate fellow with Chatham House, while Andreas Krieg, of the defense studies department of King’s College London, stressed the angle of them protecting growing Gulf, especially Emirati, investment in Syria.

USA – rebels “terrorists”

As for the US, on November 30, National Security Council spokesperson Sean Savett released the following statement:

“… The Assad regime’s ongoing refusal to engage in the political process outlined in UNSCR 2254, and its reliance on Russia and Iran, created the conditions now unfolding, including the collapse of Assad regime lines in northwest Syria. At the same time, the United States has nothing to do with this offensive, which is led by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a designated terrorist organization. [emphasis added]. The United States, together with its partners and allies, urge de-escalation, protection of civilians and minority groups, and a serious and credible political process that can end this civil war once and for all with a political settlement consistent with UNSCR 2254. We will also continue to fully defend and protect U.S. personnel and U.S. military positions, which remain essential to ensuring that ISIS can never again resurge in Syria.”

So, the opposition is terrorist, and we want de-escalation at a time it is winning. Doesn’t sound “delighted” to me. On December 2, the US, France, Germany and the UK released a joint statement urging “de-escalation,” claiming the current “escalation” underlines the need to return to the “political solution” outlined in UNSC Res 2254.

Israel: Collapse of Assad regime could lead to military threats

Israel has always supported the Assad regime against the opposition; throughout the Syrian conflict, Israeli leaders (political, military and intelligence) and think tanks continually expressed their preference for the Assad regime prevailing against its opponents, and were especially appreciative of Assad’s decades of non-resistance on the occupied Golan frontier. This put it on the same side as its Iranian enemy, with the difference that it prefers the regime without Iran – hence Israel’s strong decade-long partnership with Russia starting with its 2015 intervention to save Assad; since then, the Israel-Russia agreement has allowed Israel to bomb Iranian and Hezbollah targets anywhere in Syria at will, and the world-class Russian S-400 air defence system will not touch them.

But since Israel has just come through a successful war against Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Assad regime betrayed its ally, Israel can see the opportunity to put even more pressure on Assad, to completely cut the Iranian lines into Lebanon. As such, Israeli foreign minister Gideon Saar’s view that “Israel doesn’t take sides” as “there is no good side there” is probably closest to the mainstream at present. Saar also said that Israel should “explore ways to increase cooperation” with the Kurds, “we need to focus on their interests,” which also seems to be a common view in Israel.

On November 29, Netanyahu held a security consultation with “defence” chiefs. He was told that Hezbollah’s forces will now be shifted to Syria, “in order to defend the Assad regime,” which will bolster the likelihood of the Israel-Lebanon ceasefire holding, meaning that these developments “appear to be positive” in the short-term, but “the collapse of the Assad regime would likely create chaos in which military threats against Israel would develop.” Channel 12, reporting on the meeting, also claimed concerns were raised that “strategic capabilities” of the Assad regime, including “the remnants of [its] chemical weapons,” could fall into the jihadists’ hands, so the IDF “is said to be preparing for a scenario where Israel would be required to act,” ie to destroy this weaponry before it falls into rebel hands.

So, not exactly “delighted.” This raises the question of why Israel apparently has no problem with these chemical weapons currently being in the hands of the regime! As far back as 2013, Israeli defence ministry strategist Amos Gilad stressed that while Israel “is prepared to resort to force to prevent advanced Syrian weapons reaching Hezbollah or jihadi rebels”, Israel was not interested in attacking Syria’s chemical weapons at present because “the good news is that this is under full control (of the Syrian government).”

It is interesting that the first point, that the blows suffered by the Assad regime “forces all members of the axis to focus on another theater that is not Israel,” is likewise considered “a net positive for Israel” by Nadav Pollak, a former Israeli intelligence official at Reichman University in Israel. In other words, Iran and Hezbollah being in Syria, fighting for Assad, is no problem for Israel, as long as they are not focused on Israel. This corresponds to the times when Israel’s support to the Assad regime against the uprising was something stated openly by Israeli political, military and security chiefs, except for the Iranian factor – yet at times it was even let slip that Israel supported Iranian and Hezbollah actions as long as it was focused on support for Assad.

For example, in 2015, IDF spokesperson Alon Ben-David stated that “The Israeli military intelligence confirms that the Lebanese Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s ability to protect the Syrian regime has dramatically declined, making the Israeli military command more cautious of a sudden fall of the Syrian regime which will let battle-hardened jihadist groups rule near the Israeli border;” as a result, military intelligence services are “working on the preparation of a list of targets that are likely to be struck inside Syria, after a possible fall of the Assad regime” [clearly, that “list of targets” has come in handy now that “the fall of the Assad regime” has come about].

Other prominent spokespeople in the Israeli media include Dr. Yaron Friedman at the University of Haifa, who penned an article in Maariv which claimed that HTS “controls internal terrorism over the entire province of Idlib” and “like Hamas,” receives the support of Turkey and Qatar. He notes that “the opposition consists mostly of Sunni fanatics from the Salafi Jihadi stream” who “look like Hamas terrorists.” He stressed that while “Assad is far from being Israel’s friend … he is the old and familiar enemy” under whom “Syria has not waged a war against Israel for more than fifty years,” while “Bashar al-Assad has not lifted a finger in favor of Hamas or Hezbollah since the beginning of the war in Gaza.” Therefore, “the Islamic opposition that aims to turn Syria into a center of global jihad is a much more dangerous enemy. The option of Syria under the rule of Assad under the auspices of Russia is still the least bad from Israel’s point of view.”

“The collapse of the regime in Damascus would pose a threat to the whole region, including Israel,” according to Yehuda Balanga, at the Department of Middle Eastern Studies at Bar-Ilan University. Nevertheless, Eyal Zisser of Tel Aviv University, while largely agreeing, thinks there are voices now challenging the “the traditional Israeli approach of preferring Assad — the devil we know,” with a view of delivering a blow to Iran by getting rid of the Assad regime, but, “for the moment at least, the Israeli leadership is not considering such a possibility.”

One of the problems for Israel is the same as the problem for Russia and Iran – if the despot you have relied on for decades to service your varied and even opposing interests can no longer maintain that “stability,” but on the contrary, his house collapses like a pack of cards, then continued support would not just be be a bad investment, but be utterly pointless.

On possibility discussed is for Israel to invade and establish a “buffer zone” in southern Syria if the rebels take Homs. Apparently the Golan Heights is not enough of a “buffer” for Israel [update: this has come to be in a big way!]

Hama, Homs, Daraa, Suweida, Tartous, Latakia, Damascus: 3 days!

With events moving rapidly, the rebels walked into Hama, again the regime simply melting away, with massive scenes of celebratory welcome by the population. Hama was where Hafez Assad slaughtered 40,000 people and bombed the city to suppress another uprising back in 1982, a dress rehearsal for the slaughter of hundreds of thousands and the bombing and destruction of all Syrian cities by the regime airforce during the 2011-2018 round.

For those who don’t know the significance of Hama falling to the rebels, this video is from Hama in 2011, when millions rose against Assad. As Syrian revolutionary Rami Jarrah says, “they were quickly silenced by Assad’s killing machine, these are the people who have just been liberated and this marks the end of the Assad regime.”

The rebels then moved onto Homs and again took it at lightning speed. Just as with Hama, we were warned that the rebels’ victory streak would finally meet resistance because, unlike the north, this is part of regime core areas, and there are more minority (Christian, Alawite and Ismaeli) populations in the region. Aaron Y. Zelin, senior fellow at The Washington Institute, claimed “we will see more hardened lines in the core areas where the regime is strongest,” referring to Tartous, Lattakia, Homs, Hama and Damascus. Even Exile-based Syrian opposition leader, Hadi al-Bahra, declared he was ready to start negotiations with Assad on December 4 [postscript: talk about being out of touch with the people he claims to be a leader of!].

No such luck for the regime. Homs had been a very important centre of the 2011 revolution, in fact was called the ‘cradle of the revolution’, though it is true that there was sectarian division, which however was deliberately created by the regime. The regime bombed the city to the ground, as we see here:

Meanwhile, former rebels in the southern province of Daraa launched a new front called the Houran Free Gathering, which stormed police stations and local intelligence headquarters, disarmed regime checkpoints, seized weapons, and launched attacks on regime troops.” On December 6, the Free Syrian Army (FSA) took control of the Nassib border crossing with Jordan for the first time since 2018, leading Jordan to close the border, and the same day, these FSA fighting groups announced the establishment of a Southern Operations Room for the south of the country. By December 7, the whole of Daraa had fallen.

Daraa had been the birthplace of the revolution in March 2011; here is some footage from Daraa then showing peaceful protest and massacre. The movement was galvanised in April following the regime kidnap, murder and mutilation of 13-year old Daraa child Hamza al-Khatib and torture of other children for writing anti-Assad graffiti. For several years, Daraa was controlled by the democratic-secular FSA Southern Front, containing some 35,000 troops at its height, in over 50 brigades, but as Assad’s forces rolled in in 2018, as part of a Trump-Putin-Netanyahu agreement, many fighting units underwent forced ‘reconciliation’ with the regime under Russian auspices. These fighters have now reemerged, thrown off their ‘reconciled’ uniforms and were joined by other people rising against the regime.

The neighbouring Druze province of Suweida was something of a prequel of the new revolution when the people rose against the dictatorship back in August 2023, which at the time also echoed around the country; now again people took to the streets and demanded the fall of the regime. On November 28, the ‘Local Forces in Suweida’ issued a statement supporting the “battles to regain the lands in northern Syria against the regime.” On December 1, the spiritual leader of the Druze community in Syria, Sheikh Hikmat Al-Hajri, declared that Syrians were “at a historic turning point to end the conflict and stop the killing machine of Syrians and those who caused their displacement and migration over the years,” vowing support for the “the right of the owners of the land to return to their lands” mentioning Aleppo, Idlib and parts of Hama.” Meanwhile, a Druze militia called the Syrian Brigade Party issued a statement calling on Druze soldiers to defect and return home to Suweida, and soon police station and governent buildings were seized. In coordination with neighbouring Daraa, Suweida was also under the control of the revolution by December 7.

In the east, the Arab-led Deir ez-Zour Military Council in the SDF launched the ‘Battle of Return’ and captured seven villages on the eastern side of the Euphrates from which regime militias had been launching daily attacks on the SDF. According to the SDF, this offensive was in “response to the appeals of local residents amid escalating threats from ISIS, which seeks to exploit the unfolding events in the western part of the country.” Now the SDF has taken control of the west side of Deir ez-Zour city from the regime and Iranian forces (it already controlled the east side).

By early December 8, the combined southern forces from Daraa and Suweida had entered Damascus. All the previously revolution-held towns of the southern and eastern Damascus – Darayya, Moademiya, Madaya, Rabadani, Ghouta and so on – once again fell to revolution, despite the expulsion of their populations to the northwest when they were defeated in 2016-18, and their repopulation by the regime with supporters, including many Iraqi and Pakistani Shia, in a sectarian engineering program, which clearly did not save the regime. Then Damascus itself fell to the southern revolutionaries.

That still left Tartous and Latakia, the two provinces of ‘the Alawite coast’, which were considered very unlikely to fall to the revolution, both due to it allegedly being the strongest base of the regime (some 80 percent of military and security officers were Alawite) but also because this is where Russia would most likely put its foot down to defend its naval bases and airbases. Nevertheless, they collapsed, and as Assad statues came down in Tartous and Latakia, the revolution declared “The city of Tartous has been liberated, we are here with our people from all sects, Christians, Alawites, Sunnis, Druze and Ismailis, the Syrian people are one, to our people in Tartous, work with us to build our country, we will present a model to be proud of”. As one Alawite who was previously in a pro-regime Alawite militia appealed:

“Do not blame us and do not resent us. We were deceived for 14 years. Our awful life was under the delusion that if he [Assad] lost authority, we would be massacred and slaughtered. Our life was filled with great fear about the prospect of our being subject to genocide if he left. No one ever told us that you [the insurgents] would enter in such a peaceful way and without bloodshed. By God we have never treated anyone on a sectarian basis, but rather with all humanity and love. We lost martyrs, and you lost martyrs. God have mercy on all the martyrs. And let’s work together to build a new, free Syria: one hand and one people in all its sects and religions. To the dustbins of history, oh traitor [Assad]!”

The regime disappeared into history in 10 days. The speed of collapse demonstrates that the regime’s base even in what were considered its core areas had disappeared, that no-one is willing to fight for a genocidal and uber-corrupt hereditary monarchy any longer, and the markedly positive attitude of the rebel leadership towards minorities – supposedly one of Assad’s bases – has removed the fear that the acceptance of the dictatorship rested upon. There will be many struggles ahead, but today is the day for Syrians and people fighting oppression the world over to celebrate one of the most decisive and popular revolutions ever.