Despite signs over the past year that the Syrian opposition has been reorganising its ranks to make a comeback and threaten the regime led by Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, the timing of the ceasefire in Lebanon coinciding with the onset of battles in Aleppo is striking on multiple levels.

In comments on the ceasefire in Lebanon, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Al-Assad against “playing with fire.” Iran accused Israel and the US of orchestrating the Syrian opposition’s attacks on Aleppo. 

While the link between these two events appears significant, it does not necessarily imply that the armed factions advancing on Aleppo and the surrounding countryside is directly coordinating with Israel.

For Tehran, the attacks on Aleppo mean that it has had to rescue its ally Hizbullah in Lebanon and now also has to rescue its ally in Damascus in the shape of the Al-Assad regime.

Iran’s support for Al-Assad throughout the Syrian conflict has been anything but incidental. Without Tehran’s provision of weapons and fighters, the conflict would have taken a different turn. Moscow’s air power has also played a pivotal role, providing cover for pro-Iranian militias operating on the ground and ensuring Al-Assad’s survival in Damascus. 

This backing has secured Al-Assad’s hold on power. However, it no longer necessarily holds today, and faced with a depletion of resources Al-Assad must seek alternatives to address the challenges posed by the advancing opposition forces.

After the outbreak of the conflict in Syria in 2011, the Syrian Army saw several defections, impacting its structure and manpower. While senior officers, known for their loyalty to Al-Assad, remained, many recruits deserted, rejecting the idea of fighting their own people. 

In response, Tehran stepped in, recruiting fighters on a sectarian basis from countries where it wielded influence, such as Lebanon, with the involvement of Hizbullah, Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. These fighters were often poor Shias who had sought refuge in Iran to escape conflicts in their own countries.

Once the immediate threat to the Al-Assad regime subsided, Iran dismantled the costly military arrangements it had established, retaining only strategic positions staffed predominantly by Iranian officers and Hizbullah operatives. 

However, the recent war in Lebanon has tempted Israel to target Iranian positions in Syria to disrupt supply lines bolstering Hizbullah through Syrian territory. Iran and Hizbullah have had either to withdraw or redeploy their forces in Syria to mitigate the risk of Israeli airstrikes, which had claimed the lives of commanders stationed behind the frontlines.

The current ceasefire in Lebanon, often seeing violations by Israel in southern villages, does not extend to Syria, and Israel can resume its strikes on the country at any time. 

Al-Assad has received warnings regarding the ramifications of permitting Iranian forces and Hizbullah to operate within Syria. Among the most important of these were delivered by Russia.

Already entangled in the conflict in Ukraine, Moscow has little interest in becoming embroiled in further confrontations, particularly with Israel. It has conveyed to Damascus the need to keep Syria insulated from the ongoing hostilities between Iran, its allies, and Israel. 

Al-Assad has been forced to weigh his reliance on two pivotal allies: the Russian aerial dominance that originally turned the tide in his favour by targeting his adversaries and the Iranian ground support that provided fighters and weaponry. 

However, his delayed decision-making has forced him to confront the question of which ally offers greater strategic benefit. 

Regaining the Occupied Syrian Golan Heights remains absent from Al-Assad’s current priorities. It is unlikely that he willframe his military alliances around such an aspiration, as his overriding concernis the preservation of his regime. 

Meanwhile, the Syrian opposition movements cannot be disentangled from the repercussions of the Israeli war on Lebanon. Israel’s airstrikes over the past two months have forced Iranian forces to vacate their military positions in Syria, including 40 locations in Aleppo.

Capitalising on the opportunities this has been given a strategic objective for the opposition, but the rapid execution of their offensive, timed with the truce in Lebanon, was striking. 

The attacks were spearheaded by two allied groups: Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), led by Abu Mohamed Al-Golani, previously called Jabhat Al-Nusra and a former Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda, and armed factions aligned with Turkeyoperating in northern Aleppo that is under Turkish influence.

There has been collaboration between the two groups before, and they have previously taken part in coordinated military operations under comparable geopolitical circumstances. 

During the transitional period from the Obama administration to the first Trump presidency from Summer 2016 to Spring 2017, Turkey sought to secure its influence in Syria in anticipation of negotiations under the incoming US administration.

Ankara directed its militias to launch operations in the northern and western area of Aleppo and later bolstered them through Operation Euphrates Shield targeting both Al-Assad regime forces and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

Turkey was later obliged to negotiate with Russia to remove Syrian opposition forces from Aleppo to Idlib as part of what later became known as the Astana Agreement to de-escalate the situation. 

It embarked on political arrangements to facilitate Al-Assad’s reclaiming territories lost during the conflict in exchange for reforms allowing a safe return for Syrian refugees. 

However, Al-Assad reneged on these promises, refusing the return of the refugees. Ankara, burdened by the social and economic strain of hosting the Syrian refugees, sought further measures to facilitate their return without triggering a domestic or international backlash. 

Meanwhile, Al-Golani finds himself excluded from both the UN-sponsored Geneva Process on the Syrian conflict and the Astana Track and is designated as a terrorist by international bodies alongside groups like Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State (IS). 

Observing the withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan in 2021 and its pragmatic engagement with the Taliban, Al-Golani had begun envisioning a similar trajectory for his organisation in Syria. 

To achieve this, he sought to reposition the HTS by forging alliances with Turkish-backed Syrian opposition factions. This included pledges to protect religious and ethnic minorities in Aleppo, a renewed focus on combating Iran’s presence in Syria, and reintroducing slogans advocating Al-Assad’s overthrow. 

The efforts were meant to expand the group’s support base beyond hardline Islamist factions, thereby hoping that the US would deal with it as it had with the Taliban. 

Hizbullah is now busy with Lebanon’s internal arrangements and has to withdraw from south of the Litani River and take part in the restoration of Lebanese state institutions and the election of a new president.

It also has to restore its popularity among its core base and the wider population and establish a healthy relationship with them within the framework of the Lebanese state. The last thing Hizbullah wants now is to deploy fighters to defend Al-Assad on sectarian grounds, risking undermining the peace in Lebanon. 

Until recently, Hizbullah’s Shia support base coexisted peacefully within Sunni and Christian areas across Lebanon. However, this civil cohesion is now at risk, particularly as Israel is wagering on Hizbullah repeating its past mistakes in Syria, thereby providing further justification to stoke up a civil war. 

Israel hopes that Hizbullah will withdraw from Southern Lebanon into Syria, where it could become entangled in a conflict with the Syrian opposition.

Iran may support Hizbullah’s refusal to return to Syria and instead deploy other Shia fighters from Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan to help the Al-Assad regime. But Russia has declined to participate and lacks the capacity to deliver air support due to its engagement in Ukraine. 

The International Coalition against the Islamic State group, led by the US and still operational in Syria, appears to have shifted its focus. A recent strike targeted a pro-Iranian military convoy, indicating that Iran is mobilising its militias in Syria to counter the opposition’s advance and defend the Al-Assad regime, even as it lacks the air power to do so.

Iran is concentrating its resources, both human and military, in Syria while the armed factions steadily gain ground. This is likely to go on until Turkey and Russia forge a new understanding, diminishing the Iranian influence and further sidelining Al-Assad’s forces.

* A version of this article appears in print in the 5 December, 2024 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly