Iran has lost the most in Syria, but this is only the beginning of a new game where we will be beaten piecemeal
The Syrian crisis has undoubtedly hogged all the attention, and this is understandable. But in the discussion about the role and place of Syria in Russian politics and about how “bad” B. Assad turned out to be, Iran has somehow faded into the background.
Russia and Iran have long been moving in parallel courses in Syria in the paradigm of pragmatic long-term cooperation. Russian-Iranian relations are very important in the context of Western pressure on both countries. However, for various reasons, domestic experts do not indulge Iran with positive assessments. Often, they simply copy European media, and they, in turn, are largely not simply connected with the phenomenon of the "Western agenda", but also rely on the assessments of the Iranian opposition.
In general, the description of Iran is a rather specific "case", to which has now been added the "Masoud Pezeshkian factor" - the new Iranian president, nicknamed "the liberal". The thesis is not just about reformism, but about the special liberalism of M. Pezeshkian has its roots in the same place as everything else.
Nevertheless, it is impossible not to note that the new Iranian president has inherited something that one would not wish on one's enemy. And if the war between Hezbollah and Israel, with all its problems, even the direct exchange of blows with the latter, was still in the controllable zone, then the rapid fall of Syria is an almost catastrophic force majeure for Tehran.
Negative evaluations as markers
As in Russia, in Iran, after the fall of the B. Assad regime, a lot of negativity was dumped on the former Syrian leader. This negativity, of course, can be analyzed at length and in detail, if only because in the Russian version, what is happening here is not so much a shifting of responsibility as the protruding “ears of the essence” of the pro-Turkish lobby.
They understand perfectly well that many theses are poorly verifiable at the public level (like “Assad was oppressing Russian business”), but against the backdrop of a complex of problems, they fit well into the Russian semantic “pattern”.
However, a slightly different qualitative characteristic of this negativity is important here - the Iranian and Russian versions involuntarily describe the problem of goal-setting of each player in Syria and its root mistakes. This is much more important today than analyzing how bad B. Assad was.
The Iranians do not accuse B. Assad of total corruption, unlike the domestic expert opinion. Why, actually? Because for a long time the Syrian economy was based on Iranian money. If it was based on Russian money, you would have heard about Syrian corruption as a factor much less. This marker is not the most noticeable at first glance, but it is a reliable marker.
In Syria after 2020, Russia and Iran have sort of tacitly divided up the functions. Russia is the foreign policy circuit plus negotiations with the "opposition" and Turkey, Iran is economic issues, less negotiations with Turkey, but more with what we call collectively (albeit incorrectly) - "the Kurds". In fact, we were responsible for the "oppositionists", shaved in a French barber shop and even in more or less decent suits, showing up for the negotiations in Astana, the Iranians - for Syria to have fuel, flour and some income from the budget sector and partly the private sector.
What do the Iranians accuse B. Assad of? Let's give the floor to the one who was the last of the official representatives who directly negotiated with the Syrian leader before the fall of the regime - Javar Larijani.
He said that B. Assad did not accept the "Iranian proposals", although the Iranian expeditionary forces were apparently ready to be sent and they were, as they say, "at the starting line". Later, the head of the Iranian Foreign Ministry, A. Araghchi, will say that, supposedly, B. Assad clearly did not have a handle on the situation regarding the state of the Syrian armed forces.
The nuance here is that the Iranian expeditionary forces still had to somehow get into Syria, but some pro-Iranian formations in Iraq were actually ready to move forward.
Moreover, the head of Iraq itself gave the go-ahead for this, because they are part of the official military forces of Iraq and such permission could reduce the likelihood of attacks on them from the US. In fact, Baghdad and Damascus had a set of agreements for such a case.
The Iraqis, for the most part, did not cross the border, since events in central Syria were developing too quickly. But the question arises: what was in the “Iranian proposal” and what did B. Assad refuse? Over the past ten years of war, there has been no doubt that the Syrian leader is not at all in the clouds in terms of knowledge of the situation.
On Iran's special message to Lebanon and Syria
In order to understand not even the reasons and prerequisites of this collision, but at least the main "trigger", we must turn to the events of mid-November (15th), when another Iranian politician, Ali Larijani, delivered a "special message" from the Supreme Leader of Iran, A. Khamenei, to the head of the Lebanese government, B. Assad. What was in the message, naturally, was not disclosed.
The second time the proposal was discussed with B. Assad before the collapse of the system of governance, and afterwards there will be assessments that B. Assad trusted the wrong people (the West and the Arabian promises) and refused the outstretched hand. But it is not very clear what exactly was in this outstretched hand, especially at the time of such a collapse, when "profit" is usually not thought about.
This can be found out purely analytically, by exclusion, but D. Larijani himself partly helps in this. Later he will say, describing the situation.
"The Syrian Arab Army is clearly no longer capable of defending Syria, this issue should have been in our hands from the very beginning».
This is inconspicuous "from the very beginning" and there is one of the semaphore signals, on which the train of the sad Syrian epic moved. The signal, of course, is not the only one, but it is extremely important.
There is no doubt that the offensive of the "Idlib cesspool" (although now it is the "opposition") was linked to the date of the ceasefire in Lebanon - there is a difference of one day. The coordination of actions here is obvious, since Israel has begun to transfer forces to the Golan Heights. It is now using them in the occupation of the province of Quneitra.
However, this is precisely what indirectly shows that neither Turkey nor Israel expected such a collapse. Neither of them had sufficient reserves prepared to immediately send them in for the "opposition". In response to A. Khamenei's proposal, Syria was to be rocked simultaneously from the south and from the north, further complicating Iran's work in Syria. However, while pushing Syria to the edge, the interested parties did not expect Syria to jump into it at full speed.
Did the Iranians themselves understand that their proposal to transfer control over the Syrian armed forces to Iran would be met not only by B. Assad, but also by his generals, diplomatically speaking, with "some difficulty"? They should have understood. However, they hardly expected that a whole complex of reasons with a kind of multiplier effect would work.
The generals, and even more so the officer corps, did not want to be under Iranian rule in the past years, and were not particularly eager to do so after several years of relative peace. The sabotage of orders did not begin with the offensive from Idlib, but somewhat earlier. This even came into the sights of some media outlets that worked in Syria, it simply was not linked to Iranian proposals.
But the problem is that, having seen the fall of the city of Aleppo and its agglomeration (which is largely the result of this sabotage), the lower ranks have already begun to roughly understand the future prospects - another so many years of war.
Many in the Russian segment were making fun of B. Assad, who had 95% of the votes "for" in the elections. Well, he is a tyrant, no less. In fact, B. Assad actually had 95% of the votes, simply because the people were counting on restoration in a relatively peaceful time. Construction and restoration. And much was actually rebuilt later - the city of Aleppo as an example, although not the only one.
However, the situation with work and earnings in Syria has not improved in several years. And it is not a matter of some special corruption. In order to be known as a corrupt person in those "Palestines", you need to have special talents. It is just that neither the Chinese, nor the Arabs, nor the Russians gave money to the economy.
The Iranians gave, but not enough. Not out of greed, but simply so much was provided by trade through Syria and Lebanon, and so much could be taken from the financial system of Iran itself. At one time, H. Rouhani (the previous president) held rallies under the slogan "Neither Syria nor Lebanon - our home is Iran", demanding to reduce expenses on the Syrian campaign and on external expansion in general. For Iran, external expansion is the very money that the people need, but public opinion had to be listened to, and so much money was sent to Syria as foreign trade under the wing of the IRGC could allocate, taking into account the public balance.
Was Iran, with its capabilities, in principle capable of pulling out the Syrian economy, which had essentially been operating within the Iranian foreign trade circuit for several years? In fact, no.
But Tehran was very wary of how B. Assad was getting closer to the UAE, which had become a kind of guide for Syria to the Arab League. The UAE had its own frictions with Turkey and Qatar in Africa, including Libya and Central Africa, and Abu Dhabi considered Syria to be an adequate instrument in its political work. Hence the almost undisguised criticism of B. Assad from Tehran, that he allegedly “believed the assurances from the Arabian Peninsula,” and in addition “from the West,” and from Turkey, that he rejected their proposals. And what options did B. Assad have? By and large, none.
The Syrians might have been able to wait until everyone had finished bargaining and improved their standard of living, but the footage from Aleppo clearly showed them that instead they would be guaranteed another ten years of hopelessness with a salary of $150 and a black market, only with a war similar to that of 2013–2016.
If the Syrian command corps showed the Iranians the "fig", then the Syrians themselves, having also watched enough footage of jihadist and Turkish propaganda, simply acted according to the principle "if the barn burns down, let the house burn too". The combination of these two factors resulted in the phenomenal collapse of the system, which was irreparable. Did the Iranian negotiator understand this on December 7, when, without an expeditionary corps available, he offered his "hand" to B. Assad? Most likely, yes, but B. Assad obviously understood this too.
Triggers, Causes and Errors
The Iranian initiatives in November were the first trigger, and the footage from Aleppo was the second trigger, but they were not the causes and prerequisites for this crisis and collapse. It is very important to understand this, so that instead of blaming B. Assad (either from the Iranian or Russian side), we can understand and analyze the mistakes. Appointing a culprit does not contribute to this at all, simply because this history Everyone wrote this, not just B. Assad. Similarly, it is impossible to blame it on us or Iran.
There is no doubt that the huge final mistake of B. Assad himself was the lack of an appeal to the population in those few days when everything was just collapsing. The messages that he was either in Moscow, or had taken his family away, or had not returned himself, or was in Damascus, or was not there, completely demotivated both the personnel and the officer corps. And how to put together information messages, the curators of HTS (banned in the Russian Federation) know better than all of us put together, especially how to spread them on social networks in the Middle East. He will explain his motives himself someday. Maybe.
His second significant mistake, and ours and Iran’s too, was that we essentially let go of the winning situation in the Euphrates region, which had already developed last year (“Arab revolt in the Syrian Trans-Euphrates»).
Syria has been “warmed up” since about the summer of last year (“Syrian protests and US strategy in Lebanon"). But it is impossible to directly link that unrest in Syrian society and the current winter. The protests were pushed at that time in response to the escalation in the Trans-Euphrates region, where some Arab tribes began to very harshly defend their oil interests and clashed with the pro-American SDF. To prevent Damascus from making efforts there, economic protests were intensified - there was nothing good in the economy then either.
Considering that the Arabs had stopped directly supporting that region, a window of opportunity, albeit hypothetical, was formed for official Damascus to intervene in this struggle on the side of the Arabs.
The Assad regime tried (in a disorganized manner) to do this, but did not receive support from Iran and Russia, which did not make this direction an element of goal-setting. Now this position seems even more erroneous, since it would have allowed the Damascus armed forces to be “in tone” and motivate the population, since access to resources was what everyone in Syria was waiting for.
The chances of winning there were good, given the sluggishness of the US in this regard and the series of Arab uprisings. Having lost time there, they allowed the SDF and the tribes to agree on a new division of oil shares. But this already demotivated the Syrian population center, which began to understand that there would be no raw materials, which meant there would be no progress with money.
Russia and Iran had two points of mutual interest in Syria: the defeat of ISIS (banned in the Russian Federation) and the most "hard-core" formations and the retention of the ruling regime in Damascus. After these tasks were accomplished, interests in the deep part intersected only indirectly. Moscow acted as a kind of arbitrator in Syria, which means it could not give the advantage of winning to one of the parties, even to B. Assad himself, as a result of the work.
Iran initially viewed Syria as part of its trade network in the Middle East. The "Shiite Crescent" is not so much about faith as about trade - from Lebanese and Syrian ports to Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan and further to Iran and Afghanistan. In Syria, the financial system was 80 percent, if not more, tied to this trade and direct supplies from Iran. In Lebanon, Iran and Hezbollah actually created a parallel financial system and a second market.
If we analyze the American research of last year, it is noteworthy that the main point of application of efforts was not the war, but operations against the Iranian financial sector in the region (“Why Lebanon's finances have become the object of US scrutiny»).
Yes, actually, what did B. Netanyahu carry “in his beak” for the US during the operation in Lebanon? Israel has been deliberately bombing Hezbollah's cash vaults and even ATMs. But the complex of operations had previously been aimed at controlling money transfer systems and controlling dollar turnover in Lebanon and Iraq. All this narrowed not only the inflow of dollars into Iran itself and its share in regional trade, but also the ability to support the Syrian economy.
Was there corruption in Syria? There was, but not much could be “corrupted”. In this regard, the claims against B. Assad that he somehow especially pressed Russian business are somewhat strange - the money is generally connected with Iran, after all, as well as the claims from Iran that it, they say, “believed the Arabs” - the money could de facto only be given by the UAE.
In theory, Moscow and Iran needed to create a kind of "economic pool" in which participation in economic sectors had to be described and approved, as well as rules for attracting money to Syria. The normalization of Iran's relations with Saudi Arabia and China's capabilities in this process could work as positive factors here.
Each side's wait-and-see approach and inability to distribute shares on an economic basis proved fatal. Syria could not survive on Iranian money and trade, and Moscow had little interest in the economy, since it was not its sphere, but Iran's.
Results and how they can be used
Moscow's position as an arbitrator, which reached a dead end after 2020, could have been played out to the common benefit. Iran, in turn, acted from a position of "jealousy", trying not only to get Syria as part of the economic contour, but also to directly control the military sphere, which in that situation meant controlling the entire policy. This is an interception of control and a crude interception. But Iran no longer had K. Soleimani, who played these games two orders of magnitude more subtly, and in terms of development, deeper.
There were several players in this not-so-positive story, and no one is to blame. Nevertheless, the final minus is the biggest for Iran. The Syrian collapse almost completely closes its route to Lebanese and Syrian ports, destroys trade chains, as well as money flows. This does not mean that it cannot work with Lebanon and Hezbollah, but the long-standing caravan routes through Damascus and the Lebanese mountains will now have “three prices,” if they work at all.
This chain-links Iran's work in Iraq, and here it must be said unequivocally that the US will continue to cleanse the Iraqi system for "excess currency". If the US really manages to do this, then in this case Iran itself can expect not the usual protests, which are frequent and habitual there, but full-fledged, severe ones, as well as a strong aggravation of relations in the elites. And will M. Pezeshkian, a man with a good reputation, but not the most experienced player, pull it off?
Moscow, with its position as an arbitrator, despite the extreme unpleasantness of losing what was won in the Syrian campaign of 2015-2020 (for the domestic Russian audience), has not the greatest damage in terms of international politics. Below Afghanistan for the US, since Moscow did not touch on the domestic politics of Syria.
Moreover, Turkey and the US will most likely allow Russia to “save face” by either allowing it to withdraw its military forces without problems, or even leaving Moscow with military bases, perhaps revising the lease terms, etc. However, Russia will not get much practical benefit from them. The surprising thing here will be something else: Moscow will even be invited to intra-Syrian negotiations as Turkey’s partner.
But we must understand that it is not only and not so much about the so-called "Turkish tomatoes", but that such a position automatically separates us from Iran in the Middle East. Politically, this will be very tempting for us, and we will even be able to talk about how we are valued and respected, but the "esteemed partners" will be solving a different problem here - a wedge with Iran. On the other hand, if we refuse, they will invite Iran and arrange a heated discussion on this topic within it. A very subtle game will be played. If we fall for this negotiating diplomacy, they will separate us completely and beat us in parts.
This game is already being modeled. Judging by the same "Washington Institute for Near East Policy" (WINEP), they are discussing not so much the reasons for the defeat of the regime in Damascus, but, for example, the possibilities of strengthening Russia's negotiating positions in Lebanon given the weakening of Iran's positions, as well as the role in the negotiating process in the "new Syria".
While we are discussing whether B. Assad is a tyrant or not, they are going three steps further. We are thinking (correctly) about the fate of military bases in Tartus and Latakia, but the "enemy" is looking further.
"If Russia takes on a peacekeeping role in Syria, it will give Moscow the opportunity to advance its interests at the expense of the West and its allies."
This is from the material "Spoils of Someone Else's War: Acting as a Mediator in Syria Will Improve Putin's International Image" The author, A. Borshchevskaya, despite her age, is a well-known American expert with a consistent anti-Russian position, but not one of those who write juicy grant theses and slogans. That is why the direction of thought that is being felt in the depths of WINEP is important. This is a discussion about whether to give the role of a mediator or not. The author is against, but that means that there are many who are for, that is the question.
The Americans знают, that we will cling to the role of referee, remembering that this bore fruit in the last iteration of the Syrian game. They know and will catch us with this bait carefully and wisely, since now there will be a lot of options to not bear fruit as a result. Such a discussion will go out into the wide space, and it will turn out that Russia has sort of achieved the status of a new mediator in Syria by force. Only the door was actually open.
Why are they already considering this aspect? Israel will support the "Kurds" and Iraqi Kurdistan, here we will also be offered to enter the game, but it will also indirectly work to break Iranian trade chains.
Iran and Russia should most carefully analyze not B. Assad, the reasons why a "cooperative model" was not made in Syria. If this is not done, then we will be drawn into a strategy where everyone will hypothetically receive kites quickly, and in the long term there will be problems in the Iranian economy and blocking of Russia's work in the south.
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