Bashar Assad has been engaged in a delicate dance with Arab states that once shunned him. They recognize that he has won the Syrian civil war and there is little point in keeping him in Coventry; their aim now is to weaken the Syrian ties with Iran. The UAE has been at the forefront of efforts by Arab states to normalize ties with Damascus, and earlier this year it called for Syria to be readmitted to the Arab League. It reopened its embassy in Damascus three years ago. And now the U.A.E. Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed — the most senior Emirati dignitary to visit Syria in the decade since the eruption of a civil war – has been in talks with Bashar Assad, in the first high-level meeting between the Syrian leader and a high-ranking Arab official since the civil war began.
Egypt has also taken steps toward normalizing relations with Syria. A renewal of diplomatic ties began with a meeting between Egypt’s Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry and his Syrian counterpart, Faisal Mekdad, on Sept. 24, for the first time in nearly 10 years. The meeting took place at the headquarters of the Permanent Mission of Egypt at the United Nations in New York on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly meeting, as part of a broader move by Arab countries to reintegrate Syria into the Arab world after ties had been cut since the outbreak of the civil war in 2011. The Kuwaiti Foreign Minister also met with Mekdad at the same venue.
Jordan has been actively lobbying within the Arab League for the re-admission of Syria. On October 3, the country’s official carrier, Royal Jordanian Airlines, resumed direct flights to Damascus for the first time in nearly a decade. On October 4, Bashar Assad called King Abdullah on the phone for their first conversation in ten years. This call resulted in Jordan’s decision to renew diplomatic ties with Syria. It is now engaged in talks with Damascus on the renewal of the extensive economic ties between the two countries that had been severed when the civil war broke out, and Jordan sided with the rebels.
In addition to Jordan, the U.A.E., Bahrain, and Oman have now reestablished diplomatic ties with Syria.
Even Saudi Arabia has been moving toward reopening ties with Syria. In March 2021, Syrian Tourism Minister Mohammad Rami Radwan Martini attended a conference in Riyadh, becoming the first Syrian official to make a public visit to the kingdom since 2011. In May,Saudi Arabia reopened direct communications with Syria, after a visit to Damascus by the head of Saudi intelligence, Lieutenant-General Khalid al-Humaidan. There he met President Assad and the head of the National Security Office, Major General Ali Mamlouk.
What does this all mean? It means that the Arab states that once supported the insurrection against Assad have concluded that he has won the civil war, and there is no.benefit to be gained from continuing to keep Syria at arm’s length. They’ve concluded, too, that it’s better to welcome Assad back into the Arab fold, and to try to loosen his alliance with Iran. Those ties made sense for Syria when Assad so desperately needed critical military and financial support during the ten-year war; he received more than $30 billion, as well as rockets, missiles, and drones from Iran. Tehran saw Syria as part of a “Shi’a crescent” that it was attempting to build, with help from allies, including the Houthis in Yemen, the Kata’ib Hezbollah militia in Iraq, the Alawite army in Syria, and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Iran recognized the Alawites who rule Syria as fellow Shi’a; thus, Tehran concluded, they would be the natural, and permanent, allies of the Islamic Republic against the Sunni Arabs.
Iran miscalculated. Now the civil war is won, and Syria no longer has such a need for Iranian help. The tug of Arab ethnicity is turning out to be stronger than the sectarian tie between Alawites and Twelver Shi’ites. What better way for Assad to please his fellow Arabs, and hasten his country’s return to the fold, than by dramatically distancing himself from Iran? And that is exactly what he has done. A report on his “excluding” – that is banishing from Syria – the IRGC commander, is here.
A major rift has opened between Syrian President Bashar Assad and the head of Iran’s terrorist army in Syria, Arabic-language media reported Wednesday [Nov. 10].
According to the Saudi news outlet Al Hadath, a source described as familiar with the issue said that Assad and other high-ranking members of the Syrian regime have “excluded” Mustafa Jawad Ghafari, head of Iran’s terrorist Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps-Quds Force in Syria.
The word “excluded” means that IRGC commander Ghafari has been expelled from the country, sent packing to Iran. One wonders how the Supreme Leader will react to what he will no doubt see as an act of lèse-majesté by Assad. How dare he cross the Supreme Leader? Doesn’t the lanky ophthalmologist know he owes his victory to Iran?
The Quds Force has helped prop up Assad’s regime since a revolt against the dictator in 2011 led to an ongoing civil war.
But Assad — it bears repeating — no longer needs that Quds Force. Iranian interference in Syria has become, for Assad, infuriating, both because the Iranians have violated Syria’s sovereignty and because they have turned Syria into an unwilling theatre of the war between Iran and Israel.
Al Hadath stated that, according to the source, Assad considers Ghafari’s various activities to be a violation of Syria’s sovereignty.
These activities include bypassing Syrian customs, smuggling goods in order to build an Iran-dominated “black market,” exploiting Syrian national resources, looting national assets, and evading taxes.
The Quds Force in Syria has created an economic state-within-the-state for the personal enrichment of its members. It imports goods from Iran, smuggling them in so as to avoid paying Syrian customs duties, and then selling them to Syrians in a “black market” at prices lower than what the Syrian-made goods sell for. The Quds force has also, according to Assad, “exploited Syrian national resources,” which may refer to its buying up, at rock-bottom prices, Syrian resource companies, and even properties abandoned by Syrians who fled abroad. Everything from phosphates to marble may be bought up cheaply, Assad may have reason to believe, and then sent out the country for sale, enriching the grasping members of the Quds Force in Syria. That Quds Force not only has avoided paying customs duties on the goods it smuggles into Syria, but apparently pays no taxes to the Syrian government on its profits from selling those goods.
Assad is also angered that the Quds Force has violated its commitments not to deploy forces in certain parts of Syria, which has in turn prompted Israeli air strikes on Syrian territory.
By placing its troops and weaponry in places that the Syrians had declared off-limits, the Quds Force has managed to put not only its own troops, but Syrians, too, in danger of Israeli missiles and airstrikes. And that is exactly what has happened. The Israelis have conducted hundreds of strikes on Iranian bases. Many of those attacks have also hit Syrian soldiers and weaponry.. When, for example, Israel hit the Iranian headquarters at the Damascus airport, where senior IRGC officials are based, and which is used to coordinate shipments from Iran to its allies in Syria, Syrian troops, and a significant part of Syria’s main airport, were also hit. Israel has said it holds Syria responsible for hosting the Iranians. The Quds Forces are lightning rods for Israeli attacks, but the ensuing damage, and loss of life, is seldom limited to the Iranians. The Iranians and Syrians often share bases; their weapons — both Syrian and Iranian — are similarly stored in those bases; even supposing it could, the IAF does not stop to make distinctions between Syria is not keen to be dragged repeatedly into the gunsights of Israeli pilots because of the presence of Quds bases.
Syria’s state media said on Monday that its air defenses had intercepted an Israeli missile strike in its central and coastal regions, the latest in a number of recent reports of Israeli strikes.
Here, as one example, is what happened when there was an attack on Israeli troops in the Golan. Israel responded thus:
The Israeli military said fighter jets hit multiple targets belonging to Iran’s elite Quds force, including surface-to-air missiles, weapons warehouses and military bases. It said a number of Syrian aerial defense batteries were also destroyed after an air defense missile was fired.
The death toll included five Syrian troops, 16 Iranian and Iran-backed fighters, and two Syrian civilians.
The Syrian Observatory said the airstrikes targeted Quds Force arms depots in the Damascus suburbs of Kisweh and Qudsaya. Abdurrahman said several other areas were targeted in Wednesday’s strikes, including the Mazzeh air base in Damascus, where air defense units are stationed.
In other words, although Quds forces were the Israeli target, Syrians were also killed and Syrian aerial defense batteries destroyed.
Perhaps most damning in Assad’s eyes is that Ghafari has presided over Quds Force actions against the US and Israel. The dictator believes that an attack on American targets on Oct. 20 by militias controlled by Iran almost dragged Syria into a war….
The drone attack on an American base in Syria on Oct. 20 was launched, without Syrian permission, by members of the Quds Force in Syria. No casualties resulted, but had there been, there would certainly have been a devastating response by the Americans that would not have spared Syrian military and bases. Syrian and Iranian troops are often found on the same bases and an attack aimed at Quds forces – by the U.S. or Israel — cannot always avoid causing casualties among the Syrians. Besides, the Americans believe that in allowing the IRGC to establish its base in their country, the Syrians are aiding and abetting the Quds attacks, and should not be spared retaliatory attacks.
Assad was appalled that the IRGC Commander in Syria, on his own, without receiving permission from his host, attacked the American troops. Had any of them been killed, there would have been massive retaliation, against both IRGC and Syrian targets. Like Israel, the Americans hold Syria responsible for any attacks originating from its soil.
This sort of thing – a Quds force acting against Israel without Syrian permission – has happened many times before. When, for example, Israel discovered four men planting bombs on the Golan Heights in August 2020 – almost certainly Quds fighters – Israel targeted “observation posts and intelligence collection systems, anti-aircraft artillery facilities and command and control systems” in Syrian army bases in Qunaitra, the IDF said.
Assad will not tolerate the Quds Force attacking either American or Israeli targets without his express permission. Assad has won his civil war, but he must still worry about attacks on Syrian bases and weapons by the Israelis and Americans in retaliation for attacks that the Syrians had nothing to do with. How can he control the IRGC? He has made a start, by summarily expelling from the country the IRGC commander. That should get Tehran’s attention, and make them realize they are no longer seen by Assad as necessary to his survival.
Now Assad has entered a new phase of the conflict. Iran was a necessary ally during the civil war, providing both military aid and $30 billion to keep the Syrian economy afloat, but now Assad is looking ahead to beginning the post-war reconstruction, which will cost $350- $400 billion. That kind of money can come only from the rich Gulf Arab states – Saudi Arabia, the U.A.E., Kuwait. Iran is in no position to offer help on that scale; in any case, its economy is reeling and it has had to cut aid even to Hezbollah.
In Tehran, they must now be tasting wormwood and gall. How can Assad be so ungrateful for all the Islamic Republic has done for him? If Iran were to threaten to pull out the IRGC troops from Syria altogether, a threat that once might have alarmed Assad, he would now welcome their departure. If he needs a foreign military ally for intermittent help in the handful of areas where opposition fighters remain active, the Russians are ready and, unlike the Iranians, are not about to get Syria involved in a conflict with Israel or America.
jewdog says
The economic and political collapse of neighboring Lebanon must surely serve as cautionary tale as to what happens when Iran and its proxies sink their teeth into your country. Assad must surely realize the implications.
Quazgaa says
Iranians are tools in arab hands.
A befitting end for a spineless nation.
Quazgaa says
I always maintained there’s a pecking order within islam, with arabs at the top, “the best of people”.
After all, they invented the whole thing.
I never understood what possessed iranians to believe they could be something else than second class muslims in the eyes on an arab.
Now iranians are waking back up to their ajam reality.
Infidel says
They would in any case be second class due to their race, just like the Turks are seen by Arabs: however, the fact that they’re shi’a makes them third class. Within the Iranian population, the number of believing muslims had fallen to 40%: I suspect the actual number may be even lower. Essentially, the Twelver sect is now a de-facto cult (much like all of islam really is, but I digress), run by Khamenei and whoever his handpicked successors are
I do think that once this Iranian regime collapses, the next flare-up will be b/w Arabs and Turks. The Pakis and Taliban will be on the Turkish side
Charlie in NY says
Matters will come to a head when Assad formally announces Syria’s thanks for Iranian assistance against “terrorists” but now that the danger has passed, further Iranian help is no longer required and the IRCG and their Shi’a proxies will be leaving Syrian soil by [add a specific date].
At least the pretense that Iran is in Syria by invitation will be stripped away. Whether Iran will leave quietly will, I suppose, depend on Putin’s powers of persuasion.
Infidel says
It’s not just a tacit recognition that Assad won that is forcing the Arab realpolitic. They also see how Erdogan is trying to reclaim the Ottoman empire, and how his territorial incursions and interference in Syria seems to go towards that end. Much as they may loathe the Alawite sect, they also prefer Alawite Arabs to sunni Turks running Syria. That’s a big part of what’s driving UAE, Jordan and Egypt’s moves to get Syria’s membership of the Arab League re-activated. Wonder whether Syria will have similar luck in the OIC, where Turkey and Iran are both there to sabotage their re-entry
Also, Assad doesn’t owe his survival to Iran: despite Hizbullah, his regime was on the brink of collapse before the Russian Air Force, which didn’t wanna lose Syria as a military customer and Latakiya as a major port in the Mediterranean, completely destroyed the sunni jihadists that were on the verge of taking over and changed the game. Also, if Syria hadn’t expelled the IRGC, Israel would have destroyed them irrespective of the wishes of Damascus. So there wasn’t much of a way for Iran to continue to participate in Syria. If they wanna continue, they have to look at Yemen, since Hizbullah too has lost much of its popularity among shi’a in Lebanon. Speaking of which, in addition to the IRGC, Syria should also stop being a conduit b/w Iran and Hizbullah, and force the latter to live independently of Iran
Also, Israel has been dealing w/ Russia on all its moves in Syria. Given the US recognition of the Golan Heights – which the Biden Administration hasn’t been able to reverse – Syria should simply sign a permanent peace agreement w/ Israel and give up that claim, since it already has its hands full, w/ ISIS and the Kurds in the east of their country, and Turkish claims on Idlib and other places in Syria
As for Iran, they need to stop obsessing about Israel, and instead gang up w/ Turkey in forming an anti-Arab coalition within the OIC. They’ll have a lot more allies there – Malaysia, Pakistan,
Azerbaijan, Bangladesh as well as jihadist groups worldwideElderlyZionist says
Well said concerning Arab worries about Erdogan and his creeping annexations of Syrian and Iraqi territory. The Syrian Civil War is *not* over, Turkey is now the sponsor and protector of the Muslim Brotherhood mujahidin in Idlib province.
This whole essay is optimistic. So far, Assad has only kicked out one IRGC general. Will the Persians just send another, more tractable general? Or will the Syrians expel the whole IRGC and Hezbollah too? Time will tell.
Infidel says
Very true! It’s perfectly not just possible, but also likely, that Assad has been having behind the scenes talks w/ Khamenei/Raisi, and that this general was removed after they all agreed that what he did hurt Syria’s plans to keep the Baathist regime intact
Not only is the Syrian Civil War not over, but if ISIS is back, there is nothing stopping them – particularly w/ Turkish support – from taking over East Syria as well
JimJFox says
“keeping him in Coventry” ? I I wonder how many Americans will be baffled by this old English expression? ?
Kenneth J Johnson says
Good, but go slow is the rule. Any little thing and the muslems will explode. The next change must be very snall and very well thought out , such as very “very” quietly allowing a few Christians and Jews visas to leae teh country. KEN