Israeli Occupation in Syria

On December 7th and 8th, 2024, after 13 years of cities reduced to rubble, hundreds of thousands of deaths, and countless war crimes by regime forces as well as takfiris among the foreign-backed rebels, Damascus fell to the armed opposition. Bashir al-Assad and his extended clan fled. The backbone of the 50-year-old Baathist state founded by Bashir's father Hafez al Assad in 1963, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA), seemingly disbanded overnight, to the disbelief of many in the "Axis of Resistance" and those who'd observed the SAA's struggle from abroad.

As when the Americans rolled into Baghdad twenty years before in Iraq, the ruling Baath Party was suddenly no more. But the ancient country of Syria remains, and has retained its formal name of the Syrian Arab Republic, with many Syrian diplomats abroad who previously defended Assad denouncing him and pledging loyalty to the new authorities, led by a group called Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS)--which is still listed as a terrorist organization on the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) web page. Given that former Hawaii Congresswoman and National Guardswoman Tulsi Gabbard has had a noticeable disdain for the so-called 'moderate Syrian rebels', this page might stay up for a while.

Above video from WION: Israeli PM Netanyahu Demands Demilitarization Of Southern Syria | World News | WION (World is One News) Dispatch, February 26, 2025. See also this video Israel Launches Air Strikes, Provokes Syria | GRAVITAS | World News | WION February 27, 2025

Moscow and Tehran Negotiate a New Reality for the Region with Ankara

This was the closing punchline to 2024, as the old political order was swept away and replaced by another in the Levant. These shocking events were almost certainly as a result of secret negotiations between the Kremlin and the Turks plus the Gulf Arabs led by Egypt's strategic partners Saudi Arabia and the UAE. As a result, a new reality has been imposed on Syria, and the Russians are still negotiating with the new Syrian regime to preserve a very limited presence at their Tartus naval base and Kheimmim air base in the Allawite heartland on the Latakia coast--all while building alternative air bases in eastern Libya and a small naval station in Sudan.

It must be said that one 'spinoff' from the successful negotiations for Assad's departure, however initially disavowed by Moscow, appears to be the Saudi-hosted Trump Administration peace for Ukraine talks with the Russians in Riyadh. We are also seeing as of late February reports that Türkiye could send a large peacekeeping contingent as a security guarantee to Ukraine, in the event the difficult U.S.-Russia peace talks succeed. (To a lesser extant than in Syria, the Ukraine has also been subject to Ottoman influence if not direct rule in centuries past).

The Arab League Welcomes a New Syrian Leader

So now almost all governments, even those who were previously hostile to the Syrian rebels such as Iran and Russia, have engaged with the new Turkish-dominated regime. In fact, the Arab world has also accepted former Hayat Tahrir al Sham commander and previously designated by the U.S. government as a terrorist Ahmed Al Sharaa as the legitimate leader of Syria. Al Sharaa will visit Cairo and meet with President Sisi on an Arab League summit by the end of February (2025).

Thus, the observer of the Middle East is left with a simple question, after regime change in Syria, what's coming next for the Middle East?

Image credit above: The Umayyad Mosque in Damascus

Uploaded to iStock by Wirestock December 2022

iStock photo ID: 1442126058

The Reshuffled Regional Balance of Power After Assad

There are those who pointed at Egypt, saying that another revolution was going to occur, however, this is categorically false as the 25th January anniversary went by and nothing happened. The security establishment of the Arab Republic of Egypt is too strong and the Egyptian populace is either indifferent or unwilling to engage in mass protests after what happened in the early 2010s. In Jordan, the situation is much more finicky, considering the war in Palestine and much of the population being of Palestinian origin, but there are no indications of unrest there either.

In Iraq, the Shia militias seem to not be interested in engaging outside of Iraqi borders and the federal government in Baghdad is the same, and considering nothing ever happens in the oil and gas-rich Arab Gulf we can rule out any big changes across the monarchies. The Libyan conflict is frozen between Tripoli and Tobruk, and the Maghreb has been rather quiet since the Arab Spring. There's ongoing civil wars in Sudan and Somalia, but Syria is too far away to influence what occurs in the Horn of Africa, where an East African resource scramble by the superpowers and great powers awaits.

As for Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's government is consolidating its influence across Syria, including through arming and training the post-Assad armed forces, which are being reformed along Turkish Army lines. The new regime's green stripes and stars flag plus some Turkish flags are now flying over bases where the SAA and Russian forces were previously based. The other abandoned Russian outposts in the northeast of the country have been occupied by the Kurds, who are facing abandonment by Washington. Thus the Kurds have little choice but to negotiate for autonomy from the new regime and its Turkish backers.

This leaves Lebanon as the only country that events inside Syria might influence significantly--though Israel also is refusing to withdraw from captured territory in southern Syria beyond the Golan Heights. The Israeli positions are not too far from the strategic Damascus-Beirut highway.

Fellow Levantines: The Syrian-Lebanese Historical Connection

Ever since the two states were created under British (Syria and Iraq) and especially French (Syria and Lebanon) patronage in the aftermath of WW1, Syrians have always been involved in Lebanon one way or the other. This goes back to their shared Syro-Phoenician ancestry and its interaction with Mesopotamia dating back thousands of years. As a consequence of the Lebanese Civil War in the 1970s, the Syrian Arab Army occupied Lebanon, an occupation which became increasingly disliked and onerous for the Lebanese people, which only ended in 2005.

The SAA was heavily involved in the Lebanese Civil War as well as the short war with the invading Israelis in 1982, at times clashing with Israeli units as well as with sectarian parties in Lebanon or their militias. It did not help matters that the leadership of Syria consisted of a religious minority, the Allawites, concentrated in the coastal Latakia region as well as Damascus. Syria is a mostly Sunni Muslim country but previously, as in Lebanon and Iraq, has maintained a highly influential Christian minority.

Ethno-religious Diversity from Beirut to Damascus and the Badiya

While having a Sunni Muslim majority and many Christians both Catholic and Greek Orthodox or belonging to the Church of the East or Assyrians in terms of religion, ethnically Syria has consisted Levantine Arabs, with large minorities of Turkmen and Kurds. So with the Syrian state defined by ethno-religious diversity, the situation has been somewhat similar to that of Lebanon. However, no one has a complete majority in Lebanon. Since its independence the State has been divided into three confessions–Shias, Sunnis, and the Catholic Maronites marking the majority of Christians, the others being Greek Orthodox and Christian sects mentioned above.

In Lebanon there is also a large Druze minority with cousins across the border in southern Syria, living in villages on the approaches to and along the Golan Heights, now (after the SAA's dissolution) fully occupied by Israel. More on the Druze and Israel attempting to use them as proxies or even propose their annexation into a Greater Israel in the WION video above and in our conclusions below.

Hezbollah Faces Both Hostility from the New Syrian Regime and Eroding Political Support Inside Lebanon

For Lebanese, the largest non-government body--and indeed, an Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC or Pasdaran)-allied body that involves itself in the governance of Lebanon--is Hezbollah, an armed militant Shia group. For the Assads, Hezbollah proved a critical ally , sending thousands of fighters to fight in Damascus' war with the Turkish and Gulf-backed Syrian rebels. The fall of the Assad clan has already altered the power dynamics in Lebanon, so that open disrespect of Hezbollah by some Lebanese as well as Syrian government officials has become noticeable. This, despite Hezbollah having made inroads of support into some Christian communities of Lebanon, which felt largely abandoned by their old French patrons in the Collective West and the Israelis alike, after Israel quit its two decade-old occupation of the south, in 2000.

Many Lebanese Christians were pleased when Hezbollah inflicted painful losses on the invading Israeli armored columns during the short but intense 2006 war, in which Hezbollah deployed Syrian-provided Russian Kornet anti-tank missiles to deadly effect on Israel's Merkava tanks and infantry fighting vehicles. The 2006 war showed that Israel despite maintaining a fearsome image could be beaten and driven back. However, the Israelis spent the ensuing years analyzing their failures and this time around, after their Gulf Arab partners and Turkey spent years besieging and breaking down the Assad regime, Netanyahu's government relied more heavily on Mossad assassinations via the pager and walkie-talkie plots, plus massive aerial bombing of Hezbollah's leadership, to attack the "Axis of Resistance'", where armored assaults and artillery barrages had failed in 2006. But decades of Hezbollah-related Western sanctions, high inflation and insolvent (due in part, to the Western sanctions) banks, as well as the defeat of Hezbollah's ally Assad in the Syrian War, has definitely reduced many Lebanese enthusiasm for the 'Party of God'.

Over the past two months, several arms smuggling attempts to Lebanon for Hezbollah have been thwarted by the new Syrian government. Whether those arms seizures were for show or real is yet to be seen. Certainly, the Netanyahu government has not won many friends in Damascus by its heavy bombing campaign to utterly destroy the old regime's Russian-provided surface to air missile stocks, ammunition and armored vehicles. But it's doubtful that the new Syrian administration, which was fighting with Hezbollah for over a decade and has recently engaged in clashes over smuggling routes managed by the Shia clans on the border, would be so friendly to the Lebanese.

The new Damascus regime hardly knows exactly whom to trust on the other side of the Syro-Lebanese border. Especially since Hezbollah can still turn out hundreds of thousands to attend Hassan Nasrallah's recent funeral and shout, "Death to Israel, Death to America" as Israeli Air Force jets flew over the enormous crowd and packed stadium where the memorial services were held.

The Return of Syrian Refugees from Lebanon and Turkey to Syria

However, not all is lost or is “bad” for the people of Lebanon. With the war finally over, hundreds of thousands of Syrians who fled to Lebanon, and were considered a significant strain on the resources and infrastructure of this small country, are returning to their homes. This one good trend for general relations between both Levantine countries. Already, many thousands of the millions of Syrian refugees who've been residing in Turkey for over a decade have returned to Syria.

Even if the Israelis may exaggerate their successful decapitation of Hezbollah's leadership and Hamas continues to recruit Palestinians in Gaza, there's no doubt that regime change in Damascus has shifted the regional balance of power. Iran lost an important ally and a previously open (if constantly Israeli-bombed) Damascus airport to Beirut highway for arming Hezbollah in their mutual "Axis of Resistance”.

Cutting Deals and Counting Winners and Losers from Assad's Ouster

The Russians, who despite their deal cut with the Turks may have worried that their bases would be dismantled or even overrun by HTS with Russian troops and maintenance crews taken hostage (and perhaps even Ukrainian mercenaries or GUR agents paying foreign jihadist mercenaries from the former Soviet countries and China's Xinjiang region for such an attack). However, the new Syrian administration thus far has said that the Russians can stay, even if they sometimes make futile demands for the extradition of Assad to face a war crimes tribunal.

The Turks are currently negotiating new contracts for massive postwar reconstruction across Syria's rubbled cities with their gas-rich Qatari patrons. As for the rest of the Gulf Arab powers, they sort of “won” the war, despite their late in the game reconciliation with Assad. Because in truth, they were almost always anti-Assad, due to the decades-old tensions between Baathists and Gulf Monarchies, as well his Allawite alliance with the Shia Resistance Axis. In the Collective West, the bipartisan foreign policy Blob as well as most of Trump's supporters won when Assad was kicked out. The British and their Ukrainian allies also declared victory, with Kiev's wartime military intelligence agency the GUR boasting of having supplied the rebels with FPV drones that attacked and harried the fleeing SAA troops.

That all said, in light of all this deal-making between the previously hostile sponsors of the Syrian War factions, who in 2015 had seen NATO member Turkey shoot down a Russian jet and in 2019 Russia get revenge by bombing Turkish troops (which Erdogan blamed on Assad, not Putin's air force, in order to preserve relations with Moscow); since all the major powers have decided that the war in the Levant should end–will there be a Second Lebanese Civil War? Especially one provoked by Benjamin Netanyahu, the one foreign leader Donald Trump might not be able to tell no? Or will the current zeitgeist of, "war is bad, but sitting down with the adversary and demanding minerals mining royalties and even ceding of territory from one's own allies is just business" Mar-a-Lago make business, not war pragmatism prevail?

Lebanon Is Not a Game of The Godfather: Five Families or a Game of Thrones, Peace Breaking Out Across the Levant is Not Only Possible, But Likely

The political system in Lebanon is highly fragmented and depends today, as it has for decades, on external patronage. With one patron broken off or badly weakened like Iran, in theory this could lead other factions like rival mafia clans in a Godfather movie to pounce on and seize Hezbollah's turf, both its money-laundering legitimate businesses and in the literal territorial sense of turf. Amid sectarian tensions, the change in Syria has already lead to realignments within the Lebanese political landscape.

However, it's highly unlikely that the newly installed Syrian administration would get themselves involved in Lebanon, since their primary patrons in Turkey as well as the Qataris and the other Gulf Arabs would be against this. And amid weekly Israeli bombing and a Damascus regime stripped of its previously Russian-supplied jets and air defenses proving powerless to do anything about it, there's no sign the new Syrian regime would sacrifice its fighters and lose political support to attack Israel's chief enemy in the Levant, Hezbollah.

As for proxy warfare, there are no new or previously emergent groups in Lebanon that can now be supported by the new Syrian regime. So far, the political compromises in Lebanon between the Amal, Hezbollah, Christian, and Sunni groups have led to the first Lebanese President in several years being sworn into office. With the ceasefire in Gaza and between Hezbollah and Israel, the Lebanese economy looks more stable than it's been in many months, and more violence is not a priority for any of the political parties or their patrons in neighboring countries.

Conclusion: Why We Believe There Won't Be Another Lebanese Civil War

The new president, Joseph Aoun (no relation to Lebanese Civil War leader Michel Aoun), has been accepted by all of the political and religious factions in Lebanon. As a former Lebanese Army chief, his relations with former colonial power France and with EU members Italy, Greece and other friendly Mediterranean countries allow for some support from Western powers besides the US. Aoun is also supported by influential regional actors such as the Saudis and Emiratis as well as Egypt, so there are high hopes for greater stability under his administration.

Therefore, with the Arab League and GCC powers supporting peace and reconstruction in Syria, it's doubtful that the new Syrian regime would destabilize itself by invading Lebanon or sending arms it increasingly doesn't have to share (due to the SAA's depots being destroyed by Israel) so proxies can strike Hezbollah. Turkey facing rampant inflation, but hopefully with an end to the PKK terrorists' decades-old insurgency in sight, is not interested in any foreign adventures. Ankara as it transitions to an aging Erdoğan's chosen successor wishes to consolidate itself and its Syrian client state.

The new Turkish-backed Syrian administration already addressed such fears of irredentism toward Iraq or supporting any insurgency in the western Iraqi deserts previously occupied by Daesh. Ahmed Al Sharaa promised Iraqi President Abdul Latif Rashid that he's not interested in interfering with internal Iraqi affairs and that he hopes for future cooperation.

The idea of a new civil war in Lebanon Is depressing considering the brutality and inhumanity of the last one in the Seventies and Eighties. But in our personal Egyptian opinion, Lebanon and the world have moved on, and no one but the most bloody-minded outsiders would want another civil war. There may be some a few politicians in Israel spouting tough guy hot air who talk about a golden opportunity to finish off Hezbollah, but the Israelis lack sufficient proxies willing to fight for them on the ground to even try.

Therefore, cooperation and improving relations are much more appealing across the Levant than continued sectarian warfare. Thus, we at the ESW MENA desk believe Lebanon has high potential in the coming years as a destination for French and British retirees, as well as digital nomads and Lebanese 'repats' returning to invest their capital from abroad into real estate. ESW intends to help our clients and online subscription community members take part in these positive developments.