Policy 360: From the Arab Spring to the Fall of Assad - The Birth of A Free Syria
A Syrian man waves the “revolutionary” flags as he continues to celebrate the ousting of Bashar al-Assad’s government by Syrian rebels. Photo courtesy of Hussein Malla, Associated Press.
Introduction
In the final weeks of 2024, the Syrian rebel group Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) entered Syria’s capital of Damascus and formally overthrew one of the world’s most notorious authoritarian dictatorships: the Assad regime. Hafez Assad initially seized control of the country in 1971, but his family’s authority was eventually challenged during the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings against his highly unpopular son, Bashar Assad. An initially heavy crackdown on demonstrators and civilians evolved into the second-most deadly war and one of the greatest humanitarian catastrophes of the 21st century. Yet, until the eve of this year, Assad maintained power over the devastated Arab Republic.
The eventual collapse of the Assad regime heavily impacted the region, as key players, Russia, Turkey, Israel, and Iran, had to quickly reassess their diplomatic and military roles, both within the context of the persistent Syrian civil war and the region as a whole. Russia and Iran had been providing assistance that enabled the Assad regime to maintain control over most of Syria, while Israel had been bombing Iran-linked militias, particularly Hezbollah, a Shia Muslim political party and militant group considered a terrorist organization by many countries. Turkey’s geopolitical placement in Syria’s northwest corner and its military support for HTS against both the regime and autonomous Syrian Kurdish forces further inflamed tensions.
Throughout the war, Syrian civilians were the foremost sufferers of the conflict, falling victim to both wartime atrocities and international sanctions, such as the U.S. Caesar Act, which disproportionately impacted average citizens more than the Assad regime. HTS was able to take advantage of the public’s disdain for Assad and the distraction of Russia and Iran by the wars in Ukraine and Gaza to launch an offensive that ultimately toppled the regime. Now, the revolutionaries, led by Ahmad Shara’a, face the task of building state institutions and establishing themselves as the legitimate governors of a liberated Syria.
This change within the Syrian government has far-reaching consequences for countries across the globe, but it is especially relevant to the interests of Russia, Israel, Turkey, and Iran. As Syria develops its new governance, these powers must find ways to mitigate their losses or maximize their gains in a Middle East reshaped by popular upheaval and devastating conflict.
In a Syria Without Assad, Russia Comes to the Table
Theodore Griffin, CC ‘27
Russia maintained a complex and highly antagonistic role in the Syrian civil war prior to the collapse of the Syrian regime in December 2024. Russia began as a strong military and diplomatic lifeline for Assad, but, after its invasion of Ukraine in 2022, was logistically strained and thus took a more passive approach to the Syrian conflict.
In September of 2015, Russia started an operation in Syria to support President Assad by focusing pressure on Islamic State (IS) opposition groups and jihadist factions. The combination of Russian airstrikes and Iranian ground troops was crucial in shifting the conflict in favor of the Syrian government. This included air attacks on rebel-controlled regions such as Aleppo, Idlib, and Eastern Ghouta, which utilized weaponry such as precision-guided munitions and cruise missiles to which the Syrian government would have had limited access without Moscow’s presence. Russian special forces likewise played a role in key military campaigns by aiding in the retaking of Palmyra and Aleppo in 2016. In addition, private military contractors, namely the Wagner Group, were utilized in crucial battles and tasked with protecting oil fields and other security nodes.
Furthermore, Russia used its status as a member of the United Nations Security Council to protect Syria from global sanctions and military actions by consistently voting against resolutions targeting Assad’s regime. Since the start of the conflict in Syria in 2011, Russia vetoed 17 Security Council resolutions on Syria, shielding the Assad regime from its human rights abuses and chemical weapon use. Aside from its direct involvement, Russia offered Syria military supplies, including advanced air defense systems, tanks, fighter jets, and helicopters, to bolster its military strength. In return, Russia gained access to Syria’s oil and gas reserves through agreements that focused on areas liberated from IS. Additionally, Russian companies secured deals for reconstructive efforts in Syria, such as revamping energy infrastructure and ports. These moves established Russia as the primary supplier of arms to Syria and boosted its economic influence in the Middle East.
In 2022, Russia’s attention and resources were redirected towards its own conflict with Ukraine, resulting in an overall decrease in its involvement in Syria. With the loss of Russian backing for the Syrian army, it had neither the resources nor the morale to fend off any prospective attacks. At the same time, an increase in Turkish aid to rebel factions, especially HTS, further tilted the scales against Assad. These elements combined to produce a stunning rebel offensive in the final days of November 2024, resulting in the fall of major cities such as Aleppo and Hama and, finally, the takeover of Damascus on December 8. Following his ouster, Assad sought refuge in Moscow, where he and his family were given asylum, marking the formal end of his rule in Syria.
In the following months, Moscow pursued negotiations with the new Syrian government to secure its military sites, such as the Khmeimim air base and Tartus naval base, Russia’s only presence in the Mediterranean Sea. As part of Russia’s efforts to maintain influence in Syria, it offered substantial investment in infrastructure and energy projects, as well as discussions regarding debt relief and reparations for war damage, demonstrating Russia’s commitment to sustaining its existing position in the region post-regime change. Given the precarity of the new government’s position, it is unclear whether it will accept Moscow’s offers, even if they carry material benefits for the Syrian people.
Russia’s involvement in Syria transitioned from being a military supporter of the Assad government to engaging with the challenges of a new era following the end of Assad’s rule. Since December 8, it has emerged as one of the most significant strategic losers of the Syrian revolution.
Israel’s National Security in the Syrian Civil War
Greta Herman, BC ‘26
Israel’s involvement in the Syrian civil war began in 2013, when Israeli airstrikes began targeting Hezbollah and the Assad regime. The conflict––which is technically still ongoing despite Bashar Assad’s exile––initially presented a complex and varied set of potential responses for Israeli military intelligence. Israel quickly coordinated with the Military Operations Center (MOC), a CIA-led initiative that sent Syrian rebel groups funding and weaponry. This intervention failed as Israel and the United States, along with other international actors, unevenly funded a variety of rebel proxies whose competing ideologies and material objectives more or less aligned with those of their sponsor countries. Instead of a united front against the Syrian government, MOC produced sets of quarreling insurgent elements that fought each other as often as they did Assadist forces.
In 2014, military intervention continued to fail as Israeli and the MOC stationed troops alongside the doomed “Southern Front” Syrian rebel group. Security tactics such as the development of the MOC point towards the greater failures of economic and military efforts to intervene, suggesting Israel has to change its approach to the Syrian civil war. The lack of cohesion between Israel and its Western allies suggests an inability to protect national security interests despite overt military intervention.
Given its self-proclaimed status as the only democratic nation in the Middle East, Israel primarily depends on its relationship with the U.S. to fund its military, including aid towards Syrian rebel groups. However, Israel also sought out authoritarian states, specifically Russia, to protect the nation’s “buffer zone” in the Golan Heights from the Assad regime and their allies, particularly Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The Golan serves as a key region of defense against the IRGC and Iranian proxies during the Israeli response to the October 7 attacks. Specifically, in 2018, Moscow assured Israel that their troops would prevent IRGC weapons or militia from being closer than 70 to 80 kilometers from the Golan. At the same time, though, Putin told the Assad regime that Russia would provide them with a “security umbrella.” Russia’s duplicity begs the question of why Israel would rely on assurances from an actor that consistently supported an overt enemy of its national security interests.
Despite this potential misstep, Israel continues to depend on its relationship with the United States and asserts that efforts to counter the IRGC, primarily funded by American aid, have effectively mitigated that threat. At the same time, Israel has consistently navigated a balancing act between non-intervention and attacking jihadist groups that it believes threaten its existence, with some characterizing its inaction during the most intense battles of the Syrian civil war as a “lost opportunity.”
The fall of Assad in December, combined with its aggressive strategic dominance in Lebanon and Gaza, rendered Israel by far the greatest strategic winner of the Syrian civil war. Still, it remains suspicious of the new Syrian government, whose leadership was formerly affiliated with the very jihadist groups that Israel views as an existential security threat. As a result, the Israeli Defense Forces reported “striking over 350 strategic targets, including air bases, weapon depots, chemical weapons sites, and naval vessels, across multiple locations in Syria, such as Damascus, Homs, Tartus, Latakia, and Palmyra,” effectively obliterating 70 to 80 percent of Syria’s military capabilities while seizing control over the whole of the Golan Heights.
Despite this aggression, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claims that “we have no intention of interfering in the internal affairs of Syria, but we certainly do intend to do what is necessary to ensure our security.” It remains to be seen how the new Syrian government will react after its forces have been rebuilt. Overall, between its war in Gaza and its incursions into Lebanon and Syria, Assad’s fall means the initial aims of its CIA-accompanied proxy warfare efforts during the early phases of the civil war have finally come to fruition just a decade later.
Turkey’s Ethnic Cleansing, Disguised as Counterterrorism
Nathan Shurts, CC ‘28
Turkey’s stake in the Syrian civil war is incredibly significant, sharing its southern border with Syria and receiving over 3 million refugees from its conflict, in turn straining the Turkish economy and infrastructure. In 2011, Turkey’s government under President Erdogan supported the Arab Spring protests against Syria’s Assad government, backing the rebel group HTS, formerly the Al-Nusra Front, in fighting the Islamic State. However, Turkey became far more concerned with the growing strength of Kurds in Syria—an ethnic group spanning Iran, Turkey, Syria, and Iraq—as it dealt with ongoing tension with the Kurdish Workers’ Party in Turkey.
With the US supporting the Syrian-Kurdish entity known as the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the civil war, Turkey has grown increasingly concerned that the Kurds may cut a deal with the West for autonomy, like Iraqi Kurds did after the Gulf War. However, when Turkey first invaded Syria in 2016, launching Operation Euphrates Shield against the Islamic State, it did so with tentative American support. Despite this, tensions continued between the two countries as Turkey sought to wipe out the Kurdish entity, which some condemned as ethnic cleansing. In 2018, Turkey launched Operation Olive Branch, employing drones in the area to clear Kurdish militia out of Afrin Canton along the border. This operation chiefly aimed to deter US support for Kurdish forces and push back the terrorist threats they represented.
In 2019, following Operation Olive Branch, President Trump pulled US troops out of Syria and left the US-backed Kurdish forces open to attack. In response, Turkey launched Operation Peace Spring, which engaged the northern border of Syria with its “Syrian National Army,” a group trained and funded by Turkey’s intelligence agencies. This offensive partially decoupled Turkey from the U.S. and EU, formerly its allies, due to its implicit threat to Israel and allegations of Kurdish ethnic cleansing. The move also earned formal EU condemnation, UN threats of response, and trade embargos from allies.
After the Assad regime was toppled on December 8, 2024, Turkey remained at war with the SDF, which it considers an extension of its domestic Kurdish elements, and continues using air and drone strikes in Syria, often killing civilians and protestors. As Turkey continues trying to gain a foothold in Syria and negotiate the return of its refugees, it is clear that Turkey wants to limit Kurdish influence in the region even as it negotiates with the Kurds domestically.
Turkey, like Israel, has emerged as a significant winner since the explosion of regional tensions after October 7. The domestic implications have already yielded significant results: in February, the leader of the Kurdish Workers’ Party, Abdullah Öcalan, called for the dissolution of his organization in exchange for peaceful coexistence with the Turkish people and the state. Moreover, the SDF recently accepted a deal with the new Syrian government to integrate its armed forces into the national military in exchange for constitutional rights and representation.
Still, now that the HTS has set up an interim Syrian government, Turkey has a major stake in ensuring that its new leaders don’t succumb to their histories of Islamic extremism. If they do, that would risk reigniting the civil war and restarting foreign aid to the SDF and the Kurdish non-state actors that Turkey has been fighting for years. Meanwhile, Turkey’s ongoing tensions with Israel and Iran have undermined its ability to mediate the ongoing proxy war in Gaza and Lebanon. This wider regional conflict threatens to deteriorate into another all-out war as Israel contemplates striking Iran’s nuclear facilities to prevent them from developing weapons. Such a strike would exacerbate conflict and force Iran to respond drastically, inciting a larger regional conflict.
If Turkey wants to maintain its advantageous position in the region and its presence in Syria, it will need to use its influence to maintain stability and peace in the new regime. Otherwise, Turkey risks allowing the Middle East to explode into full-scale war.
Revolution Ruined the Resistance: Iran’s Losing Hand After the Fall of Assad
Valerie Rahman Yum, BC ‘28
Dating back to the Iran-Iraq War, Tehran was the chief supporter of the Assad regime, using Syria’s convenient geographic position between the Iranian north and the Mediterranean coast to transport weapons to its proxy forces, namely Lebanon’s Hezbollah, in countering Israeli dominance. As part of its embrace of the Houthis and various Iraqi Shia militias, Iran has formed a so-called “Axis of Resistance” meant to counter the overwhelming military and economic power of American, Israeli, and Western-aligned Arab forces in the region. By using the Assad regime in this grand strategy, Tehran has gotten its hands dirty by inextricably linking itself to the Assad regime’s atrocities, including both bombing and using chemical weapons on civilians. As the HTS-led government grapples with transitional justice and the social consequences of over half a million wartime casualties, this association will prove especially detrimental to its efforts to rebuild arms supply networks and its influence in the region at large.
Throughout the years, Iran actively assisted in the construction of Bashar al-Assad’s political and economic infrastructure. Over time, it became one of the most dominant forces of foreign influence in Syrian affairs. As evidence of the deep relationship Iran had with the Assad regime, one spokesperson reported that 4,000 Iranian citizens left Syria after Assad’s overthrow–– on an Iranian state-run and heavily sanctioned airline, no less. Furthermore, Iran has not expressed any form of regret for the tens of billions of dollars spent in propping up Assad, instead justifying its economic and military investments as efforts for the cause of promoting its national interests.
Nevertheless, the loss in Assad’s fall is practically undeniable: With its channels disrupted and Assad now residing in Moscow, Iran has quietly resorted to using maritime routes to replace the land corridor it once enjoyed for proxy arms shipments through Syrian territory. The IRGC has abandoned all of its military installations after years of operational freedom. The Axis of Resistance may be breaking.
Though it continues in its policy of regional antagonism, Iran’s geopolitical position after December 2024 is weaker than any time in recent memory. Its occasional proxy exchanges with Israel are now limited in effect by the logistical and political decapitation of Hezbollah and Hamas, along with the continued bombardment of the Houthis in Yemen. Tehran may signal some dovish overtures to the HTS-led government in the near future, but how those signals will be received is still in question. The Syrian people will certainly remember the degree to which the Islamic Republic and its proxies were complicit, if not directly responsible, for the atrocities committed by the Assad regime. As a result, Iran must be wary that its politics and reputation will be intertwined with that of Assad’s Syria for decades to come, or at the very least, for now.
Conclusion
Syria’s new life marks a turning point for its citizens and the surrounding region. For over five decades, tens of millions of Syrian civilians have been tormented by the Assad regime, and now, with a new governing authority, some feel as though they have been offered a sense of hope, with many refugees and exiles expressing excitement to finally return to their homeland.
The shifting of the Syrian government presents countries with new decisions to make about their ties to the new administration. Countries like Turkey and Israel now have the opportunity to form fresh connections with the new and ostensibly moderate Syrian government, but they must account for the controversial and fragmented nature of groups like HTS. Both nations can be expected to enjoy their share of the Syrian civil war’s spoils, even if they express reservations about the instability of new state institutions. Israel will almost certainly maintain its hold on the Golan Heights, while Turkey will consolidate its political power over Kurdish groups, either through mutual reconciliation or renewed attacks on Kurdish nationalism.
At the same time, nations that had closer ties to the Assad regime, such as Russia and Iran, must adjust their foreign policies to account for the collapse of their former ally. Russia has chosen the path of negotiation, while Iran has looked elsewhere to rebuild its IRGC forces and its Axis of Resistance. Overpowering diplomacy may lead such countries to find themselves in an undesirable position with excessive association to the unstable government and could undermine their influence in Syria, and by proxy, the Middle East.
In conclusion, Syria’s future remains unstable and unclear. As a state, its success will be influenced not only by the responses of regional actors to this delicate transition but also by those of the Syrian people to the opportunity to rebuild their nation after emerging from some of the darkest depths of authoritarian atrocity seen in this century.
This roundtable was edited by Alex Vilarin, Claire Thornhill, and Maytal Chelst.