NYT (“Iran Begins to Evacuate Military Officials and Personnel From Syria“):
Iran began to evacuate its military commanders and personnel from Syria on Friday, according to regional officials and three Iranian officials, in a sign of Iran’s inability to help keep President Bashar al-Assad in power as he faces a resurgent rebel offensive.
Among those evacuated to neighboring Iraq and Lebanon were top commanders of Iran’s powerful Quds Forces, the external branch of the Revolutionary Guards Corps, the officials said.
The move signaled a remarkable turn for Mr. al-Assad, whose government Iran has backed throughout Syria’s 13-year civil war, and for Iran, which has used Syria as a key route to supply weapons to Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Guards personnel, some Iranian diplomatic staff, their families, and Iranian civilians were also being evacuated, according to the Iranian officials, two of them members of the Guards, and regional officials. Iranians began to leave Syria on Friday morning, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive issue.
[…]
“Iran is starting to evacuate its forces and military personnel because we cannot fight as an advisory and support force if Syria’s army itself does not want to fight,” Mehdi Rahmati, a prominent Iranian analyst who advises officials on regional strategy, said in a telephone interview.
“The bottom line,” he added, “is that Iran has realized that it cannot manage the situation in Syria right now with any military operation and this option is off the table.”
[…]
The Iranian officials said that two top generals of Iran’s Quds forces, deployed to advise the Syrian army, had fled to Iraq as various rebel groups took over Homs and Deir al-Zour on Friday.
“Syria is at the verge of collapse and we are watching calmly,” said Ahmad Naderi, an Iranian Parliament member, in a post on social media on Friday. He added that if Damascus fell, Iran would also lose its sway in Iraq and Lebanon, saying, “I don’t understand the reason for this inaction but whatever it is, it’s not good for our country.”
The rebel offensive came at a moment of relative weakness for three of Syria’s most important supporters. Iran’s ability to help has been curtailed by its conflict with Israel; Russia’s military has been sapped by its invasion of Ukraine; and Hezbollah, which had previously supplied fighters to aid the Assad government’s fight against the Islamic State, has been battered badly by its own war with Israel.
The fall of more territory to rebel forces, which are led by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, could also threaten Iran’s ability to supply either Mr. al-Assad’s regime or Hezbollah with weapons and advisers.
Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, had traveled to Damascus this week, meeting with Mr. al-Assad and pledging Iran’s full support.
But in Baghdad on Friday, he appeared to make a more ambiguous statement. “We are not fortune tellers,” he said in an interview on Iraqi television. “Whatever is God’s will shall happen, but the resistance will fulfill its duty.”
Reuters (“Situation in Syria creating new weakness for Hezbollah, Iran, says US envoy Hochstein“):
U.S. envoy Amos Hochstein said the situation in Syria, where rebels are pressing a rapid advance that is threatening President Bashar al-Assad’s grip on power, was creating a new weakness for militant Lebanese group Hezbollah and for Iran.
The U.S. envoy, who negotiated a U.S-brokered ceasefire agreement in the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah that went into effect on Nov. 27, said he believed Hezbollah was not yet eliminated but it was rather weakened.
[…]
Hochstein, speaking during a political conference in Doha, said the situation in Syria would mean it was going to be harder for Iran to supply Hezbollah with weapons there, adding that Iran appeared to be withdrawing its support from Syria, without clarifying how.
Iran has said it is pulling out embassy families but has denied a report by the New York Times that it was pulling out military personnel.
Hochstein added that Hezbollah “may not be strong enough to fight Israel or to support Assad but it doesn’t take a lot of strength to be a dominant presence in Lebanon so you can also be weakened and still strong at the same time when it comes to the Lebanese context”.
Al Jazeera (“Where does Iran stand on Syria’s fast-moving conflict?“):
Iran has continued to voice support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as opposition fighters carry on with a blistering military offensive that aims to overthrow the government.
The foreign ministers of Iran, Russia and Turkiye held Astana-format talks, joined by United Nations representatives in Qatar on Saturday, as more Syrian cities fell to the armed opposition groups.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told reporters after the meeting in Doha that participants agreed that the conflict should end and that political dialogue needs to be established between the Syrian government and “legitimate opposition groups”.
The last of these reports has a rather detailed rundown of recent power shifts inside of Syria, illustrated by this map:
That conflict, like so many others that rage round the world, drew enormous attention in the Western press for weeks before drifting off into the background. It took some stunning gains by opposition forces to bring the spotlight back.
Even with a decoder ring, assessing this from the standpoint of American interests is next to impossible. The only unalloyed good news is that ISIL is a tiny shell of its former self. Otherwise, the large swaths controlled by forces aligned with ostensible American ally Turkey and actual American partner (but enemy of Turkey and ostensibly on our terrorist watchlist) Kurdish forces is, to say the least, complicated.
The continued bad news for Iran, though, is something to celebrate. The Islamic Republic is a malign force in the region and has suffered setback after setback among its proxy forces.
