Outside the Beltway

Rebels Retake Aleppo

Another huge blow against Iranian's regional strategy.

James Joyner · Saturday, November 30, 2024 · 16 comments

Reuters (“Syrian army confirms rebels enter Aleppo, says dozens of soldiers killed“):

The Syrian military said on Saturday that rebels had entered large parts of Aleppo city during an offensive in which dozens of soldiers had been killed, forcing the army to redeploy – the biggest challenge to President Bashar al-Assad in years.

The surprise attack led by the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham has jolted the frontlines of the Syrian civil war that have largely been frozen since 2020, reviving fighting in a corner of the fractured country near the Turkish border. The army said it was preparing a counteroffensive to restore state authority.

The Syrian army command’s statement was the first public acknowledgement by the military that rebels had entered Aleppo, which had been under full state control since government forces backed by Russia and Iran drove out rebels eight years ago.

“The large numbers of terrorists and the multiplicity of battlefronts prompted our armed forces to carry out a redeployment operation aimed at strengthening the defence lines in order to absorb the attack, preserve the lives of civilians and soldiers, and prepare for a counterattack,” the army said.

The army said that the rebels had entered large parts of Aleppo but army bombardment had stopped them from establishing fixed positions. It promised to “expel them and restore the control of the state … over the entire city and its countryside”.

Two rebel sources said the insurgents had also captured the city of Maraat al Numan in Idlib province, bringing all of that province under their control, in what would be another significant blow to Assad.

In addition to radically reshaping the situation in a 13-year-old civil war that most Americans had forgotten about, it’s yet another blow against Iranian ambitions in the regional proxy war the regime has been financing for four decades.

The rebels, including factions backed by Turkey, said on Friday their fighters were sweeping through various Aleppo neighbourhoods.

Mustafa Abdul Jaber, a commander in the Jaish al-Izza rebel brigade, said their speedy advance had been helped by a lack of Iran-backed manpower to support the government in the broader Aleppo province.

Iran’s allies in the region have suffered a series of blows at the hands of Israel as the Gaza war has expanded through the Middle East.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi, in a phone call with his Syrian counterpart on Friday, accused the United States and Israel of being behind the insurgent attack.

The opposition fighters have said the campaign was in response to stepped-up strikes in recent weeks against civilians by the Russian and Syrian air forces on areas of Idlib province, and to preempt any attacks by the Syrian army.

The connectedness of the region’s wars is complex, as Ellen Knickmeyer notes in an AP explainer:

Intervention by Russia, Iran and Iranian-allied Hezbollah and other groups has allowed Assad to remain in power, within the 70% of Syria under his control.

The surge in fighting has raised the prospect of another violent front reopening in the Middle East, at a time when U.S.-backed Israel is fighting Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, both Iranian-allied groups.

Robert Ford, the last-serving U.S. ambassador to Syria, pointed to months of Israeli strikes on Syrian and Hezbollah targets in the area, and to Israel’s ceasefire with Hezbollah in Lebanon this week, as factors providing Syria’s rebels with the opportunity to advance.

[…]

The roughly 30% of the country not under Assad is controlled by a range of opposition forces and foreign troops. The U.S. has about 900 troops in northeast Syria, far from Aleppo, to guard against a resurgence by the Islamic State. Both the U.S. and Israel conduct occasional strikes in Syria against government forces and Iran-allied militias. Turkey has forces in Syria as well, and has influence with the broad alliance of opposition forces storming Aleppo.

Coming after years with few sizeable changes in territory between Syria’s warring parties, the fighting “has the potential to be really quite, quite consequential and potentially game-changing,” if Syrian government forces prove unable to hold their ground, said Charles Lister, a longtime Syria analyst with the U.S.-based Middle East Institute. Risks include if Islamic State fighters see it as an opening, Lister said.

Ford said the fighting in Aleppo would become more broadly destabilizing if it drew Russia and Turkey — each with its own interests to protect in Syria — into direct heavy fighting against each other.

[…]

This year, Israeli airstrikes in Aleppo have hit Hezbollah weapons depots and Syrian forces, among other targets, according to an independent monitoring group. Israel rarely acknowledges strikes at Aleppo and other government-held areas of Syria.

A NYT report (“Syrian Rebels Breach City of Aleppo, in Biggest Advance in Years“) adds:

The rebel offensive launched on Wednesday is the most serious challenge to President Bashar al-Assad’s regime in years. And the timing of it has raised questions about whether the rebels are trying to take advantage of weakness across an alliance with Iran at the center, and groups like Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Syrian regime closely aligned with it.

But rebels said they had been preparing the offensive for months.

Weapons and money have long flowed from Iran across Syria’s borders to Hezbollah in Lebanon, part of a so-called “axis of resistance” that includes the Palestinian armed group Hamas in Gaza. Iran and Hezbollah also provided vital military support to Mr. al-Assad that helped him survive the civil war.

But now, Hezbollah, Hamas and Iran have all been weakened by more than a year of conflict with Israel. A cease-fire this week halted more than 13 months of war between Israel and Hezbollah while Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza continues.

Israel has been bombing Syria for months, targeting Iranian commanders and fighters in the country and weapons shipments transiting through Syria to Hezbollah.

At the same time, Mr. al-Assad’s other key military ally, Russia, is bogged down in the war in Ukraine.

The rapid shifts over the past three days “serve as a powerful reminder that the Syrian conflict is far from “frozen,” said Mohammed Alaa Ghanem, a senior policy adviser for Citizens for a Secure and Safe America, a Syrian American advocacy group.

“What remains clear is that these developments expose Assad’s deep vulnerabilities and his regime’s lack of popular legitimacy,” he said.

A June report from scholars at the European Council on Foreign Relations (“Beyond proxies: Iran’s deeper strategy in Syria and Lebanon“) provides useful context. After a recapitulation of recent tit-for-tat strikes by Israel and Iran, the authors note:

These escalatory dynamics are shaped by Israel’s wider response since the Hamas attacks and Iran’s “forward-defence” strategy, a decades-old approach based on confronting potential threats before they reach Iranian borders. Within this strategy, Lebanon and Syria have always represented critical arenas for Tehran’s strategic ambitions. Since 7 October, Tehran’s allies in Lebanon and Syria have provided some military support for Hamas by tying up Israeli resources on other fronts. But Tehran has also used its influence to cement its deterrence posture against any Israeli or US targeting of Iran in response to the Hamas attacks.

[…]

Iran’s focus on preserving its influence in Lebanon and Syria ultimately trumps its ideological commitment to supporting Palestinians and fighting Israel, as does its underlying aversion to war with the US. The country’s 13 April attacks on Israel demonstrated an unprecedented willingness to assume a more escalatory position to maintain its deterrence credibility. But this was still accompanied by caution. Iranian leaders seem to have little desire for a war that would likely draw in the US directly, reverse Israel’s growing international isolation, and jeopardise their hard-earned influence in Syria and Lebanon.

[…]

As the cornerstone of Iran’s regional policy, the axis of resistance – which includes the Assad regime and Iranian-backed militias in Syria, Hizbullah in Lebanon, Iraqi militias, Yemen’s Houthis, and Palestinian factions including Hamas – is ideologically founded on the basis of opposition to US influence in the Middle East and confrontation with Israel. The network shares a commitment to resisting what its members perceive as the West’s imperial ambitions in the Middle East and forming a unified front against common adversaries. In this sense, the axis is more than just a political and military alliance; it is a manifestation of Iran’s revolutionary ideals, aimed at reshaping the regional order to fit Tehran’s anti-US and anti-Israeli vision.

At the strategic level, Iran’s “forward-defence” strategy supplements this ideological foundation by transforming ambition into action. By extending Iran’s influence and establishing proxy forces across the Middle East, its leaders seek to deter potential threats before they reach Iranian borders. This forward-defence concept, better known in Iranian military circles as “offensive defence”, is a military strategy that integrates offensive elements within a larger framework based on deterrence. From this perspective, Iranian military strategists view the country’s approach in the Middle East as an endeavour to enhance Iran’s “strategic depth” – and not as an ambitious expansionist project. Their aim is to increase Iran’s capacity to absorb enemy strikes and to deliver counter-strikes, all while safeguarding domestic security and territorial integrity.

Since decades of arms embargoes have curtailed Iran’s ability to develop conventional military capabilities, while its rivals in the Middle East – especially Saudi Arabia – have significantly advanced in this realm, Iran has focused on asymmetric tools, most importantly its axis of resistance allies. These tools also include the use of domestically produced drones and medium- to long-range missiles and asymmetric naval capabilities, such as speed boats, drones, and sea mines (like Iran has deployed in the Strait of Hormuz over recent years). This strategy reflects Iran’s acknowledgment of the limitations of its conventional military capabilities vis-à-vis superior adversaries.

Tehran has doubled down on this strategy over the past decade as tensions with the US and Israel have escalated. The deteriorating relations have resulted in crippling economic sanctions aimed at curtailing Iran’s nuclear and regional ambitions, as well as targeted assassinations and cyber-attacks against Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. This has significantly exacerbated Iranian leaders’ threat perceptions, cementing their belief in the strategic importance of enhancing the country’s deterrence capabilities.

Lebanon and Syria are central arenas for this strategy. Over recent decades, Tehran has built up significant political and military influence across the two countries, and senior Iranian officials now contend that Iran’s “natural strategic depth” stretches all the way to the Mediterranean Sea. Geographical priorities are a guiding force for Iran’s strategic focus. Iran’s presence in southern Lebanon positions Hizbullah as the most significant challenge to Israel in the event of a multi-front war with the axis of resistance. Syria’s Golan Heights – which borders Israel – is also of immense strategic value as a possible further layer of deterrence.

Things have deteriorated, from an Iranian perspective, rather considerably since. Hezbollah has suffered huge setbacks and has been forced to accept a ceasefire. And now this.