The fall of Aleppo this weekend surprised even the residents of Aleppo, so you can imagine how flabbergasted foreign analysts were, from thousands of miles away. As recently as a week ago, the Syrian civil war seemed to have reached a dismal equilibrium: The Syrian government controlled most major cities, including Aleppo, and had ceased progress in retaking insurgent enclaves in Syria’s north and east. A Sunni group controlled a microstate in Syria’s northwest, which started as a little patch of Talibanism in the Levant. This miserable deadlock showed no sign of changing. But on Friday, those Sunnis fought their way into Aleppo, and the government troops withdrew without much of a fight. Now the city is under insurgent control, and no one is sure whether the government forces have it in them to stop the insurgency from penetrating farther south, perhaps even to Damascus.
These events may have been unexpected, but they are also oddly familiar. Ten years ago, the northern-Iraq city of Mosul fell to a Sunni jihadist insurgent group, after the Iraqi army collapsed and then vanished. That group was the Islamic State, which had recently broken from al-Qaeda. And like the Syrian regime, led by Bashar al-Assad, the Iraqi government was close to Tehran. In both cases, the fall of a whole city seemed implausible until images of jihadists wandering around Mosul and Aleppo circulated on social media. In both cases, the incredulity at what had just happened swiftly gave way to morbid curiosity about what might happen next, if the jihadists proceeded to the capital. Both cases, finally, share an underlying dynamic: Syria and Iraq allowed themselves to become tools of Iran, and therefore never developed competent states themselves. When their citizens rose up to object to a government that cared more about Iran’s wishes than their own, the states were too hollow and incompetent to crush the uprising.
In Aleppo, the Sunni jihadists are principally members of a group called Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham. HTS is a descendant of al-Qaeda, the mother-group from which ISIS broke in 2013. Since then, HTS has mellowed out to some extent, having learned from the Islamic State’s decidedly unmellow example 10 years ago. When ISIS conquered cities, it quickly instituted a particularly humorless version of Islamic law, began amputating hands of thieves, and slaughtered Shia. HTS claims to have given up jihadism, and their fighters have so far not soaked Aleppo’s streets with blood or engaged in sectarian persecution. HTS’s leaders have issued statements reassuring residents and rival factions that they do not intend them harm. One would have to be naive to think that HTS intends interfaith outreach to the eternally damned Shia, but their leaders have clearly evolved in their ideology. They have at least learned the value of patience, just as ISIS demonstrated the benefits of its opposite by galvanizing jihadism on a planetary scale.
In both Syria and Iraq, the security of the central government depended on Iran—and because Iran is a Shiite sectarian power, the Sunnis ended up ignored, subjugated, or just plain shafted. In Syria, this shafting took the form of Iranian, Lebanese, and Iraqi paramilitaries wandering the land and killing insurgents and civilians. Russians joined in as well. Syria is a Russian ally, and Russia’s Mediterranean naval base is the Syrian port of Tartus.
Tehran did not care about creating a state. It cared only about creating a proxy. And eventually, proxies crumble, because (as Machiavelli wrote five centuries ago, about mercenaries and auxiliaries) nothing is as shockproof and reliable as a state army composed of citizens whose interests match your own. Iran never created a proper state army in either country, so there was a natural limit to the capability and dedication of those fighting for it. ISIS surpassed that limit in 2014. HTS has done so now.
In the past, Assad, Syria’s president, could rely on Iran to succor his country by sending Hezbollah from Lebanon or Iraqi militias, or could rely on Russia to supply it with Wagner mercenaries. But 2024 just isn’t Assad’s year: Russia has impoverished and overextended itself fighting Ukraine, and Hezbollah is busy nursing groin injuries inflicted by Israel. Proxies from Iraq are reportedly on their way to help Assad, but they, too, have other priorities right now, such as safeguarding the gains they’ve made by taking over the Iraqi state and its underground economy. Assad himself was rumored to be in Moscow recently, probably less to take in the Bolshoi’s new production of Boris Godunov than to avoid becoming a Boris Godunov himself, dying as a rebel army approaches—or worse yet, a Muammar Qaddafi, skewered up the backside by a howling crowd.
Iranian media said Assad was in Damascus yesterday and met with Iran’s foreign minister. Russia and Iran have already moved to support Assad. Today Russian jets bombed Idlib, HTS’s stronghold, and the insurgent advance on the next city between Aleppo and Damascus, Hama, has thus far been halted. But if it resumes, little would stand between the rebels and Damascus—which is to say, total regime collapse and a dramatic, squalid end to Iran’s major state ally in the Levant. Turkey’s proxies have played a significant role in beating back Assad’s forces, and among state powers, Turkey is the biggest beneficiary of their retreat. It has already pressed its advantage to take over Kurdish regions of northern Syria and fight against Kurdish armed groups. But Israel and other forces not aligned with Iran will also find things to like about Assad’s government being pinned down.
When Mosul fell and ISIS declared its caliphate, many in Washington realized, belatedly, that a movement they thought had been contained to a dusty backwater of eastern Syria had suddenly acquired regional and even global characteristics. In this case, something similar may have happened: A conflict frozen in northern Syria has thawed from the heat of battles hundreds of miles away, and now the war in Syria could reflect its own heat back on those distant battlefields. Russia and Iran will not want to lose Assad and their various assets. But what will Moscow and Tehran give up to save them, and to whom will they give it up? If Russia is seeking a deal with Ukraine and its allies, or Tehran is seeking a deal with the United States, the fate of Damascus might end up as part of the bargain.
The United States has not done much in Syria in the past several years. Its troops in eastern Syria, far from Aleppo, have been spectators, though they have served a purpose: They are strategically placed to help block Iran’s land bridge across Iraq and all the way to the Mediterranean. America’s ally there is the Kurdish-led alliance that Turkey is intent on neutralizing because of its connections with Kurdish separatists in Turkey. According to his Cabinet nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Donald Trump intends to remove those troops. (He called them “cannon fodder,” but whose cannons they would be fed into is anyone’s guess.) If they are removed, the United States—not even a spectator at that point—will have even less say over how any deal might look. Right now America’s advantage would be best served by staying put, and safeguarding its remaining influence over the world that is preparing to be born out of the ruins of this decade-long civil war.
