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WHAT CAUSED ASSAD’S SUDDEN FALL  
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Interview with Joshua Landis by Michael Hirsh
December 9, 2024
Politico
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_ And what is its significance for the Middle East and U.S. policy _

Citizens in Syria take down statues of Hafez al-Assad – the father
of Bashar al-Assad, in Damascus, Syria on December 9, 2024. , [Murat
Şengül – Anadolu Agency]

 

The stunning fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Sunday has
completely changed the dynamics of the Middle East, explains Joshua
Landis, head of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University
of Oklahoma. Assad, says Landis, “didn’t appreciate the weakness
of his own situation. And then, of course, once Israel destroyed
Hezbollah’s leadership and pinned Iran’s ears back, he was left
naked.”

The new nominal Syrian leader, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, is a radical
Islamist who once fought alongside al Qaeda against the Americans in
Iraq. But he’s since dramatically moderated his views, says Landis,
who spent more than 14 years living in the Middle East and is the
author of the forthcoming book, _Syria at Independence: Nationalism,
Leadership, and Failure of Republicanism_. And Landis says that
President-elect Donald Trump has an opportunity to find ways of
working with Jolani to gain leverage against Iran and Russia.
“America has wanted a Sunni-led state in Damascus in order to hurt
Iran. And Russia. And it’s now got it, right? So you know — why
bite the hand that you wanted now?”

_This interview has been edited for length and clarity._

WHAT BROUGHT ON THE SUDDEN COLLAPSE OF THE REGIME OF BASHAR AL-ASSAD,
THE FORMER SYRIAN PRESIDENT?

Well, it’s taken 14 years, but the fight had gone out of the Syrian
army. Soldiers weren’t getting paid. Officers were making $30 a
month, enlisted men $10 a month. In order to feed their families
officers were letting many of their soldiers go home, and then they
weren’t even collecting the $10 a month. There was no money. Syria
was bankrupt. It was also bankrupt politically and couldn’t offer
Syrians any sort of a brighter future.

THE U.N. SAID EARLIER THIS YEAR THAT 90 PERCENT OF SYRIANS
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LIVING BELOW THE POVERTY LINE, AND FOOD AID WAS FAST DISAPPEARING.

Much of Syria’s wealth, some 40 percent of its government receipts
before the revolution, came from its oil and gas wells. Syria
doesn’t have a lot of oil, but it has enough oil for its own
consumption, and that is key because today it doesn’t control it,
and that means that there’s only an hour or two of electricity for
most homes in Syria a day. It means that in wintertime, schools are
freezing and people are freezing in their apartments. It’s a very
bad situation.

Those wells are mostly owned by the United States today, and they’re
very seriously run down, and not producing what they should be
producing. So getting foreign companies in to rebuild them and to
revive this entire oil industry is going to be key to the Syrian
government, and that means a tug of war in the United States. And
there is really no excuse for the United States to own those now. They
couldn’t give them up before because they were denying them,
theoretically, to ISIS, but also to Russia and Iran, which are enemies
of the United States. But this government of Syria today is no longer
an enemy of the United States, so there is no legal pretext for
holding on to these oil wells.

BUT THE LEADING REBEL GROUP THAT JUST TOOK DAMASCUS, HAYAT TAHRIR
AL-SHAM (HTS), IS A RADICAL ISLAMIST GROUP AND ITS LEADER, ABU
MOHAMMAD AL-JOLANI, ONCE FOUGHT WITH AL QAEDA IN IRAQ AGAINST THE
AMERICANS — THOUGH HE’S SINCE BROKEN WITH THE EXTREMISTS PUBLICLY.
SO IS IT ACCURATE TO SAY THAT THEY’RE NOT GOING TO BE AN ENEMY OF
THE UNITED STATES?

Well, that’s what obviously the United States is going to determine.
Jolani has made it very clear that there’s no place for extremism in
Syria. He said he wants to be friends with everybody, and Syria’s
only enemies are Iran and Hezbollah and Assad. So he’s clearly
saying all the right things, and yes, the United States can say, ‘I
don’t believe you,’ which it will do for some time, and it’ll
try to keep all this for leverage and to justify sanctions on him and
his government, to try to prevent it from rebuilding and keeping it
poor. But if Jolani doesn’t declare war on Washington and says that
he’s trying to build a government and feed people so that they can
come home and refugees can return, the United States is going to look
bad if it doesn’t come to terms with that. And Jolani has already
been reaching out to the American government, from what I’ve heard
from people in Washington. And so they’re going to have to engage
with him and take the measure of him and his new government, but
they’re going to have to act rather swiftly on this, because the
entire Arab world and larger world is going to want to give this new
government the benefit of the doubt.

IS HE NOT, THOUGH, STILL ON THE U.S. TERRORIST LIST? I THINK THERE’S
A BIG PRICE ON HIS HEAD.

There is a big price on his head, and there are many people in
Washington who are working to get him off the terrorist list. The
Washington Institute for Near East Policy has a number of people
who’ve been arguing quite vociferously that Washington should take
another look at him, and he’s moderated, and that he’s done many
good things.

CAN YOU TALK MORE ABOUT HOW YOU THINK JOLANI AND HTS EVOLVED
IDEOLOGICALLY? FOR EXAMPLE, WHEN THE TALIBAN TOOK POWER IN AFGHANISTAN
THEY ALSO MADE NOISES OF MODERATION, ABOUT WANTING TO ENGAGE, BUT
THEY’RE STILL A RADICAL ISLAMIST GROUP. AND DURING THE TIME HTS
RULED OVER THE CITY OF IDLIB, ITS BASE, IT WAS KNOWN FOR ITS BRUTAL
TACTICS, INCLUDING SOMETIMES TORTURE.

True, he didn’t have a democratic government. There was no democracy
in Idlib. Of course, it was a strange situation with tons of refugees,
but he hasn’t talked about democracy in any way, shape or form, and
one of the biggest U.S. demands under Assad was U.N. Resolution 2254,
which calls for a democratic transition in Syria. Biden even mentioned
it in his most recent speech today. So clearly Washington is holding
that up as an expectation. But Jolani is much less dogmatic than, say,
the Iranians, and he’s shown his flexibility and ability to try to
woo Syrian minorities and foreign countries.

YOU DON’T THINK WE SHOULD FEAR THAT SYRIA WILL NOW BE A HAVEN FOR
MORE RADICALISM, FOR AL QAEDA, FOR THE REBIRTH OF ISIS? EVEN IF IT IS
TRUE THAT, AS YOU SAY, JOLANI IS MAKING THE RIGHT NOISES, WE DON’T
REALLY KNOW WHAT HE INTENDS.

We don’t. But you know, one can imagine that the legitimacy will go
out of ISIS, because with Islamist rulers taking over in Damascus,
there is no longer justification for fight against the unbelieving
Shiites. And your average Syrian young person is not going to look at
Jolani and think, ‘Oh, he’s an unbeliever,’ right? And so Jolani
is going to have to move against ISIS as quickly as he can in order to
reassure the West. And that’s going to be a big test for him.

GIVE US A LITTLE MORE HISTORY ON HOW THE U.S. CAME TO CONTROL
SYRIA’S OIL AND GAS.

It’s because ISIS controlled it along the Euphrates River where most
of the big oil and gas wells are. And the United States bombed it and
then took it over. … And that’s what it uses to fund the Kurdish
militias in the northeast.

THE UNITED STATES HAS DITHERED A LONG TIME OVER SYRIA SINCE THE ARAB
SPRING BEGAN IN 2011. BARACK OBAMA DIDN’T WANT TO GIVE TOO MUCH AID
TO THE SYRIAN REBELS BECAUSE HE FEARED THE POSSIBILITY OF AN ISLAMIST
TAKEOVER JUST LIKE THIS ONE. AT THE SAME TIME, THE U.S. WAS OPPOSED TO
ASSAD. SO IT APPEARED TO BE A POLICY OF DOING NOTHING, AND INTO THAT
VACUUM, IF YOU WILL, RUSSIA STEPPED IN 2015. COULD YOU TALK ABOUT HOW
THIS EVOLVED?

I think the CIA was put into a very difficult position in Syria
because President Obama, on the one hand, wanted Assad to step aside
— but at the same time, he didn’t want the Syrian army to be
destroyed. So he gave the CIA a horrible brief, which was to get rid
of Assad without destroying the Syrian army. And that proved
impossible for the United States, because the top 40 generals in the
Syrian army were all Alawites [the minority Shiite sect of the Assad
family]. And they weren’t going to dump this Alawite-led government
and allow for some Sunni rebels to be running the place, because they
would all be driven from their jobs — as they will be in the next
few weeks. And once the rebels increasingly became dominated by al
Qaeda and ISIS, America got spooked, and they turned away from the
entire task of overthrowing Assad. So it was a terrible choice and
that’s why Russia stepped in.

But the Americans may have been secretly relieved that Russia stepped
in because it meant keeping Assad’s army from collapsing and being
overthrown. Obama’s first words [after Russia’s intervention] were
that the U.S. is not going to go to war with Russia for Syria, and
then [Russian Foreign Minister Sergei] Lavrov and [Secretary of State
John] Kerry began to work on what they called de-confliction, which
was dividing Syria between them. And America took everything north and
east of the Euphrates River and Russia got everything else. And of
course, Turkey jumped in and decided they didn’t want to let Russia
and Assad reconquer everything. So they created a buffer zone in Idlib
and northern Aleppo province for themselves, in which these militias
[like HTS] took refuge.

DID ASSAD FALL BECAUSE HE WAS SIMPLY CONTINUING TO RELY FAR TOO MUCH
ON IRAN AND RUSSIA?

Absolutely. And he was arrogant. He didn’t appreciate the weakness
of his own situation. And then, of course, once Israel destroyed
Hezbollah’s leadership and pinned Iran’s years back, he was left
naked.

WASN’T RUSSIA’S LACK OF SUPPORT ALSO DECISIVE SINCE IT WAS SO TIED
DOWN IN UKRAINE?

I think it’s all three. I think Israel really changed the balance of
power in the region, and that’s why the rebels were champing at the
bit. They wanted to take advantage of that incredible blow to
Hezbollah, because Hezbollah had played such an important part in
retaking Aleppo. But of course, Russia no longer provided support with
its air force. So all three of those factors were key. And Assad’s
economic support disappeared as well.

GIVE US THE LARGER PICTURE OF WHAT THIS MEANS FOR THE MIDDLE EAST,
ESPECIALLY IN TERMS OF HOW WEAKENED IRAN HAS BECOME
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This is a big blow for Iran. Hezbollah has been decimated, and it
looks like the loss of Syria means that Iran will not be able to
rebuild Hezbollah. _(According to Landis, Hezbollah relied on Syria
for the overland transit of weapons. -Ed.) _That entire argument that
Hezbollah would serve as a deterrent to Israel attacking Iran’s
nuclear facilities is now gone. Yeah, there is no deterrent. Israel
can attack Iran’s nuclear facilities at will. And undoubtedly,
[Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu is is trying to figure out
whether Trump will play ball with him on that. But Iran still has a
lot of capabilities, putting its own satellites in space, and it’s
doing some very sophisticated things. So counting Iran out would be a
big mistake.

AND OF COURSE, RUSSIA HAS LOST.

This is a major, major loss for Russia’s foreign policy, because in
the past, we’ve seen that Israel was one of the major suppliers of
the Georgian state for its military stuff. And when Russia challenged
Israel and said, ‘Don’t do it, or I’m going to give the Syrians
sophisticated anti-aircraft missiles,’ Netanyahu agreed not to
supply the Georgians. For the same reason Israel has been quite
deferential to Russia on Ukrainian issues, because they didn’t want
Russia to help Assad on the Israeli issue. So that was important
leverage, along with the Russian port on the Mediterranean, and all
those things are gone now.

WHAT SHOULD BE THE POLICY OF INCOMING PRESIDENT TRUMP, BOTH TOWARD
SYRIA BUT MORE BROADLY TOWARD THE MIDDLE EAST?

Well, I think a new page has turned. The United States has been
against Assad primarily because Assad was an ally of Iran and Russia,
and today, the new Syria is no longer an ally of Russia or Iran. We
don’t know who is going to be an ally of Syria right now, other than
Turkey, right? But it is a Sunni state for the first time in 54 years.
And that’s significant. America has wanted a Sunni-led state in
Damascus in order to hurt Iran. And Russia. And it’s now got it,
right? So you know — why bite the hand that you wanted now? Yes,
they’re more Islamist than Washington would prefer to have. But
that’s the reality of the Middle East.

_Michael Hirsh is the former foreign editor and chief diplomatic
correspondent for Newsweek, and the former national editor
for _POLITICO Magazine_._

 

* Syrian conflict
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* Bashar al-Assad
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* Overthrow
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* Future of the Middle East
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