As ‘axis of resistance’ faces greatest test, Damascus clings to the sidelines
The Syrian regime, while indebted to Hezbollah and Tehran, has distanced itself from the escalating regional conflict between the “axis of resistance” and Israel. Where does Damascus stand?
15 October 2024
PARIS — Israeli missiles tore into a residential building in the Mezzeh area of the Syrian capital, Damascus on October 8, killing eight civilians—including women and children—and injuring 11 others. Tel Aviv said the strike targeted a senior official in Lebanese Hezbollah overseeing weapons smuggling between the two countries.
Recent strikes in Damascus, as elsewhere in Syria, are part of Tel Aviv’s escalating war against Iran and Hezbollah—hunting down prominent figures within the Lebanese armed group, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and other Tehran-affiliated figures.
Tel Aviv’s strikes inside Syrian territory, while a regular occurrence for years, have significantly escalated since Iran launched some 200 ballistic missiles at Israel in early October, in part as a response to the assassination of Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah.
For decades, the Assad regime in Syria has been part of the regional, Tehran-backed “axis of resistance” opposed to Israel. The informal alliance, which also includes Iraq, Hezbollah, Yemen’s Houthis and Palestinian resistance factions, has been engaged in a larger regional confrontation with Israel since the start of its latest war on Gaza last October.
But while other axis members have engaged in open conflict with Israel, Damascus remains on the sidelines, despite owing its survival to Tehran and Hezbollah—its main backers following the 2011 Syrian revolution.
Where does Damascus stand in the escalating regional conflict? Why has it remained outside the “unity of arenas” of resistance to Israel, particularly as its ally Hezbollah faces an attempted eradication by Tel Aviv, with the majority of its leadership targeted—including Nasrallah, his would-be successor Hashem Safieddine and dozens of other top commanders—in Lebanon and Syria alike?
Regime stance
In the wake of the October 8 Mezzeh bombing, Syria’s foreign ministry condemned the attack, stressing the “need to take immediate measures to deter this entity from continuing its approach based on shedding innocent blood, spreading chaos and seeking to drag it into a confrontation that will have catastrophic circumstances.”
When Syrian President Bashar al-Assad met with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi in Damascus on October 5, he praised Tehran’s retaliation for Nasrallah’s September 27 assassination, calling it a “strong response [that] provided a lesson” that “the axis of resistance is capable of deterring the enemy, and will remain strong and steadfast.”
Damascus’ response to Israel’s war against Hezbollah—its key ally—might have been expected to differ from its position on the war in Gaza. The Lebanese armed group lent much of its military weight to regime fronts against its opponents over the past nearly 14 years since the Syrian revolution, a choice that left it exposed to Israeli intelligence. Hamas, meanwhile, took a stance rejecting the Syrian regime at the start of the revolution, before normalizing relations with Assad in 2022.
The regime has not dared “even to make political statements” because its goal is “self-preservation,” Ahmad Hamada, a defected Syrian colonel and military analyst, told Syria Direct. Nasrallah may not have been counting on Assad’s support in any case, stating prior to his death that Hezbollah did not “want the Iranians or Syrians to intervene in the war, because he knew full well that they would not rush to his aid,” Hamada added.
Mention of the Syrian front was unusually absent from Nasrallah’s final speeches before his assassination. The Syrian regime, meanwhile, ignored a number of his speeches, and Syrian television did not broadcast his statements in his final weeks.
Hasan Shaghel, a London-based researcher, ruled out the prospect of Damascus’ direct involvement in war with Israel. “The regime is an international actor, a simple but rational actor within the international system, weighing gains and losses more than non-state groups such as Hezbollah and the Houthis,” he said.
“The regime realizes that the magnitude of losses that it could suffer, or that could cause its fall, is greater than any scenario bringing gains,” Shaghel told Syria Direct. Iran is making a similar calculation, he said, trying “to avoid war and not get directly involved” because both countries’ regimes “do not have sufficient political, economic and social capabilities to fight such a war.”
Similarly, Shaghel considers it unlikely that Iran will pressure the Syrian regime to “engage in the war against Israel, as it is fully aware that any direct involvement by the regime would be tantamount to its termination by Israel or Western countries.” Given the structure of the Assad regime, “if the head of the pyramid is uprooted, the pyramid will collapse,” he added. “This is what Iran does not want, because maintaining the regime means maintaining Iranian influence in the region.”
For Damascus to enter what Iran, in Shaghel’s view, considers a “losing war,” would “entail the direct entry of Western actors, such as the Americans,” he said.
While the Assad regime could yet be drawn into the war, this would not come “at its own initiative but at Israel’s initiative in striking it,” al-Sheghal said. Damascus’ involvement “depends on the extent to which Israel reads its current behavior—the use of Syrian territory to mobilize Iranian militias or allow the passage of weapons to Hezbollah.” It could be pulled in “because it cannot control the militias” present in its territory, he added.
Strikes aimed at Israel have been launched many times from within Syrian territory—albeit not directly by Damascus. If Tel Aviv feels “these strikes are with the regime’s direct intervention, it will strike it,” al-Shaghel said.
Limited movements
The pattern of Israeli strikes in southern Syria—Daraa, Quneitra and Suwayda provinces—over the past four weeks, according to data compiled by Syria Direct, sheds some light on Iranian movements on the ground.
In Quneitra, during September and October, Israeli air and artillery strikes focused on targeting and cutting off main roads in the province’s central countryside. Israeli forces also repeatedly launched flares following the detection of nighttime military movements.
In Daraa and Suwayda, Israeli strikes in recent weeks concentrated on targeting radar battalions, alongside agricultural and military airports. Strikes on October 1 hit five radar battalions in the neighboring provinces: the 5th Radar Battalion at the Khalkhala Military Airport in northern Suwayda, the Tal al-Kharouf radar in the eastern Daraa countryside, the 79th Brigade’s radar battalion in the al-Sanamayn area of northern Daraa, the Izraa Agricultural Airport and the al-Thaala Military Airport.
“The regime’s early warning system and radar in Daraa went out of service almost completely following the Israeli strikes,” Abu Muhammad, a former opposition military commander living in northern Daraa, told Syria Direct.
“Israeli strikes pursue Iranian movements in Syria’s south, and may indicate the nature and scale of these movements, though they take place under the cover of regime forces,” Abu Muhammad added. A local group is he part of “monitored the arrival of Hezbollah forces at the Izraa airport” in the first week of October, “as well as the arrival of weapons shipments, mostly Iranian drones,” he said.
Hezbollah also made “some changes to its positions” the same week, including “withdrawals from the Quneitra front and other points near the border, towards eastern Daraa.” However, shifting configurations on the ground “do not indicate a possible outbreak of confrontations, as calm prevails on the Syrian side,” Abu Muhammad said.
“The Syrian regime does not want to open a front against Israel because it knows that it will bomb the presidential palace if it does so,” a former opposition commander told Syria Direct earlier this month. Any confrontation from within Syrian territory would likely be limited to “Iranian militias launching some limited-impact drones and rockets,” he added.
Read more: Will Iran’s proxies in Syria mobilize in support of Hezbollah?
Recent military movements in southern Syria also included the arrival of Hezbollah fighters “at the al-Thaala Military Airport, the 12th Brigade in Izraa, Tal al-Qaed, the triangle of death [an area where the northern Daraa, Quneitra and southern Reef Dimashq countrysides meet], the Fatima Hills, the 9th Division north of Daraa and the Dahiya neighborhood of Daraa city,” Ayman Abu Nuqta, the spokesperson for the local Horan Free League, an opposition media organization, said.
“Iranian militias are deployed at the 82nd Brigade and the fire battalion near the city of Sheikh Miskeen” in Daraa province, Abu Nuqta added. “The families of some Hezbollah fighters from the southern suburbs of Beirut have also arrived.”
Russia refuses
Russian forces in southern Syria have made repeated changes to their deployment over the past five months, particularly in Quneitra and Daraa. Most recently, Russian forces withdrew in October from the strategic Tal al-Hara in northern Daraa, where they had been stationed for years, to a Russian military point in nearby Zamrin village. Regime forces remained deployed on Tal al-Hara.
In late September, Russian forces established three new observation points in the Quneitra countryside near the border with the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. That brought the number of Russian observation posts bordering the Golan to 18, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR).
Most of these points were established starting in November 2023, one month after Hamas’ “Operation al-Aqsa Flood” against Israel on October 7 of that year, which sparked a full-scale war on the Gaza Strip. This positioning indicates that Russia does not want the scope of confrontations with Israel to expand to within Syrian territory.
In this context, Hamada said Moscow plays a role in the regime not intervening in the axis’ war with Israel. It “forces the regime to do so [not intervene], and tries to maintain calm on the Syrian front, despite Israeli bombings targeting Iranian movements and positions near Russian points,” he said.
Russia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have advised Damascus “not to get involved in the war in any form,” al-Shaghel said. Moscow “wants to reduce Iranian influence in Syria, because it is one of the obstacles to refloating the regime, especially in relations with the Turks.”
He speculated Damascus itself could be “involved” in “sending coordinates of Iranian forces’ presence in Syria to Israel, as the current Israeli operation is one of the most efficient operations in reducing Iranian influence in Syria.”
In January, a report published by Iran’s Islamic Republican newspaper accused Damascus and Moscow of leaking the locations of IRGC commanders to Israel.
This report was originally published in Arabic and translated into English by Mateo Nelson.