The overthrow of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad regime has opened the door to new dynamics in the Middle East, regional analysts say, with Turkey likely gaining superiority, Iran reeling and, with that, Iraq gaining more freedom from Iranian pressure.
The Assad government in Syria spanned 54 years in power — first with the elder Hafez al-Assad and later with son Bashar of the minority Alawite community, a branch of Shiite Islam. Regional analysts say its fall marks a seismic shift in Middle East politics.
Sinan Ulgen, a senior fellow with Carnegie Europe speaking during a Carnegie Middle East Center webinar on Dec. 19 in Beirut, called it a “political earthquake” with far-reaching regional implications.
“Fundamentally, we now see the emergence of a government in Syria that maybe after 50 years really is likely to be more pro-Turkey than pro-Iran,” Ulgen said. “This is a lasting change in the regional power constellation, which is another reason why the fall of Assad has been welcomed with such zeal in Ankara,” the capital of Turkey.
Ellie Geranmayeh, the deputy head of the Middle East program at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said Israel’s attacks on Iran’s assets in Syria and its Hezbollah proxies in neighboring Lebanon, as well as Israeli military strikes in the heart of the Iranian capital, Tehran, “present a moment of regional reckoning” for Iran.
”It [Iran] is definitely on the backfoot,” she said. “There is now a strategic rethink ... happening in the establishment about where their policies — both at home and abroad — go from here.”
Geranmayeh said prominent figures in Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guard Corps are likely to be replaced with others, given the nation’s demoted regional status and the near demise of its so-called axis of resistance in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen.
She said that Iran likely will spin a narrative that the late Revolutionary Guard commander Qassem Soleimani’s regional project to surround Israel with a so-called ring of fire has been “accomplished,” and that Iran will look to devise other plans to deal with the new reality it faces.
Harith Hasan, a nonresident senior fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center, said, “Iraq is the last stronghold for Iran’s axis of resistance,” but that, too, could be changing.
“So, Iran might try to strongly defend that influence,” Hasan said. “But as we see, the balance of power has shifted a lot, and the Iraqi government gained more freedom to be able to resist some of the pressure coming from Tehran.”
Hasan said concerns about a possible Islamist-led government in Syria is giving cause for concern to its neighbors, as well as to regional political influencers Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
That, he said, “could give Iraq new leverage” because of its long border with Syria and strong cross-border ties between the two countries.
Hasan said that also may give Iraq a way out from under Iran’s influence, as developments in the region continue to unfold.
