For months, his country was battered by escalating Israeli bombardment, while behind the scenes, the United States and Gulf countries courted him diplomatically. It was a secretive, two-pronged approach meant to pressure President Bashar al-Assad of Syria to abandon his most important regional alliance with Hezbollah and Iran.
The overtures to Mr. al-Assad were the product of what Israel and its allies saw as a rare but risky opportunity — with Iran’s regional network fracturing under Israeli attack, they hoped to force Iran’s most important partner out of the alliance, according to former U.S. officials, two European diplomats and four Israeli officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.
Now, those regional ambitions may be derailed by a far smaller and long-discounted force: Resurgent rebels have launched a surprisingly successful attack in Syria, exploiting in part the strain Israel has put on the alliance that helped Mr. al-Assad maintain power through more than a decade of uprising and civil war. In a matter of days, the rebels seized the country’s second-largest city, Aleppo, and challenged Mr. al-Assad’s grip on the country’s northwest.
Despite his traditional partners being so weakened, regional experts and diplomats expect that Mr. al-Assad will now be even more reluctant to abandon Iran and its allies, who are still his best bet for fighting, yet again, for his regime’s survival.
Syria is at the center of today’s regional power struggles because of the critical land corridor it provides for Iran to Hezbollah, Tehran’s most important regional ally, in Lebanon. Severing this pipeline for weapons, supplies and people is critical to Israel — and defending it is just as critical to Iran.
Israel, with the support of the United States, was eager to take advantage of its campaign against Hamas after the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks. After Israel killed key leaders of Hezbollah and Hamas and depleted their weapons stockpiles, there were signs that Israel’s approach was working. Iran’s bellicose rhetoric toward the United States and Israel had given way to signals that it wanted less confrontation. Russia, another key ally of Mr. al-Assad’s, has been ensnared in Ukraine, emboldening Israel and U.S. regional allies to pressure Moscow and Mr. al-Assad into rethinking the alliance.
But the attack on Aleppo has jolted Iran and Russia into issuing new vows to come to Mr. al-Assad’s aid, suggesting that the alliance will defy the attempts to unravel it.
Andrew Tabler, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute and a former White House and State Department official, said the long-term regional efforts, which aimed to gradually compel Mr. al-Assad to shift, now look unlikely without his showing a willingness to “make a hard break with Iran.”
“How could he do that under the current circumstances?” he said. “Iran is now more essential to his staying in power than perhaps ever.”
Before the rebel advance, Israel had for weeks been escalating its attacks on Syria, striking everywhere from the capital to the ancient desert city of Palmyra, in what it says were operations targeting Iran, Hezbollah and their allies. Israeli commandos have raided secret military sites, the aim of which, one of the senior Israeli officials said, was to demonstrate that Israel would not tolerate any further weapons smuggling from Syria to Lebanon.
But that approach had a major flaw, analysts said: Even with its intensified operations, Israel had not managed to shut down the supply line from Iran to Hezbollah, involving hundreds of miles of porous borders, secret tunnels, smuggling rings and militant groups.
“There is no way just by carrying out airstrikes that they can defeat the Iranians in Syria,” said Haid Haid, a fellow at Chatham House in London who focuses on Syria. “The Israelis can inflict damage. They can reduce the flows. They can make it more difficult. But they cannot stop it completely, and they know that.”
That is why Israel’s military push has been underpinned by diplomatic efforts, mediated by Washington and Gulf Arab leaders, who are also eager to undermine Iranian influence in the region. Eight current and former Western and regional diplomats and Israeli officials shared with The New York Times details of different proposals made to Syria.
Mediators focused on promises of Gulf economic aid, they said, and the withdrawal of hundreds of U.S. troops deployed in northeastern Syria since 2014. They also floated plans to lift or reduce crippling U.S. sanctions against the Syrian regime — though withdrawing some sanctions requires a vote in U.S. Congress, and previous efforts to persuade senators to abandon the bipartisan legislation have failed.
“They have been making offers to Assad: Your ally Iran is getting weak, so let us in,” said Malik al-Abdeh, the founder of the consultancy Conflict Media Solutions and a longtime mediator in Syria. “But getting Assad to do that would require a much more dramatic shift in the balance of power.”
Efforts by the Gulf nations, particularly the United Arab Emirates, to try to lure Mr. al-Assad away from his regional allies are not new, officials said. A European, a regional and a former U.S. official told The Times that the previously established back channels for negotiations, hosted or mediated by Gulf officials, in particular the United Arab Emirates, are being utilized again.
But regional diplomats and experts warn that continued Israeli bombardment to try to lure Mr. al-Assad away from Iran at a time when he faces a renewed insurgency risks escalating violence that could unleash chaos with fallout beyond Syria.
Syria is now territorially divided among Mr. al-Assad, Islamist militants, U.S.-backed Kurdish groups and Turkish-backed rebels. Unsettling that precarious equilibrium could embolden other groups to attack al-Assad-held territory, potentially rekindling the civil war and causing a new outpouring of refugees or a resurgence of jihadist groups, similar to the rise of the Islamic State in 2014.
Israel needs a strong central government in Syria to carry out its plan to pressure Mr. al-Assad and cut off supply routes from Iran to Lebanon, two of the Israeli officials said. Israel and the United States are continuing their efforts, but the chances of success for this plan appear to have diminished even further, they said.
Israel had also been pressing for assistance from Moscow, arguably Mr. al-Assad’s most important military ally. He is in turn critical to Russia because of the warm water port he allows it to operate on Syria’s coast.
Moscow had made gestures about limiting Iranian influence, the two European diplomats said, by increasing patrols in southern Syria near the Israeli border, ostensibly blocking Iranian-backed groups from operating there. Most regional experts saw this as futile: Iranian-aligned forces still operate along Syria’s southern border..
Russia and Iran have a complicated relationship, competing for resources in Syria. But Russia is also dependent on Iran for cheap drone technology for its war in Ukraine and for help with military operations to support Mr. al-Assad, a role ever more critical as he comes under renewed rebel pressure.
“Russia knows that without Iranian boots on the ground, it would have to be theirs,” said Mr. al-Abdeh.
Mr. al-Assad is not only dependent on Iran and Hezbollah militarily, but also financially.
The oil Iran provides Syria in defiance of international sanctions not only supports the formal economy but also the black market networks that many regime figures profit from, regional experts said. Many military leaders and militias aligned with Mr. al-Assad are deeply involved in the lucrative production of the stimulant Captagon, a booming drug trade facilitated by networks linked to Hezbollah and Iranian-backed groups.
These illicit and secretive networks, diplomats said, make it hard for Gulf Arab states to simply entice Mr. al-Assad’s government with aid and reconstruction funds.
Even if he still wanted to try to disentangle these patronage and security networks, Mr. al-Assad may be unable to, said Emile Hokayem, the director for regional security at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
“He probably doesn’t know that well who in his first and second circle is in the pockets of Iran — or the Russians,” he said. “That’s one thing we don’t fully understand, which is Iran’s coercive power within these structures. Iran is still embedded in a lot of security agencies and militias, and it can threaten the edifice from within.”
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