A Year Without Assad| A new Middle East begins in Damascus
On Dec. 8, 2024, five decades of Assad family rule came to an end, opening the door to an entirely new chapter for Syria, and for the region around it. The collapse was not the simple toppling of a government, but a deeper rupture in the Middle East’s political geography, a shift that sent old alliances crumbling and forced new ones into existence on the basis of raw pragmatism.
In this emerging landscape, power flowed in unfamiliar directions. Turkey tightened its grip on the north. Israel entrenched its military footprint across the southwest. Gulf states harnessed reconstruction diplomacy as a political lever. And at the height of this regional realignment, US President Donald Trump welcomed Syria’s interim president Ahmed Al-Sharaa into the White House, a symbol of international recognition of the new order.
Before the fall
The scene unfolding today in Syria affirms the findings of a recent commentary by the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), that Assad’s fall was the inevitable outcome of a long, grinding decay, not the sudden triumph of a single battle.
Across the past two decades, the Middle East’s balance of power shifted more than once due to accumulated pressures: the Arab Spring, the seismic shock of Oct. 7, 2023 together with the unraveling of the so-called “Axis of Resistance”, and Russia’s distraction in Ukraine.
These forces hollowed out Assad’s foundations and created the vacuum into which local armed factions, especially Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) under Abu Mohammad Al-Joulani, advanced with direct regional support.
This rupture compelled global and regional actors, from Washington and Beijing to Tehran and Tel Aviv, to reassess their alliances. Syria, long the board on which others played, had become the hinge of a new geopolitical architecture. As Fateh Shabaan of the University of Kent wrote for the Arab Center for Contemporary Syrian Studies, this was a reconfiguration radiating outward from Damascus. His analysis aligns with the views of both an expert and a former diplomat interviewed by Al Manassa.
But Syria’s security map is far from complete. Ahmed Kamel Al-Beheiri, a political researcher at Egypt’s Al-Ahram Center, notes that four actors remain militarily and security-wise entrenched on the ground: USA, Israel, Turkey, and Russia, none with a full strategic picture. Their uncertainty, he argues, is mirrored by the confusion of political and financial patrons.
“Saudi Arabia and the UAE don’t share a unified vision for Syria,” he says. “And the rivalries between active powers resemble the old clashes of the Assad era; Israelis and Turks on one side, Americans and Russians on the other.”
Despite their differences, these actors agree on one point: removing Al-Sharaa from the picture now would unleash a new wave of extremism, violence, and fragmentation.
Iran and Hezbollah: A broken corridor
For years, Iran sustained the Assad regime through military intervention, a sprawling network of bases, arms depots, and militias—Syrian and foreign—woven into the state’s security fabric. That infrastructure bought Tehran enormous influence inside the Syrian military and intelligence services. This is why former assistant foreign minister Rakha Ahmed Hassan and national-security researcher Ahmed Sultan both view Assad’s fall as a devastating blow to Iran.
Rakha describes Tehran as the regional actor most harmed by Assad’s downfall. Iran had built its entire Syrian project on his survival; suddenly, it found itself expelled from a sphere it had considered guaranteed.
Before Assad fell, Iran saw itself as the natural partner for Syria’s reconstruction—linked by geography, ideology, and deep networks of influence. It had already begun signing contracts and opening cultural centers to cement a long-term sectarian presence.
“All of that vanished with Assad’s collapse,” Rakha tells Al Manassa. The influence Iran believed it had earned became an unwanted burden—especially with a new Syrian administration eager to avoid antagonizing the United States and its Western allies, who prefer to keep Iran at arm’s length.
Though relations have not been formally severed, Rakha believes Iran’s influence has clearly receded. Yet he expects a partial return in the future—through Iranian investments still on the ground, and Syria’s substantial petroleum-sector debts to Tehran.
Sultan adds that Assad’s fall also severed Hezbollah’s vital artery. Syria, for decades the movement’s lungs and strategic depth, has become a barrier instead—choking Hezbollah between escalating Israeli military pressure in the south and a new, unfriendly Syrian authority to the north and east.
Turkey steps in
As Iran’s role diminished, Turkey moved swiftly to fill the void. Ankara, many argue, is the biggest regional winner from Syria’s transformation—a decisive advance in its long duel for influence with Tehran.
Rakha describes the Ankara-Damascus relationship as having transformed from open hostility into something approaching partnership. He points to Turkey’s direct role—alongside the United States, Britain, and others—in training and supporting armed factions that later seized Idlib and prepared to assume governance should Assad continue rejecting President Erdoğan’s repeated normalization proposals. Assad had conditioned normalization on a fixed timetable for Turkish withdrawal—a demand Erdoğan dismissed as “baseless arrogance,” prompting him to reorganize his approach first discreetly, then openly.
With Assad gone, Turkey moved to occupy the strategic space Iran once dominated—without altering its own military occupation of northern Syria. Here, Ankara’s interests align closely with those of the new Syrian administration: no Kurdish autonomy, only integration into the Syrian state with cosmetic concessions.
The importance of Turkey to the new regime is visible in Al-Sharaa’s frequent visits. Ankara was his second foreign destination after Riyadh, and he has already visited Turkey three times—a signal of deepening coordination.
Israel’s pursuit
Ahmed Sultan notes the competition between Turkey and Israel to dominate the post-Iranian space. Ankara seeks expansion through political “embrace”; Israel through military entrenchment in the south.
Israel’s anxiety has grown alongside Turkey’s. The presence of armed factions in power is itself a source of Israeli alarm, but Turkish military ambitions escalate that worry. Although Israel appeared neutral during the Syrian war—aside from periodic strikes—the moment Assad fell, Tel Aviv declared the 1974 disengagement agreement void. It launched “Operation Bashan Arrow,” establishing monitoring posts atop Jabal El-Sheikh (Mount Hermon) overlooking Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, creating a new buffer zone, and preventing Assad-era weapons from reaching armed groups.
Within the first 48 hours of Assad’s collapse, Israel announced roughly 480 airstrikes targeting airports, anti-aircraft systems, missiles, drones, jets, tanks, and weapons-production sites in Damascus, Homs, Tartus, Latakia, and Palmyra.
Shabaan writes that Turkey’s ambitions stirred deep Israeli unease, especially Ankara’s efforts to establish new bases in Syria—including an attack on the strategic Tiyas airbase. Israel saw this as “a more direct threat than Iran.” A Turkish airbase in Syria would upend regional balances and complicate Israeli strategic calculations, pushing Tel Aviv to strike the Tiyas facility.
Rakha adds that Israel is among the biggest beneficiaries of Assad’s fall, having secured broad stretches of Syrian territory immediately afterward. He calls this a deeply dangerous shift when viewed alongside Trump’s statements about “expanding Israel’s borders” and Netanyahu’s claim that he is “a messenger for realizing Greater Israel.”
“It is astonishing,” Rakha says, “that Arab states are not taking these statements seriously.”
The Gulf and the new Syria
Assad’s fall reshaped dynamics within the Gulf. Rakha explains that Gulf states had long worked to topple Assad, but the “day after” scenario haunted them: the only available alternatives were extremist Islamist factions. “That made regime change a risky proposition. And over time, there simply appeared to be no other option.”
Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE were the main players; Kuwait and Oman stood back. Even the UAE—which had resumed contact with Assad in the months before his fall, reopening channels and sending delegations—seemed to be treating his survival as an acceptable reality.
Rakha offers two explanations for the UAE’s moves: Either Abu Dhabi was left out of the anti-Assad plan and did not understand the scale of the coming shift; or it understood perfectly—and chose to reassure Assad to keep the broader scheme intact.
After Assad fell, Gulf states returned with a different face. Embassies reopened. Syria reclaimed its seat in the Arab League. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE offered full political recognition, financial support, and investments in reconstruction. Riyadh even mediated directly with Washington to arrange Al-Sharaa’s visit—the first official trip by a Syrian president to the US capital since independence in 1946.
America and Russia: A contest reopened
One of the biggest shifts after Assad’s fall was Russia’s shrinking influence—and the corresponding expansion of US. leverage. Moscow, which had invested politically and militarily in Damascus since 2015, watched the regime collapse with “complete surprise,” Rakha says. The Kremlin chose silence—“like a Russian bear entering hibernation until spring reveals its shape.”
As the new administration emerged, it kept in mind that Russia still holds essential levers: oil and gas extraction rights, long-term arms contracts, and the military bases at Tartus and Hmeimim—Moscow’s only warm-water footholds on the Mediterranean.
Al-Sharaa’s visits to Moscow and Washington illustrated the new balance. In Moscow, he received the honors of a head of state. In Washington, he entered the White House through a side door without a press conference or public send-off. For Rakha, this was deliberate: the United States signaled that it had no intention of replacing Russia as Syria’s dominant patron.
Washington conditioned its engagement on clear terms: real political inclusion of all Syrian communities—Alawites, Christians, Druze, and Kurds. Having formally joined the coalition against ISIS, Damascus allowed the US to begin reducing reliance on the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) as a frontline partner, shifting them instead into a political pressure card.
But the picture on the ground tells a more complicated story. Al-Beheiri says US strategic interests remain far closer to the Kurds than to Damascus. American military support for SDF rose 20–25% in 2025, including the construction of a new base near Tishrin Dam. This makes Kurdish incorporation as mere “individual recruits” in a Syrian army impossible. The future, he argues, points toward autonomy or expanded federalism.
Russia, meanwhile, has not withdrawn. The bases remain. A new arrangement was struck with Al-Joulani’s administration to redeploy Russian military police in southern Syria to prevent escalations with Israel, reviving versions of earlier de-escalation agreements.
Rakha notes that Moscow demanded no political concessions, content to maintain bilateral relations—a contrast Damascus noted carefully as it maneuvers between two indispensable powers.
A new map of power
For Al-Beheiri, the most significant regional transformation is Iran’s exit from the “four major actors” shaping Syria, replaced by Israel as a dominant force in the south—an attempt to sever the “Tehran–Beirut corridor.”
Turkey, too, is crafting new routes of influence. Al-Beheiri cites reports of four secret Ankara-hosted meetings between Hezbollah members and Al-Joulani’s forces, facilitated by Turkish officials Hakan Fidan and Ibrahim Kalin. The reports suggest Ankara is building a new corridor: Ankara–Damascus–Beirut, a direct challenge to Iran’s decades-old axis.
The cards, once again, are being reshuffled.
Syria—long the battlefield, long the fulcrum—is now the board upon which new rivals sketch their ambitions, each trying to anchor themselves in the uncertain terrain that followed the end of the Assad era.