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Solitudinem fecerunt,
pacem appelunt
Publius Gaius Cornelius Tacitus

Op Deterrence of Aggression - Background

The sudden escalation in Syria where anti-government groups launched a sudden offensive towards Aleppo betrayed the involvement of several foreign powers, including Israel and the United States, said Seyed Mohammad Marandi, political analyst and professor at Tehran University. The offensive, he points out, takes place “literally a day after Netanyahu said he needs the ceasefire in order to deal with the so-called Iranian threat,” and it appears that the goal of this offensive is “to cut off Syria from the Axis of Resistance in order to isolate Lebanon.” Marandi added “Obviously, this is being done in coordination with the United States. The whole dirty war in Syria since 2011 was led by the United States. We know that Jake Sullivan back then, who is now the national security adviser of Biden, said in an email to Hillary Clinton on February 12th, 2012, that in Syria, al Qaeda is on our side.”

The scenario of carrying out a military operation against the Syrian regime in the northwest of the country was not completely ruled out, as the issue was widely discussed throughout October and November 2024. These discussions moved to the public space, where Syrian activists commented on them, some of whom supported them and others expressed objection to them due to fears of the return of aerial bombardment to a small geographical area burdened with more than 6 million people.

By 06 October 2024 talk of an impending battle against regime forces’ positions was the dominant theme in northern Syria, but there is great uncertainty surrounding its causes and the political and field data that push it forward or prevent its outbreak. For several days, the residents of northern Syria had been living with successive news broadcast by the media affiliated with “Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham” indicating that the organization and other factions intend to launch a military operation against the positions of the Syrian regime forces on the Aleppo fronts in particular, accompanied by great hope from the displaced people who have been expelled from their homes.

The "credibility" of this news was reinforced after the displacement of residents of several areas near the contact lines east of Idlib and west of Aleppo, most notably the city of Sarmin, from which nearly 70% of its residents were displaced, according to local estimates, in addition to other towns, most notably Al-Nayrab and Kafr Nouran. The displacement movement from these areas came after warnings issued by military personnel in “Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham” to the residents of these villages, according to several local sources, in addition to the transfer of heavy military equipment to the fighting fronts, and the organization raising the readiness of the military wing in it completely, which indicated preparation for an expected battle.

On the other hand, the Syria.TV website contacted three different sources, two of them in the military wing of the organization and the third in the "National Liberation Front", and they confirmed "that there is no expected battle against the regime forces' positions in the foreseeable future." The sources added that "Tahrir al-Sham received promises from Western countries to support it in the event of attacking the positions of the Syrian regime forces and striking Russian bases in light of the changes witnessed in the entire Middle East region."

According to the sources, “Tahrir al-Sham submitted a proposal to the Turkish side, which did not show any opposition or approval to the idea, but informed it that it would not provide any kind of military or logistical support and that its bases spread throughout the region would not provide any military support to the factions, nor would it participate in any operation to ban Syrian or Russian aircraft in the region, and that its role would be limited to the humanitarian aspect, which is receiving the wounded in its hospitals.” One of the sources reported that “the Turkish side has contacted Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham again and asked it to abandon its idea at the present time,” which was not confirmed by the rest of the sources.

Muhammad al-Hassan, a researcher in Iranian militia affairs in Syria, believed that “northwestern Syria may not remain calm for much longer, as the opposition factions, which are aware of this, are trying to exploit the current situation in the region and the preoccupation of the militias supported by Tehran with the war between Hezbollah and Israel to create a new reality, through a confrontation in which they are alone in fighting the regime forces and some local militias or those supported by Russia, such as (the 25th Special Tasks Division), while the regime seeks to ignite this front to stay away from any battle against Israel that its allies supported by Iran may push it into.”

According to Al-Hassan, “the Syrian regime has recently reached a critical point in its relationship with Iran and its militias present throughout its areas of influence, as it prevents the implementation of any retaliatory operations against Israel from Syrian territory, especially since its position of ‘dissociating itself’ from that war in the media and on the ground has become a reality that disturbs the Iranian axis and points the finger of treason at it.”

He considered that "the military capabilities of the opposition factions aspiring to expand their area of ??control have not developed during the previous years to the level that qualifies them to excel over the Syrian regime forces supported by the Russian Air Force, in addition to the issue of armament, which depends mainly on the Turkish side in supplying the factions with heavy and medium ammunition capable of continuing the battle for weeks or months."

He pointed out that "the factions are noticeably superior to the regime forces and the militias supporting it in urban and street warfare and close confrontations, which may give them an advantage in some arenas, but they will be in a less stable position in open confrontation arenas such as rural areas, which represent more than 80 percent of the extension of the contact lines."

A journalist working in Idlib believed that everything that “Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham” does is nothing more than media propaganda. It “wants to get rid of the popular pressure demanding the opening of fronts and the launching of military operations to reclaim the areas that the opposition lost in late 2019 and early 2020. This pressure increased with the outbreak of the confrontation between Hezbollah and Israel.” He believed that “the most that the organization can do is a face-saving play that does not go beyond advancing to a village or a small point, controlling it, and then withdrawing from it. It is fully aware of the failure of any military action that is not supported internationally, and it will not expose Idlib, where it displays the development of its institutions, investment areas, and points of attraction for investors, to a battlefield that Russian aircraft will attack and destroy what the organization had built over the year. According to what sources in the Joint Operations Department, which supervises the “Deterrence of Aggression” operation, confirmed to Al Jazeera Net, the choice of timing was linked to several considerations, the most important of which was their certainty of the withdrawal of elite elements affiliated with the Lebanese Hezbollah from northwestern Syria. In addition, the Iraqi factions allied with Hezbollah were focusing their positioning in the region extending from eastern Syria near the border with Iraq to the south of the country, in the areas adjacent to the Golan Heights and the Lebanese border. Consequently, they are no longer as densely deployed in western and southern Aleppo as they were in the past.

The information available to the Syrian opposition factions through monitoring and tracking operations before the launch of the attack confirms that Moscow is keeping less than 10 aircraft at the Hmeimim base in the Latakia countryside, of which only 6 or 7 are operating, after it withdrew more than 30 warplanes and helicopters to Russia to participate in the Ukrainian war.

Russia had thrown its weight behind the Syrian war since late September 2015, its intervention a decisive rescue operation for Assad’s forces, which were on the verge of collapse, according to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov , who later said: “Before our intervention, Damascus would have fallen within two or three weeks.”

In 2024 Russian raids on Idlib and Aleppo throughout the confrontations did not exceed 100 raids, and this is a low number compared to the intensity of the attacks that occurred during the operations launched by the regime under Russian air cover in 2018 and 2019 on various Syrian territories. Given the limited participation of Russian aviation, the Syrian aviation took on the task of air cover, and Sukhoi 22 and 24 aircraft participated in the confrontations, but the nature of this old model of Russian-made aircraft made it less efficient than those possessed by Russia.

Information indicates that the Syrian opposition factions viewed the decline of the Iranian role and the current international pressures on Tehran as an opportunity to change the balance, especially since the factions supported by Iran were an important factor in facilitating the Syrian regime’s recovery of large areas since 2016.

The strategic goal of the battle was to regain control of the city of Aleppo, along with large parts of its countryside, and parts of the Idlib and Hama countryside. These areas were under the revolutionaries’ control but were lost during the Russian-Iranian offensive in 2019-2020. The primary objective of retaking these regions is to return as many Syrian refugees as possible, especially those in Europe and Turkey, and to strengthen their stability in their own areas as population groups that resist Iranian and Russian projects. These communities would work alongside the local revolutionary authorities in northwest Syria to establish a model of governance based on freedom, justice, and economic development.

If achieved, this model would be an existential threat to Iran and Russia’s projects in the Middle East. It would also address various concerns for Turkey and European countries, which fear national security threats such as refugee influxes, the Syrian regime’s involvement in an assortment of evils. Chief among them drug trafficking, and the export of terrorism – whether through Iranian militias, Syrian mercenaries recruited by Russia to fight in Ukraine, or extremist groups that exploit the lack of development, displacement, despair, and poverty in northwest Syria to recruit individuals for their terrorist agendas.

Iraqi military expert Muhannad Al-Azzawi explained that the military movements in Syria by the opposition factions surprised everyone, saying that the recent military movements came as a result of several factors, including the damage to Hezbollah’s capabilities after its war with Israel and the limited movement of Iran inside Syria. He added that these factions have moved from the task of preserving the areas they control and the de-escalation zones, to achieving field gains such as seeking to retake Idlib after they gathered their forces in a way that perhaps surprised the Syrian regime forces.

Regarding the reasons for the opposition factions’ movement in Aleppo and Idlib, Al-Azzawi said that Hezbollah’s presence, albeit unofficially, in these areas, and the Israeli strikes it suffered in Lebanon, caused it to lose some of its strength and it is no longer as it was before, in addition to the fact that Iran’s movement inside Syria has become limited, and this has encouraged the opposition forces to move in the field. In the same context, the Iraqi military expert referred to reports that spoke of Western military support for the Syrian opposition for the first time, with the aim of opening a new front against Russia, for which Syria is no longer a priority due to its preoccupation with the war in Ukraine.

Al-Azzawi said that these factors prompted the Syrian opposition to move again to regain some villages and areas in the Aleppo countryside, suggesting the possibility of developing military confrontations with the Syrian regime forces, which do not have great capabilities to tighten their control over these areas. However, the influential factor, says Al-Azzawi, remains the strength of the Russian army, which possesses great destructive capabilities and air and missile superiority, which may turn the situation on the Syrian opposition in a way that allows the current attack to be stopped.

Since September 2024, Russian officials had repeatedly accused Tahrir al-Sham, influential in Idlib and part of al-Fath al-Mubin, of receiving an offer from Ukraine involving the release of known Chechen fighters hostile to Russia in exchange for providing the HTS with drones. In turn, Tahrir al-Sham and the Syrian Salvation Government (SSG) have repeatedly denied the Russian accusations. Within the context of increasing Russian tension regarding the relationship between Tahrir al-Sham and Ukraine, the “Russian Spring” website published a release from the Unity and Jihad Group, commenting on the release by stating that Idlib factions are learning to use drones based on the Ukrainian experience against the Russians.

Military factions in northwestern Syria shifted from using drones for surveillance to carrying out attacks against the positions of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the Syrian regime. According to Enab Baladi’s monitoring of the factions’ media since last September, drones are being used in offensive operations that include dropping bombs on military vehicles or fortifications, as well as using suicide drones. The use of drones by these factions to carry out attacks and training on them first appeared for the Syrian National Army (SNA) factions supported by Turkey on 20 August 2024, in images published by the Ministry of Defense of the Syrian Interim Government (SIG) showing training on suicide drones.

The regime had used drones randomly, primarily targeting civilians, causing panic and prompting new waves of displacement, which has exacerbated the security fragility in areas controlled by the opposition in northwestern Syria. Meanwhile, the SDF used drones strictly for military attacks, with limited targeting of civilians, mainly focusing on the positions of the Syrian National Army and sometimes Turkish forces. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in Idlib had shown early interest in the issue of local manufacturing and is superior to the National Army in producing drones for reconnaissance and offensive uses, benefiting from local initiatives in utilizing available resources, despite technical and material challenges.

It is not difficult to acquire commercial drones and make modifications to turn them into suicide drones or for dropping bombs, similar to the methods followed by other factions.

Military and strategic expert Brigadier General Elias Hanna believed that this rapid progress reflects a great ability to maneuver and implement quickly, explaining that the three factors that contributed to this progress are the speed of planning and implementation, achieving great accomplishments within a short period of time, and the Syrian army’s weak readiness to fight on the ground.

Hanna believes that what is happening reflects a major shift in the balance of power on the ground, with an explicit challenge to the Syrian regime and its allies, which places the future of the battles in northern Syria before open scenarios that may witness external interventions or fundamental changes in the map of field control.

The Syrian army was spread out over large areas in an unorganized manner, which made it unable to withstand the opposition's surprise attack. He added that the Syrian regime's military distribution did not rely on coherent war plans, which led to the withdrawal of its forces from key areas such as Aleppo International Airport, Maarat al-Numan, and large parts of Aleppo.

There were many field reasons that can explain part of the reasons for the rapid collapse of the Syrian government forces. According to a report published by the Financial Times, a state of frustration and despair has prevailed among pro-Assad circles, after 13 years of war, especially among the ranks of the army.

Syria has been on the brink of economic and financial collapse for years, burdened by unpaid debts to its warring allies. In 2023, Heshmatollah Falahatpisheh, the former head of the Iranian parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, said that Syria owes Iran about $30 billion, and numerous reports have indicated that Iran has used the demand for this massive debt to pressure the Syrian government on various issues, such as granting Iranians all the same rights as Syrian citizens inside Syria.

In recent years, reserve service in the army had become a burden on recruits and the regime at the same time, due to the enormous financial burden resulting from extending the service period. This prompted the Syrian army in the middle of 2024 to announce the start of a plan to demobilize reserve forces, in 3 stages, starting in July 2024 and ending in October 2025, with the facilitation of paying a “financial allowance” of about $3,000 for those who prefer not to remain in military service.

many reserve service recruits do not serve in their cities or villages, but are transferred to distant areas to serve there, which reduces the sense of belonging to the area they must defend, which partly explains the rapid withdrawal of many of Assad’s forces without a fight.

Several major players are likely to decide what happens next in Idlib: the Syrian government and its allies Iran and Russia, as well as Turkey and the United States. Russia, preoccupied with the Ukraine war, has withdrawn the bulk of its military equipment and “experts” from Syria, and America is now passing between two administrations, the old one will hand over the region’s files to the new one, which will deal with them as a fait accompli according to how the maps change. As for Turkey, the intransigence of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has thwarted all its attempts to normalize relations between Ankara and Damascus, and Iran is facing international rejection of its presence in Syria, as Washington has stated that the exit of the militias supported by Iran from Syria is a condition for reconstruction. Saudi Arabia has also set the condition of “regulating relations with Iran” to support the reconstruction file in Syria, and this has had a major impact on the context of the “deterrence of aggression” battle.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who has repeatedly vowed to take back “every inch” of Syria, is pursuing a “military solution” to the conflict. His goal is to regain complete control to avoid having to make concessions to the Syrian opposition. Taking over Idlib would mean that the opposition has no territorial presence and consequently no leverage in any future negotiation process. In the short-term, the government wants to establish control over two major highways – the M4, which connects the port city of Latakia to Aleppo, Raqqa and oil-rich Deir Az Zor; and M5, which links the capital Damascus to Aleppo, and eventually to the trade route to Turkey and Europe.

Iranian leader Ali Khamenei issued fatwas calling for jihad in Syria, saying: “We in Syria are fighting against infidelity,” which gave his country the ability to ideologically mobilize tens of thousands of Shiite fighters, from Lebanon, Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan and elsewhere, who were fighting in support of Assad’s forces.

Iran was behind the establishment of the Axis of Resistance that includes Shiite groups from more than one country (such as the Iraqi factions, the Lebanese Hezbollah, and the Fatemiyoun and Zainabiyoun groups) to intervene in Syria and support its government under the pretext of protecting the holy Shiite shrines.

The IDF estimated that there were 40,000 Iranian militia fighters in Syria. Iran had no direct strategic interest in Idlib, especially since the completion of an evacuation process in the two Shia towns of Foua and Kefraya in July 2018. However, Tehran shared Damascus’ goal of eliminating the armed opposition and is backing the offensive with its militias. Iran’s military assistance goes hand-in-hand with its efforts to entrench its presence permanently in Syria despite pressure from the US, Israel and Russia to withdraw.

The Iraqi government felt directly concerned with what was happening in Syria, but it was stuck between two fires: the fire of the past, which raised its fears of the Syrian factions, and the fire of the future, which necessitates opening a new page with them in light of the reassuring messages it sends to Baghdad. The Iraqi Shiite factions, which played a key role in Assad’s defeat of his opponents before his current setback, were using the eastern province of Deir ez-Zor as a base for their activity, which falls within the framework of Iran’s desire to secure its supply line through Iraq and Syria to Hezbollah in Lebanon. However, the Iraqi factions appeared unable to intervene again to save the Syrian government. There may be a desire among some factions to intervene militarily to help Assad, but it was not initially clear whether this was permitted by the Americans. It was known that the American air force launched strikes against Iraqi factions that were allegedly heading from eastern Syria to help the regular army repel the attack on the Hama countryside, suggesting that the Americans opposed the involvement of the Iraqi factions in helping President Assad.

the Iraqi government, supported by factions, some of which participated in the Syrian war, appears concerned about the changes taking place in Syria, a concern expressed by senior Iraqi officials. The concern may be linked to the identity of the factions fighting the Syrian regime. The Iraqi government knew that al-Julani himself was a member of the Islamic State in Iraq, led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Iraqis, of course, remember that this organization was behind sending an army of suicide bombers who committed atrocities in the country and almost dragged it into a civil war. It was noteworthy that al-Julani sought, in recent days, to reassure the government of Mohammed Shia al-Sudani that it should not fear their rise to power in Damascus, and that they did not want to interfere in Iraqi affairs, linking this, of course, to the neutralization of the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces from what was happening in Syria.

Moscow, like Damascus and Tehran, also wants Idlib captured but would prefer to have the opposition surrender and integrate into the Syrian military divisions under its control (such as the Fifth Division) rather than continue the costly fight. It hopes that the capture of the rebel bastion would force Turkey, the European Union and the US to negotiate a favorable political solution, as well as give it more leverage in talks on the suspension of US sanctions and a resolution in Ukraine.

Turkiye's political leaders believe that expanding the areas of opposition control is the only way to ensure the voluntary return of more Syrian refugees, who constitute a major burden on Turkey’s internal political balances, after the failure of attempts to normalize relations with Bashar al-Assad through Russian mediation.

Turkey – Idlib’s guarantor power under the Astana agreement – is keen to prevent an offensive on the region and maintain some level of control over it. Already hosting over three million Syrians, Turkey fears a major crisis in northwest Syria would prompt the influx of more refugees into its territory and further strain its overwhelmed humanitarian capabilities. It also wanted Hay’et Tahrir al-Sham (HTS, one of the two main armed group controlling Idlib) dissolved so Russia has no justification to attack the province. Moscow has designated HTS a terrorist group.

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, along with other rebel groups, has been sheltering under the Turkish military presence in northwestern Syria since at least 2020, when the Assad government, with the help of Russia and Iran, pushed its opponents toward part of Idlib province, the only remaining rebel-held enclave. The opposition was on the brink of defeat at the time, but for Turkish military intervention, which prevented Russia from completing its mission of helping Assad retake the northwest. The Turkish intervention contributed to the establishment of what later became known as the “de-escalation zones” or the “Putin-Erdogan zone,” whose borders were drawn by the Russian and Turkish presidents, and which have remained fixed since 2020.

Since then, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham rebuilt its forces and imposed its hegemony over many of the armed factions that were spread across the north and northwest of the country. In parallel with rebuilding its strength, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham sought to redraw its image by confirming its severing of ties with al-Qaeda and presenting itself as an opposition faction whose activities are confined to Syria and have no connection to the “global jihad” project. Thus, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s leader, Abu Muhammad al-Julani, launched a media campaign in which he sought to highlight his new image as the leader of a faction whose goal is to change the regime in Damascus. Al-Julani has removed the mantle of the “hardline leader” that he appeared in when he was the leader of Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda’s branch in Syria, and has begun to tour Christian and Druze towns in the Idlib countryside in civilian clothes, trying to reassure their few residents who fear practices targeting them by extremist groups.

The factions loyal to Turkey seem determined to expel the Kurdish forces operating within the so-called "Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF)" from the western bank of the Euphrates River, if their attack on the Manbij countryside succeeds. Here, the Syrian factions are fulfilling the desire of the Turkish president, who has repeatedly said that he wants to remove the Kurdish forces from the border strip with his country. Erdogan has not been able to implement this desire in the past.

Lebanon, in turn, was not immune to what was happening in Syria. During the years of the Syrian war, Lebanon witnessed part of this war on its eastern border, where ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra fighters were deployed, before they were expelled years ago in the framework of what is known as the “Battle of the Outskirts” (the outskirts of the Arsal region). However, that battle was only a small part of the broader picture, which was represented by Hezbollah’s full-fledged involvement in supporting the Syrian president’s forces against his opponents. There is no doubt that the party’s intervention played a fundamental role in preventing the fall of the Damascus government, which was going through its darkest days between 2013 and 2014, before Russia intervened militarily in September 2015, an intervention that played a decisive role in changing the map of control and influence in Assad’s favor.

During the years of the Syrian war, armed groups supporting the opponents of President Assad emerged in Lebanon. In recent years, the Lebanese authorities dismantled armed groups supporting the Syrian opposition, but Hezbollah’s weakness today and the setback of Assad’s government forces may whet the appetite of some groups to revive their activity in Lebanon.

Hezbollah’s intervention seemed to be facing difficulties. Israeli strikes in the last war inflicted huge losses on the party’s leadership, members and equipment, not only in Lebanon but also inside Syria, including its main base in Qusayr in the Homs countryside. Hezbollah sent a number of its members from Lebanon to Homs at night, and Israel launched raids at dawn on border crossings between Lebanon and Syria, in a clear message confirming the decision to prevent the party from moving into Syria.

Jordan had not intervened militarily in the Syrian conflict, but it will certainly be concerned about the changes taking place on its northern border. Jordan’s main concern in recent years has been related to drug (Captagon) and weapons smuggling, and the spread of pro-Iranian Shiite factions near the Syrian side of its border. Its concern would focus on the possibility of extremist groups, which it has long been hostile to, reaching its borders. Jordan is known to have played an important role in the war against cells of extremist groups linked to Al-Qaeda in recent years, but it appeared to be facing the possibility that these groups will reach its borders to replace the pro-Iranian groups.

But Jordan can bet on the good relationship it has built with the tribes of southern Syria over the years of war, a bet that could spare it the repercussions of any changes that might occur in Syria. It is not entirely clear what the future of the Tanf border area with Jordan will be, where American and other Western forces are deployed alongside an armed Syrian faction opposed to the Damascus government. In addition to the Tanf base, there is the Rukban camp on the Jordanian-Syrian border for Syrian refugees opposed to the Assad government.

Israel, for its part, did not seem far from the repercussions of what is happening in Syria. Its primary concern was to limit the influence of Iran and Hezbollah, something it has largely achieved through a series of raids that have, in fact, contributed to the collapse of the Syrian government forces’ defenses during the current offensive by the armed factions.

While Israel is committed to its policy of preventing Hezbollah and Iran from repositioning themselves in Syria, it may at some point face the possibility that the pro-Iranian Shiite factions will be replaced by hardline Sunni factions that were until recently part of Al-Qaeda. Today, there is talk of Israeli preparations to establish a buffer zone on the border in Syria, if the armed opposition factions reach Damascus. This scenario would not be the first of its kind for Israel, as the experience of the Syrian war years revealed that armed opposition groups were deployed on the border with Israel, but their primary concern was to confront the Syrian government forces, not launch attacks against the Hebrew state. However, Israel may be concerned today about the arrival of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham fighters to its borders, especially since al-Julani himself had made statements in which he praised the Hamas movement’s attack on Israel in the Al-Aqsa Flood on October 7, 2023.

Israeli expert, researcher and lecturer in the Department of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at the University of Haifa, Dr. Yaron Friedman, considered that one of the decisive factors in this is the decline of Hezbollah's role in Syria, noting that "the development of the war with Israel, which escalated in recent months, forced the party to withdraw its forces from Syria to focus on the Lebanese front." The Israeli researcher confirmed that this withdrawal left a huge void on the Syrian front, as Hezbollah had replaced the Syrian soldiers of Sunni origin who defected from the army, and their absence led to the weakening of the Syrian regime.

The two Russian military bases in Tartus and Latakia, which were an essential part of the support for the Syrian regime, did not play an influential role in the battle against the opposition in northwestern Syria, especially in Aleppo and Idlib, which made the Syrian regime more vulnerable to attacks.

As for the Syrian army itself, Friedman pointed out that the Syrian regime fell into the trap of the false perception that the war had ended successfully in its favor. As a result of this perception, the regime began to transform its army into a volunteer army, with the abolition of compulsory military service. In addition, salaries were very low, which led to a decline in the morale of the soldiers, and thus a weakening of their ability to confront the opposition attacks. Accordingly, the Syrian army was surprised by the opposition's attack on Aleppo, which affected the regime's ability to defend the city. He also pointed out that one of the reasons for the Syrian army's failure to confront the opposition's attacks was the mistaken belief that Idlib province no longer poses a serious threat.

The writer drew attention to the decisive Turkish role in the battle, as Turkey was "working behind the scenes to strengthen the opposition's attacks on the Syrian regime and supply it with weapons, which indicates the strengthening of Ankara's role in the Syrian conflict equation."

“Israel will certainly benefit from weakening the Iranian presence in Syria, which will harm Iranian arms supplies to Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the United States will also benefit if the Russians are forced to leave Syria.” But Friedman raised a question about the alternatives, saying that “if Assad falls, the Syrian opposition led by Salafist groups may create a greater threat on the Israeli border, and there is a risk of the emergence of a new ISIS or the emergence of an extremist Sunni religious state, which poses a greater threat to Israel than the Syrian regime, which, despite its hostility, has maintained calm in the Golan Heights for 50 years.”

"There is growing concern in southern Syria, where some local factions in the Daraa and Sweida regions have begun to rebel against the Syrian regime." In Sweida, where the Druze were previously loyal to the regime, they began demonstrating against Assad, due to the poor economic and political conditions. In Daraa, which was considered one of the most prominent opposition strongholds at the beginning of the civil war, some local groups began to seek greater independence from the Syrian regime, which increases the regime’s weakness in this part of Syria.

He warned that "with the resumption of military operations in northern Syria, Shiite militias may try to fill the vacuum created by Hezbollah's absence, threatening further escalation in the conflict," noting that this could be the beginning of a "second round" of what he calls the Syrian civil war.