Le Monde newspaper said that the Syrian government is paying the price for its refusal to make concessions, and its inability to reform and break out of its isolation. The rebellion that regained control of Aleppo in a lightning attack has revived, without the army, its Iranian allies, and Lebanese Hezbollah showing any resistance.
The newspaper reported – in a report written by Laure Stephan from Beirut – that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who was aware of the weakness of his army, abandoned in 2015, at the height of the advance of what it described as rebels, areas he considered secondary, such as Idlib, to strengthen his control over more strategic areas.
The newspaper saw that the “rebel” fighters seized the moment, after the pro-Iranian camp was weakened by the strikes directed at it by Israel in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria, and Russia, which was preoccupied by its war in Ukraine, no longer enjoyed the same financial and human resources that it had enjoyed when it deployed its planes. At the Hmeimim base on the Syrian coast.
Fatal stubbornness
The newspaper pointed out that Bashar al-Assad, who remained an outcast in the eyes of Westerners because of the bloody oppression he carried out on his people, was able to save his position thanks to the intervention of his powerful Russian and Iranian allies, but he was never able to regain the entirety of Syrian territory, and he became the king of a fragmented state deprived of resources. It is unable to rebuild itself and rise again.
The newspaper believes that the decline in the regime’s power is due to its refusal to make concessions and cooperate in negotiations at the regional level, and that what is happening in Aleppo now is a result of this intransigence. Researcher Reem Turkmani at the London School of Economics said that the main thing for Assad is to always remain in power, even if That doesn’t mean it’s strong.
In the face of Ankara, which wants to obtain a form of autonomy for Idlib in order to return part of the 3 million Syrian refugees residing on its lands, and to be able to intervene whenever it wants against the Kurds, Damascus adhered to its positions on the necessity of the withdrawal of Turkish forces from Syrian territory before any… a dialogue.
Brinkmanship strategy
After its reintegration into the Arab League in 2023, Syria also did not provide the guarantees of good behavior that its Arab neighbors expected, whether with regard to the issue of the return of refugees or with regard to the smuggling of the drug Captagon, which it produces in large quantities and floods neighboring countries with, and thus the rapprochement did not exceed for the countries. Arabic is almost normalized for practical reasons.
Sinan Hataht, a specialist in Syrian affairs, points out that the “Syrian regime” has reached a degree of structural weakness that has made it afraid, even if it wants to make concessions to the opposition, that this will lead to a risk whose end it cannot know.
In order to get out of problems – as Syrian economist Samir Aita says – Bashar al-Assad can resort to the strategy of brinkmanship that his father Hafez practiced, which is to put the international community in front of a fait accompli: “You want Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham and I am not the one who wants it. You will get it.” He will also challenge the rebels by providing the needs of 4 million Aleppo residents.
The United States, France, Germany and Britain called for a “de-escalation” in Syria, and “it is astonishing – as Hassan Hassan, founder of New Lines magazine and the Syria Observer magazine, wrote – to see world leaders publicly mobilizing their efforts today to ensure that the Assad regime does not collapse, in the way they have mobilized.” In 2011, to ensure his overthrow.
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