Centre des affaires politiques et étrangères

What is happening in the Middle East marks its entry into another era. This description is not a value judgement: it is neither negative nor positive; what has changed are the rules of the game. Alliances have shifted, strategies have changed, and no actor now moves against a single power or beneath a single umbrella.

This transformation did not begin on 7 October, nor with the fall of Assad in Damascus; both events took place within a system that had already been changing before them. And the change itself is older and broader than what has happened in the region. The countdown had begun in Iraq in 2003, and what ended there was not American power, but the ability of that power to turn its military and economic superiority into an order through which it could determine the terms of conflict and its outcomes. The difference between the two is everything: America remained the strongest, but the system through which it had managed the region stopped working. This failure did not create the alternative. The material from which the alternative would emerge had been accumulating, in China’s rise since the 1990s and Russia’s recovery at the turn of the millennium; what the failure did was bring it into the open. This is what we saw four years later, in Munich in 2007, when rejection of American unipolarity moved from an implicit position to an openly declared political line voiced by Putin. Then came Georgia, followed by Libya, not because Russia had become the world’s leading superpower, but because America was no longer able to prevent what it had once prevented. Russia, however, was the clearest expression of this formation, not its centre. China, meanwhile, was moving beyond the limits of economic power to impose itself as a technological and military power, building ports and corridors and signing long-term agreements outside the dollar; it was China that gave the alternative its depth.

A regional system born under the dominance of a single pole could no longer remain as it was once the conditions that had established it disappeared. No one decided this and no plan drew it, as some imagine; it was the disappearance of those conditions that reshaped the system itself.

The current confrontation between Iran on one side and the United States and Israel on the other is the first conflict to be conducted entirely within this new framework. Its importance lies not in its parties alone, nor in its immediate military outcomes, but in the fact that it reveals the contours of the era replacing the one before it. Through it, we can read the Middle East that is now taking shape.

This confrontation is not a war like those that preceded it in the region, when a single superpower possessed the decision to go to war, its timing, and the ability to rally others behind it, even if it never possessed the conditions needed to end it. The Iraq War of 2003 was the last war of this kind and the first sign of its end: Washington launched it, mobilised for it and chose its timing, only to prove unable to end it as it wished. From then on, the countdown began. What is different today is that the United States no longer possesses even the decision, the timing and the mobilisation on its own. When the United States and Israel struck Iran, Iran fought within a network with allies such as Beijing and Moscow. Even though neither entered directly, their diplomatic, technological and economic support has not wavered, and Chinese military assistance was decisive in enabling Iran to deal painful blows to American bases in the region, as Trump himself described them. Each of the two allies has its own calculation. For Russia, Iran is the North-South Corridor linking its economy to the Indian Ocean and circumventing sanctions, as well as a partner in its war effort in Ukraine. Beyond that lies a simple strategic calculation: the fall or subjugation of Iran would mean not only the loss of an ally, but the loss of a corridor. Russia would lose its route to the Indian Ocean, and China the link connecting Gwadar to Central Asia and securing its oil outside the dollar. More dangerous still for both would be Washington regaining what it has lost since 2003: the ability to isolate the nodes of the network one by one. Beijing and Moscow are therefore not defending Iran, but a principle: that individual isolation is no longer possible. What they share is credibility with the non-aligned countries*: abandoning Tehran under American or Israeli pressure would be a sign of weakness neither can afford. That is why the wager on a grand bargain in which Washington asks Moscow to abandon Iran in exchange for concessions in Ukraine is a double illusion: Washington would not honour such an agreement, nor would Moscow.

For China, too, the calculations run deeper than Iran itself, and anyone who thinks Beijing will retreat for fear of an oil shock is reading its strategy wrongly. The card Washington has long kept for strangling China is the Strait of Malacca, through which the largest share of its imported oil passes. For years, therefore, China has been working to neutralise this card, not to live with it, through several routes rather than one. These include the oil and gas pipelines across Myanmar, running from the Bay of Bengal to China’s Yunnan province and bypassing the strait entirely; and the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, from the port of Gwadar on the Arabian Sea to Xinjiang, with roads, railways and pipelines designed to carry Gulf oil overland without passing through either Malacca or the South China Sea. China also supports two projects in Thailand that cut across the Kra Peninsula, around which the strait bends: the Kra maritime canal, proposed repeatedly but stalled by its cost and political sensitivity, and then the land bridge that takes its place, with a port on each side and a railway connecting them, the project Bangkok is pushing today. Elsewhere, China is building logistical and port partnerships with Malaysia, on the very shore of the strait, together with Gulf actors such as the United Arab Emirates, making China a party in the strait, not merely a user of it. Finally, to the north, there is the polar route, which melting ice is opening along a Russian path entirely removed from any strait controlled by Washington or its allies.

Any expert or analyst who wants to measure these alternatives by their capacity today makes the same mistake as those who measured China in 2007 by the position it held then. There is no doubt that the operating overland pipelines from Myanmar, Kazakhstan and Russia carry no more than one and a half million barrels a day, against seven million passing through Malacca. But that figure reflects the present situation, not the direction in which it is moving. The Russian route is expanding and Russia has become the leading supplier, at roughly a fifth of imports; the Thai land bridge is under construction; the Pakistan corridor has an operating road and railway and a planned pipeline; the Kra Canal is postponed, not ruled out; and the climate opens the polar route further year after year. Above all this is a strategic stockpile approaching 1.4 billion barrels, enough for months, and sources spread across forty-nine countries, none accounting for more than a fifth. China therefore does not need to dispense with Malacca now; it needs to make closing it pointless. Once the weapon of strangulation is exposed, the targeted party begins building what will protect it from that weapon, and with every passing year the cost of strangling it rises while its effectiveness falls, because what was once vital gradually becomes one route among several. Iran is at the core of this structure; it is an essential part of the new Silk Roads and is tied to China by a twenty-five-year strategic agreement outside the dollar market. In the same direction, the port of Gwadar on the Arabian Sea adds another outlet to the network of roads and pipelines, reducing China’s dependence on the maritime routes the United States is trying to choke. What was built quietly since 2007 was not merely infrastructure, but preparation for a day like this: for China to enter the war without flinching at the price of a barrel.

Inside Iran, the wager that external pressure will lead to the collapse of the regime is a miscalculation. There is a deep national sentiment that crosses political divisions, and even the citizens most critical of the religious regime reject their country being subjected to foreign aggression or an American diktat. The nuclear programme and missile capability are therefore seen as two guarantees of sovereignty and two symbols of national dignity, not as a matters belonging to the regime alone. Iran knows from experience, since the repudiation of the 2015 agreement, that a written commitment from Washington guarantees nothing. It therefore has no reason to concede in exchange for a promise.

Iran’s depth does not end at its borders. Iraq is its logistical artery and strategic extension: its crossings and supply routes, alongside the factions most closely attached to Tehran, such as Kata’ib Hezbollah and Harakat al-Nujaba, ensure the continuity of the overland route extending westwards. The wager that the de facto authority led by Abu Mohammed al-Jolani in Syria can cut this artery is a complete illusion. The Syrian-Iraqi border stretches across hundreds of kilometres of desert, and the army of the de facto authority has neither the numbers nor the tribal reach to seal it. In addition, the Iraqi factions and Hezbollah are adept at heavy smuggling through tunnels, concealment within commercial flows and local collusion. As for the convoy intercepted by Jolani, it was a political display and an overture to Trump; on the ground, however, he avoids confrontation at any cost with armed forces that outgun him.

Let us move to Yemen, where the Houthis hold Bab al-Mandab and the Red Sea, and in this way they give Tehran the ability to choke maritime trade at little cost, threaten Gulf installations and strike southern Israel, the second handle, after Hormuz, on global trade. Hezbollah, despite what it has suffered, remains a shield that neither Jolani’s army nor any Turkish contractor can dismantle. The question is not whether these actors retain their former strength: the Houthis reopened the Red Sea front at the start of the war and brought down everything achieved since the October truce; the Iraqi factions hold the crossings; and Hezbollah still imposes an open northern front on Israel.

These actors do not need to recover their former strength in order to perform their function. It is enough that, together, they raise the cost of isolating and striking Iran while opening more than one arena of pressure at the same time. This is what strategic depth means: each front is not required to decide the battle on its own, but to force the adversary to distribute its power and resources across the fronts. Hormuz is not an exception in this structure, but its third strait.

Because none of the major powers wants a direct confrontation with another, the confrontation moves below that level: to straits, crude prices, settlement currencies and proxy wars in which weapons are tested on one front before being deployed on another. This is what makes the Iranian war a war of the new era: it cannot be decided with the tools Washington used to decide its wars from 1991 onwards, because the conditions on which those tools rested no longer exist. This is what the Strait of Hormuz reveals today.

Since March, then, the strait has been neither a free passage nor a closed one; it has become a permit system. A ship wishing to cross submits an advance application disclosing its ownership, insurance, crew and cargo, and permission to pass is granted only after scrutiny. Those who pass pay around two million dollars per voyage, depending on the size of the vessel and the type of cargo, with the fee shared with Oman and settled in yuan or cryptocurrencies. The figures reveal the scale of the transformation clearly. Before the war, between eighty and 130 ships crossed the strait each day, according to data from the International Monetary Fund’s PortWatch. Since March, more than 150 tankers have accumulated outside it, while Gulf states cut production by ten million barrels a day after their storage facilities filled. Between June and July, after the Islamabad memorandum temporarily restored passage without fees, the average returned to around twenty-five ships a day. The memorandum then collapsed in July and passage fell to around ten ships a day. At the beginning of August, on some days, it fell to only one or two ships.

Iran divided passage between those allowed to cross and those exempted from payment. Russia and Malaysia are exempt from payment, while China receives preferential treatment whose details have not been disclosed; India, Pakistan, Iraq and the Philippines pass in return for paid fees. More importantly, China does not need an exemption in the first place. It China that buy Iranian oil, more than nine-tenths of which ends up in independent refineries in Shandong. Although the discount on Iranian crude narrowed under the blockade rather than widening, because barrels became scarce, China continues to buy. If the calculation were purely commercial, it would have retreated. It continues because buying Iranian oil is, for China, a strategic decision through which it alone determines how much it takes and when. Iran, in return, bears the cost of the shadow fleet, insurance, intermediaries and risk, but the equation goes beyond a calculation of cost: the lever over the strait is Iranian, while the purchase of Iranian oil is almost a Chinese monopoly. Any American blockade therefore runs into the same problem: the breathing space is not a gap in the cordon that can be closed, but China itself, which buys Iranian oil and has no interest in Washington succeeding, but an explicit interest in making it fail.

As for the American blockade on Iranian ports, reimposed in mid-July after the collapse of the Islamabad memorandum, it partially succeeded in disrupting loading, but failed to achieve the purpose for which it had been imposed: forcing Tehran to concede. Kharg Island, from which nine-tenths of exports leave and which lies inside the Gulf west of the strait, remained empty for nearly a month. Satellites detected not a single supertanker at its berths, and Washington presented the images as evidence that the cordon was tightening. But the halt in loading at Kharg did not stop exports. Iran turned to vast floating stocks off Chabahar and Jask outside the strait, to the shadow fleet it had accumulated over thirty years of circumventing sanctions, and to the yuan payment channels it had built for this scenario. Since June, around eighty million barrels have left the Gulf of Oman, and twenty-six Iranian tankers reached the Singapore Strait for ship-to-ship transfers off Malaysia, before loading resumed at Kharg itself on 12 August. This does not mean the blockade came without cost. Kharg’s storage tanks did not fill despite the halt in loading, which means Iran reduced production at some fields to avoid running out of storage capacity, damaging the reservoirs over the long term. Floating stocks also rose to around 135 million barrels. But damage does not mean political subjugation. This is where the confusion lies: the blockade damaged the economy and production, but it did not change the behaviour it was intended to change. Iran did not concede on the nuclear file, did not retreat from the permit system in the strait, and did not accept Washington’s conditions for negotiations. Damage occurred; subjugation did not. The blockade therefore succeeded in raising the cost and failed to turn it into a concession. Indeed, what happened over the past six months produced the opposite result: the blockade that was supposed to narrow Iran’s room for manoeuvre ended up widening it, while the strait on which Washington sought to exert pressure in order to choke Tehran became, in Tehran’s hands, an instrument for imposing the terms of passage.

The clearest evidence appears in the American trajectory itself. In April, Rubio described the Iranian fee as illegal, while Trump said it could be a “joint venture” with Iran. In mid-July, Trump himself announced a 20 per cent American fee on shipments in exchange for protecting the strait, then withdrew it in less than twenty-four hours under pressure from the Gulf states, replacing it with investment promises for which he specified neither an amount nor the countries involved. Washington moved from rejecting the principle of fees to trying to adopt it, then abandoned it when it came to implementation.

But before anything else, I want to correct a common idea about Donald Trump. He is not a neoconservative obsessed with regime change, but a man who understands only the language of deals, especially real-estate deals. This was his fatal mistake: he entered this war without any theory of victory. He reached for his old tools, threats, then strikes, then a blockade. Iran responded with endurance and political manoeuvring. What Tehran is able to withstand as time passes has itself become a growing source of pressure on Washington.

Tehran is losing barrels and revenues and damaging its fields, but it has demonstrated its willingness to endure considerable economic pain in exchange for keeping its hand on the strait. Washington, however, faces a different kind of problem. Every dollar added to the price of a barrel feeds inflation, hits the purchasing power of American households and shakes the markets. Gulf allies have also cut production, the US midterm elections are approaching, while a section of public opinion rejects another military entanglement in the Middle East. In addition to the economic and political cost to the United States, this war has opened a gap in military stockpiles that cannot be replenished as quickly as they have been depleted. According to estimates by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, around two-thirds of the pre-war US stock of Patriot interceptor missiles has been used, while information reported by CNN, citing sources familiar with the latest internal inventory, indicates that nearly 80 per cent of the stock of THAAD missiles has been consumed, alongside a significant decline in stocks of Tomahawk missiles and other long-range precision munitions. It is true that Iran is losing some of its oil revenues, but Trump is losing political capital, while the United States is depleting military stocks and time that are difficult to replace.

In theory, there are many exits, but only one question matters: is there an exit that allows Washington to achieve its original objectives — a free strait and an Iran without nuclear capability — without concession and without redefining victory? The answer is no. Escalating towards Kharg would send prices soaring and expose American soldiers to Iranian drones just thirty-three kilometres from the coast, weeks before the elections. How could Trump justify to his base a war that contradicts his promises to end endless wars? Signing would mean endorsing an Iranian fee system he had already declared unacceptable. Waiting, meanwhile, would mean allowing time and prices to work in Tehran’s favour. One other exit remains: a tactical arrangement marketed as a victory. Oman’s plan for joint management of the strait, with “voluntary fees” instead of a unilateral Iranian levy, offers an escape route for Washington: Iran retains the lever, while the United States can claim that what it pays is not a fee imposed by Tehran. The question remains what price Tehran will demand to let Trump leave without visible humiliation. He applied maximum pressure to a regime whose political architecture, since 1979, was built to absorb precisely this kind of pressure, without having a plan for what happens if Iran does not concede. Today, he has collided with that possibility.

Ukraine is not far from this calculation. What happens in the Middle East is reflected directly on the Ukrainian front. Iran has supplied Russia with thousands of Shahed drones and ballistic technology, while Moscow transfers air-defence systems, space technology and satellite intelligence to Tehran. More importantly, equipment is tested and modified on one front before being deployed on the other. This has been formalised in the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Treaty between the two countries. Every Patriot battery and every interceptor missile redeployed to protect American bases in the Gulf is a resource lost to the Ukrainian front; the Middle East in flames therefore eases the pressure the West is trying to impose on Russia in Eastern Europe. Every dollar added to the price of a barrel because of tensions around Hormuz is direct income for Putin’s war budget. To be fair, attrition works both ways: Ukraine partially drains Russia, in human and financial terms, and drones target Russian oil facilities, striking a resource on which Moscow itself depends. But this attrition does not negate the argument; it confirms it. Despite its losses, Russia is increasing weapons production and using its missiles against Ukraine to keep it under pressure. At the same time, it has neither abandoned Iran nor reduced its support, for the simple reason that weakening Iran would free part of the American power and resources directed against it, allowing Washington to refocus on Russia.

We are not waiting for a Third World War in the classical sense, and this does not rule out the expansion of existing wars or the outbreak of new ones. Conflict today is distributed across multiple levels: militarily in Ukraine and the Middle East; economically through sanctions and blockades; in energy through straits and pipelines; technologically through chips and drones; and monetarily through settlement currencies. Each front feeds the others. In this system, Russia gains from every dollar added to the price of a barrel, China endures because it has prepared for this day for two decades, while the United States pays the military, economic and political cost all at once.

The unipolar order was not born in 1945. The Western order emerged within a bipolar balance imposed by the existence of the Soviet Union, then after 1991, with the disappearance of the opposing pole, it became an order dominated by the United States. Its failure in Iraq was not evidence of the collapse of the institutions created after the Second World War, but of the failure of that unipolar moment Washington inherited after the end of the Cold War. From then on, the United States began losing the conditions that had allowed it to act, while the alternative gradually took shape. The alternative appeared in the political challenge from 2007 onwards, while the economic and technological capacities of other states built up over the following two decades, until the confrontation with Iran came to reveal the limits of American power — and, with them, a Middle East in which umbrellas have multiplied and everyone moves according to rules no one wrote.

• I avoid the term “Global South”, common in Western literature, because it creates the illusion of a single bloc with a single interest, whereas these countries differ in their interests, economies and geographical positions, from Asia to Africa to Latin America. What unites them is not an identity but a position: rejection of compulsory alignment behind a single pole. I therefore use “non-aligned countries” descriptively, not as a reference to formal membership of the Non-Aligned Movement.

The tendency to attribute the sectarian tensions observed in the Syrian public sphere over the past two years solely to recent political developments reflects an incomplete understanding of the deeper structural roots of this phenomenon. These tensions are not merely the outcome of the regime’s collapse; rather, they represent the cumulative effect of decades of authoritarian governance under the Baath Party. Over this period, the regime systematically reshaped Syria’s social fabric to ensure its own continuity by cultivating local leaderships loyal to its authority, reinforcing pervasive security control, and concentrating economic power within selectively chosen networks designed to sustain societal fragmentation and suppress any independent political mobilization.

Within this context, any serious political settlement in Syria remains fundamentally incomplete without the establishment of an inclusive national identity that Syrians collectively endorse and that articulates their shared vision for the country’s future. In the absence of such a foundational framework, current proposals resemble provisional arrangements that generate a fragile and unstable form of peace—one that is susceptible to collapse and likely to reproduce cycles of violence while deepening social divisions in the foreseeable future.

The formation of this inclusive national identity requires a comprehensive and systematic examination of the structures of all Syrian communities, alongside the identification of shared elements and points of convergence. This process necessarily includes an informed understanding of existing conflicts and their dynamics, undertaken in partnership with local councils and administrative bodies. Such an approach constitutes a critical entry point for rebuilding trust, enhancing meaningful participation in decision‑making processes, and establishing the foundations for sustainable and long‑term stability.

Absent such a trajectory, the country will remain vulnerable to external actors seeking to exploit Syria’s structural fragility by amplifying sectarian discourse, intensifying societal fragmentation, and undermining the prospects for a genuine and durable political resolution.

Jubran Mahmoud Hamza is a Syrian dentist and political activist who helped organise the first protests in Al-Karama Square in Suwayda. He is currently a member of the Political Bureau of the Dalil Movement.

I do not write about Turkey as a foreign matter. Turkey is the neighbour that decides things in northern Syria every day, drawing the lines of influence and steering the course of both war and settlement. To understand Turkish intervention in Syria, one must first understand Turkish domestic politics. I therefore follow developments within the Turkish opposition not as a spectator but as a Syrian politician who knows that every shift in Ankara reaches us. And there is no doubt where I stand: with the will of the delegates against judicial confiscation, and with an opposition fighting to take back its own decisions — because defeating the logic of guardianship there opens the road to defeating it across our whole region.

What has happened within the Republican People’s Party is not a revolt against its leadership. It is an act of political engineering, carried out by Erdoğan with precision. Erdogan did not wait for the opposition to divide; he pushed it into division, because a divided opposition is easier to handle than one rebuilding itself into a united front. The instruments of that engineering are in plain sight, and the sequence of events alone answers anyone who calls it coincidence. The assault on the opposition began more than a year before the court’s ruling, It started with the imprisonment of Ekrem İmamoğlu in March 2025, followed by the jailing of dozens of mayors. In September of the same year, the Istanbul branch was placed under a court-appointed trustee, alongside a stream of cases against MPs and district mayors — all to paralyse the opposition established leaders first, then to drain its time and lock it into an exhausting cycle of defence, and finally to move against the party itself.

Erdoğan’s shift from targeting individuals to targeting the party was not a choice but a necessity. When he imprisoned İmamoğlu he assumed he had removed the only rival capable of beating him. Instead Özgür Özel filled the vacuum with a different set of tools: an unbroken presence on the ground, a message aimed at voter’s pockets rather than his identities, and an ability to travel and to gather crowds that Erdoğan himself no longer possesses. Unable to silence him in the open, he turned to the courts.

On 21 May 2026, the Ankara Regional Court of Appeal declared the congress that elected Özel in late 2023 an absolute nullity, and extended the effect down the chain until it swallowed everything built upon it — the extraordinary congresses that followed, the amendments to the party statute, the party’s decisions — all of it deemed never to have existed. Özel was not merely removed by a single ruling; three years of the party’s life were erased at once. Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu was returned to the chairmanship by a judge’s decision rather than a delegate’s vote, and the police enforced the ruling by seizing the headquarters. Even the Supreme Election Council washed its hands of it when Özel’s team turned to it, referring them to the Court of Cassation and leaving the party suspended in a vacuum of legitimacy. The judiciary thereby planted two leaderships and two rival centres of legitimacy within the opposition, and an opposition without a single recognised leadership cannot fight.

At the same time the Palace gambled on prolonging the disputes over the legitimacy of congresses, so that the opposition would be consumed by procedural battles instead of the issues that actually hurt the government: the economy and the cost of living. Its state media threw their full weight behind a narrative of division and chaos, while the threat of imposing court-appointed trustees on municipalities was kept permanently in the air to spread fear among the opposition’s supporters.

The opposition, however, did not walk into the trap. It distributed its parliamentary weight by design, not by the accident of a split. The New Party, launched formally on 24 July, the anniversary of the Treaty of Lausanne, with a bloc of 91 MPs, secured its position as the principal opposition force in parliament, lifted the threat of parliamentary marginalisation, and took sole charge of the confrontation in the field and of the economic and public services. The bloc that stayed behind in the historic party, 44 MPs, remained there with a clear task: to stop the appeasement wing from taking sole possession of the party seal, from disposing of its properties and its treasury funding, or from entering side alliances that serve the government’s agenda. The division here is not the product of a quarrel; it is a calculated allocation of roles. And when the judicial assault intensified, Özel and his deputies did not withdraw. They kept up their presence outside the courthouses, accompanying the cadres who had been targeted, turning every summons into a public demonstration that exposed the politicisation of the judiciary in the public eye.

Then the numbers laid the whole gamble bare. Erdoğan bet on closing off every route to change inside the party. The numbers proved he had miscounted — and proved, too, that he has no need of numbers so long as he holds the courts. The Law on Political Parties requires the signatures of only one-fifth of the convention’s 1,368 delegates to force an extraordinary congress; the legal quorum was reached within the first hours of the signature drive, and the final tally came to 833 notarised signatures, three times the threshold and more than two-thirds of the entire convention, delivered to the party headquarters on 17 June — with the Istanbul delegates, whose votes the courts had confiscated by annulling their provincial congress, still to be added. The appeasement wing’s refusal to convene was therefore no longer an organisational disagreement but an open breach of the law.

The Palace answered with its favourite weapon: time. Article 14 of the Law on Political Parties requires a general congress at least once every three years, and annulling the congresses of 2023 and returning the party to the pre-2023 position pushes it outside the statutory window and towards losing its electoral eligibility — a danger Özel’s own team acknowledged and declared itself prepared for. Even the date Özel set for the congress in July was killed off by injunction. And here the real equation stood exposed: whoever holds the delegates holds legitimacy, but whoever holds the courts holds time. Özel understood that to go on fighting for the seal alone was to accept playing on his opponent’s ground and by his opponent’s clock.

This is why the New Party was never a rupture, but the pressure card that changed the game. Özel built a decision tree rather than a single trap, and he is now moving towards two congresses along two tracks. The first is in his own hands and on his own timetable: the founding convention of the New Party in late September, which will complete its organisation across the provinces, secure its electoral eligibility and elect its leadership bodies, while most of the provincial chairmen dismissed for opposing the annulment are restored and mayors continue to declare for it. The second lies with the law: the extraordinary congress of the historic party, forced by 833 delegates whose signatures the appeasement wing ignored, so that the decision has passed to the Civil Court of Peace, which must appoint a convening committee of three delegates whose sole task is to hold it, and to the Court of Cassation, where the nullity case awaits the end of the judicial recess. Özel’s camp holds that the constitution vests supervision of party congresses in the Supreme Election Council and not in the civil courts, exposing the judiciary’s seizure of a jurisdiction that was never its own. Against this, the appeasement wing has opened a parallel track: an ordinary congress beginning in September and running for months of delegate elections, presented as reorganisation and intended in fact to replace the delegates loyal to Özel and to buy the Palace time.

So the fate of the movement now hangs on a single question: will the extraordinary congress be held or not? If the Court of Cassation overturns the nullity ruling, or the Civil Court of Peace appoints the convening committee, the congress takes place and Özel returns to his historic home with his overwhelming majority, thereby recovering the party seal and, with it, its heritage, its buildings and its treasury funding. If the obstruction continues, he proceeds with a New Party in full possession of its electoral eligibility, leaving his opponents a seal without a base and a structure without legitimacy.

The heart of this equation is that the seal itself has lost its value in the hands of those now holding it. The opposition’s voters, whose primary concern is removing Erdoğan, do not vote for a historic emblem; they vote for whoever embodies the fight. And Kılıçdaroğlu — returned to the chairmanship by a court ruling rather than by the votes of the delegates, and then dismissing Özel’s cadres and installing his own — does not look to his own supporters like a leader who recovered his party, but like a man to whom the judiciary handed it. The party’s name in his hands has become an accusation, not a mandate.

On either track, Özel’s ground strategy rests on four pillars. Full administrative disclosure, obliging opposition municipalities to publish their contracts and tenders openly, which strips the corruption pretext from the courts. A push into the rural strongholds, shifting the centre of political activity towards the agricultural provinces and the smaller industrial towns — the heartlands of the Justice and Development Party — with inflation and poverty as its message. A robust parliamentary and legal shield protecting the targeted cadres and documenting violations, so as to raise the cost of imposing administrative trusteeship. And finally a discourse that removes national security from political bidding altogether: Özel declares that ending terrorism is not a field of competition, hostility or opposition but a shared historic responsibility, and demands in return judicial and democratic reform grounded in the rulings of the Constitutional Court and the European Court of Human Rights, extending the vision to the neighbourhood by speaking of a future in which the Kurds of Syria, Iraq and Iran live in their own countries as equals, thereby depriving the Palace of the national-security pretext it uses to evade its domestic failures.

The Palace wanted to force Özel to choose between a confiscated party and a newborn one. Özel answered by taking both, deferring the reckoning to a time of his choosing rather than the one imposed by the courts.

When the organisational freeze failed to break the movement, the Palace moved to its most dangerous option: the politicisation of bribery allegations. It set its public prosecutor to draw up a motion to lift Özel’s immunity on allegations of repeated bribery and send it to the Ministry of Justice. The political weaponisation of bribery allegations moves the battle from the terrain of liberty to the terrain of morality, where it does not make a hero of the opponent as charges of opinion and state security do, but strikes at the most valuable thing the opposition owns in the eyes of voters worn down by inflation: the integrity that made it the alternative to a government sunk in corruption. The Palace is not putting Özel on trial. It is borrowing his tongue: it wants the word corruption to be an accusation made about the opposition rather than about itself.

Faced with this escalation, three paths open before Turkey. The most likely is that the Palace presses ahead and the move rebounds on it: Özel is in a position to turn the prosecution into an engine for the street, moving the confrontation from a parliament controlled by the Palace’s majority to open sit-ins outside the courthouses, until the cost of jailing him rises to the point where convicting him costs the government more than leaving him free. The second, and the most dangerous, is that the state rushes towards swift rulings — a political ban or immediate detention — while the pressure of the economy and the cost of living bears down at the same time; the resentment then breaks out of every political framework that might contain it and turns into an open confrontation in the streets between an angry public and the machinery of the state. The third is the most cunning at first sight but is the shortest-lived in reality: that the Palace neither proceeds nor retreats, but keeps the case hanging over Özel’s head and leaks allegations of financial wrongdoing through its media month after month, to keep the opposition defending itself. Yet this wager turns against the one who makes it, because an accusation that never reaches a verdict loses its power to convince, and every fresh leak becomes further evidence that the judiciary works to order. A government that bets on wearing its opponent down with time forgets that time is working against it too: every month that passes adds another page to the inflation bill, and turns the public’s disgust with the Palace into a decision at the ballot box.

Electorally, the Palace set a trap to split the opposition’s vote, but it misread the direction of the split. The division does not cut the electorate between two comparable parties; it sorts it. The parliamentary bloc, the municipalities, the cadres and the street on one side, and the seal alone on the other. The opposition voter whose concern is removing Erdoğan is not looking for the party’s legal heir, but for whoever is fighting the battle. The split therefore works for the New Party, not against it. What remains with the historic party is its name, its heritage, its buildings and a leadership installed by court order; the voters, the cadres and the municipalities have gone to the other side. And whether the movement returns to its historic home or continues through its new party, the electoral project is one: a single economic programme, an agreed presidential candidate, and joint lists wherever the marginal seats are decided — depriving the Palace’s media machine of its favourite material, the image of a divided opposition.

Behind all this engineering lies something simpler than it appears: Erdoğan no longer has his old instruments. The man who built his victories by moving from province to province and addressing crowds in one square after another can no longer sustain the punishing campaigns that were his sharpest weapon. And a man who cannot face his opponent in the squares faces him in the courts. Resorting to the judiciary is evidence of weakness, not of strength — a silent admission that he no longer trusts his ability to defeat Özel on ground where they stand as equals. A possible electoral victory would therefore change the equation only temporarily: a power built on one man ages as that man ages, and a party emptied of every figure who might have carried on after him has no successor combining his charisma with his political cunning. The movement facing him, meanwhile, enters the contest with a leadership in its fifties, cadres in their forties, and a street younger than both. The contest, then, is not between two parties. It is between a man spending the last of his credit and a movement still building its first.

What remains is the wider lesson, and it is the one that concerns us as Syrians. In Turkey the Palace confiscates a party’s seal, obstructs a congress mandated by two-thirds of its delegates, determines by a judge’s ruling who leads the opposition and when it may meet, and imprisons the mayor of the country’s largest city. This is not a party dispute; it is an assault on an existing right. The Turkish opposition is not demanding a new right but defending one it already holds: to contest elections without a judge deciding who leads it. And when a government cannot defeat its opponent at the ballot box and pursues him through the courts, it is not managing a political disagreement; it is confiscating the people’s right to choose.

In Syria we have not yet reached the stage where parties are confiscated, because we are forbidden to found them in the first place. The distance between having your party barred from meeting and having it barred from existing is the distance between a government that fears competition and one that does not acknowledge it at all. But the lesson is the same in both cases: legitimacy is not manufactured from above. It is not created by a judge’s ruling, as Erdoğan is attempting, and it is not conferred by a handshake in a foreign capital or an official reception that launders a ruler brought in by force of fact. Whoever confiscates it admits he does not possess it, and whoever waits for it from abroad admits that at home it was never granted.

Less than a month after the [repeal of Caesar Act sanctions](https://www.france24.com/en/middle-east/20251217-us-congress-ends-syria-sanctions), Syria’s transitional president Ahmad al Sharaa launched an [offensive against the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9311l0d40qo), triggering Arab tribal defections and a rapid loss of territory. The fallout has jeopardized Islamic State containment in northeast Syria by disrupting intelligence networks built by the Syrian Democratic Forces, widening security gaps, and degrading detention-and-camp control. The most acute consequence has been mass escapes from the al-Hol refugee camp, which held approximately 24,000 family members linked to the Islamic State. A recent [U.S. intelligence assessment](https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/u-s-intelligence-says-at-least-15-000-at-large-after-isis-detention-camp-collapses-in-syria-3ede991b?gaa_at=eafs&gaa_n=AWEtsqeXsLe7voWcAvo_5KWiAv3QpTdBZ4ZdrranGCO6xSLA1v7TidbtuLhQxp0paTA=&gaa_ts=69a028b8&gaa_sig=GhPrVHUTWvUTd0y8y40NrKgrVWJvvlbwkL9ke1KaNHDpjTQiTPRUBvqxJmQXD9oC0HcryHI_BTeqCxUMMjWgzw==) estimates that roughly 15,000–20,000 individuals are now at large.

In spite of these developments, Washington is doubling down on a [Damascus-centered approach](https://usun.usmission.gov/remarks-at-a-un-security-council-briefing-on-the-political-and-humanitarian-situations-in-syria-17/), pressing the Syrian Democratic Forces toward integration and treating the central state as the successor partner. The premise is that a unified Syrian state under al Sharaa can absorb the burden of countering the Islamic State and enable a U.S. military drawdown. Until recently, the United States kept a limited but consequential footprint in northeast Syria to support Syrian Democratic Forces’ operations against the Islamic State. It also held the al-Tanf garrison along the Syria–Jordan–Iraq corridor, a critical forward platform for surveillance and disruption. Washington has since handed over al-Tanf to Damascus and is in the process of withdrawing its remaining 1,000 troops from Syria [within a month](https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2026/02/us-forces-complete-withdrawal-syria-within-month).

However, Syria is only a year into a fragile transition and still lacks the institutional depth and local security architecture required for durable stabilization and containment of the Islamic State. That transition is being further undermined by al Sharaa’s coercive consolidation and the extremist character of segments of his security apparatus, which are intensifying sectarian polarization. This is creating a permissive environment for radicalization that the Islamic State can exploit to infiltrate state structures and rebuild networks. Washington’s mission against the Islamic State is ending at the very moment the group is poised to resurge. This makes consistent political pressure on Damascus more important than ever to preserve stability and compel action against radical elements within the security apparatus.

Security Gaps East of the Euphrates

[Al Sharaa’s lightning offensive](https://israel-alma.org/monthly-overview-january-2026-instability-in-syria-order-in-the-north-domestic-instability/) began in Aleppo’s Kurdish neighborhoods of Sheikh Maqsood and Ashrafiyeh. Despite repeated ceasefires, it pressed east as Damascus mobilized Arab tribal networks inside the Syrian Democratic Forces to defect. Within days, the remaining Kurdish forces fell back to their strongholds in Kobani and Hasakah, losing roughly 80 percent of the territory they once held. [A U.S.-mediated ceasefire](https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/syrian-kurdish-led-sdf-agree-ceasefire-phased-integration-deal-with-government-2026-01-30/) reached on Jan. 30 has, so far, held and is being paired with a phased integration framework. [International pressure](https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2026/01/31/syria-s-government-reaches-agreement-with-kurds-of-rojava_6750006_4.html) helped soften Damascus’ earlier stance, moving from the Jan. 18 agreement’s terms of near capitulation and individual integration toward a unit-based model that incorporates forces from the Syrian Democratic Forces into four brigades.

Officially, the deal folds the northeast back into the Syrian state, allowing al Sharaa to claim restored sovereignty and territorial integrity, while Kurdish authorities continue to exercise de facto administrative and security autonomy on the ground. However, [implementation remains tenuous,](https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/risk-missteps-hangs-over-us-backed-ceasefire-deal-northeast-syria-2026-02-13/) with both sides holding diverging interpretations of what integration entails. On the military track, the main points of contention concern heavy weapons, the size and composition of the brigades, and the future of the Women’s Protection Units. Other fault lines include under-specified arrangements for control of resources and border crossings, and the scope of Interior Ministry deployments, which have so far been limited and largely symbolic. These divergences can still be managed through diplomacy but only with sustained international pressure and continued American leverage. Otherwise, Damascus may see an opportunity to resume military operations once U.S. forces fully withdraw or attention shifts to another regional crisis. Any forceful takeover of Kurdish areas would likely spiral into mass sectarian violence and provoke a Kurdish insurgency. It would deepen social fragmentation and force the Syrian government into a costly counterinsurgency campaign, stretching an already thin security apparatus across an even wider front.

Damascus also faces challenges translating battlefield gains into stable governance in Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor, formerly held by the Syrian Democratic Forces. Although many tribal factions defected from the Syrian Democratic Forces, driven by longstanding economic and political grievances and catalyzed by a shifting balance of power, their realignment with the central state is largely tactical and shadowed by [mutual mistrust.](https://today.lorientlejour.com/article/1494914/theyre-all-traitors-in-raqqa-arabs-who-served-the-kurds-face-off-with-damascus.html) One point of friction is the absence of a unit-based framework to integrate tribal fighters. The current process requires [disarmament and a return to civilian status](https://www.newarab.com/news/syrian-gives-sdf-members-feb-deadline-return-civilian-life), with the possibility of later entry into state security forces. Another revolves around oil revenues, which Damascus has placed firmly under central state control with little provision for local revenue-sharing. Recent crackdowns by state security forces have also moved to [dismantle makeshift refineries](https://syriadirect.org/shutdown-of-deir-e-zors-informal-refineries-upends-a-hazardous-local-economy/), which, despite legitimate environmental and safety concerns, have provided a crucial source of income in areas with few viable economic alternatives. This is unfolding as [new government electricity tariffs](https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2026/01/syrians-decry-soaring-electricity-prices) take effect, driving steep increases in household energy bills — in some cases up to 6,000 percent. Iran’s disruption of the Strait of Hormuz and its attacks on regional energy infrastructure are exacerbating these strains.

Current conditions point to a fragmented security landscape in a region structurally vulnerable to the Islamic State’s reconstitution. Territory east of the Euphrates presents distinct challenges due to porous routes into western Iraq, sparsely governed terrain, fragmented tribal politics, and entrenched smuggling networks. It has repeatedly functioned as a jihadist pipeline, from the Iraqi insurgency after 2003 to the Islamic State’s territorial expansion into Syria, movements in which al Sharaa himself participated. The recent upheaval in the northeast has allowed the [Islamic State to launch a wave of attacks against Syrian security forces](https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/islamic-state-kills-four-security-personnel-syria-state-news-agency-says-2026-02-23/) in Deir ez-Zor and Raqqa. It is too early to tell whether this reflects a sustained escalation or short-term opportunism, but fraying containment gives the group greater scope to leverage tribal grievances and smuggling economies to rebuild clandestine support networks.

From Detention to Dispersal

After the coalition-backed Syrian Democratic Forces defeated the Islamic State’s last enclave at Baghouz in March 2019, fighters and their families were placed in a vast detention-and-camp system across northeast Syria. Prior to al Sharaa’s offensive, the Syrian Democratic Forces held roughly [9,000 fighters](https://www.centcom.mil/MEDIA/PRESS-RELEASES/Press-Release-View/Article/3891985/centcom-forces-partner-with-syrian-democratic-forces-to-capture-isis-leader-and/) in detention facilities, while al-Hol housed about [24,000 individuals](https://reliefweb.int/report/syrian-arab-republic/news-quote-closure-syrias-al-hol-camp-leaves-thousands-children-risk-and-facing-uncertain-futures), primarily women and children, and the smaller al-Roj camp held over [2,000](https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/thirty-four-australians-released-syrian-camp-holding-is-affiliated-families-2026-02-16/) more. That custody system began to unravel when the Syrian Democratic Forces were forced to withdraw from al-Hol on Jan. 20. While the United States has [transferred over 5,700 male detainees to Iraq](https://www.centcom.mil/MEDIA/PRESS-RELEASES/Press-Release-View/Article/4406293/us-forces-complete-mission-in-syria-to-transfer-isis-detainees-to-iraq/), mitigating some immediate risk, it addresses only part of the overall caseload. Following the chaotic handover of al-Hol, reports describes masked men and organized convoys [smuggling residents out](https://www.ft.com/content/8c7b09f2-1ce6-4363-9e8a-b36d031b3c7c) at night, with some of the camp’s population reportedly ending up in Idlib. The foreign nationals’ annex, which held more than [6,000 third-country nationals](https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/syrias-al-hol-camp-emptied-foreigners-sources-say), was among the first areas emptied, with foreign fighters implicated in facilitating departures. It remains unclear whether the facilitators were linked to Damascus-aligned factions, Islamic State networks, or both, but the speed and scale of the camp’s emptying suggest that elements of the Syrian security forces at a minimum tolerated the process. Al-Hol has since been officially closed, and the smaller al-Roj camp, though still under the control of the Syrian Democratic Forces, is also [expected to close soon](https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/syrias-roj-camp-be-closed-soon-report-says).

The mass detention of Islamic State affiliates was necessary to prevent the group from reconstituting, but it was never a sustainable long-term solution. A large portion of al-Hol’s population consisted of minors, many born there or arriving as infants and spending nearly seven years in limbo. Dire humanitarian conditions and chronic resource constraints turned the camp into an incubator for radicalization. Women aligned with the Islamic State played an active role in [sustaining enforcement networks](https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/women-isis-and-al-hol-camp), spreading ideology and indoctrinating children. The risk is not the closure of the camps per se but the absence of a clear framework for legal accountability, post-release monitoring, and reintegration. This makes mapping residual Islamic State networks far more difficult and increases the likelihood that former residents, especially children shaped by extremist socialization, drift back into the very structures the camps were meant to contain. A further complication is the unresolved status of foreign nationals, as many states continue to resist repatriation on the grounds that returnees pose a security threat at home. Yet leaving them unaccounted for as they disperse across Syria and into neighboring states raises the risk of renewed terrorist plotting with transnational reach.

The Reliability Problem in Damascus

In its first [audio message](https://www.ft.com/content/caaa8421-3a6c-4b5b-91a7-47e41dffae45) in two years, Islamic State spokesperson Abu Hudhayfah al Ansari called on supporters to target al Sharaa’s government and denounced him as an apostate aligned with Washington. Released shortly after the mass escapes from al-Hol, the message declared a new phase of operations in Syria, signaling that the group is positioning itself to exploit a weakened containment architecture. [The rivalry between al Sharaa and the Islamic State](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0q0w1g8zqvo) dates to 2013. After initially pledging allegiance to Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, he rejected the Islamic State’s attempt to absorb his Syrian faction and instead aligned with al-Qaeda under Ayman al Zawahiri, ties he later severed in 2016. Since then, he has pursued a pragmatic rebranding away from transnational jihadism and conducted counterterrorism operations in his Idlib fiefdom. After taking power in Damascus, that transformation accelerated and culminated in [Syria’s entry into the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvgvz6316zwo), announced during his visit to the White House in Nov. 2025. The question is not whether al Sharaa is hostile to the Islamic State, but whether the security ecosystem he is building can reliably contain it across Syria.

Although al Sharaa’s forces have proved effective in dismantling Islamic State and al-Qaeda cells in Idlib, scaling this to the national level presents a fundamentally different challenge. Idlib is a more religiously conservative province where al Sharaa spent years consolidating control in a relatively contained environment, enforcing ideological conformity within a largely homogeneous constituency. Syria is far more diverse in its ethno-religious makeup and lived religiosity. The same Islamist governance model cannot be applied without generating new frictions and security gaps, including the risk of armed resistance.

That problem is compounded by the composition of the nascent security apparatus. Minority communities and potential rival power centers have been largely excluded, while religious instruction embedded in military training reinforces loyalty and ideology over professionalism. The apparatus is dominated by hardline Islamist factions, many of whom continue to share an ideological affinity for Salafi jihadism. This is evidenced by repeated instances of fighters displaying Islamic State insignia and by sectarian war crimes, most notably the massacres against [Alawites on the coast in March](https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/08/un-syria-commission-finds-march-coastal-violence-was-widespread-and) and [Druze in Suweida in July](https://reliefweb.int/report/syrian-arab-republic/syria-un-experts-alarmed-attacks-druze-communities-including-sexual-violence-against-women-and-girls) of last year, as well as recent attacks against Kurds. The nature of the violence, often filmed and disseminated by perpetrators, bears chilling echoes of the Islamic State’s methods of intimidation and sectarian mobilization. Yet the authorities have done little to impose meaningful accountability or curb sectarian incitement, in part because a crackdown would risk alienating hardliners that al Sharaa still needs to consolidate power.

This climate of impunity normalizes sectarian coercion and fuels wider radicalization, creating openings for the Islamic State to recruit sympathizers and gain access to state institutions. In Dec. 2025, a member of the Syrian security forces, who was reportedly a sympathizer of the Islamic State, attacked a Syrian–American convoy near Palmyra, [killing three Americans](https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/us-syrian-military-patrol-comes-under-fire-central-syria-officials-say-2025-12-13/). Concerns over further insider attacks likely strengthened the case for U.S. withdrawal. This underscores the limitations of relying on Damascus as the principal counterterrorism partner, where unit-level sympathies and uneven vetting can compromise operations and intelligence sharing. A further risk stems from potential defections by disillusioned hardliners who see al Sharaa’s cooperation with the West and strategic moderation as a betrayal of the movement’s original objectives. The recent emergence of [Saraya Ansar al Sunnah](https://jamestown.org/saraya-ansar-al-sunnahs-micro-insurgency-in-syria/), founded by former members of al Sharaa’s Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and reportedly aligned with the Islamic State, illustrates this dynamic. The group has claimed responsibility for the Mar Elias church bombing and vowed further attacks against minority communities. It remains limited in scale but could gain momentum through recruitment, particularly among foreign fighters who travelled to Syria for an Islamic caliphate rather than to participate in Syrian state-building.

Damascus’s counterterrorism approach treats co-optation as the core mechanism of containment, folding extremist factions into state structures to secure manpower and control while pursuing the Islamic State operationally through cooperation with the global coalition. However, this strategy entrenches these factions inside the security sector and sustains ideological permissiveness that tactical operations alone cannot dismantle. Once embedded in institutions, that influence can outlast any single leader and create persistent pathways for infiltration and facilitation. Al Sharaa faces a trade-off between consolidating power and combating extremism. A serious crackdown on radical factions and sectarian abuses would require broader inclusion, tighter discipline, and credible accountability — but that would also dilute his power and risk backlash from a segment of his base. Al Sharaa’s trajectory suggests his overriding incentive is power consolidation, with counterterrorism pursued insofar as it serves that end.

Conclusion

Although the Islamic State is unlikely to restore its territorial caliphate, it is well positioned to expand as a diffuse insurgency. Rather than attempting to govern, it will likely rely on mobile cells operating across Syria and conducting terrorist attacks, ambushes, and assassinations. In Syria’s northeast, contested control, local tensions, and overstretched forces, compounded by the mass escapes from al-Hol, are creating a rare opening for the group to rebuild networks and recruit fighters. All this is unfolding amid a widening regional war that risks further straining the fragile security environment. If Iran enters a prolonged period of instability, Iraq is likely to absorb the first-order shock, potentially re-opening long-standing vulnerabilities in its western provinces that have historically served as terrain for Sunni insurgent mobilization. Meanwhile, Israel is escalating its military campaign across Lebanon, raising spillover risks that Syria is poorly positioned to absorb. Regional ruptures have repeatedly acted as accelerants for jihadist movements, from the invasion of Iraq to the Syrian civil war, and this conflict risks reproducing that dynamic.

Washington’s priority should be preventing Syria’s transition from sliding back into renewed conflict, because stabilization is the only durable foundation for containment. That requires sustained pressure on Damascus to move beyond coercive consolidation toward genuinely inclusive governance, including a workable degree of decentralization to strengthen local security. Washington played an instrumental role in providing al Sharaa with international legitimacy. It still retains enough leverage to ensure the ceasefire in the northeast is respected and to press for accountability inside the security forces, including curbing sectarian incitement and sidelining the most extreme elements rather than absorbing them. That means maintaining Syria’s State Sponsor of Terrorism designation and advancing measures such as the proposed [Save the Kurds Act](https://www.lgraham.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2026/1/graham-blumenthal-introduce-save-the-kurds-act) to reimpose targeted sanctions in response to violations. Without enforceable conditions, Syria risks a transition that either fractures, allowing the Islamic State to expand its operating space, or consolidates into an exclusionary Islamist order. Either way, the consequences will not be confined to Syria.

Despite Assad’s fall, Russia retains influence through debt leverage, military basing and security mediation.

In a [historic](https://www.ft.com/content/ee14afc3-99c0-4ec5-b29a-e4f163b9f631) visit to Washington, transitional president Ahmad al-Sharaa became the first Syrian leader to visit the White House. The trip is meant to symbolise a turning point in Syria’s relations with the United States, as Damascus prepares to join the US-led coalition against ISIS. Yet rather than signalling a major geopolitical realignment, it reflects Sharaa’s broader strategy of maintaining ‘zero external enemies’, underscored by his visit to the Kremlin one month earlier. This approach has secured him growing international legitimacy but also rests on a fragile balance of power that will be increasingly difficult to sustain amid diverging foreign interests.

Sharaa’s overture to Moscow marked the culmination of months of growing diplomatic engagement, during which Russia resumed shipments of [wheat](https://tass.com/economy/1949745) and [oil](https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/russia-ships-its-arctic-oil-syria-first-time-sanctions-limit-buyers-2025-03-21/) to Syria and agreed to print new Syrian banknotes through [Goznak](https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/syria-revalue-currency-dropping-two-zeros-bid-stability-2025-08-22/), the same provider used under Assad. The rapprochement has been facilitated by Sharaa’s brother [Maher](https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2025/04/08/syrias-new-president-has-russian-family-ties-reports-a88649), a gynaecologist who lived and worked in Russia for over two decades and now serves as Syria’s de facto second-in-command.

Although the visit has been framed as a reset in relations, Sharaa pledged to [honour](https://www.reuters.com/world/putin-syrias-sharaa-discuss-fate-russian-military-bases-wednesday-kremlin-says-2025-10-15/) all past agreements and signalled intent to deepen bilateral ties. These include Russia’s military bases at Hmeimim and Tartus, as well as the continuation of energy and reconstruction contracts awarded under Assad’s regime, many underpinned by Syria’s coercive debt obligations to Moscow. The emerging alignment points to a restoration of the structural dependencies that defined the Assad era, and with them, the return of Russian influence.

A Legacy of Influence

With the Middle East emerging as a key battleground in the Cold War, the Soviet Union sought to expand influence in Syria by supporting leftist and pan-Arab movements, most notably the Ba’athists after their ascent to power in 1963. Syria’s strategic value to the Soviet Union grew significantly in the 1970s, particularly after the 1973 Arab-Israeli War and Egypt’s subsequent pivot toward the United States. With the loss of access to Egyptian ports, the Soviet Union increasingly relied on Syria’s Tartus port, positioning Damascus as its principal Arab client.

Moscow deepened military cooperation by replenishing Syria’s battlefield losses, supplying advanced weapons, expanding training programmes and providing sustained technical and logistical support. This assistance enabled Hafez al-Assad to consolidate control over the armed forces, a critical step in securing his rule given Syria’s history of military coups. It also bound Syria’s defence architecture to Soviet systems and left Damascus with [$13.4 billion](https://www.rferl.org/a/1057067.html) in debt. Moscow later wrote off much of this debt in 2005 in exchange for preferential access to energy and infrastructure contracts.

These longstanding ties shaped Russia’s early support for the Assad regime after the 2011 uprising and set the stage for its military intervention in 2015. Launched less than a year after annexing Crimea, Russia’s Syria campaign aimed to preserve its strategic foothold in the region and demonstrate its resurgence as a global power. In 2017, it [secured](https://tass.com/defense/983682) cost-free operational control over the Hmeimim airbase and Tartus naval base for 49 years, gaining a platform for power projection in the Eastern Mediterranean and logistical support for operations in Africa.

Commodity flows continue, and the opaque nature of existing agreements enables corruption and patronage networks that help reinforce Sharaa’s internal authority, while Russia retains key military bases, strategic contracts and Syria’s outstanding debt

Meanwhile, Syria accrued significant external debt to Russia, which has been leveraged to obtain dominant stakes and long-term concessions in key strategic sectors. One of the most prominent Russian companies operating in Syria is [Stroytransgaz](https://karamshaar.com/syria-in-figures/russian-investments-the-state-of-play-after-bashar-al-assad/), a subsidiary owned by Gennady Timchenko, a Russian oligarch and close friend of Vladimir Putin. Its agreements include the management of the Port of Tartous, investment in oil fields, operation of fertiliser plants and a 50-year contract for Syria’s largest phosphate mines. While the terms of these deals remain opaque, it was [revealed](https://www.occrp.org/en/investigation/a-bloody-trade-inside-the-murky-supply-chain-bringing-syrian-phosphates-into-europe) that 70% of revenue from phosphate production goes to the Russian firm, with only 30% allocated to the Syrian state-owned Gecopham – raising concerns that other agreements are structured on similarly exploitative terms.

Former Enemies, Converging Interests

Russia’s immediate priority is to maintain its military bases in Syria, as fully replacing them in the short term remains unfeasible. Attempts to establish [alternative](https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/russias-options-naval-basing-mediterranean-after-syrias-tartus) naval access in Libya and Port Sudan have stalled amid political instability, legal uncertainties and logistical hurdles. Moscow’s presence in Tartus dates back to 1971; even under favourable conditions, developing the infrastructure and operational capacity to match it elsewhere would take years. The Kremlin also seeks to contain the threat posed by battle-hardened Chechen and other North Caucasian fighters remaining in Syria through surveillance and discreet intelligence cooperation with Damascus. Their potential return risks destabilising the North Caucasus, a concern compounded by persistent reports of Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov’s [deteriorating health](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/03/world/europe/chechnya-kadyrov-illness-succession.html). Beyond these imperatives, Moscow has cultivated extensive ties with Syria for over six decades across the diplomatic, military and economic spheres, making it unlikely to relinquish its position voluntarily. The loss of Syria would also signal a broader erosion of Russia’s global influence, particularly at a time of mounting resource constraints from the war in Ukraine and intensifying confrontation with the West.

Sharaa’s turn to Moscow reflects a broader strategy to rebuild Syria’s military and state institutions and project external legitimacy amid ongoing domestic fragility. Lacking a monopoly on force and full territorial control, he seeks to consolidate power through military strength rather than political compromise. Although Turkey already plays acentralsecurity role, its involvement is shaped by its own strategic priorities and it lacks the institutional and material capacity to undertake a comprehensive rebuilding of Syria’s armed forces. Moscow represents one of the few viable alternative security partners capable of mitigating overreliance on Ankara, owing to its longstanding military ties with Damascus. Unlike Western powers, it is also not constrained by legal frameworks or reputational concerns associated with supporting a coercive regime. More importantly, alienating Moscow could pose a serious threat, as several senior former regime officials – particularly from the Alawite community – remain in [exile](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/16/world/middleeast/assad-regime-syria-exodus.html) there. The Kremlin could offer financial, military or intelligence support to factions opposed to Sharaa, especially in the coastal region where Alawites have faced mounting marginalisation and heavy-handed [repression](https://www.reuters.com/investigations/syrian-forces-massacred-1500-alawites-chain-command-led-damascus-2025-06-30/)..

Furthermore, Syria continues to face chronic [electricity shortages](https://www.newarab.com/news/syrians-suffer-under-power-cuts-despite-new-gas-shipments) due to the destruction of its energy infrastructure, and is experiencing one of its [worst droughts in decades](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c70x500lkdno) – driving food insecurity and the collapse of its agricultural sector. Recent shipments of [oil and gas condensates](https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/russia-deliver-oil-condensate-cargo-syria-according-lseg-traders-2025-10-22/#:~:text=Reuters%20Plus-,Russia%20to%20deliver%20oil%20and%20condensate%20cargo%20to,according%20to%20LSEG%20and%20traders&text=MOSCOW,%20Oct%2022%20(Reuters),said%20and%20LSEG%20data%20showed.) and wheat from Russia underscore Moscow’s role as an essential economic lifeline. This helps explain why Russia has retained control over key contracts, with the exception of the [civilian port in Tartus](https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2025/7/13/syria-signs-800m-tartus-port-deal-with-uae-firm-dp-world), awarded to the UAE’s DP World. The status quo inherited from the final years of Assad remains in place – for now. Commodity flows continue, and the opaque nature of existing agreements enables corruption and patronage networks that help reinforce Sharaa’s internal authority, while Russia retains key military bases, strategic contracts and Syria’s outstanding debt. Yet despite a convergence of interests, the relationship remains marked by mutual mistrust and uncertainty, which may deepen or rupture depending on Syria’s political trajectory.

Mediation and Leverage in a Fragmented State

Throughout the war, Russia cultivated ties with a wide range of actors beyond the regime and engaged in mediating regional tensions, particularly in the south and northeast. This has allowed it to remain engaged across Syria’s fragmented post-Assad landscape and to embed itself in key arenas of influence. This approach is designed to give Moscow the flexibility to navigate shifting dynamics and safeguard its interests, regardless of who holds power in Damascus.

In recent months, Moscow has reinforced its military presence at [Qamishli airport](https://www.kurdistan24.net/en/story/857179/russia-expands-military-presence-at-qamishli-airport-report), located in Syria’s northeast under the control of the Kurdish-led SDF. This has occurred amid the partial withdrawal of US forces, stalled negotiations between the SDF and Damascus over political and military integration and persistent Turkish threats against Kurdish forces. This positioning gives Russia space to mediate between Damascus, Ankara and the SDF, while also enabling it to strengthen ties with Kurdish forces should its influence come under threat.

Sharaa, for his part, has expressed [interest](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-08-12/syria-open-to-resuming-russian-patrols-in-south-kommersant-says?embedded-checkout=true) in the redeployment of Russian military police to southern Syria to help manage tensions with Israel. This recalls Moscow’s earlier role under Assad, when Russian troops stationed in the south were meant to serve as a buffer between Iran and Israel. Although it did little to deter Israeli strikes, the deployment contributed to limited deconfliction and crisis management. This development comes amid an impasse in US-sponsored talks between Syria and Israel, with Washington either unable or unwilling to restrain Israeli operations. Over the past year, Israel has significantly degraded Syria’s military infrastructure through sustained airstrikes, carried out incursions along the southern border and expanded its support for the Druze community in Suweida.

If the redeployment is realised, Russia would hold a military presence in Syria’s south, northeast and coastal region. These are three strategically vulnerable areas where Damascus lacks full authority or faces ongoing challenges in asserting control. The south is particularly sensitive, as it opens the road to Damascus. In this context, Russian forces could act either as a stabilising buffer or, if relations deteriorate, as a latent pressure point. This configuration would reinforce an asymmetric balance of power in which Sharaa’s authority would be contingent on Moscow.