Assad's end sealed

Turkey “convinced” Iran and Russia not to overthrow him

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has gained influence in neighboring Syria with the fall of the Assad regime. His motivation: he wants to bring the Kurds there under control.

(Bild: APA/AFP/Pablo PORCIUNCULA)

According to Turkey, it has dissuaded Russia and Iran from continuing to support Syria's President Bashar al-Assad. The rebels' lightning offensive, which ultimately led to the overthrow, had been planned for a year, according to a British media outlet.

Concrete planning for the operation, known as "deterring aggression", began a year ago, Abu Hassan al-Hamwi, head of the military wing of the HTS, told the British Guardian on Friday. However, preparations for this have been underway for years. They had suffered considerable territorial losses in 2019 due to attacks by Assad troops, explained al-Hamwi.

At the time, all groups had recognized "that the fundamental problem was the lack of unified command and control over the fight", said the commander. As a result, the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham brought other opposition groups in the northwest of the country under its political control and then slowly molded its fighters into a disciplined fighting force using a military doctrine developed by the HTS, he said. 

By late November, the rebel alliance felt the time was ripe for its offensive as Assad's main allies are preoccupied with other conflicts: Russia is fighting in Ukraine, while Iran and its ally, the Lebanese Hezbollah militia, are weakened by the battle with Israel. It was obviously not that difficult to convince them politically to drop Assad.

An Assad poster with several bullet holes in Aleppo

(Bild: APA/AFP/OZAN KOSE)

"Moscow and Tehran have realized this"
According to Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, it went something like this: "The most important thing was to talk to the Russians and Iranians" so that they would not interfere militarily. We met with them and they understood." If the two countries had come to Assad's aid, the Islamists' offensive might have lasted much longer and more lives would have been lost, Fidan told the TV station NTV on Friday. However, Moscow and Tehran had realized that it "no longer made sense" to support Assad. 

However, the Russian army had flown air strikes in the city of Aleppo a few days after the start of the Islamists' offensive, after the insurgents had entered the city. HTS and its allied militias then continued to advance rapidly in the country and captured the capital Damascus last Sunday. Assad fled to Russia, where he was granted asylum"on humanitarian grounds".