February 25, 2025:
After ruling Syria for over 50 years, the Assad clan was overthrown in early December by Abu Mohammed al-Golani, who led a force of several thousand armed men and quickly conquered most of Syria in a few days. He left alone the Kurdish-held areas which insist only on some degree of to-be-negotiated local autonomy. The Syrian Kurds remain peaceful and are waiting for Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham or HTS to make them an offer.
Kurdish-led forces were pivotal in defeating ISIS/Islamic State of Iraq and Syria back in 2019 and have continued to guard detention centers holding ISIS fighters, and their families. The Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, also known as Rojava, is the only part of Syria where sharia councils have been abolished and religion is a personal choice. Since 2012 Rojava has been home for around two million Kurds, alongside other minority groups including some Arabs.
Turkey has been waiting in the wings for an opportunity to annihilate Rojava. For years, the Turkish government has insisted that there is no difference between ISIS and the Kurdish self-governance system of Rojava. Both are seen as terrorist threats to Turkish national security.
Aside from the departed Assads, the other big loser is Iran and possibly Russia. The Russians occupy an airbase and port in western Syria. Since the 1980s Iran has spent nearly $20 billion to establish and maintain a presence in Syria and Lebanon. Now that is all gone. The losses include weapons factories and air defense systems.
The Assads ended up in Russia because they ignored what was going in in their northwestern Idlib province. There Islamic terrorist group HTS had quietly evolved into an army of disciplined soldiers under the command of former Islamic terrorist Abu Muhammad Al-Golani. Most of Syria’s surviving Islamic terrorists, anti-Assad rebels and their families had held out in Idlib for almost ten years. Efforts by the Turks, who had to feed millions of Syrian refugees in Turkey, to get HTS, the dominant Islamic terrorist coalition in the province, to cooperate with the Turks failed. Turkey finally proposed that HTS work with Turkey-backed Syrian militias to overthrow the Assad regime so Turkey could move the millions of Syrian refugees back to Syria. Turkey offered HTS sanctuary in Turkish-controlled areas and let a few HTS members into Turkey. Reaching an agreement with HTS on the details proved difficult, but the reality was the HTS and Turkey had quietly worked out an arrangement that enabled HTS to assemble thousands of soldiers who were Islamic terrorists that agreed to follow HTS leader Golani in a successful lightning campaign to conquer Syria.
That ended 15-20 years of Iranian efforts to make Syria a base for Iranian attacks on Israel. This is one of many catastrophic strategic defeats for Iran’s religious dictatorship in the past few months. The most recent is that corruption and mismanagement of its economy have produced a shortage of oil and natural gas for domestic use. Iran’s president made a televised speech in December 2024 informing the Iranian people of this and announced his decision to divert the currently available stocks of fuel from the economy and jobs to heat housing so that millions of Iranians won’t freeze to death in the dark this winter.
Something else Iran has to rebuild is belief among all Iranians that their current leaders will be able to end the poverty that has been growing over the last decade with nearly half of Iranians impoverished and a few percent are without housing or enough food to survive. Many Iranian leaders believe that an uprising is possible if the religious dictatorship does nothing or tries to suppress the continuing protests against poverty and violent suppression of protests.