US smells Russian and Iranian blood in Syria, but rebel offensive challenges Kurdish ally
A shock offensive by Syrian rebels storming into Aleppo and Hama is not how the US expected the dam to break - in what has become a global conflict with Iran and Russia, spanning from the Red Sea to the trenches of Ukraine.
But Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and its Turkish-backed allies, the Syrian National Army, have now tangibly tipped the scales in a Middle East rebalance that US officials say has been underway since Hezbollah agreed to a shaky ceasefire in Lebanon, which gave sweeping concessions to Israel.
“Syria has been the linchpin of Iran and Russia’s power projection in the Levant. Now, everyone sees that the Islamic Republic and its friends in Moscow are reeling,” James Jeffrey, the former US special envoy for Syria from 2018 to 2020, told Middle East Eye.
The US was blindsided by the success of the HTS-led offensive across Syria, despite satellite intelligence indicating a build-up of rebel fighters who were on the verge of mounting an offensive, two current and one former US official told MEE.
Underscoring that point, the Biden administration was reportedly quietly working on a UAE-led initiative based on the assumption that Syria’s battle lines were stable and Syria's President Bashar al-Assad ensconced in Damascus. The deal floated sanctions relief to Assad in exchange for him clamping down on Iranian arms supply lines to Hezbollah.
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That agreement - which US intelligence and defence officials told MEE they were doubtful of - is now dead in the water. The Syrian army's weak defence bolsters the argument that Assad is too weak to protect his territory, let alone withstand a rift with his main ally.
After sitting out the first few days of the shock offensive, the US-backed Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have joined the fray to make their own gains, effectively severing Iran's land bridge to Syria.
Arab tribal fighters linked to the SDF swept across the Euphrates River on Friday to take a wide swath of strategic towns, including Deir Ezzor and al-Bukamal.
One US-backed Arab tribal leader told MEE that Assad's troops abandoned Syria's eastern borderlands to prevent the territory from falling into the hands of HTS, which had threatened to march into Deir Ezzor. Syrian troops and their Iranian allies are likely to redeploy to Homs, where HTS is now attacking.
With its allies having taken Deir Ezzor and al-Bukamal, the US now effectively controls the main entry points into Syria, through which Iran has funnelled arms to Hezbollah. US troops are also based at al-Tanf military base, where the borders of Iraq, Syria and Jordan intersect.
The SDF is now looking for backchannels to Israel, two former US officials and one Israeli source told MEE.
The officials said the SDF is trying to position itself to coordinate more closely with Israel.
If US-backed Arab tribes can hold Deir Ezzor and al-Bukamal, they will effectively control Iran's land access into Syria and Lebanon.
How Russia, US and Turkey carved up Syria
Turkey holds a swath of northern Syria and backs a constellation of Sunni rebel forces under the umbrella of the Syrian National Army. It maintains ties to HTS through its intelligence service. MEE reported that Turkey tried to prevent the HTS offensive, in part over concerns about disrupting its sensitive ties to Russia.
Until recently, Assad and his Russian and Iranian backers held about two-thirds of Syria, including Damascus and the Mediterranean coast, a heartland for Christians and Alawites. The latter are adherents to a Shia Islamic sect, which Assad’s family hails from and who are a key support base for his government.
The SDF controls much of northeastern Syria. The US’s support for the SDF is a sore point in its ties to Nato ally Turkey, which views the SDF as an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). The PKK has waged a decades-long guerrilla war in southern Turkey and is labelled a terrorist organisation by the US and the European Union.
Turkey’s concerns about the PKK led it to launch an invasion of Syria in 2016, with the aim of depriving Kurdish fighters of a quasi-state along its border. Two more military forays followed in 2018 and 2019.
US officials who spoke with MEE say the sheer scale of HTS’s successful offensive is an indirect result of Washington supporting Israel in its attacks against Iran and its proxies in Syria and Lebanon over the last months.
Meanwhile, Russia, which intervened in Syria’s civil war in 2015, providing air power to help Syrian and Iranian-backed ground forces retake rebel territory, is distracted by its gruelling fight with Ukraine and is focused on grabbing as much territory as it can ahead of potential peace-talks when President-elect Donald Trump assumes office in January.
“This offensive leaves no doubt how absolutely essential Assad’s Iranian and Russian backers are and how fragile he is when they are weakened and distracted,” Natasha Hall, senior fellow at the Middle East programme at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
HTS’s conquering of Hama on Thursday puts the rebels one city away from severing Assad’s link to the Alawite-dominated coast, where Russia maintains its only warm-water naval base in Tartus.
So, on the surface, Turkey's heft in Syria has increased at the expense of Russia and Iran. Zooming in closer, however, the situation is much more complicated for the US.
US grapples with HTS advance
HTS is an offshoot of the Nusra Front, which the US considers an affiliate of al-Qaeda. The Trump administration designated HTS a terror organisation in 2018.
Since conquering multi-ethnic and cosmopolitan Aleppo, HTS has outwardly moderated its Salafist image, visiting Christians and calling on Alawites to join its offensive.
“One reason the rebels failed a decade ago was that they simply couldn’t get enough Syrians on their side. Even the Sunni middle class looked at these guys and said ‘they are jihadis.’ What HTS is doing now is not what the rebels did in 2015. HTS is trying to address its image problem,” Robert Ford, the US’s former ambassador to Syria, told MEE.
One senior US defence official told MEE that since the fall of Aleppo, discussions have been taking place in the US about what steps HTS would need to take to be removed from the terror list.
Another US diplomat confirmed that those conversations had taken place but didn’t say what level of government they had reached.
The US-funded SDF and HTS are already coordinating. Under pressure from the advancing Turkish-backed rebels, the latter withdrew its forces from the strategic city of Tel Rifaat and neighbourhoods in eastern Aleppo while HTS looked on.
Jeffrey described the withdrawals, which were generally peaceful, as “an encouraging development because they show anti-Assad forces broadly aren’t fighting each other”.
But for the US-backed SDF, more troubles could be on the horizon.
The group, which is the US’s main partner in guarding thousands of Islamic State (IS) group prisoners and their families, has been badly pummelled by Turkey over the last several months. Turkish strikes in the spring destroyed oil installations, a key revenue source for the SDF.
Assad has already begun withdrawing troops from central Syria, where they were fighting a resurgence of IS, putting more pressure on the SDF.
“The fact that Assad is weaker will help Islamic State use the central Syrian desert as a staging ground, making an enduring defeat of Islamic State harder,” Ford told MEE.
Syrian Democratic Forces squeezed
Syria's battle lines are shifting amid a White House transition that has left a power vacuum.
Trump has been a critic of the US's military presence in northeast Syria. In 2019, he ordered a partial withdrawal of US troops. Bloody fighting broke out between the Kurdish fighters and the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army, which grabbed a wide swath of territory.
Trump partially reversed the decision. Today, the US maintains around 900 US troops in the northeast. Their official mission is to combat IS, but the US has come to see their presence as a bargaining chip during any future settlement of the Syrian conflict.
For Jeffrey, the rapid advance of HTS has underscored the importance of the US deployment. “Absolutely, they are more valuable today than ever before,” he said. “Ask yourself a very simple question: would Iran be happy if we pulled all the US troops from northeast Syria? We all know the answer is yes,” he said.
Ford, a long-time critic of the US mission, says the fragile SDF will be squeezed even further in the coming weeks.
With Turkish-backed rebels having seized Tal Rifaat, all eyes are now on Manbij, an ethnically diverse town that the SDF captured from IS. It connects Aleppo to the SDF-controlled city of Raqqa, where thousands of displaced Kurds are fleeing the Turkish-backed rebels.
The SDF has been concerned about a US pullout for months, MEE reported. With a nod from the US, they were in talks with Damascus to reach a settlement that would give them Russian and Syrian protection from Turkish attacks in exchange for giving up autonomy.
The talks fell apart over differences on how SDF units would be absorbed into the Syrian army, with the Kurds resisting to integrate fully into the Syrian armed forces, one current and one former US official told MEE.
“The big question for YPG now is does it throw its chances in with an even weaker Syrian government and try to get more concessions or establish a minimal agreement with Turkey and the Syrian opposition which is stronger,” Ford said, using the acronym for the Syrian wing of the PKK.
The Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) is the backbone of the SDF.
The rapid expansion of Turkey's power has the SDF on a knife-edge about a new offensive.
Ford said the SDF's best hope is striking a deal similar to that of Iraq's ruling Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). The KRG exercises some autonomy from Baghdad and works closely with Turkey against the PKK.
Trump could be the wild card. He was keen to cut a deal with Erdogan that would give Turkey free rein in northeastern Syria.
Trump has named officials like Marco Rubio and Mike Waltz as secretary of state and national security advisor; both are seen as hardline on Turkey and Iran.
One Trump transition official said they believe Trump could be convinced to maintain support for the SDF as a way to hold real estate that gives the US sway over any final Syrian settlement.
However, Hall said the US will need to work more closely with Turkey, which has now established itself as the dominant foreign power in Syria.
“The US will need to work closer with Turkey whether it likes it or not,” she said.
“A deal between Turkey and Russia would not be one that accommodates US interests and the SDF,” she said.
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