Interview | What Assad’s Fall Means for Syria and the Greater Middle East

Ilan Berman is an expert on regional security in the Middle East, Central Asia and the Russian Federation. He is senior vice president of the American Foreign Policy Council and has provided assistance on foreign policy and national security issues to a range of governmental agencies and congressional offices. Berman has written for The Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs and The New York Times, among other publications, and is the author of five books and the editor of six, including Iran’s Deadly Ambition and Winning the Long War: Retaking the Offensive against Radical Islam.

Here, in conversation with Moment Editor in Chief Nadine Epstein, cofounder of the Moment Institute Middle East Fellows program, Berman shares valuable insights into the complex and rapidly evolving situation in Syria. This adaptation of the MomentLive! program has been edited for clarity and length.

Two weeks ago, nobody was paying any attention to Syria. What happened?

I think the answer is very simple. It’s that nature upholds a vacuum, and what you’ve seen in the region over the last several weeks has been the creation of a strategic vacuum—thanks in very large part to Israel’s northern front against Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Israel has racked up some pretty stunning successes in a remarkably short period of time, including attrition of Hezbollah’s rocket arsenal, the erosion of its high-level and mid-level cadres, the elimination of successive leaders, and then Israeli direct action against the Islamic Republic of Iran (on October 26), which included strikes on Iran’s ballistic missile production capabilities and its air defense architecture. All of this showcased cracks in something that the Iranian regime had spent a generation building—its proxy network, or empire of influence throughout the region, of which Hamas, Hezbollah and the Syrian regime have been critical nodes.

It’s not at all clear whether HTS is really a kinder, gentler Salafi jihadist group. And even if it is, it’s still a group that envisions imposing of a very strict form of Sharia law on Syrian society.

It’s useful to remember that the Syrian civil war has been going on for more than 10 years, during which an equilibrium emerged between the regime of Bashar al-Assad—which was supported by Iran on the ground and by Russia in terms of aerial power—and the assorted opposition forces, many of them Sunni jihadists.

The Israeli successes vis a vis Hezbollah and Iran upset that status quo and created a political space that the Syrian rebels—again, jihadist opponents of the Assad regime—were shrewd enough to step into. What we saw as a result was this lightning-fast movement of opposition succeed as rebels swept from city to city in Syria. Instead of opposing them, like they had in in years and months past, the Syrian regime forces crumbled.

And the Russians pulled back their ships and their planes, and the Iranians too, right?

The Russians haven’t left completely, but yes, we’ve seen a retraction of their power at the air base at Khmeimim and the Russian naval base at Tartus, both on the Syrian coastline along the eastern Mediterranean. These are the bastions of Russian military power. They’re also important because they sit at the very heart of the Alawite, the minority Islamic sect from which Bashar al-Assad, the now deposed dictator, and his father hailed. Russia was effectively providing military cover for the minority Alawite regime of Bashar al-Assad. The Russians are still there, and they’re still providing some semblance of protection to the Alawites.

The question that comes next is: As Hayʼat Tahrir al-Sham, the main jihadist group driving the opposition—consolidates their power and seizes control of government functions, do they press their advantage? Do they push the Russians out? Do they persecute the Alawites? Do they prosecute them? That chapter is still to be written.

There were other rebel groups in Syria. Why did this particular group emerge?

Hayʼat Tahrir al-Sham (commonly referred to as Tahrir al-Sham or HTS) is, or was until just a few moments ago in geopolitical terms, an al-Qaeda affiliate. It is the successor of a group called Jabhat al-Nusra, a Sunni Salafi jihadist group opposed to the Assad regime. (Again, the Assad regime is associated with the Alawite minority sect that identifies with Shia Islam.) Jabhat al-Nusra quickly took to the fore after the Syrian civil war broke out in 2011 and has really set the contours of the opposition debate ever since. It’s not the only game in town, but it’s the biggest voice in that constellation.

How is HTS, and let’s also talk about HTS leader Abu Mohammad al-Julani, different from al-Qaeda and from ISIS?

Abu Mohammad al-Julani, leader of Hayʼat Tahrir al-Sham

Julani would like us to think that HTS is very different. He does not fully distance himself from all the atrocities that were carried out in Syria during the years of the Syrian civil war, but in interview after interview he’s been surprisingly charismatic and basically said, “It was the rashness of youth. I’m more mature now; I’m going to govern in a more mature fashion.”

But it’s not at all clear whether HTS is really a kinder, gentler Salafi jihadist group. And even if it is, it’s still a Salafi jihadist group that envisions the imposition of a very strict form of Sharia law on Syrian society. So, I’m reserving judgment. My sense is that a great deal is going to be determined by what we see happening with the Syrian population. Syrians have already begun to stream back into the country from different places in exile, but how they are treated, how they’re received, how much freedom of action and political breathing room they have under this new HTS rule will tell us much more than anything Julani says to Western media outlets.

Does HTS actually control the country? They rolled into Damascus, and they took over Aleppo and a few other cities. But does that really mean that they control the country?

No, not yet. Syria is a large place, and there are pockets that remain controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces, the Kurdish militias and other actors as well. But increasingly, what we’ve seen is HTS expand the areas under its control, and, as you said, take over city after city in this sort of sequential march. So, I don’t think it’s premature to talk about HTS as the power broker, at least for the moment.

The operative question now is: How is HTS going to govern? Is it going to govern in an inclusive fashion? There are some indicators that they’re willing to maintain elements of the old regime and let bygones be bygones; there have been incidents where they’ve treated politicians from the Assad regime with respect, and they’ve even offered some semblance of political refuge for Assad’s last prime minister. Again, we’re potentially looking at a reversion of a secular, very brutal dictatorship into an Islamist, clerical dictatorship.

And we’re not sure how that impacts women, and how it impacts minorities, such as the Shia, the Alawites and others. It sounds like Julani told Iran ahead of time that he would protect Shia shrines; he gave them some assurances. Is that a good sign?

I think so. The Assad regime remained in control over the past decade only because the Russians controlled the air and the Iranians provided reinforcements on the ground, and part of that Iranian footprint has included a pretty significant contingent of Iranian Shiite civilians who have altered the demographic composition of the country. Now, in the span of just a few days, Iranian media sources have reported on an exodus of Shia from Syria, which is a good indicator that they don’t feel very secure, despite all of the assurances Julani has given Tehran.

We see these scenes of great celebration, but really, nobody knows what’s about to happen.

Assad was the devil that we knew for a long time. Somehow over the last decade, the corruption and the blood-thirsty nature of the Assad regime became normalized to the point where just a year ago here in Washington, we were having discussions about whether or not we should bring the Assad regime in from the cold. Those discussions now look positively archaic in retrospect, as Western journalists are being allowed access into Syrian prisons and are discovering the inhumane ways Syrian guards disposed of bodies or prisoners who haven’t seen the sunlight in a decade. Things that really highlight the depravity of the Assad regime. Frankly, it’s a mark of shame that we took our eyes off the ball in terms of the human rights situation in Syria. Now, you have the potential for an equally odious regime but of an indeterminate character.

Let’s talk about Syria’s neighbors. First, how does this impact Jordan, which seems to exist in a miraculously stable way in the middle of everything.

Jordan’s stability is a very delicate balancing act. And one of the things that the Hashemite Kingdom has been grappling with for quite a few years has been the potential for internal destabilization as a result of what happens in Syria. They’ve now closed their border with Syria—it’s not the first time they’ve done so, but there’s real concern in Amman. Remember, the Jordanian state is 70 percent Palestinian, and Jordanian politics have been inflamed over the last year as a result of what’s happening next door in terms of Israeli conduct. It’s clear the Jordanian government sees this as a tinderbox, and the last thing they need is another match that could potentially light it. And now they have to their north a situation they have to worry about, not just about Israeli military action or about instability in the West Bank but about Sunni Salafi jihadism being reinvigorated on their northern front.

Everybody in the neighborhood and everybody in the West is sleeping a little bit better knowing that HTS, if it does have Islamist imperial ambitions, will have less ability to put them into practice as a result of what Israel has done.

Israel has played a role in the demise of the Assad regime and pressed its advantage. Tell me a little more about that.  

Depending on who you ask in Israel, Israel is either a player or the player. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has wasted no time in saying that Assad’s fall is the causal impact of what Israel has done since October 7. That’s a large part of the story, but it’s useful to remember that until just a few weeks ago, Israel did not look like it was winning strategically. Gaza is an asymmetric ground war against an entrenched enemy, kind of like Fallujah was for the U.S. military in Iraq. But what you see in southern Lebanon, and in the Israeli response to Iran, is all about Israel’s precise, quick, and dominating air power, which is why the Israelis managed to change the script.

But that’s not the whole story. We were talking about neighbors—the Turks, who have been long-time backers of HTS, also understood this moment, understood that the underpinnings of the Assad regime had become rickety, and they were the ones whispering in the ear of Julani, saying, now is the time for you to fill the vacuum; now is the time to go. In other words, I don’t think this is monocausal, although Israel deserves a lot of the credit.

Russia, meanwhile, is bogged down in Ukraine, so that’s another element.

That, to me, is one of the most interesting factors, because the Turkish-Russian relationship historically has been very adversarial. They fought something like 11 military wars over a millennia, but in recent years the relations have been positively friendly. And yet, Turkey has taken a very public anti-Russian turn, talking about their support for Ukrainian sovereignty and, as I said, essentially goading HTS into action, to Russia’s great detriment. On social media, Russian officials and Russian ideologues talking about how they feel betrayed by the Turks, so there’s a significant geopolitical shift happening between Ankara and Moscow.

Who is financing HTS?

This is a good question. Turkey is a big supporter, as is Qatar. However, the financial flows are a little murky. But I can tell you that this group would not survive, let alone thrive, if it weren’t for external sources of support.

The Golan Heights below Mt Hermon. Leif Knutsen, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Let’s talk about Israel again and its movement into Syrian territory since Assad fell.

Before October 7, Israel had become cautiously optimistic about what was happening in the region. And then October 7 was this big wake-up call about the permanence of anti-Israel sentiment and the permanence of harmful elements waiting for the opportunity to strike at the Jewish state. Israeli politicians, if you talk to them, very much hope that Julani has turned over a new leaf, but they’ll also be quick to point out that in Arabic, his nom de guerre, al-Julani, means “of the Golan,” so he’s not exactly hiding his territorial ambition. [Editor’s note: the HTS leader has now started using his real name, Ahmed al-Sharaa, ostensibly as an attempt to distance himself from jihadist past.] The Israeli military has moved modestly into Syrian territory, taking the Syrian side of Mount Hermon, and, very significantly, they have blown up something like 70-75 percent of the military arsenal of the Assad regime—missile stockpiles, heavy artillery and suspected chemical weapons stockpiles.

I think the next step, very logically, is that the Israelis will pull back and build a moat that will make it difficult for jihadists from Syria to cross. This is precisely the strategy they implemented, with Russian assistance, during the hot part of the Syrian civil war a few years ago. It was part of the quiet understanding between Putin and Netanyahu that there would be regular bombing of the Southern Syrian border as a way of making sure that jihadists didn’t leave Syrian territory and cross over into Israel.

Syria is now in a position where it’s really hard to rebuild any kind of arsenal, because those weapons were coming from Russia and from Iran, neither of whom can provide weapons in the same ways. Are there weapons coming into Syria from other places?

It’s hard to tell. But frankly, I think everybody in the neighborhood and everybody in the West is sleeping a little bit better knowing that HTS, if it does have Islamist imperial ambitions, will have less ability to put them into practice as a result of what Israel has done.

Are we expecting trials in Syria? Executions? So far, we haven’t really seen any sign of that.

We’re not yet seeing a cohesive, inclusive transitional government in Syria, but after, effectively, a generation of families being separated, of people being butchered, of these mass human rights atrocities, there has to be some level of accountability. When you look at countries in the former Soviet bloc that successfully weathered the transition from a totalitarian state, the ones that actually had proper trials are the ones that are actually the best functioning today. So, I think this is coming, but it’s going to have to be monitored very closely, because such a process can easily go off the rails and simply be about retribution, about summary execution—the authoritarians in charge taking their vengeance on the authoritarians of yesterday.

As far as people returning to Syria, it’s currently a limbo period. In 2010 the Syrian population was 22 million, but had gone down to 12 million by the middle of that decade with a massive exodus of people to places like Iraq and Turkey, but also into Europe and points beyond. It seems there is a reverse flow now beginning, but remember, refugees from the Syrian civil war have at this point lived in their adopted countries for anywhere from five to ten years. They’ve made lives there, so it’s not very clear that 10 million people are coming back.

I’ve seen images of entire neighborhoods in Damascus destroyed. So much of Aleppo is destroyed along with other towns. Where are people going back to?

Reconstruction becomes a paramount priority because of the destruction that’s accompanied the Syrian civil war. It’s going to require direct foreign investment and international cooperation, which simply doesn’t come if you establish exclusionary Islamist rule. So that’s a factor in favor of HTS taking a more moderate tone. There’s a historical analog in what Egypt experienced in terms of its economic prosperity when Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohamed Morsi took power. It was only about 13 months before he was deposed, but you saw this catastrophic outflow of capital, and you saw all these promises from the Gulf states about direct investment that simply didn’t materialize. And the very important lesson here is that, on a very basic level, the international community does not invest in Islamist regimes.

At one time, Syria was a very cosmopolitan country. Jews lived there for centuries, including Jews in my own family. It’s such a different country now, but is there any hope for that kind of Syria to return someday? Of the hundreds of thousands of Jews who once lived in Aleppo, Damascus and elsewhere, are there any left?

I think we have a long way to go for Jews to feel safe enough to go back, especially because we haven’t seen an authoritarian-to-democratic transition in Syria. A lot depends on the pressure the international community applies to HTS and that it applies to Turkey and Qatar to apply to HTS, because they’re the ones that have the ear of Julani and his commanders.

How are Egypt and Saudi Arabia eyeing what’s happening in Syria?

Egypt is taking a wait-and-see approach. They are, I think, justifiably worried about a reinvigoration in a different form of what we saw in Iraq and Syria just a few years ago with the ISIS caliphate. That’s their worst-case scenario. I think they’re going to work very hard behind the scenes with anybody who will listen to make sure that doesn’t come to pass. But one of the reasons why Israel’s military campaign in Syria isn’t receiving nearly the sort of the critical outcry that you would expect watching the press coverage of the last year in the Gaza Strip, is the fact that what Israel is doing right now is checking the box for all these countries that are concerned about a reinvigorated jihadist threat that may come to dominate Syria.

For even more from this conversation, including Saudi Arabia’s assessment, how the Houthis might be affected as well as Hamas, and even what the incoming Trump administration might do, tune in to the entire program on YouTube.