Assad’s failure to understand was fatal

Iran and its leaders have never lived through such a bad day as December 8, 2024 and the fall of the Assad regime.

It is not easy to find an explanation for all that has happened in Syria during the past two weeks, starting with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) forces entering Aleppo and ending with the HTS reaching Damascus in a sweeping offensive which led to the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

Everything evolved quickly. The total collapse of the regime in the face of a medium-sized force like HTS cannot be examined only from a political or military perspective.

It is clear however that following its civil war “victory”, the regime of Bashar al-Assad, just watched time elapse while it gradually eroded, eventually turning into a hollow shell, in every sense of the word.

Some may say the regime did not win the civil war in the first place but that all parties were exhausted to a point where no one cared to claim victory leaving Assad to declare himself the winner.  That might well be the case, of course.  The regime could have continued to hide behind large numbers of soldiers and security personnel, and rely on Russian and Iranian backing. But such an endeavour would have required a large budget which the internationally-sanctioned regime could not afford. At the same time, the Russians were preoccupied with their war in Ukraine, which turned into a full confrontation with the West. The Iranians were floundering under the weight of the Hamas “Al-Aqsa Flood” misadventure and Hezbollah’s costly involvement in the conflict. Hostilities led to the near-total destruction of Hamas and Gaza, on the one hand, and Hezbollah’s decapitation and the dismantling of its organisational structure, on the other.  This was result of Israeli strikes, which were part of an onslaught that one day will be studied as a minutely-planned military stratagem.

At the heart of attempts at explain what happened, Bashar al-Assad stands out as the key player in the drama which has unfolded over the past two weeks.

Developments demonstrated, time and time again, Assad’s inability to understand the importance of time and how new developments can sweep away the long-established status quo. During three decades of his political role in the top (or almost top) position of power, Assad was unable to keep pace with time nor understand how critical the situation had become

Former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad definitely excelled in wasting the opportunities with which fate presented him. Bashar al-Assad, was brought to power by mere political coincidence and strokes of fate. He subsequently continued to count on destiny to throw him more opportunities. But this time, he ran out of opportunities.

There is no need to dwell too long on the history of the Assad dynasty. Suffice it to say that Bashar’s father, Hafez al-Assad, quickly seized the opportunity to clinch power, and once in power, he did everything to remain the absolute ruler of Syria.

Bashar al-Assad hardly existed until one dark, foggy dawn when Bashar’s older brother, Basil, was killed.

Bashar became the potential heir to his father (and to the Assad dynasty, within which there was no shortage of ambition among the uncles and cousins). When Basil was killed in a car crash on the road leading to the airport, Assad Sr rushed to summon his “unknown” son from ophthalmology school in London.

This was the first opportunity which Bashar al-Assad was to squander. His father was weak and needed someone to support him after he had bet on Basil and excluded his younger brother Rifaat. But the young Assad instead of “training” to become a seasoned statesman, chose to indulge in talk about the Syrian Computer Society. He pinned the future on the growing reach of the Internet which he touted as his next miracle. Bashar stayed at the near-top position of power behind his father, until the latter’s death in the year 2000.

His accession to the presidency was the second opportunity which he immediately wasted. Syrians welcomed him as someone who had lived for a certain period of time (however short it was) in the West, and married a Syrian woman who had studied and worked in Britain. There was hope that he could transfer some of what he or his wife had learned to his home country. Syrians did not ask for democracy nor pragmatic governance. They would have been content just to see some calm in relations between the authorities and Syrian citizens in a way that would make them forget the harshness of Hafez al-Assad’s rule. Syrians were optimistic about the dawn of Bashar’s era, but the young president dealt with the new situation as if he and the world could wait.

Nothing seemed urgent for the president, and procrastination continued to be the rule of the day. After a while, the young president added a strange mixture to his regional and international relations. He was not satisfied with deftly-calculated, interest-based relations, in the manner of his father Hafez when dealing with the Iranians, Hezbollah and Hamas. Instead, he became a believer in two facets of political Islam which he deemed compatible: the Khomeini phase and the Muslim Brotherhood phase. Assad set a political precedent by believing in salvation at the hands of two religious parties while being the leader of the secular nationalist Baath Party

After a while, the Syrians began to lose enthusiasm, while Assad chased Iranian illusions through Hezbollah and initiated a hostile policy towards the Arab Gulf. He also clashed with the Saudis for no apparent reason other than his incredible failure to understand what was happening.

The region was jolted by the assassination of Rafik Hariri, then it witnessed the withdrawal of Syrian forces from Lebanon and the 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel. Bashar al-Assad nevertheless remained adamant that time was on his side and that what cannot be handled today could be eventually be dealt with in a decade or two.

The region changed significantly after the invasion of Iraq but Assad remained unable to understand how serious these changes were and how the balance of power was shifting in favour of Iran. His lack of understanding and awareness led him to become the link that brought the Iranians to the Mediterranean through Iraq. It was the same link that facilitated Tehran’s use of Hezbollah to impose its hegemony over Lebanon and the Palestinian issue. He was unable to realise the magnitude of the threat that the region was facing as the Iranian ideological project was morphing into a drive to build a Shia empire.

When listening to what Assad was saying, one could not imagine he really could believe his own words. In the meanwhile, he was wasting more opportunities, until the “Arab spring” catastrophe unfolded. Assad’s dubious achievement was to be able, instead of containing the crisis, to transform within weeks, a popular protest movement into a full-fledged civil war.

There is no need to detail the horrific depths to which Syria sank, as this is more than well-documented. But the decline in violence after a few years was supposed to open the door to a solution. Assad, once again, failed to recognise the time factor and the importance of timing. He let the matter drift for years until the final period of his reign. The last years of Assad’s rule witnessed Arab overtures to the Damascus regime. Bashar was offered more than one opportunity as he frequently attended Arab and regional summits. He did not seize on the Arab world’s overtures, which helped improve the relationship with his arch-enemy, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. For a while, Erdogan seemed to be begging for reconciliation with Assad, while the Syrian president rebuffed the invitations to direct talks as he failed to see things beyond his own black and white prism. Obstinacy was a salient trait of the long years of Bashar’s rule.  But it quickly became a deeply-rooted problem that even Arab countries which wanted to help him could not overcome. As everyone else realised the world was changing very rapidly, Assad could not escape his own time warp.

In the final manifestation of his disconnect from reality, Assad was unable to comprehend what was happening near him. Israel devastated Hamas, and destroyed a large part of Iran’s military and political assets in Syria, then turned to destroying Hezbollah.

Assad remained angry about Hamas. He was also convinced that Hezbollah was an invincible force which Israel could not defeat. Bashar also believed that Iranian deterrence was a reality and not just missiles displayed on Tehran murals and military parades.

Everything was tested and failed as Israel was able to direct its strikes against the senior leaders of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard in Syria, and decimate Hezbollah by targeting all its important figures through pager and the walkie-talkie attacks, and then by killing its top leadership Hassan Nasrallah and Hashem Safieddine. At that point, people interpreted Assad’s silence as strategic magnanimity. No one could imagine he was just impervious to facts on the ground.

Now the game is over and the Assad regime has fallen, sweeping way with it a great deal of Iranian political, financial and strategic investments. Iran and its leaders have never lived through such a bad day as December 8, 2024 and the fall of the Assad regime. Iran, which seems to have abandoned Assad, had understood early on what was happening after its missile and deterrence power were destroyed by Israel. It left Assad to die a quick death while trying to salvage whatever it could from all that remained of its dreams of an empire.

Tehran had no time to waste pretending it was wisely contemplating the changing realities, as Assad would do. If there is anything that Syrians could learn from the fallen regime’s inability to understand and comprehend the importance of the time factor, it is that they have an opportunity now to understand and comprehend unfolding developments in order to look ahead.

Some in the Arab Gulf, who remained keen on Syria, despite everything that happened with Assad and his regime, still want to help save Syria from its long string of setbacks. Among them are those who have already extended a hand to Damascus and engaged in the first stage of rescue efforts. No doubt they will continue their support for Syria.

This is an opportunity that may not be avail itself again. Syrians must seize it and not turn it into some regional political ploy driven by petty ambitions. Fortune may not knock twice on someone’s door.

Haitham El Zobaidi is the Executive Editor of Al Arab Publishing House