to my reality: not dust and not fire. What

will I do without roses from Samarkand? What

will I do in a theater that burnishes the singers with its lunar

stones? Our weight has become light like our houses

in the faraway winds. We have become two friends of the strange

creatures in the clouds … and we are now loosened

from the gravity of identity’s land. What will we do … what

will we do without exile, and a long night

that stares at the water?   — Mahmoud Darwish

Newark, Del. (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – Ebrahim Nabavi was an Iranian satirist.  On January 15, 2025,   he took his life at the age of sixty four in Silver Spring, Md.   He never felt at home, whether in Brussels or in the vicinity of Washington, D.C.  He always wanted to go back to Iran. He was one of the reformists who took on the mantle to criticize the Islamic Republic.   He was imprisoned.  He shared the same block with other famous prisoners. 

He did stand-up comedy.  He wrote satirical views on different media outlets, first in Iran and later in Europe and in the U.S.  

I didn’t always agree with him.  He wrote an article to which I felt the need to reply.  I wish I had known him better. 

But what happens to luminaries who die in exile, either naturally or by taking their own lives?

In 1942, Stefan Zweig took his life in Brazil.   He had seen the devastation of his homeland Austria and, later Germany, by the Nazis.  He could not tolerate it. 

Such people tend to be more sensitive than others.  They are not weak but more emotional perhaps.  Or this world of ours is too much for them to handle. 

Gholamhossein Saedi, a renowned playwright, a physician from Tabriz was one of them.  He immigrated to Paris. He never liked the city, even though he tried.   He wrote his essays and tried very hard to become part of Parisian intellectual life.  He said, I can relate to Paris, but Paris is not Tehran.  My pen does not write well in Paris.  

Gholamhossein Saedi; h/t Wikimedia

“All the buildings in Paris are like a theatre décor.   I feel as if I am living in a post card,” he wrote.

In a way he also committed suicide.  He died at the age of 49. 

I met him in Tehran after the Revolution at his house and then, much later, in Paris.  He was not the same man.

He was laid to rest in Père Lachaise where many famous people are buried.   A few weeks ago, his tombstone was desecrated in a terrible way. Someone urinated on it.

Saedi was a famous person; he had been incarcerated by the Shah and then by the Islamic Republic.  A few of his plays were turned into films, among them the Cow by the famous film maker, Dariush Mehrjoui. 

Ebrahim Nabavi took his life perhaps because he could not stand to be away from his homeland.

Who knows?

What drives some people to suicide?   

They both shared one thing:   A long-lasting love for Iran.  An Iran they could neither live in nor leave behind.

Here’s another irony. Solar panels are the solution to Iran’s woes, even if it has all those oil and gas fields under the ground. It is better for everyone, and especially for Iran if the carbon locked up in those fields is never pumped into the atmosphere, where it will act like a planetary Bunsen burner.

The energy crisis has several roots. The country has been under US and international sanctions for nearly two decades. They have made it impossible for Iran to attract investment in its gas fields, which it shares with the small Gulf nation of Qatar. In contrast, Shell and other multinationals are heavily invested in Qatar’s side of the underground gas field and are vastly expanding production. Iran has fair relations with Qatar but there is some tension over all this, since Iran’s access to the same fields is blocked by sanctions.

The sanctions also interfere with the importation of equipment and materiel essential to the gas industry, which has therefore become backward and ramshackle.

Farnaz Fasihi wrote at The New York Times in mid-December that in February Israel destroyed two gas pipelines in Iran as part of its clandestine conflict with the ayatollahs. Consequently, she said, the government discreetly accessed emergency gas reserves to prevent service interruptions for millions. The government of the late prime minister, Ebrahim Raisi, secretly drew down reserves to avoid outages in the aftermath of this strike, but the reserves went only so far.

Israel’s strike on civilian infrastructure was a war crime.

The Iranian state is also just not very good at its job, and mismanagement is part of the problem.

Finally, the sanctions on Iran include kicking it off the major currency exchanges and making trade in riyals difficult. The riyal has been cratering against the dollar.

What would you do if your life savings were dwindling in value daily, and you couldn’t even use them to buy imported goods?

You might mine some bitcoin. Cryptocurrency, though, is a huge energy hog, and some analysts suspect it has added to Iran’s energy crunch. Individuals and businesses are suspected of illegal cryptocurrency mining and of spreading out the load to avoid detection, reducing access to power on the part everyone else.

Finally, in the summer the temperatures have risen because of human-caused climate change, i.e. from burning Iran’s and other countries’ oil and gas, and there are enormous air-conditioning demands in the summer months, way up from previous years.

“Azadi Tower Solarized,” Digital, Midjourney, 2024.

Solar panels would solve Iran’s electricity problems, including air conditioning and winter heating. Iran has vast deserts like the Dasht-i Kavir, where you could place the panels without interfering with humans, farming, or other land use. So it has room for PV. Not every country has this advantage.

Iran can import inexpensive Chinese panels. It has excellent relations with China, which has found ways around US sanctions on Iranian trade. Private Pakistani citizens and small businesses added 17 gigawatts of solar power to Pakistan in 2024, just importing photovoltaic panels made in China despite the lack of government support. Pakistan’s energy crisis makes Iran’s look like a walk in the park.

Iran also has a fair industrial base and an excellent scientific establishment, and Iranians could make their own panels if they wanted to. It would be far more remunerative than investing in nuclear power.

Iran could deploy community and neighborhood solar, which would make it harder for an enemy to knock out the whole grid.

According to Azerbaijan’s Trend News Agency, Iran has an electricity generation capacity of about 93 gigawatts. Its power plants put out 76 gigs, mostly from fossil gas, and it gets another 2.4 gigs from retail power plants. Iran has 12 gigs of hydro. The Bushehr nuclear plant produces about a gigawatt. and it has 0.4 gigawatts of diesel electricity production. Its renewable installations at the moment produce only 1.1 gigs.

Just last week, President Masoud Pezeshkian announced plans to substantially increase solar and wind power generation. He has ordered all government office buildings to have solar panels on their roofs by this coming summer.

The renewable energy and Energy Efficiency Organization (SATBA) of Iran is inviting bids for new renewable electricity plants. The agency plans to add 500 megawatts of new renewable production by March.

The question is whether Pezeshkian can move toward renewables quickly enough to avert a budding economic, social and environmental meltdown.

Russia and Iran were major allies of Syria under the regime of President Bashar al-Assad until the totalitarian leader was ousted by rebels in early December.

The West is closely watching the new ruler’s actions, including the depth of any future ties with Tehran and Moscow.

“Syria cannot continue without relations with an important regional country like Iran,” Sharaa told Al Arabiya in a wide-ranging interview on December 29.

But relations “must be based on respect for the sovereignty of both countries and noninterference in the affairs of both countries,” he added.

Sharaa urged Tehran to rethink its regional policies and interventions and pointed out that opposition forces protected Iranian positions during the fighting to oust Assad, even though rebels knew Iran was a major backer of the president.

Sharaa said he had expected positive overtures from Iran following these actions but said they have not been forthcoming.

Sharaa, previously known by the nom de guerre Abu Muhammad al-Jolani, said that while he expects Moscow to withdraw its forces from Syria, he also spoke of “deep strategic interests” with the “second most powerful country in the world.”

“Ahmad al-Shara,” Digital, Dream / Dreamland v3/ Clip2Comic, 2024

“We don’t want Russia to exit Syria in a way that undermines its relationship with our country,” he told Al-Arabiya, without providing details.

“All of Syria’s arms are of Russian origin, and many power plants are managed by Russian experts…. We do not want Russia to leave Syria in the way that some wish,” he said.

According to flight data analyzed by RFE/RL, Russia is reducing its military footprint in Syria and shifting some of its assets from the Middle Eastern country to Africa.

To offset the potential loss of its air base in Hmeimim and naval base in Tartus, Russia appears to be increasing its presence in Libya, Mali, and Sudan, although experts say the loss of Syrian bases is a major blow to the Kremlin.

Meanwhile, Sharaa also said that organizing elections in the country could take up to four years and that a new constitution could require three years to be finalized.

The leader expressed hope that the new U.S. administration under Donald Trump — set to take office on January 20 — would lift sanctions on his country.

“We hope the incoming Trump administration will not follow the policy of its predecessor,” Sharaa said.

The rebels who ousted Assad were led by Sharaa’s Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) Islamist group, a U.S. and EU-designated terrorist organization.

Sharaa has publicly pledged to adopt moderate policies regarding women’s rights, national reconciliation, and relations with the international community, although world leaders say they remain wary of the new rulers pending concrete actions.

RFE/RL

Copyright (c)2024 RFE/RL, Inc. Used with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty

( RFE / RL ) – The fall of Bashar al-Assad’s government at the hands of rebels, including Ankara-backed factions, has effectively made Turkey the dominant foreign actor in Syria at the expense of Iran and its ally Russia.

Turkey and Iran have competed for years for influence in the South Caucasus, and this rivalry appears to have now extended to the Levant.

“The Islamic republic has had significant misgivings about Turkish influence in Syria, be it economic, political, or military, long before the fall of Assad. But with the loss of Iran’s sole state ally in the region, these concerns are set to be magnified exponentially,” said Behnam Taleblu, an Iran analyst at the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD).

Still, experts say Turkey’s rising profile in Syria to the detriment of Iran does not necessarily mean Ankara-Tehran relations will be significantly impacted.

What Is Turkey After?

Since the onset of the Syrian civil war in 2011, Iran and Russia backed Assad while Turkey supported rebel groups opposed to his rule.

Iran needed Assad to remain in power so that it could use Syria as a staging ground to fund and arm its proxies and partners, especially the Lebanese group Hezbollah.

For Russia, Assad’s rule meant Moscow could maintain its Hmeimim air base and naval base in Tartus, which gave it easier access to the Middle East, North Africa, and the Mediterranean Sea.

Ankara wanted a government in Syria more aligned with its regional vision and policies, especially those that would restrain Kurdish groups in northeastern Syria. A coalition of Kurdish parties, including the Democratic Union Party (PYD), heads the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria.

PYD’s armed wing, the People’s Protection Units (YPG), leads the U.S-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

“Turkey has had three core concerns in Syria: fighting the YPG/PYD, enabling the return of Syrian refugees to Syria, and preventing further refugee flows into Turkey,” said Daria Isachenko, a Turkey expert at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs.

Assad’s downfall on December 8 has stemmed the influx of refugees into Turkey, but the “first two concerns remain,” Isachenko added.

Syria is now effectively ruled by the U.S.-designated terrorist organization Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and its allies — some of whom are linked with Turkey, Iran’s rival.

Isachenko says Turkey’s growing influence in Syria could further strengthen its position in the Mediterranean Sea if Ankara signs a Libya-style maritime deal with the new authorities in Damascus.

The Road Ahead

Turkey’s growth in stature and Iran’s weakened position in Syria could have ramifications for developments in the South Caucasus, where Iran, Russia, and Turkey vie for influence.

Experts say while the Astana talks — a format sponsored by the three countries to end the conflict in Syria — may be dead, it still served as a platform for managing different interests.

“Coordination and consultation on conflict management between Turkey and Iran as well as Russia on the Middle East and the South Caucasus should not be ruled out,” Isachenko said.

She adds that even in Syria, Turkey and Iran may find some of their interests aligned, such as finding a common adversary in Israel, which has moved into Syrian territory since the fall of Assad.

“Turkish Victory in Syria,” Digital, Dream / Dreamland v3 / Clip2Comic, 2024

Still, some argue that Tehran will seek to undermine Turkey in Syria in the hopes of returning the country into its so-called axis of resistance — Iran’s loose network of regional allies and proxies.

“The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps will look for ways to claw back influence in Syria,” said Taleblu of FDD.

“Downtrodden, disposed, and spurned local actors are easy to co-opt, particularly in states where central authority is weak.”

The Kurdish Question

U.S. support for the Kurdish-led SDF has weakened in recent years due to a combination of factors, including the withdrawal of a majority of U.S. troops in 2018 and 2019 and pressure from Washington’s NATO ally, Turkey.

Ankara, which launched an incursion into northern Syria in 2019 against Kurdish forces, is now in a strong position to further challenge the Kurds, experts say.

Since Assad’s fall, Ankara-backed rebel groups have clashed with Kurdish forces and seized the previously Kurdish-controlled cities of Manbij and Tarafat near the border with Turkey.

Wladimir van Wilgenburg, an Iraqi Kurdistan-based analyst who has co-authored books on Syrian Kurds, says the presence of the 900 remaining U.S. troops might offer some protection to the Kurds but the situation remains precarious.

“The new administration in Damascus likely will prefer relations with Turkey over the SDF,” he said. “The situation is difficult for the Kurds unless they reach an agreement with HTS.”

HTS leader Ahmad al-Sharaa, previously known by the nom de guerre Abu Muhammad al-Jolani, wants to unify all armed groups in Syria under one banner. But if the SDF were to join, it would effectively end Kurdish autonomy in Syria, Wilgenburg says.

Via RFE / RL

Copyright (c)2024 RFE/RL, Inc. Used with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty

(The Conversation) – The wheels of history have been turning rapidly in the Middle East over the last year.

For a significant period of time, Iran’s status as a rising power within the region has been regarded as a consistent reality in assessing Middle Eastern geopolitics. But events since the Oct. 7, 2023 attack by Hamas on Israel have seen Iran’s position in the region erode substantially. The balance of power in the Middle East has consequently been irreversibly altered.

A key pillar supporting Iran’s previously powerful status in the Middle East has been its cultivation of the “Axis of Resistance,” a group of Iranian allies across the region that acted together against Israeli and American interests.

The members of the axis, in addition to Iran itself, include Hamas, Hezbollah, Iraqi Shiite militias, the Houthis and Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria.

Axis decimation

Israel’s relentless war in retaliation for the Oct. 7 attack has seen several of the most important members of the axis severely diminished, if not entirely decimated.

Both Hezbollah and Hamas have been humiliated through the destruction of their respective leaderships, and their operational capacities have been reduced significantly.

The largest blow to Iran’s proxy network was arguably the recent ousting of Syria’s Assad, ending a decades-long regime that was regarded by top Iranian strategists as Iran’s most important regional ally.

The adverse consequences of these developments for Iran’s grand strategy raises questions of how a significantly weakened Iran will affect the world at large, especially in terms of its impact on great power politics in the Middle East.

This undoubtedly represents a welcome development in the United States given the long-standing animosity towards post-1979 Iran among the American foreign policy establishment. But China is likely to have a more nuanced outlook predicated upon its commitment to pragmatic foreign policy maneuvering in accomplishing its top global objectives.

China’s engagement with Iran

As China has grown richer and more powerful in recent decades, it’s turned its attention to increasing its diplomatic clout and economic presence throughout the world. Every region of the planet has been affected by this development, but the Middle East achieved a spot of particular importance for China.

The Chinese government’s motivation to deeply engage in the Middle East has been — and continues to be — driven by several key considerations: the Middle East’s status as a powerhouse of oil production, its strategic geographic location bridging east and west, and its status as a long-standing pillar of American foreign policy.

China has fostered bilateral partnerships across the entire Middle East, but one of its longest regional relationships has been with Iran. In Iran, Chinese authorities saw a country that provided it with an opportunity to help it achieve China’s main objectives in the region.

“China in the Middle East,” Digital, Dream / Dreamland v3, 2024

Post-1979, Iran was inherently anti-American, which meant that China was more likely to be warmly received by Tehran, especially when compared to other regional powers like Saudi Arabia that had relatively warm relations with the U.S.

Perhaps most importantly, Iran could be depended on — to an extent — to stymie American interests in the Middle East given its status as a rising regional power.

This is not to say that Iran became a Chinese client state, but rather that China could provide diplomatic and economic support to Iran as the Iranians used their power to act disruptively in a region of great strategic importance to the U.S.

China’s future moves

Given the motivations underlying deep Chinese-Iranian ties historically, it’s clear that the evaporation of Iran’s clout will likely greatly alter the character of their relationship moving forward.

In a nutshell, a significant portion of Iran’s appeal to Chinese policymakers has disappeared with the near annihilation of its regional network. This will likely encourage China to seek deeper ties with other Middle Eastern heavyweights, like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, in accomplishing its goals in the Middle East — chief among them, increasing its regional influence at the expense of the U.S.

But it’s also unlikely China will entirely abandon Iran. While it may focus its most concerted efforts on developing deeper ties with other Middle Eastern countries instead of Iran, China would likely be hesitant to see Iran become even further isolated and therefore more predisposed to behaving aggressively.

China was one of the main behind-the-scenes mediators of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal because it wanted regional tensions to dissipate via Iran’s abandonment of its nuclear program.

Now that Iran is weakened, it has essentially been boxed into a corner, and has two main options moving forward: either it achieves a rapprochement with the West, or it reinvigorates its nuclear program and acts more aggressively.

While Iran’s ultra-conservative factions that control the levers of power in the country may be tempted to take a more aggressive path, it is very possible China will attempt to use its substantial economic leverage over Iran to encourage them to pursue the rapprochement option.

That’s because the Chinese need the Middle East as a source of petroleum to fuel their economy, and because China doesn’t want to be viewed by the West as an implicit accomplice to a bellicose and destabilizing Iran.

China a moderating influence?

On the contrary, China is currently attempting to repair relations with many western countries given the importance of the West’s markets to China’s ailing economy.

In fact, China may wish to play a role in inducing Iran to strike a deal with the West in the near future, given that it would show the incoming Donald Trump administration — which is notoriously hawkish on China — that it can be trusted and worked with constructively.

At the end of the day, China will seek the path that minimizes the likelihood of full-blown conflict in the Middle East given the importance of the region to the Chinese economy. The country has a strategic opportunity to signal trustworthiness and dependability to the West by working to prevent Iran from choosing a more aggressive path.

Daniel Lincoln, Policy Research Analyst, Geopolitics, The China Institute, University of Alberta

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

( Foreign Policy in Focus ) – The dramatic sequence of events that began on October 7, 2023, with Hamas’s strike in Israel, has cascaded through the Middle East, toppling regimes and reshaping the region’s fault lines. On the very day Israel and Hezbollah agreed to a ceasefire halting hostilities in Lebanon, the Syrian militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) launched a bold offensive to capture Aleppo, marking the end of an era for Syria. Earlier this month, the reign of President Bashar al-Assad—a tenure synonymous with repression, conflict, and decay—crumbled under the weight of accumulated resistance.

Syria, long shackled by a Ba’athist dictatorship and scarred by 14 years of brutal civil war, now glimpses a fragile freedom. Yet, the challenges ahead are formidable: sectarian tensions and entrenched divisions could derail the nation’s rebirth. Meanwhile, the upheaval in Syria has laid bare the vulnerability of Tehran’s once formidable “axis of resistance.” For Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the collapse of this network, painstakingly built to project Iranian influence, represents an existential political crisis. The fall of Assad’s regime signals not just a geopolitical shift but also a psychological blow to Iran’s ambitions.

The Middle East, a region perpetually in flux, faces yet another transformation, fraught with uncertainty but also infused with the hope of a new beginning. Hezbollah’s gamble in opening a second front against Israel during the Gaza conflict may go down as one of its gravest miscalculations. The Shia Lebanese movement, heavily supported by Iran, was emboldened to assist Hamas, but misread both the regional dynamics and Israel’s military prowess. By striking along the UN-demarcated Blue Line, Hezbollah stirred a hornet’s nest, and the consequences proved catastrophic.

After nearly a year of skirmishes that uprooted hundreds of thousands, Israel escalated its operations in September, delivering precision blows that decimated Hezbollah’s leadership. The group’s iconic leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was among those eliminated in a series of airstrikes that left Hezbollah’s command structure in tatters. On the ground, Israel’s forces drove Hezbollah militants away from the contested border zone, a tactical and symbolic victory for a nation accustomed to perpetual conflict.

By November, Tehran’s calculus shifted. Acknowledging the unsustainable losses, Iran urged its Lebanese ally to seek peace rather than risk further erosion of its capabilities. Reluctantly, Hezbollah acquiesced, agreeing to a ceasefire that handed Israel the upper hand. This episode highlights the limitations of proxy warfare in a region where alliances are tenuous and military missteps can unravel years of carefully constructed influence. For Hezbollah, the toll of this misadventure extends beyond the battlefield, leaving its future—and Tehran’s credibility—irreparably shaken.

“Mired,” Digital, Dream / Dreamland v3 / Clip2Comic

Iran’s reliance on Hezbollah as a cornerstone of its influence in Syria has long been a strategic necessity. In 2015, the Lebanese group, alongside Russian forces, proved pivotal in rescuing Bashar al-Assad’s regime from the brink of collapse. But the Middle East is a region defined by shifting alliances and resource exhaustion, and neither Iran nor Russia could muster the will—or the means—to defend Damascus.

Tehran, after all, was drained by its proxy war with Israel, and Moscow was deeply entangled in Ukraine. Their absence created a vacuum, which the HTS and the Syrian National Army were quick to exploit. Seizing on Assad’s weakened position, these groups launched an offensive on Aleppo, ostensibly to preempt a regime operation targeting their strongholds in northwest Syria. What unfolded revealed the fragility of Assad’s government. Rife with corruption and demoralization, Syria’s army offered scant resistance. Aleppo fell with startling ease, underscoring just how diminished Assad’s authority had become. Iran and Russia may have propped up Assad in the past, but their inability to save Assad signals a profound weakening of the axis that once anchored Syria’s survival.

Iran faces a sobering recalibration of its regional ambitions. Stripped of direct influence on Israel’s borders, it must rely on proxies in Iraq and its longstanding ties with the Houthi militia in Yemen to project power. Yet, a renewed focus on its nuclear ambitions could be fraught with peril, especially with Donald Trump’s imminent return to office. Trump’s previous strategy of extreme pressure left Tehran with little room to maneuver, and Supreme Leader Khamenei may tread cautiously this time.

Meanwhile, tensions have flared on the Syrian-Israeli frontier. For the first time since 1974, Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) entered the Syrian-controlled Golan Heights to repel an assault on a UN outpost near the Druze village of Khader. By Sunday, Israel had deployed additional troops to secure the buffer zone, aiming to contain Islamist rebel groups and prevent a flood of refugees. It is too early to envision a scenario where Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, the leader of HTS, brokers peace with Israel over the contested Golan Heights. Yet, as the Middle East repeatedly proves, the unimaginable has a way of becoming reality.

( RFE/ RL ) – Iranian police released singer Parastoo Ahmadi in the early hours of December 15 following a brief detention after she performed without the mandatory head scarf, her lawyer has confirmed.

Ahmadi caused a stir on social media earlier this week after recording a performance with her hair uncovered and wearing a dress. The performance, recorded with a crew of male musicians, was uploaded to YouTube.

The police on December 14 claimed she was released after a “briefing session” but a source close to the family told RFE/RL’s Radio Farda that she remained in custody. Her lawyer Milad Panahipur also denied the police claim, writing on X that the authorities were “lying” about her release.

The following day, Panahipur confirmed Ahmadi, who had been detained in her home province of Mazandaran, was released at 3 in the morning.

Two of her bandmates, Soheil Faqih-Nasri and Ehsan Beyraqdar, were also detained briefly.

Ahmadi’s Instagram account is no longer accessible, but her YouTube account remains active.

The video of her performance, dubbed “an imaginary concert” because female performers cannot sing solo in front of an audience, has received around 1.6 million views on YouTube since it was uploaded on December 11.

On December 12, the authorities said legal proceedings had been launched against Ahmadi and her bandmates for the “illegal concert.”

Ahmadi, who gained prominence during the 2022 nationwide protests after singing a song in support of demonstrators, has been widely praised for her performance.

On social media, many have hailed her for fighting “gender apartheid” and showing “bravery, resilience, and love.”

A rising number of women have been flouting the mandatory hijab in public since the 2022 protests, which gave rise to the Women, Life, Freedom movement.

The authorities have tried to crack down and recently passed a law enhancing the enforcement of the hijab by introducing hefty fines, restricting access to basic services, and lengthy prison sentences.

The new hijab and chastity law, which has been widely criticized by even conservative figures, is scheduled to go into effect this month, but at least two lawmakers have said its implementation has been postponed by the Supreme National Security Council.

Via RFE/ RL

Copyright (c)2024 RFE/RL, Inc. Used with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty

—-

Bonus video added by Informed Comment:

Parastoo Ahmadi: “Karvansara Concert, Parastoo Ahmadi”

Khamenei on December 11 also implicitly blamed Turkey for the lightning push of Syrian rebels who reached Damascus from their strongholds in the northwest with little resistance.

“It should not be doubted that what happened in Syria was the product of a joint American and Zionist plot,” he said.

“Yes, a neighboring government of Syria plays, played, and is playing a clear role…but the main conspirator, mastermind, and command center are in America and the Zionist regime,” Khamenei added.

The U.S.-designated terrorist organization Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and its allies — some of whom are linked with Turkey — ousted Assad on December 8, less than two weeks after launching their offensive.

Syria under Assad served as a crucial part of a land corridor connecting Iran to the Levant, which was considered the logistical backbone of the so-called axis of resistance — Iran’s loose network of regional proxies and allies.

Iran spent billions of dollars and sent military advisers to Syria to ensure Assad remained in power when civil war broke out in 2011.

Russia — where the ousted Syrian leader has been granted political asylum — also backed Assad, while Turkey has supported rebel groups who aimed to topple the regime.

A Khamenei adviser once described Syria as the “golden ring” in the chain connecting Iran to its Lebanese partner, Hezbollah. With the ring broken and Hezbollah’s capabilities degraded after a devastating war with Israel, experts say the axis has become severely weak.

“Foiled,” Digital, Dream / Dreamland v3 / Clip2Comic, 2024

Khamenei said only “ignorant and uninformed analysts” would assess that the axis has become weak and vowed that its reach “will expand across the region more than before.”

Reza Alijani, an Iranian political analyst based in France, told RFE/RL’s Radio Farda that Khamenei’s comments were more “trash talk” than anything else.

“The axis may not have been defeated, but it has suffered a serious blow and the Islamic republics arms in the region have been deal major hits,” he said.

Alijani argued that factions within the Islamic republic’s core support base may be starting to question Khamenei’s policies and vision after the recent setbacks, which he said is a cause for concern among the clerical establishment’s top brass.

With reporting by Hooman Askary of RFE/RL’s Radio Farda

Via RFE/ RL

Copyright (c)2024 RFE/RL, Inc. Used with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty

Damascus is the prize.

Damascus has an Achilles heel. It is landlocked, deep in the south of the country, and far from the port of Latakia that supplies it.

The other nearby port, Beirut in Lebanon, is a shadow of its former self, and the Lebanese government has closed the borders with Syria. You could get some things in from Iraq by truck, but the Kurdish-led, U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces have taken all of Deir al-Zor province and the checkpoint of Al-Bukamal on the Syrian side of the Syria-Iraq border has fallen to the SDF.

Food, weapons and ammunition have to come from Latakia. The truck route from Latakia down to Damascus passes through Homs.

The fundamentalist Sunni Arab militia, the HTS (Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham or the Levant Liberation Council), led by a former al-Qaeda affiliate, had Idlib. In the past week it has taken Aleppo and then moved south to take Hama. (These territories are green in the below map from “X”.)

Homs is next. If the Tahrir al-Sham takes Homs, it can cut Damascus off from resupply.

Game over.

This is the current latest status map of the Civil War in #Syria

Red: Assad’s army, the official army of Syria, aka SAA
Green: all the sub rebels groups
Yellow: kurds
[Hashtags (ignore): #Pushpa2TheRule    #SpotifyWrapped #pragyanagra #Bitcoin ] pic.twitter.com/SCnG7pUmqD

— The_Airplane_Master (@plane12429) December 7, 2024

In 2012-2013, when the fundamentalist Sunni rebels, including al-Qaeda, had taken Homs, they were pushed back out by the intervention of Iran and the Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah militia alongside the remnants of the Syrian Arab Army. The fundamentalist hopes of cutting off Damascus were dashed.

In 2015, the Sunni fundamentalists in Idlib in the north of Syria tried out a Plan B, which was simply to take Latakia itself. That would also cut off Damascus from resupply.

Iran and Hezbollah could not muster the sheer manpower to stop this from happening. The Sunni fundamentalists were getting backing from Turkey and the Gulf, and the Syrian Arab Army had seen two-thirds of its troops (mostly themselves Sunni) desert. Hezbollah probably only really has 25,000 fighters despite exaggerated claims, and they were spread thin in Syria and in Lebanon itself. (Lebanon is a small country of maybe 4.5 million citizens, and only a third or so are Shiites, and only half of Shiites support Hezbollah. So it just isn’t that large an organization).

So it is alleged that in the summer of 2015, the head of Iran’s Qods Force, the special operations unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, flew to Moscow and informed Russian President Vladimir Putin that Iran had done all it could. If Russia did not want to see Syria fall to the Sunni fundamentalists led by al-Qaeda — with all its implications for nearby Russian Muslim-majority areas such as Chechnya — then Putin would have to intervene.

On September 30, 2015, Russia started flying air support missions in Syria for the Syrian Arab Army, Hezbollah, and Iraqi Shiite militias, against the Sunni fundamentalists. This combination of ground forces and Russian air support succeeded in defeating the rebels and bottling them up in Idlib in the north.

Therefore, in some ways the fate of the al-Assad government was sealed when President Putin invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022. The Russian Aerospace Forces became bogged down in the Ukraine War and were simply not available in the same way for deployment in Syria.

The Russian Federation is pulling up stakes and leaving Syria. The embassy in Damascus said on Telegram Friday that owing to the “difficult” military and political situation in Syria, Russian citizens living in the Syrian Arab Republic were encouraged to take the next commercial flight out of the country. (H/t BBC Monitoring). BBC Monitoring also reports that Russian military bloggers had warned this week that if Homs fell, Russia would lose its military bases in Syria.

Homs fell.

“Running Away,” Digital, Dream / Dreamland v3, 2024

Now veteran Iran correspondent Farnaz Fassihi reports at NYT that Iran is withdrawing from Syria.

I suggest that Tehran has no choice but to leave Syria. Without Russian air support, the couple thousand Revolutionary Guards and the remnants of the Hezbollah forces in the country, along with the tattered Syrian Arab Army, cannot hope to defeat the rebels now any more than they could in 2015. The situation is even worse than in in the summer of 2015, since Hezbollah’s forces have been devastated by the recent war with Israel, which saw their commanders blinded or crippled by Israeli booby traps and many of their tactical personnel killed or wounded in battle. Moreover, if Hezbollah attempted to deploy in a big way in Syria now, without Russian air support, Israel would hit them. Russia had offered them their only air defense umbrella, and then only as long as they were doing Russian bidding in targeting the Sunni fundamentalists.

Russian air power made the difference then. Without it, the Syrian government and its few allies are doomed.