The nine-year war waged by the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on the Syrian people is no longer camouflaged or obscured, as Damascus’ media outlets attempt to do through campaigns to promote the image of the aggression of the American West opposite to the peace of Assad, his government, and his allies, ignoring the scale of the destruction and bloodshed by Assad's brutal military campaign represented by Iran's sectarian cross-border militias, the fiercest violent tool with which Assad drew on this wounded people.
There are several catastrophic consequences of these campaigns on the country's economy. Russian Sukhoi aircraft and Assad’s helicopters loaded with their internationally banned barrel bombs and weapons, have decimated the infrastructure of Syria's targeted cities.
Assad's forces and their supporters deliberately sabotaged facilities that provide basic life services, including power lines and drinking water networks, and set fires that destroyed crops – a vital Syrian industry. Energy and oil sources fell into the grip of terrorist groups, and the high budget resulting from the military operations that Russia and Iran supported with equipment to ensure their continuation all resulted in an official budget which could no longer cope with all those crises. Meanwhile, the economic returns of vital sectors and enterprises went into the pockets of his family and supporters, away from the state treasury, and even accumulated in private bank accounts, most of which enjoyed bank secrecy of its clients such as Rami Makhlouf and other connected to the Assad family.
Finally, the economic sanctions of the Caesar Act came to pour gas on fire, while the two capitals Tehran and Damascus are reeling under the influence of ongoing and growing international sanctions. The Caesar Act was the final strike on the ability of the two regimes to deal with the financial scarcity that hit sectors and sources of national income including oil, gas, and strategic resources, as well as putting up barriers in the face of any attempt to begin reconstruction or import the necessary building materials before the Syrian regime seriously enters the political transition process and complies with UN resolution 2254.
It is obvious that Iran and Russia are pinning their hopes on investing in reconstruction and reaping the fruits of their blind support for Assad.
The ports have been blocked for Assad, and his allies are no longer able to support him, especially since the Caesar Act extends to both Russia and Iran. Iran, exhausted by the zeroing of its oil exports under heavy pressure and control of the smuggling operations that it relied on to sell the oil subjected to the US embargo, is no longer able to provide any form of support to the worn out Assad government. In addition, Tehran needs to cover the needs of its interior first, for fear of the implosion of the living situation in the country, which will call for a new green revolution whose seeds are still alive on the ground and irrigated with the blood of its martyrs.
As for Russia, it has begun grumbling about Damascus’ accumulated debts that Moscow has been unable to collect, and it intends to reduce support for the Assad government until these debts are scheduled and immediate payment is started. In addition to the consensus with the international powers that have influence on Syria, with which Moscow has woven lines of understanding about the future of Assad and his regime, in turn it will exert the required pressure on Tehran in order to withdraw its militias from al-Tanf military base in the south, and the vicinity of Damascus in the center, and in every spot has taken to spread destruction and strife.
The Caesar Act came into force on June 17, and the Syrian economy and its attachment to Lebanese Hezbollah collapsed before it even came into force.
Damascus's tough austerity measures to counter the scarcity of resources and the absence of basic goods from the markets and their monopoly by a class of traders who are already the regime's partners and associates are almost igniting a new revolution in the Syria – similar to the one that began in 2011 demanding freedom, dignity and human justice. This revolution is returning to the street demanding bread and the overthrow of Bashar Assad.
The popular demonstrations that started recently in Suwayda are an example of a new popular uprising that not only seeks to topple the regime, but also carries with it the tools of societal and political reform following the lessons learned from the ten years of war that are now set to bring the Syrians back to practicing their lives on their land, and with their natural human conditions after long displacement, abuse of rights, and deaths.