The Iranian role in Syria has declined since Russia took on the task of overseeing the fighting and preventing the fall of the Syrian regime. Russia’s leadership of the scene did not necessarily mean the decline of Iran as a power, as it led to the introduction of new Iranian policies that are less showy and more conservative, and Iran would not have disappeared from the scene despite suffering big losses in Syria.
This comes in addition to the deterioration of Iran’s reputation in the Arab world, as well as the reputation of Hezbollah, as a natural result of the violence, cruelty, and bloodshed of the intervention.
However, the Islamic Republic is determined to survive despite the high costs, since the Iranian imperial vision is based on the idea of transporting conflict with others to the lands of others, and this strategy contributes to a large degree in avoiding the spread of the conflict towards the Iranian geography.
In the early days of the protests in Syria, the late Iraqi President Jalal Talabani made a statement in which he expressed a brief vision of the Iranian strategy in Syria. As he knew the details of Iranian policy in the region, Talabani resolved the issue of the Syrian regime’s survival by relying on saving it with Iranian support, which is more important than the nuclear issue.
A large part of the price of preserving the status and role in Syria was paid by the exposed Iran with Israeli planes in Syria.
Last year, Israel bombed some 50 targets in Syria, among them many Iranian targets. The striking thing about the Israeli escalation during the most recent period was the desire to intensify military actions in Syria during the last days of Trump’s presence in the White House.
This explains the harsh blows that Israeli aircraft directed at sites and weapons stores belonging to Iranian militias in Syria’s eastern city of Deir ez-Zor, which caused the deaths of at least 57 militants.
Of course, these strikes, that could be described as a provocation, did not lead to any direct Iranian response, which means that Iran is seeking to restrain itself as much as possible. This is because there are looming opportunities for the United States to resume negotiations on the nuclear deal in accordance with promises made by the new head of the White House Joe Biden.
There is an inevitable separation between the two tracks of US-Iran relations, because the nuclear agreement, if it is expected to resume, will lift some sanctions on Iran, and the parties to the agreement may lean towards cooperation based on mutual trust.
But the other track in Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon will witness a lot of complexity, and if we are talking about the Iranian role in Syria, the US-Iran confrontation seems inevitable looking at the Iranian role in intervening the vital institutions of the Syrian regime.
The Syrian regime needs a force equivalent to the Russian force, which is the Iranian presence that reduces the burdens of strict Russian intervention and enables Damascus to not comply with the trends and decisions that Moscow is trying to impose.
On the other hand, there is a Russian-Iranian partnership, despite Moscow’s constant talk about Western and Arab media exaggerating the size of Iran’s presence and its role in Syria.
As for the nature of the partnership, it is based on the Russian need for Iranian militias on Idlib front, and to face of the growing influence of ISIS in the Syrian Desert, which is close to oil and phosphate deposits that Russia has gotten ahold of.
Finally, there is their need to restrict the US in the vicinity of al-Tanf (US military base), and in northeastern Syria, especially in Deir ez-Zor. In turn, the partnership provides a cover for Iranian presence, as the Russian and Iranian forces’ contact has a vital role that makes it difficult for the US to prevent Russian and Iranian forces from mixing.
Iran suffered devastating strikes by America and Israel during the years of Trump’s rule, but the ability of the Iranians to absorb this, and their determination to preserve their role in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon is beyond description, despite the fact that matters nearly drifted towards open war.
Biden’s ascension to power does not mean reducing coordination between Washington and Tel Aviv regarding the containment of Iran in Syria, and it also does not mean that the fate of the nuclear agreement is dependent on whether Iranian militias remain in or depart Syria.
The most important thing is that Biden’s administration is about to announce that its forces will remain in Syria to counter the Iranian presence, and this matter is what constitutes attrition and exhaustion for the two countries, the only option available in the war of attrition that both sides are good at.
The philosophy of the Iranian war does not pay any attention to human losses among its militias and forces. This itself means that American and Israeli missiles lose their great impact as if they are falling on the sand, although they will remain described as painful strikes according to the tenderness of Western analysts.
The experience accumulated by the US of relying on trusted local allies, such as the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), made it aware of the importance of not losing its fighters on foreign soil, and this in turn gives Washington an advantage in the game of containing Iran, but it is a localized containment that includes the area of the eastern Euphrates only.
The most important paradox that can be talked about is Iran’s need for financial resources that would enable it to remain in Syria, and in the event that the nuclear agreement goes ahead, the United States will provide Iran with the financial capabilities necessary to remain in Syria by lifting partial sanctions on it.
This paradox that seems ironic will lead Iranians to absorb the subsequent US-Israeli strikes and not engage in open confrontations that might lead to the imposition of sanctions against them.
This may seem absurd, even to the extreme, but it represents the only formula for coexistence within the Syrian devastation between Iran, which is looking for a prolonged role in Syria, and America, which does not want Iran to have the slightest role there.