Iran Pledges Support For Assad Regime After Syrian Rebels Seize Major City

Iran has promised to aid Syria after rebels took control of the country’s second most populous city, Aleppo.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi traveled to Damascus on Sunday to express support for Syrian President Bashar al Assad’s regime and to affirm support for Assad in Syria’s ongoing civil war. The civil war, which began in 2011, reignited last week when antigovernment troops launched a surprise attack and took control of wide swaths of western Syria.

“We firmly support the Syrian army and government,” Araghchi said before leaving for Damascus on Sunday, Iranian state news reported. “The Syrian army will once again be victorious over these terrorist groups as in the past.”

The Assad regime has also received help from Moscow. Russian and Syrian fighter jets struck rebel-occupied areas over the weekend, including inside the city of Aleppo. One such strike killed a dozen people in a central part of the city, according to The Guardian.

The rebel forces are led by the group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), or the Organization for the Liberation of the Levant. HTS began as Jabhat al-Nusra, an affiliate of the terror group al-Qaeda. The United States designated HTS a terror group in 2018.

HTS struck against Assad and the Syrian government because of Assad’s perceived weakness with Russia and Iran both distracted and spending significant resources on separate conflicts, according to Emile Hokayem, senior fellow for Middle East security at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

“This has to do with geopolitics and local opportunity,” Hokayem told The Washington Post. “The rebellion at large had regrouped, rearmed, and retrained for something like this.”

Moscow is waging war against Ukraine, and Tehran has suffered significant losses in exchanges with Israel. The terror group Hezbollah in Lebanon has also been a key ally for Assad’s regime in the past, but Hezbollah has been decimated and its leadership all but destroyed by Israel.

U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on CNN on Sunday that whether the rebel forces surprise attack in Syria aids U.S. interests in the region remains to be seen.

“It’s a complicated question because the group at the vanguard of this rebel advance, HTS, is actually a terrorist organization designated by the United States. So, we have real concerns about the designs and objectives of that organization,” Sullivan said when asked about U.S. interests in the region. “At the same time, of course, we don’t cry over the fact that the Assad government – backed by Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah – you know, are facing certain kinds of pressure. So, it’s a complicated situation, it’s one we are monitoring closely, and we are staying in close touch with regional partners about it.”

National Security Adviser @JakeSullivan46 tells @kasie that the surprise rebel offensive in Syria is the “natural result” of Russia and Iran’s “weaker strategic position.” pic.twitter.com/6xkMI6c8AO

— State of the Union (@CNNSOTU) December 1, 2024