CHAPTER SEVEN

To the hilt: Assad’s allies dig in

The Islamic Republic of Iran aims to strengthen its relations with Syria and will stand by it in facing all challenges … The deep, strategic and historic relations between the people of Syria and Iran … will not be shaken by any force in the world.

Newly elected Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, Tehran, 5 August 2013.1

For long stretches of 2013 there was only one area where residents of the divided city of Aleppo could pass between the rebel-held east and the regime-held west: Bustan al-Qasr checkpoint – nicknamed ma’aber al-mout, the Crossing of Death.² Two buses were stacked on top of each other across a boulevard to restrict passage to pedestrians, who would have to pay a hefty fee and then risk sniper fire to pass. Even so, one report estimated that from September 2013 to January 2014 up to 50,000 people crossed every day, carrying essential foodstuffs or to reach relatives on the other side. Young boys scratched out a meagre living making the trip on wealthier residents’ behalf. As the Battle of Aleppo settled into a prolonged war of attrition, the two forces became entrenched.

A young smuggler from the east would leave behind a series of rebel-manned checkpoints, some aligned with Idriss’ FSA-SMC, but increasingly dominated by the radicals like Tawheed and Nusra.³ Passing into the regime-held west would reveal a different picture. The Syrian Arab Army soldiers on regime checkpoints sported new military fatigues, weaponry and vehicles. Alongside them and elsewhere in the city were paramilitary groups like the Ba’ath Brigades – a volunteer pro-regime local Sunni militia.⁴ As half the city was out of its control, the visitor might wonder how the Assad regime had been able to survive this long. The answer was visible in the soldiers facing them. Their new equipment, training, salaries, reorganisation, and even some of the men doing the fighting, came from abroad. This chapter examines how Assad’s closest allies Russia and, particularly, Iran rallied behind Assad and gave his embattled regime the means to continue its war.

A friend in need

Assad maintained a veneer of calm and business as usual for over a year, persisting with his supposed reform agenda by holding parliamentary elections in May 2012 and appointing a new government the following month. However, this couldn’t mask the regime’s losses. Manaf Tlass, a general in the Republican Guard, close friend of Assad’s and, crucially, the son of the former defence minister who had been a prominent Sunni in the regime, fled in July, denouncing the regime’s ‘criminal acts’. His was the most high profile in a string of regime defections that included high-ranking army officers, the newly appointed Prime Minister Riad Hijab, in August 2012, and the Foreign Ministry spokesman, Jihad Makdissi, in December 2012. More significant were high-level assassinations, such as the bombing of the National Security Headquarters on 18 July 2012 that killed four intelligence chiefs, including Assif Shawkat and Defence Minister Dawoud Rajiha; or the bombing of the Iman Mosque in Damascus on 21 March 2013 that killed forty-two people, including the respected cleric Mohamed Said Ramadan al-Bouti – the regime’s ‘last credible ally among the Sunni religious elite’.5 These losses alongside rebel military successes gave the impression of a regime on the verge of collapse by late 2012.

These losses should not be overstated. Despite the embarrassment of the defections, none were power-wielding individuals – with the Prime Minister in Assad’s Syria, for example, a manager not a leader, while Tlass was prominent but outside Assad’s inner circle – and the regime avoided the high-level fractures suffered by Gaddafi.⁶ Likewise, unlike in Libya, though many individual soldiers had defected, no whole units had gone over to the rebels with their equipment. Even the military losses were limited, with the rebels unable to capture any of Syria’s fourteen regional capitals until March 2013, when the regime lost Raqqa, followed by Idlib in May 2015. However, it will not be known whether, unaided, the regime would have collapsed. As it was, significant economic, material and military support was provided by Russia and Iran to ensure Assad’s medium term survival.

Russian diplomatic support and early Iranian help in media, cyber warfare and policing was discussed above. As the war expanded it became clear that more was needed, not least in the economic sphere. A combination of sanctions and the loss of trade and productivity, due to war, caused Syria’s economy to contract more than 50% in real terms between 2011 and mid-2015.7 However, the regime needed money more than ever, to finance an increasingly expensive war and to continue to pay state salaries and provide services – essential in maintaining support.⁸ Russia and Iran helped Syria cope with sanctions. When the EU forbade an Austrian bank from printing Syria’s banknotes, Moscow delivered over 30 tonnes of new notes, ensuring salaries could be paid.⁹ In 2013 $4.6 billion worth of loans was agreed with Iran while generous credit lines were similarly agreed with Moscow and Tehran for military equipment.

Weaponry and equipment was another key lifeline. Russia insisted that the weapons sold were for a legitimate government, that they were ‘defensive’, and that it was honouring contracts agreed with Damascus before the 2011 uprising. In terms of international law, Assad’s was indeed still a ‘legitimate government’, but this was because Russia had made it so by preventing any UN arms boycotts. While deliveries of Yakhont anti-ship cruise missiles and SA-17 surface-to-air missiles might have been defensive, aimed at deterring any potential western no-fly zone, delivering MiG fighter jets, short-range Pantsir-S missiles, tanks, small arms and sending engineers to repair Mi-24 helicopter gunships hardly fall into the same class.¹⁰ Having used helicopters to raze whole villages in search of insurgents in Afghanistan in the 1980s, Moscow may have had a different interpretation of ‘defensive’. Yet despite the Kremlin’s denials, reports from Russia suggested that new contracts were agreed, as was confirmed by Assad himself in 2015.¹¹ Weapon deliveries also served a political purpose for Putin, often announced in response to western anti-Assad measures. In December 2012, for example, NATO deployed Patriot missiles on the Turkish border following a request by Ankara, so within hours Moscow announced it had delivered its first shipment of Iskandar ballistic missiles. Similarly in September 2013, when it appeared that the US and its allies would strike Damascus, Russia again threatened to complete the controversial shipment of the S-300 air defence system. Using such ‘delivery diplomacy’ Putin assessed that this threat to Israel would help sway an already reluctant US to reconsider its position.¹²

Iran’s weaponry was even more controversial, as from 2007 it was forbidden from exporting any arms by the UN as part of its nuclear-programme-related sanctions. Even so, western officials claimed as early as 2012 that Iran was illegally supplying the regime with rockets, anti-tank missiles, RPGs and mortars by sending them on civilian aircraft and overland through Iraq, Turkey and Lebanon.¹³ Tehran (and Baghdad) strenuously denied this, but Brown Moses, a UK-based blog monitoring the conflict, unearthed photographs of an Iranian rocket and a mortar shell crate found in Syria showing a manufacture date of 2012, adding credence to these allegations.14

Beyond weapons, the allies provided key advice and personnel. Moscow deployed its navy to Tartous on several occasions: in summer 2012, and again in January 2013 for its largest naval exercise since the fall of the USSR.¹⁵ However, this was primarily a symbolic show of support. Until its dramatic intervention in summer 2015 Moscow had actually quietly withdrawn most of its military personnel, due to safety concerns in June 2013, although Russians employed by the regime as engineers and operators of Russian military equipment remained.¹⁶

Iran’s contribution in the first few years of the war was far deeper. While it deployed a small number of IRGC advisers almost immediately, rebel gains from spring 2012 prompted several more substantial interventions. In May 2013 Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Iran’s Shia Lebanese ally Hezbollah, admitted that his militiamen were fighting in Syria, but they were certainly there in some capacity before. Iran arranged for other foreign Shia militants to fight for the regime, mostly Iraqi militia until 2014 and from as far as Afghanistan and Pakistan after many Iraqis returned home to fight ISIS. These fighters helped compensate for the regime’s manpower shortage. Defections, desertions and attrition reduced the regime’s military from 325,000 in 2011 to an estimated 178,000 in 2013, and some claimed its active troops were as low as 70–80,000 by mid-2015.¹⁷ Yet Iran (with Hezbollah) helped the regime make the most of the troops it did have, improving training and equipment and directing strategy and tactics. They spearheaded the creation of the National Defence Force, a collection of domestic local paramilitaries, more disciplined than the unruly Shabiha, to supplement the military by manning checkpoints and providing local security. How many IRGC troops were deployed remains contested. Syrian rebels claimed soldiers wore Syrian uniforms but spoke Farsi, and sometimes paraded captured Iranians, whom Tehran insisted were civilian pilgrims. Such was the extent of Iranian military involvement that by 2013 oppositionists claimed IRGC Quds Force commander Qassem Suleimani had more power in Syria than Assad.

How this altered the nature of the Iranian–Syrian relationship will be discussed below, but the assistance clearly had a dramatic impact on the war. After a gruelling set of defeats in late 2012–early 2013, when the regime incrementally lost ground in the Aleppo, Hama and Damascus countryside, as well as Raqqa city, the increased support began to show. The regime’s new strategy, proposed by Iran and Hezbollah, was to give up trying to regain the whole country and instead consolidate its control of a defensible ‘rump’ of Syria from Suwaida in the south through Damascus, Homs, Hama and up to the coast, while defending remaining outposts like west Aleppo as best it could. In spring–summer 2013 regime offensives made advances in Idlib, captured the strategically important city of Qusayr in June and the rebellious Homs district of Khaldieh in July and repelled a rebel advance into Latakia in August. This was followed by a series of victories when trying to push the rebels out of Rump Syria, capturing areas such as Yabroud near Damascus on the Lebanese border in March 2014 and regaining the whole of Homs, once the ‘capital of the revolution’ that May. This did come at the expense of rebel gains in the periphery: establishing a presence along the Jordanian border in the south in autumn 2013, and capturing the last of the Deir-ez-Zor oilfields that November, meaning the regime had to import all of its oil. However, the victories seriously weakened the rebel presence in rump Syria, and boosted Assad’s confidence of survival. Continuing his ‘reformist agenda’ approach he held the constitutionally mandated presidential election in June 2014, in which opponents were permitted for the first time. In an election widely dismissed by western commentators as a farce (though only observers from friendly countries were invited to attend), Assad won 88.7% of the vote, easily defeating his two challengers, with a turnout of 73% (11.6 million voters).

The view from Iran

Neighbourhood matters

Iran’s policy in Syria was driven by a combination of domestic and external concerns. Despite accusations from its regional enemies, notably Saudi Arabia, that its agenda was expansionist, Tehran viewed the conflict primarily through a defensive lens. The great expansion in regional influence had actually come before, in the late 2000s when Iraq became a key ally, Hezbollah’s position in Lebanon was increased, ties in Yemen and Palestine were strengthened, and its stature on the street as a regional anti-western leader grew. The Syrian civil war pushed Iran into an unfamiliar role. Having spent decades trying to disrupt the established regional order, Iran was now seeking to consolidate and defend the post-2003 status quo. Meanwhile its great regional rival, conservative Saudi Arabia, was promoting change. Yet Iran in its foreign policy had long had a defensive mindset and its desire to expand its regional influence was, rather like Stalin’s Soviet Union, considered protective. A fear of western-led regime change had been a fixture of Iran’s regional view since 1979 and what Tehran saw as western sponsorship of Saddam Hussein’s invasion the next year. Weakening the western presence in its neighbourhood was long desired, including that of such key US allies as Israel and Saudi Arabia. While Riyadh’s leaders played up the sectarian dimension of their rivalry, Tehran frequently emphasised Saudi Arabia’s alliance with the US, presenting the House of Saud as the equivalent to Iran’s Shah who had been deposed by the 1979 Revolution. Iran’s pursuit of a nuclear programme also had a strong defensive component – possessing nuclear technology would deter potential attackers and also elevate its regional power projection to sway more states away from the western camp. This defensive mentality fostered a sense of encirclement and paranoia, reinforced in the 1990s and 2000s by the increasing US military presence in Tehran’s neighbourhood: the Gulf, Afghanistan and Iraq. The condemnation of the 2009 Green Revolution crackdown and the application of UN sanctions in 2010 only exacerbated this siege mentality.18

So what was Iran defending in Syria? The alliance had strategic value on several fronts. Firstly, the regime was a key bridge to deliver weapons to Hezbollah. Lebanon’s fractious politics, with political groups often aligned with the west in government, blocked Tehran from sending arms directly to Beirut. This meant that deliveries by air (and occasionally ship and truck) to Syria for overland transfer to Hezbollah’s strongholds in the Bekaa were an essential lifeline.¹⁹ Hezbollah officials heading to Iran took the same route in reverse. Keeping Hezbollah powerful was a means of both pressuring Israel, and by extension the US, and maintaining the militia’s political dominance over Lebanon, which it had asserted informally since 2008. Secondly, Iran utilised Syria’s proximity to Israel and the occupied territories to strengthen its ties with Palestinian groups, notably Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and Hamas, the political wings of which were both headquartered in Damascus. Finally, with Iraq’s post-2003 transformation from Tehran’s traditional enemy into one of its closest friends and trade partners, Syria became an outer wall of defence for Iran’s new asset.

Syria also held significant symbolic value. In the 2000s as Iran sought to improve its regional appeal, its enemies led by Saudi Arabia would seek to delegitimise its appeal to the Arab (mostly Sunni) masses by emphasising its Shia and Persian character.²⁰ Publicly aligning with Syria, a Sunni Arab majority country, despite its Alawi leadership, with a historic pan-Arab pedigree was a great legitimiser. Yet ironically, to defend this symbolic asset Tehran deployed tools that ruined its regional image. By supporting Assad in the first place, and then arranging for Hezbollah and other foreign Shia militias to fight for him, Iran reinforced the Saudi-led narrative of its Shia agenda against the Sunnis. Iran and Hezbollah always rejected this charge, attempting to present themselves as Muslims rather than Shia and carefully describing their Sunni enemies as ‘Takfiris’ (apostates) rather than using ‘Sunni’ in the pejorative way that their enemies used ‘Shia’. Yet this couldn’t mask the fact that Iran was almost exclusively importing foreign Shia militiamen to support what was presented as a Shia/Alawi regime. The cost to Tehran’s regional standing was seen in early 2012 when Hamas’ leader Khaled Meshaal, based in Damascus since 2001, relocated his politburo to Egypt and Qatar. Hamas was originally the Palestinian arm of the MB, had an entirely Sunni leadership and constituency and, with the regional climate seemingly shifting in favour of the MB, abandoning Assad seemed expedient. However, it further highlighted how sectarianised the regional fault lines of the conflict were becoming and dealt a considerable blow to Iran’s claims to speak for all Muslims, whether Shia or Sunni.

While supporting Assad was battering Tehran’s regional credibility and costing it financially, it is worth noting the wider regional context for Iran. Despite Syria’s violence, for some time Tehran saw the Arab Spring as an opportunity. President Ahmadinejad particularly wooed President Morsi in Egypt, making a great show of his arrival in Tehran in August 2012 for a Non-Aligned Movement conference – the first Egyptian leader to visit Iran since 1979.21 While Morsi caused shock by publicly criticising Iran’s Syria policy, Ahmadinejad persisted in the relationship, visiting Cairo to rapturous welcome in February 2013. Iran also welcomed Morsi’s proposal in 2012 for a set of Syria contact groups involving Egypt, Turkey, Russia, Iran and Saudi Arabia – only for Riyadh to refuse. However, whatever hopes Ahmadinejad may have had for improved Iranian–Egypt ties were ended by the coup of July 2013, which placed Cairo firmly back into the pro-Saudi camp.

Despite being on opposite sides of the Syria conflict, Iran also enjoyed mixed ties with Turkey. In a sign that Prime Minister Erdoğan was prioritising economic need over his fight with Assad, Turkey helped Iran bypass the 2010 sanctions that blocked Tehran’s access to the global banking system by indirectly purchasing Iranian natural gas with gold. This earned Tehran up to $13 billion in 2012 and 2013, much of which could have been used to support Assad.²² Similarly Qatar, with whom Iran shared the vital South Pars/North Dome gas field, continued to trade with Iran despite rivalry over Syria and sanctions – Qatar Airways even took over 20% of Iran’s domestic airline in November 2011.²³ There was also some ambivalence towards Russia. Although Moscow was also a key supporter of Assad, for the first years of the conflict the two powers hardly acted in concert. Russia and Iran might be seen as ‘frenemies’ in the Middle East: as much rivals as friends. They shared a desire to reduce western influence but saw themselves, not each other, as the beneficiary of a post-American Middle East. Historically Iran has been suspicious of Russia, which had invaded alongside its western allies during the Second World War and sought to manipulate thereafter. Iran enjoyed little bilateral trade with Russia (except arms) and was a potential future rival to export gas to Europe. Moscow had played a canny hand regarding Iran’s nuclear programme as well. While it helped to dilute and delay sanctions, ultimately it accepted them in 2010, prompting anger from Ahmadinejad, who was personally disliked by Putin.24 On the one hand Russia didn’t want Iranian regime change, as it would strengthen the west, but nor did it want either a nuclear Iran or an Iranian–US détente, that could allow Tehran to become a regional hegemon at its expense.²⁵

Finally, perhaps the most important regional development for Iran was negotiation with the west over its nuclear programme. Attempts to broker an impasse between Iran and the P5+1 (US, UK, France, China, Russia and Germany) had ground to a halt months before the Syria uprising, in January 2011, and were only revived in April 2012. However, a series of secret backchannel bilateral meetings did take place between lower-level US and Iranian officials in 2011 and 2012, brokered by Oman. This led to a more high-profile meeting in March 2013 when US Deputy Secretary of State William Burns and Jake Sullivan, Vice President Biden’s national security adviser, met with Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Ali Asghar Khaji in Muscat.²⁶ As the political climate in Iran was beginning to change, with the end of Ahmadinejad’s term and the election of Hassan Rouhani in June 2013, these bilateral talks would prove vital in combining with the P5+1 talks to make progress. The extent to which the US was more cautious on Syria once these secret talks were under way, and whether this impacted Iranian thinking and audacity, is unclear.

Domestic dynamics

Regional concerns were the dominant driver of Iran’s Syria policy, with a degree of consensus among the different factions of the ruling elite, but internal dynamics interacted with them. Perhaps the most important of these was the economy, which saw Iran suffer a recession at home just as it was facing limitations abroad, another sharp contrast to the success of the 2000s. Under Ahmadinejad, whose economic reforms and increase in international trade coincided with a surge in oil prices, the economy nearly tripled in size, from $192 billion in 2005 to $528 billion in 2011. Yet this boom masked widespread economic mismanagement, corruption and clientism and, according to The Economist, it was heading for a fall even before the UN’s 2010 sanctions. Yet after enduring ‘the world’s most elaborate sanctions regime’, the economy contracted nearly 6% in 2012, and 2% the year after.27 Oil exports almost halved, from 2.5 million b/d in 2011 to 1.5 million in 2013. Inflation rose to 42% at one point in 2013, the Iranian rial devalued by 80% in two years and unemployment hit 18%.²⁸

This downturn played a major role in the election of Hassan Rouhani as President in June 2013. Rouhani was a pragmatic conservative cleric who had studied in the UK before the 1979 Revolution and then served the new regime loyally, as secretary of the Supreme National Security Council and as Iran’s top nuclear negotiator 2003–5. Ideologically opposed to the Radicals dominated by the IRGC that had brought Ahmadinejad to power, Rouhani emerged as the consensus moderate candidate once his predecessor’s term was up. While his political base was a mixture of the remnants of the crushed reformist Green Movement of 2009 and fellow pragmatic conservatives, votes were won on a platform of domestic and international change. By emphasising ending the sanctions regime and reordering the economy, Rouhani won a landslide victory, earning 50.8% of the vote, compared to the 16.4% of his nearest challenger (a Radical).²⁹

However, Rouhani’s election represented a nuancing of Iran’s regional policy rather than a transformation, and its immediate impact on Syria was minimal. Indeed, soon after his inauguration in August 2013 Rouhani reiterated his commitment to the alliance, stating it ‘will not be shaken by any force in the world’.³⁰ Several reasons explain this. Firstly, though he was pragmatic, Rouhani was still a conservative, an Iranian nationalist and a supporter of the Islamic Revolution and broadly accepted the strategic and symbolic value of Syria discussed above. Secondly, although polls showed declining popularity for the Syria policy, domestic pressure to change direction was low. Despite austerity at home due to sanctions, Iran was spending billions to prop up Assad – in 2015 UN special envoy Staffan de Mistura estimated it was up to $6 billion a year.³¹ Even so, one poll showed that most Iranians had little interest in far off Syria, with only four in ten saying they followed the conflict, and those who did were most supportive.³² Using foreign proxies rather than sending Iranians to fight in large numbers limited the chances of Syria becoming Iran’s Vietnam or Afghanistan, despite the hopes of Tehran’s enemies.³³ Thirdly, and most importantly, the structure of power in Iranian politics gave Rouhani little power over Syria policy, and foreign policy in general save for the sanctions and nuclear issue, even had he wished to change it.

Iranian domestic politics was fractious, with Khamenei more of an arbitrator when consensus among leading factions could not be found rather than an absolute dictator. The IRGC’s role among these factions was particularly contentious. The force had increased its power in recent years, especially under Ahmadinejad, and controlled a large stake in the economy – at least 10% in the formal economy, even more in the substantial informal one.34 However, the IRGC was no united single body, having various hard-line and pragmatic currents, often competing as much economically as politically.³⁵ Rouhani’s election in 2013 was therefore not as unexpected as it may seem. Khamenei himself was not enthusiastic about Rouhani, but neither interfered in the election – having lost considerable political capital standing by Ahmadinejad’s disputed ballot in 2009 – nor opposed the new President’s re-engagement on the nuclear issue, recognising the damaging impact of sanctions.³⁶ Similarly, pragmatic elements within the IRGC, despite maintaining the rhetoric of resistance to the west, recognised the need for a shift. Suleimani himself defended Rouhani’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif’s engagement with the US against radicals in parliament.

At the same time as Rouhani’s re-engagement on sanctions won over hardliners, the pragmatists and moderates did not contest the stout defence of Syria. Different, sometimes competing figures helped Khamenei form foreign policy – including IRGC commanders, senior clerics, and Foreign Ministry officials – but on Syria a small faction of IRGC commanders led by Suleimani enjoyed unchallenged favour.³⁷ They ran the day-to-day campaign and, despite being frustrated having initially been assured that the crisis would be resolved quickly, Khamenei was a strong supporter of Suleimani’s approach.³⁸ The generally more doveish Foreign Ministry under Zarif had little influence over matters, but appeared supportive nevertheless, developing political options in favour of a negotiated settlement in parallel to the Quds Force’s military operations.³⁹ Tehran was not naïve about the Syrian situation, especially after 2013, and few believed that Assad could regain control of the whole country militarily. However, despite the fractious nature of its politics, even after Rouhani’s election all were united behind a policy of supporting the regime militarily and politically with the aim of maximising the chances of an outcome that would suit Tehran at the expense of its regional enemies.

Hezbollah’s role: a dilemma for Nasrallah

A key component of Iranian support for Assad was the Lebanese Shia militia-cum-party Hezbollah (Party of God). Tehran helped create the militia in the 1980s during the Lebanese civil war and has been its principal source of funds and weapons thereafter. But Hezbollah was not simply an Iranian vassal and Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah faced a dilemma when Syria’s uprising broke out.40 On the one hand, Hezbollah faced a grave, even existential threat should Assad be toppled. Syria provided it with strategic depth, including the essential supply line to Iran, and legitimacy: the Syrian–Iranian alliance was presented as part of a wider ‘Resistance’ on behalf of all Muslims and Arabs against Israel and the west. Like Iran it feared a Sunni-dominated regime emerging in Damascus, but with a further domestic reason: it might shift Lebanon’s delicate sectarian balance in favour of its Sunnis, at the expense of the Shia and Hezbollah. On the other hand, the costs of supporting Assad in his repression were potentially great. Regionally, Hezbollah had seen its popularity soar since it fought Israel to a standstill in the 2006 Lebanon war, and this could be compromised. Domestically, many of Lebanon’s Sunnis (roughly 27% of the population) instinctively sided with the mostly Sunni anti-Assad rebels and might use any Hezbollah involvement in Syria to challenge the Party of God at home.

Initially Nasrallah attempted to balance these concerns by offering Assad limited support, but publicly downplaying Hezbollah’s role. As early as May 2011, before the uprising turned violent, Nasrallah publicly backed Assad – arguing in favour of his ‘reforms’ – but denied opposition claims that Hezbollah fighters had taken part in the crackdown.⁴¹ As fighting intensified, the US acknowledged Hezbollah’s deeper involvement in August 2012, suggesting it was facilitating the IRGC’s retraining of Assad’s military. In summer 2012 Ali Hussein Nassif, a senior Hezbollah commander was killed in Syria, prompting Nasrallah to admit that some of his fighters were there but, he insisted, in a private capacity.

In early 2013, however, the gloves came off. In April Nasrallah stated for the first time that Hezbollah was fighting in Syria as the militia shifted to an overt combat role.⁴² Three developments caused this. Firstly, the regime’s inability to repel rebel advances raised the prospect of Assad’s defeat. Secondly, the rise of sectarian Jihadists and Salafists among the rebels represented a force along Lebanon’s border that would not just be anti-Assad, but threatened the entire Shia presence in the Levant. Finally, Iran appealed to Hezbollah for greater help. Whether this was decisive or merely confirmed Nasrallah’s own conclusions is unclear, but twice in April 2013 the Secretary General flew to Tehran to meet both Khamenei and Suleimani, and soon after openly declared Hezbollah’s presence in Syria.

This new approach was immediately felt at the Battle of Qusayr. A Sunni town south of Homs, Qusayr was controlled by the rebels and used to resupply the embattled rebel quarters of Homs, yet sat on the strategically valuable road used by Hezbollah to transport weapons from Syria into its Lebanese stronghold of Hermel in the Bekaa Valley. For the first time the Lebanese militia took the lead in a regime assault, sending up to 2,000 fighters into battle, capturing the city in June.43 This helped Assad eventually recapture Homs, but also signified a new phase of the regime’s war. While Hezbollah would mostly take dominant military roles in battles close to locations of essential strategic value – such as the Qalamoun region along the Lebanese border in 2014 – rebels were now frequently fighting regime forces supported by the Party of God.⁴⁴ Given Hezbollah’s reputation as the most impressive military force in the Arab world, this sapped rebel morale and boosted the regime. By offering expertise that Assad lacked, such as light infantry and urban warfare expertise, training, or directing military tactics, from 2013 the Party of God became a vital component of Assad’s forces and greatly shaped the conflict.⁴⁵ Curiously, despite the militia’s clear interests in Syria, western policy-makers were surprised by Hezbollah’s entry – another significant miscalculation in its Syria policy. As US ambassador to Syria Robert Ford later remarked, ‘We did not anticipate that Hezbollah would go in in such a big way in 2013. We thought we’d get to negotiations by summer 2013 because the regime would be on its back heels, we did not see Hezbollah coming at all.’⁴⁶

Hezbollah also greatly contributed to the war’s increasingly sectarian character. As discussed, there were sectarian elements within the opposition from the beginning, and Hezbollah and Iran were often the targets of anti-Shia sentiment. In the eastern town of Al-Bukamal pictures of Nasrallah were reportedly burned in May 2011, while elsewhere some protesters chanted ‘No Hezbollah, no Iran, we want a Muslim who fears God’ – an anti-Shia slogan which implies that Assad, as an Alawite Shia, is not a true Muslim. Even so, seemingly the largest section of the protesters rejected sectarianism, shouting inclusive nationalist slogans, and it was the regime and the emerging radical Islamists that drove the gradual sectarianisation of the conflict.⁴⁷ But Hezbollah helped to exacerbate this trend once it entered the war. A report by the International Crisis Group in 2014 noted how it justified its role in sectarian terms. Its early involvement was based on defending Lebanese Shia near the Syrian border and the Shia shrines in Syria. Later Hezbollah cast the struggle as a pre-emptive war against ‘Takfiris’. This implied that every rebel was a radical and a threat to the Shia, encouraging all Shia (or non-Sunni) in Lebanon and Syria to fear anyone supporting the rebels. At the same time, radical Islamists could point to Hezbollah’s involvement as evidence of a ‘Shia plot’.⁴⁸

For Hezbollah, increased involvement came at a cost, albeit a manageable one. Regionally, its popular reputation among Sunnis was shattered. A symptom of this was the strain placed on its relationship with Hamas, especially after Hamas-style tunnels were found in Aleppo and rebel IEDs in Qusayr of a near identical type to those the Hezbollah had taught Hamas to make.49 Domestically, Nasrallah had tried to keep Lebanon’s fractious politics isolated from the chaos in Syria, in contrast to regime attempts to sow chaos by smuggling in explosives and assassinating key security figures.⁵⁰ However, as the civil war became more sectarianised – partly due to Hezbollah – confessional violence spilled over. A series of attacks on Shia areas by Sunni radical groups occurred in 2013 and early 2014, the first within a month of Hezbollah’s open declaration of its Syria operations. The worst of these, a car bomb in August 2013, killed eighteen people in a Shia-dominated suburb of Beirut. A week later a far more violent attack on two Sunni mosques in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli killed forty-seven, with many suspecting avenging militants tied to Hezbollah. Sectarian violence linked to Syria also occurred in Tripoli where Lebanese Alawis clashed with Sunnis; the Bekaa Valley where radical militants in the Sunni town of Arsal clashed with the Lebanese army and Shias from Hermel; and the southern city of Sidon, where followers of radical Sunni preacher Ahmad al-Assir fought Hezbollah supporters and the Lebanese army. Despite this disruption, Hezbollah enjoyed the tacit support of the Lebanese military, which also wished to retain the pre-2011 status quo and feared radical Sunnis. Even Sunni political leaders were fearful of such groups and reached an accommodation in April 2014 that caused the attacks to subside.⁵¹ As such, Nasrallah contained the domestic fallout from Syria, which, though disruptive, did not gravely impact Hezbollah’s support for Assad. While Hezbollah had to sacrifice its regional position to support the regime, its domestic situation was rocked but ultimately secure.

Suleimani’s Syria?

‘Syria is occupied by the Iranian regime,’ former Syrian Prime Minister Rijad Hijab told the Saudi-owned al-Arabiya news channel in February 2013, six months after his defection. ‘The person who runs the country is not Bashar al-Assad but Qassem Suleimani.’⁵² Similar accusations, that the thirty-year alliance had been transformed into vassalage or even military occupation became increasingly widespread as the full extent of Iranian assistance became clear.⁵³ Assessing the truth is difficult, given the secretive nature of the regime and the political biases of those claiming insider knowledge: it is not surprising that a defecting Prime Minister speaking to a Saudi-owned channel should wish to vilify Iran. However, the available evidence does suggest a significant shift in the dynamics of the relationship.

Qassem Suleimani and the Quds Force

Major General Qassem Suleimani was no stranger to conflict. Aged 23 he joined the IRGC and spent the next eight years fighting in the Iran–Iraq war. Having risen in the ranks, a decade after that brutal war finally ended he was appointed commander of the IRGC’s Quds Force, Iran’s extraterritorial military and intelligence force, described by one analyst as a combined CIA and special forces.54 Despite quiet cooperation with Washington against Iran’s enemy the Taleban in Afghanistan in 2001, Suleimani would make his name devising anti-US operations during the American occupation of Iraq after 2003. By sponsoring anti-US Shia militia, funding various Shia political parties, and combining accommodation with intimidation in dealing with Iraqi Kurdish leaders, Suleimani successfully helped make the US occupation untenable. When the last US troops left in December 2011, Iraq had become a solid Iranian ally, not least due to Suleimani’s role in brokering Premier Nouri al-Maliki’s return to office in 2010. A silver-haired smallish man, with a close-cropped beard and ‘a look of intense self-containment’, Suleimani’s years in Iraq acquired him a fearsome reputation.⁵⁵

Yet when he was tasked to apply his skills to Syria, the challenge proved different from the case of Iraq. In the latter, Suleimani’s Quds Force had backed irregulars fighting an asymmetric war against a regular military, while in Syria the roles were reversed. In Iraq, Saddam Hussein’s state had collapsed, leaving a vacuum to be filled by militia while in Syria, Hafez al-Assad’s coup-proofed regime remained largely in place. Indeed, one problem was that the regime was designed to prevent any part of the military or security forces accruing too much power, which was not well suited to effectively combating an insurgency. In Iraq Suleimani had close ties with Shia and Kurdish leaders stretching back to the Iran–Iraq war and before, but in Syria Tehran had conducted relations primarily via the regime and enjoyed few deeper societal ties.

This different context prompted a divergent approach. An ‘advisory mission’ was sent in early 2011, including Suleimani and the former commander of the IRGC’s Greater Tehran unit, Hossein Hamedani, who had led the crackdown on the 2009 Green Movement, which the Iranians wrongly believed the Syrian uprising resembled.⁵⁶ In a sign of the regime’s independence from Tehran’s at this point, Assad ignored the mission’s advice to use only riot police, instead cracking down hard with the army, to Suleimani’s reported frustration.⁵⁷ As violence grew, so did the Quds Force presence, although until 2013 Iranian leaders denied it had a combat role. IRGC commander Ali Jafari insisted in September 2012, for example, ‘Sepah [IRGC] is offering assistance in planning, as well as financial help, but does not have a military presence.’58 However, western officials noted in late 2012 a sharp increase in flights arriving in Damascus from Tehran, carrying weapons, ammunition and, apparently, Quds force officers.⁵⁹ This was facilitated by Iraq, which had reclaimed control of its airspace after the US withdrawal of December 2011 and had a minister of transport, Hadi al-Amiri, who was head of the Badr Corps (a pro-Iranian Shia militia) and a close ally of Suleimani. Baghdad insisted the planes contained humanitarian supplies.⁶⁰ Rumours that the Quds Force was playing an active military role seemed confirmed in January 2013 when the Assad regime released 2,130 rebel prisoners in exchange for just 48 Iranians captured by the opposition the previous August – an abnormally high military price to pay for civilians.⁶¹

Reorganisation: ‘The Syrian Army is useless!’

By the time of the Battle of Qusayr Suleimani was directing operations. Having helped persuade Hezbollah to lead the assault, Qusayr was a major victory for him. By this point he was flying frequently to Damascus to head up a command centre comprised of the Syrian military, Hezbollah, and other Shia militia. This command centre was one of several major reorganisations he made to streamline Assad’s complex web of competing security forces into an effective fighting force. The Syrian military had suffered thousands of defections, but Assad’s elite units, dominated as they were by Alawis and other loyalists, remained intact, and they received an influx of new Iranian equipment and training. Regular units with a large Sunni contingent of soldiers were held back from the front line guarding checkpoints, for fear that they might desert or be less willing to fight. Suleimani was less than impressed, reportedly telling an Iraqi politician, ‘The Syrian Army is useless! Give me one brigade of the Basij [Iran’s paramilitary irregulars], and I could conquer the whole country.’⁶²

With this in mind, Suleimani helped create the National Defence Force (NDF), a paramilitary body estimated to have 50,000 fighters in 2013 and aiming to reach 100,000, to supplement and support the beleaguered military.⁶³ This was not a new idea: the Ba’ath Party established several paramilitary forces on coming to power in 1963 and Hafez created citizen militias from party supporters in 1980 to defeat the Muslim Brotherhood uprising.⁶⁴ Following his father’s playbook, Assad likewise looked to paramilitaries early on in the crisis. The vicious Shabiha existed before the conflict, but their numbers soon grew, drawing from a cross-sectarian pool, not just Alawis.65 In 2012 the regime encouraged the creation of local Popular Committee militias, similar to those formed in 1980, based around neighbourhoods and often centred on the dominant sect or ethnicity (Christians, Druze, etc.). Recognising the value of these militias, Suleimani with Hezbollah’s assistance first helped consolidate the most effective into the Jaysh al-Sha‘bi (People’s Army), but a few months later in early 2013 led their reorganisation into the NDF.

The NDF, initially tried in Homs and then extended across the country, was an umbrella organisation to formalise and professionalise various pro-Assad paramilitaries, particularly after Iranian concerns about the unreliable Shabiha.⁶⁶ The regime provided armaments, salaries and licensing, and all fighters were Syrians, but training came from the Quds Force and Hezbollah. Given Iran’s weak ties with Syrian society, observers suggested that the NDF was Tehran’s attempt to build a pro-Iranian proxy from scratch to act in its interests as a back-up plan should Assad fall. As one commentator noted, if Syria cannot be an Iranian ally, they won’t allow it to become an enemy.⁶⁷ Michael Weiss and Hassan Hassan suggest that an IRGC officer was attached to each NDF brigade as embedded commissar and fighters were sent to train in Amir al-Momenin camp near Tehran to ensure pro-Iranian ideological discipline.⁶⁸ Though not exclusively so, NDF units were often dominated by one sect, and some Shia and Alawi brigades embraced a sectarian outlook, allegedly massacring Sunni villages on occasions.⁶⁹ However, some caution should be added here. If the NDF really had 100,000 it is unlikely that all, or even more than a handful of leaders and elite brigades, were sent to Iran for ideological indoctrination. Hezbollah, a far older and trusted Iranian ally, has an estimated strength closer to half that, and only its elite divisions trained in Iran.⁷⁰ Suleimani probably did build a loyal core within the NDF, but the umbrella organisation incorporated a wider range of militias. Some were simply locals protecting their neighbourhoods, while others were former Shabiha using the NDF as a cover for looting and extortion.⁷¹ There were even reports of the regime buying off a rebel militia in the town of Nabq by turning it into a branch of the NDF.⁷² Tehran would not be likely to see any of these as worth training and indoctrinating in Iran. The NDF did, however, transform the regime’s war effort. By 2014, it had ‘functionally became a branch of the regime military’, manning checkpoints and taking on combat roles, while Hezbollah fighters interviewed declared they trusted the NDF far more than the regular Syrian army.⁷³

Suleimani’s second innovation came in his use of non-Syrian fighters. Alongside Hezbollah the Quds Force commander deployed thousands of other foreign Shia. The Institute for the Study of War estimated that in mid-2014, alongside 4–5,000 Hezbollah fighters, 3–4,000 other Shia fighters were operating in Syria.74 The majority of these were Iraqi, drawn from Shia militia close to Suleimani from his days combating the US occupation there. In 2013 the Badr Corps stated on its Facebook page that it had 1,500 in Syria, while Kata’ib Hezbollah (KH) and Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq (AAH), Iraqi Shia groups that Suleimani helped create in the 2000s, also acknowledged their presence.⁷⁵ Many joined the Abu al-Fadl al-Abbas Brigade, formed in 2012 as a conglomerate of Syrian and foreign Shia likely ordered to Syria by Suleimani. Like Hezbollah they justified the deployment by saying that Shia shrines, particularly Sayyeda Zeynab in southern Damascus, were being defended. However, while many did fight in crucial battles around the south of the capital, they were also deployed in Homs, Hama and Aleppo.⁷⁶ With the regular Syrian military facing a serious manpower shortage these foreign fighters became increasingly important. However, as with Hezbollah, they contributed to the sectarianisation of the conflict on both sides as Shia were imported to fight Sunni, including many Shia radical sectarian Jihadists.⁷⁷ In June 2014 ISIS captured Iraq’s third city, Mosul, and threatened Baghdad, prompting most of the Iraqi Shia fighters in Syria to return home. To fill their place, the Quds Force recruited Afghani Hazara Shias, almost half a million of whom lived as refugees in Iran.⁷⁸ Some reports suggested Iran had even raided its jails for Hazaras to fight.⁷⁹

Assad’s eroding state: spiralling costs, rising debt

In addition to the military presence of the Quds Force and Suleimani’s Shia proxies, the gradual weakening of Assad’s state, even in the rump the regime still controlled, amplified the perception of increased Iranian control. Years of war and sanctions crippled Syria’s economy. For the first few years the regime proved resilient, being self-sufficient in oil and food, and utilising the financial support of pro-regime Syrian businessmen like Rami Makhlouf plus Iran and Russia. It was helped by cost-cutting measures, a drop in demand for public services due to a decreasing population, and the falling value of the Syrian lira, which allowed its foreign reserves to go further.⁸⁰ However, as the war intensified costs spiralled. Troops needed paying, including the new NDF forces, while equipment and weapons were expensive – Iran and Russia wanted Assad to win, but would not give arms away for free. The public salaries bill remained high: as part of its claim to legitimacy the regime continued providing services, even in war-torn regions and often paid public employees in rebel-controlled areas.⁸¹ Yet from 2013 most of its oilfields and much of the agricultural land of the north and east had been lost, forcing the regime to import both oil and food crops for the first time. In 2014 Syria imported 1.5 million tonnes of wheat, while in early 2015, it was importing 60,000 b/d of oil.82

The regime consequently became more dependent on Iran. Firstly, it took on debt, Tehran providing two credit facilities in 2013 – $1 billion for imports of food and to prop up depleted foreign reserves and $3.6 billion for oil. As Syria’s economy declined, its debt grew, almost doubling from 29% of GDP in 2010, to 59% in 2013.⁸³ Secondly, Iran’s economic role was transformed from peripheral player in 2010, to key foreign actor. Bilateral trade grew from $300 million in 2010 to $1 billion in 2014, helped by a free trade agreement implemented in 2012.⁸⁴ This may only have been a tenth of the thriving Iran–Iraq trade in the same period, but still made Tehran Syria’s largest trade partner. Iranian companies entered the Syrian economy as other foreign companies were leaving, with contracts agreed to rebuild Syria’s damaged infrastructure. In one case, in July 2013, the regime offered substantial tax exemptions for an Iranian food export company.⁸⁵ In addition, observers noted a growth in Iranians and other foreign Shia settling permanently in south Damascus near the Sayyeda Zeynab shrine. Some speculated that Tehran’s long-term plan was to carve out a loyal Shia stronghold there, akin to the Dahieh region of Beirut.

Another key source of regime funds was the World Food Programme, UN and other international agencies, which provided over $1 billion in aid for refugees and IDPs.⁸⁶ While service provision continued for political reasons, quality and reach inevitably declined. By 2016 over five million refugees had fled Syria, decreasing human and financial capital, while those that remained found taxes eventually raised and subsidies cut.⁸⁷ Fighting the war damaged the institutions of Assad’s state. The military saw its command structure decentralised to fight the rebels. The new smaller mobile units were necessary to fight the war but weakened the military as a centralised body. The creation of militias, especially the NDF, exacerbated this process, with the Institute of the Study of War’s Joseph Holliday remarking that, ‘The distinction between Syrian Army soldiers and pro-regime paramilitaries has become increasingly irrelevant.’⁸⁸ Perhaps the most visible sign of state weakening in rump Syria was the growth of militia outside of the NDF structure. While some NDF acquired a fearsome reputation, and were permitted to loot recaptured areas if on the front lines, they were still an institution of the state. Yet the regime also tolerated and even encouraged a variety of militias allied to but outside of the NDF umbrella, such as Aleppo’s Ba’ath Brigades. More than the NDF, these groups had an overt sect-based or ethnic make-up, such as the Sootoro – Assyrian Christians in the eastern Hasakah region – or various different Syrian Palestinian militias.89 In some cases, such as the Druze Jaysh al-Muwahhideen (Army of Monotheists), formed in the Druze-dominated southern city of Suwaida, or the Alawi al-Muqāwama as-Sūrīya (The Syrian Resistance) in Latakia province, militias were given considerable autonomy. As Samer Abboud has noted, this ‘militiafication’ inside regime territory in many way resembled the privatised, decentralised and civilianised violence seen in rebel areas.⁹⁰ Moreover, this increased the chance that ethnic identities would be strengthened at the expense of a national one and decreased the likelihood of being folded back into a centralised state after the war.

Partner or puppet?

So had Assad simply become Tehran’s quisling in the Islamic Republic’s ‘occupation’? Insiders paint a more nuanced picture than former Premier Riad Hijab and other oppositionists. Clearly, as a result of the conflict Iran’s influence in Syria penetrated deeper and wider than ever before. Qassem Suleimani played a major role in directing the war effort, recruiting foreign militias and reorganising domestic forces, while economically Syria became increasingly dependent on Iran. The general weakening of the Syrian state both territorially and institutionally further amplified Iran’s increased role in what was left.

However, an increased role is not the same as either occupation or vassalage. Foreign fighters, especially Hezbollah, were essential to the regime’s military in providing highly skilled and loyal fighters. However, while the exact number sent to Syria remains unknown, even the more generous accounts place the total around 20,000 in early 2016, so the overwhelming majority of soldiers in uniform on the regime’s side were Syrian.⁹¹ Oppositionists may fear that some in the NDF were brainwashed to serve Iran ahead of Syria, but the number indoctrinated in such a way is likely a minority. Iran may have built close ties to the NDF in case the regime should collapse, but this was very much a distant back-up plan. Iran had few grass-roots ties in Syria prior to 2011 so was starting from a low base when it helped build the NDF, and to rest its policy on such newly formed ties would be uncharacteristic of Suleimani. The level of investment and debt agreed with the regime did not suggest that Tehran in any way favoured the dismemberment of the Syrian state. While it may have encouraged a necessary retreat from the north and east, retaining a functioning rump state that could eventually repay its debts and benefit the Iranian economy was important.

Assad, moreover, was no puppet. It was suggested by Naame Shaam (Letter from Syria), a pro-opposition activist group, that the Quds Force was behind the assassination of Shawkat and others in July 2012. According to this account, Shawkat was critical of Iran’s increasing role and, having contacted some of the Gulf states about seeking peace, he was killed in a pro-Iranian ‘coup’ to silence regime dissenters.92 The truth will probably never be known and an inside job cannot be ruled out.⁹³ Yet even if true, such internal ‘spring cleaning’ of anti-Iranian elements in the regime does not make Iranian puppets of those left. In his quest for survival Assad evidently was willing to use whatever means necessary, including subordinating major military decisions to Tehran, something likely to stick in the throat of Syrian nationalists within the regime. Far from a quisling, insiders suggest that Tehran actually found Assad stubborn to deal with. Moreover, its view changed over time. In 2011, from afar, they believed the President was a disposable figurehead, but the more deeply they penetrated and understood the regime’s workings, the more they saw Assad as essential.⁹⁴ As the only figure all the competing factions could agree on as leader, Assad came to be seen by Iran as the glue holding the regime together. At the popular level, many fighting for the regime genuinely believed in the ‘Assad’s Syria’ narrative.

Western commentators frequently mooted the idea of persuading Iran to ‘ditch’ Assad, arranging for him to be replaced as part of a peace deal, similar to the pressure they successfully placed on their ally, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to resign in summer 2014. However, it must be questioned firstly whether Iran would ever accede to that, fearing that without Assad the regime might collapse. Secondly, it is questionable whether, despite all their assistance to the regime, they actually had the leverage to persuade Assad to go, as they lacked the deep historical ties to Syria’s political elite long enjoyed in Iraq.

From the beginning of Syria’s civil war, Assad’s allies were willing to give more to ensure the regime’s survival than those states that wished to hasten its fall. While the anti-Assad states offered the armed and political opposition money, arms and support, Russia and Iran more than matched this and were also prepared to risk their regional reputations and send their own personnel. For the first four years Iran was by far Assad’s most important ally. Qassem Suleimani led a major reorganisation of the regime’s forces, brought in Hezbollah and other Shia militias, and directed key aspects of military strategy. Tehran, with decades of experience, proved itself to be far more talented at proxy warfare than its rivals in Doha, Ankara and Riyadh. At the same time Iran deepened its economic and political involvement in Syria, transforming the relationship. While this did not make Assad the Iranian vassal often claimed by his opponents, it did make his regime increasingly dependent on Tehran for survival. Such deep involvement by Assad’s allies greatly impacted the shape of the Syrian civil war. Financial and military support prevented the regime from collapsing under pressure, while Iran and Hezbollah’s role significantly contributed to sectarianising the conflict, a price that Tehran was seemingly willing to pay.

As with so much in the conflict, Assad’s enemies underestimated the lengths to which Assad’s allies would go to defend the regime. In the same way that western actors believed Russia could be persuaded to ditch Damascus, many seemingly expected Tehran to eventually cut its losses. Yet throughout, Iran showed a willingness to increase its involvement when Assad faced setbacks, not retreat. A refusal to recognise this by Assad’s enemies only escalated the conflict further.